In Search of Crowcombe’s Elusive Medieval Manor
This summer we undertook our second major community archaeology excavation. Following 2021’s dig which helped to identify a Late Bronze Age Univallate Hillfort on Cothelstone Hill, this year, together with archaeologists from Context One Heritage & Archaeology, we decamped to Crowcombe, spending almost 4 weeks in search of the site of the village’s medieval manor.
Crowcombe is a very ancient settlement. The village name is first recorded as ‘Cerawicombe’ in the year 854 and appears in the Domesday book as ‘Crawcome’. The first written record of a manor house dates to 1295 but the original construction may well be even earlier. The manor, however, was demolished in the early 18th century and its exact location has never been positively identified. Various theories abound, with plausible arguments for the manor being most likely located to the East of the Church, or on the West side of the modern drive leading to Crowcombe Court, the 18th century Mansion which ultimately superseded the medieval construction.
The first edition Ordnance Survey map, surveyed 1886, places it to the due north of the churchyard, and it is in this area that the QLPS were granted access to investigate. It is known that a later walled garden was laid out in this area by John Carew in 1676, the remains of which are still evident as very slight earthworks, clearly visible on our LiDAR imagery. These remains make identifying potential locations of the manor site rather difficult, as the later walls mask any potential earlier remains. Prior to the excavations, a geophysical survey was undertaken for us by GeoFlo. This too, revealed the walled garden remains, along with a number of other anomalies. Some of these appeared likely to be land drains, but others suggested rubble spreads, potentially indicative of building demolition. These were chosen as the sites with the best potential for identifying evidence of the medieval manor.
Two large trenches were opened, exposing an area of 100 square metres. In addition, a number of 1m test pits were sunk to investigate some of the other anomalies identified by the geophysics. Immediately, the trenches began to show promising results, revealing a substantial spread of rubble to the west of the walled garden, and large amounts of demolition debris to the north. This debris included huge amounts of glass and 18th century post-medieval roof tile. Much of this seemed to be associated with the demolition of the walled garden and a substantial Victorian greenhouse, but excitingly, amongst this debris were earlier remains, including fragments of medieval glass; medieval pottery sherds; and a number of medieval roofing slates.
As this debris was cleared, a building began to reveal itself and we began to believe that we had succeeded in locating part of the manor. However, as the dig progressed, it became clear that the building was, in fact, a pavilion or garden room associated with the walled garden. Amongst the finds recovered from the area of this structure were large amounts of clay pipe fragments and a number of 18th century wine and champagne bottles, helping to create a picture of the gardens and pavilion as a place of recreation and entertaining.
The manor itself remained elusive and we consoled ourselves that we had learnt a huge amount about the development of Crowcombe Court and the extent of the landscaping which had taken place there to create the ‘natural’ landscape that exists today. And then, with literally hours to go until the mechanical diggers arrived to start backfilling the site, one of the small test pits, originally sunk to confirm the corner of the garden wall, revealed a potentially older structure. Sitting directly beneath the garden wall, at well over a metre in depth, was another construction, comprised of much larger stone than we saw anywhere else on site.
Could this be evidence of the manor, or just a foundation, and possibly a buttress, for the corner of the walled garden? Unfortunately, it was simply too late to do anything to confirm this. Instead, like the rest of the excavations, the feature was recorded and mapped. It does, however, hold out the tantalising possibility for further investigation of this area in the future.
The dig was also a huge success in terms of community engagement. 66 individual volunteers took part in the dig, contributing almost 1,500 hours of work. In addition, nearly 100 pupils from Crowcombe and Stogumber Primary Schools took part in the dig along with 32 members of Mick Aston’s Young Archaeologists. A number of community groups visited us over the course of the dig and around 150 local people visited our excavation open day to view the excavations; handle some of the vast number of finds recovered; and witness displays of medieval craftsmanship provided by experimental archaeologists from Newhaven Coppice.
We returned to Crowcombe in October to continue our programme of village test pitting aimed at learning more about the early development of Quantock villages. You can watch our series of films produced to document the dig here. We hosted a free public event for the villagers and those interested in February 2023, and approx 70 people turned up to hear about the final results. You can read the final report, produced by Context One by clicking here.