The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

Middle Ages: rural settlement and manors
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The defining moment in medieval rural archaeology came in 1952 when a Cambridge postgraduate,
John Hurst, precociously engaged in the study of medieval pottery, visited one of
Beresford’s excavations, at Wharram Percy, deep in the high chalk landscape of the east Yorkshire
Wolds (Beresford and Hurst 1990). Appalled by the historians’ trenching, Hurst agreed to take
over responsibility for the excavations, thus unwittingly launching not only one of the most
celebrated partnerships of post-war archaeology but also what, over the whole course of its 40-
year existence, was undoubtedly one of the most influential all-round projects in European
archaeology. During that time, the project was the archaeological flagship of the Deserted Medieval
Settlement Research Group, founded in the latter part of 1952, which was later to change its
name as perceptions altered and interests broadened to the Medieval Village Research Group in
1971 and to the Medieval Settlement Research Group in 1986.
As excavations proper commenced at Wharram in 1953, Hurst abandoned the then ‘industry
standard’ method made famous by Sir Mortimer Wheeler of digging a regular chequerboard of
trenches separated by broad baulks whose sections recorded the vertical stratigraphy. Instead,
and for the first time on a British medieval site, the technique of open-area excavation was
adopted and the whole area of House 10 was opened up at once. Its excavation occupied summer
seasons throughout the 1950s, as did a similar campaign on House 6 in the 1960s. The archaeology
of both sites was complex, and its interpretation has changed radically over the years. That in
itself is testimony to another innovation at Wharram, of meticulous recording: stone-by-stone
planning, and the noting of the position of every find, even pottery, in three dimensions. When
the turf and the shattered chalk destruction rubble was removed and picked apart, what was
exposed was apparently not the single-phase 30-m long buildings that the earthworks had suggested
but short, misaligned lengths of walling interpreted as evidence of the frequent rebuilding of
what must therefore have been structurally flimsy buildings. Only in the 1980s, and following
detailed work on the area’s vernacular architecture, was Stuart Wrathmell able to reinterpret the
same evidence, and to demonstrate that these had been cruck-framed houses, sturdy and long
lived, standing for perhaps two centuries (Figure 14.2). What the excavators had found were the
short lengths of walling between each timber cruck, walls that had no structural function (the
roof being supported by the cruck frames), and which were replaced piecemeal as needs be.
The study of vernacular architecture—that is of ordinary houses and cottages constructed
from locally available materials using traditional building techniques—has made a massive impact
in general on the study of medieval housing, especially now that dendrochronology has supplied
large numbers of precise dates. In Kent, for instance, admittedly a county where the tradition of
timber-framed building was strong, it is now reckoned that there remain some 2,500 open-hall
houses of late thirteenth- to late sixteenth-century date, most post-dating 1370, when rebuilding
began with a vengeance after a 30-year gap following the Black Death. The sheer number strongly
indicates that these represent not atypical structures, the survival of which can be explained by
the use of exceptional materials or techniques, but the perfectly ordinary farmhouses of an
emerging late medieval sub-gentry class (Pearson 1994). Documentary research has also played a
part in advancing our understanding of peasant building, for although references to structural
details are relatively infrequent, when collected together on a regional basis, significant patterns
can emerge. In the West Midlands, for instance, the historical evidence has enabled Dyer (1986)
to characterize late medieval houses as well-carpented, of two or three bays, erected around
cruck principals and founded on low stone plinth walls. It is now clear that in many parts of the
country the late medieval peasantry was living in well-built houses, many of which have survived
to this day.
Returning to archaeology, from the mid-1960s, open-area excavation began on villages other
than Wharram, both of single plots (‘tofts’) and more extensively (for a review and references see