Monument record 3629/0/9 - Site of a medieval manor house, Main Street

The remains of a medieval manor house dating to the 12th-13th centuries were excavated prior to development in 2015. The house was abandoned in the early 14th century, although the chamber block was briefly re-used as a stable or livestock shed in the 16th- to 17th-centuries

{1} In July 2015 trial excavation was carried out within the area to the rear of the pub. The trial excavation revealed evidence of truncated medieval features along with later drains (Trenches 2 and 3), perhaps dating to the late sixteenth- or seventeenth-centuries. It was unclear whether they drained a building (in which case they were interior drains), or a courtyard (in which case they provided external drainage). In either scenario, they were thought to potentially belong to stables. There was also evidence of undated burning together with 18th-century quarrying on the site and a large late 19th-century rubbish pit.

{2} Excavation of the site in December 2015 found that there were truncated walls outside the drains forming a complex of buildings typical of a medieval manorial core. At the north-eastern end was a great hall measuring 8.5m wide and at least 10m long, although the east end had been quarried away, a chamber block, originally separate, to the south-west, 10m x 5.8m wide. A later linking building joined the hall and chamber, 5.3m x3.6m. A garderobe or privy building was added to the south-west corner of the chamber, 4.5m x 3.6m, with a garderobe chute relatively intact at its far end.

The hall was the most poorly-preserved of the buildings, but contained a pitched limestone central hearth and a possible screens passage in the form of a large cracked and pitted flat slab of limestone placed centrally close to the end gable wall. It may have been a re-used 12th century grave-slab.

From within the recess of the garderobe chute a group of pottery dating to the last decades of the 13th or beginning of the 14th centuries constitutes the last use of the garderobe. The most significant were multiple sherds from a Potterspury squat baluster jug of the early 14th century. Further sherds of the same vessel were also recovered from the chamber. Bones included cattle, sheep/goat, dog and pigeon, as well as herring and eel bones. Mole and amphibian bones were assumed to be intrusive.

Against the inner face of the east wall of the privy building was a small piece of undressed ironstone with a sub-circular cup in its upper surface. This is thought to represent a pivot stone for a simple form of doorway situated in this location. These have been found on numerous rural Northamptonshire domestic sites in the past, notably in relation to the buildings of the Lyveden/Stanion pottery industry. Set within the wall and just inside the garderobe, behind the door-frame pivot stone, was a substantial iron hoop with a diameter of c30cm, and some 3cm deep. This may be the base hoop of a bucket set on the ground in a niche. Its purpose is unclear, but if related to a bucket, it might just have been used to collect waste water beneath a wall-mounted laver, a basin for washing.

A group of limestone drains is associated with the chamber block though their relationship is not entirely clear.

<1> Soden I, 2015, An archaeological evaluation on the garden plot of the former 10 O’Clock Public House, 42 Main Street, Little Harrowden, Northamptonshire (Report). SNN110959.

<2> Soden, I and Prentice, J., 2016, Uncovering Little Harrowden Manor House: Excavations behind the former 10 O’Clock Public House, 42 High Street, Little Harrowden, Northamptonshire, https://doi.org/10.5284/1090794 (Report). SNN110960.

<3> Horne, B (editor), 2016, South Midlands Archaeology (46), p. 35-6 (Journal). SNN111326.

<4> Crank, N. (Editor), 2017, South Midlands Archaeology (47), p. 37 (Journal). SNN111362.

Record last edited

Jul 25 2024 2:04PM