Post-Medieval Archaeol 29

Excavations in advance of a new gas pipeline provided a section through the moated manor of the Skipwith family on the eastern side of the village of Habrough. Tenth-century pottery was sealed beneath the moat platform. The enclosure ditches had been water-filled, but had been kept clean by regular scouring until the later-sixteenth century. Documentary evidence suggests that this moat can be identified with the manorial site of the de Saltfletby family during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was subsequently granted to a branch of the Skipwith family in 1365 who were to continue living there as lords of the manor until the end of the sixteenth century. At some stage in the later-sixteenth or early-seventeenth century the site of the medieval manor was abandoned in favour of a new location. Large quarries were dug into the now disused moat platform, to provide clay for the construction of the new buildings. In the field to the south, the first of a series of three crop-drying kilns was built on the edge of the redundant moat ditch. After the building work had been completed, the site of the medieval manor was deliberately slighted in the early- to mid-seventeenth century: both the clay quarries and the moat ditch were infilled with a mixture of discarded building materials, rubble from the now demolished medieval buildings, and large quantities of domestic rubbish. Finds from these contests serve as a useful guide to the contents of a middle-ranking gentry household in the later-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. Once the site had been cleared, it was incorporated into the adjacent field system and ploughed. Includes specialist reports on

Annual review of fieldwork undertaken. Investigations are arranged under the following sections: ecclesiastical buildings; military and naval earthworks and structures; towns and corporate buildings; villages; manors, country houses and associated works; farms and small domestic buildings; industry (with subsections for industry types); and communications.They are listed alphabetically within these sections by country, then by county or unitary authority.