Great Moor Farm, Sowton, Devon: the recording and excavation of a 16th- and 17th-century farmhouse

Abstract

SUMMARY: The demolished Great Moor Farm provided a unique opportunity to study the development of a Devon farmhouse combining detailed fabric recording, excavation and documentary research. The building had a complex structural history, and neither the recording of the standing structure nor the excavation on its own provided sufficient information for the confident identification of the sequence of phases and their dating. The development of the house can be followed from its original construction in the early 16th century, as it was adapted, improved and enlarged following the prevailing fashions of comfort and style, to become a relatively large and comfortable house by c. 1700. Its growth coincided with a prosperous period for Devon farmers and with the evolution of the medieval to the modern house.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank Exeter City Council and Devon County Council for financial support, and Exeter Archaeology for much assistance, both financial and otherwise, including the funding of the radiocarbon dating; Cathy Tyers kindly prepared the samples for radiocarbon dating from the original tree-ring samples and re-examined the tree-ring dating. Professor Christopher Ramsey provided advice on the dating results. John Allan has provided immeasurable assistance in making the publication of the paper possible.

Notes

1 Alcock 1962, 195–201; this also discusses Middle Moor Farm. Laithwaite 1971 describes that farm in more detail, based on recording during its demolition, though the site was not excavated.

2 The cost of the investigation of Great Moor was met by Exeter City Council and Devon County Council, the joint developers of the industrial estate.

3 Cob is the Devon term for mud walling, made up of clay and sand/gravel with a binder (usually a small amount of straw), mixed with water and built up in layers on the wall. Different phases of cob can often be distinguished by their colour and character (e.g. the proportion of gravel). Cob walls in houses were almost invariably plastered and lime-washed, but farm buildings were occasionally left unplastered (e.g. Fig. 1c).

4 This description relates to the area before its development as an industrial estate.

5 Taken from an abstract of title of 1833 [DHC, D5308/Box 7/Abs. 11, p. 26 dorse].

6 By 1837, the farm also included some fields to the east of the Moor Lane stream, that had formerly been leased with Sowton Barton (in Sowton village), which was in the same ownership. The area excluding Great and Little Vine (1a on Fig. 3) was 56.3 acres.

7 DHC, 1926B/E1/1a, p. 2. In the lease of 1565 [DHC, 1926B/W/L26/1; Table A3], the tenant was still being required to do two days’ hay-making, while in that of 1700, Nicholas Forward also had to deliver one good fresh salmon every year to Henry Walrond, the landowner, at Bradfield.

8 The name Ringswell is found with very varied spellings, including Ryngswell, Ringwell, Ryngswyll, etc. The capital messuage of the manor was St Loyes (Fig. 2b).

9 For details, see the Appendix 2.

10 Numbered features are located on the drawing indicated (e.g. [110(6) on Fig. 6). Those given as (e.g.) 118(-) are not identified on the drawings but can be located approximately using their text descriptions. References to numbered sections relate to drawings in the excavation archive, not reproduced here.

11 Heavitree stone is a distinctive coarse red conglomerate sandstone quarried in the adjoining parish and widely used in Exeter and its adjacent southern and eastern parishes from the 14th to the 19th centuries.

12 This form of screen is also described as plank-and-muntin. In a mason’s mitre, the return of the chamfer is entirely cut on the head-beam.

13 Alcock 1962, 195.

14 The other sides of these screens were recorded in 1960 (Alcock 1962, 199), but by 1977 had been plastered over.

15 Section F; see also Alcock 1962, 200.

16 The earliest phase of the surviving hall fireplace is considered to belong to phase 2, dating from the mid- to late 16th century.

17 Information from John Allan.

18 Fursdon 1926–27. Her husband had died in 1617. Nicholas’s known children, baptized in Heavitree, are Nicholas (1625), Elizabeth (1631) and Agnes (1634).

19 Alcock 1962, 195.

20 Such walk-in chambers have previously been described as smoking chambers (Williams 1990), but Brears 2015 suggests that they were in fact farmhouse malting kilns.

21 Thorp 1990a, 121. Records of the demolished building, made by the Exeter Archaeology Unit are in Devon Heritage Centre, Acc. 8264.

22 Alcock 1962, 213.

23 Thorp 1983, 115; Adams 2015.

24 Hall & Alcock 1994.

25 He was buried in Sowton, as was John Forward’s father, who died in 1657.

26 A photograph of this overmantel in situ is included in Alcock 1962. The parlour below may also have had a decorated plaster overmantel. The farmer vaguely remembered seeing another plaque when he first viewed the property in 1944, but it was not there when he moved in later that year. It may be significant that a patch of 20th-century plaster [239(-)] was found in the right position for such an overmantel.

27 Alcock 1962, 195–6.

28 See Thorp 1990b for examples of similar plasterwork.

29 Hoskins 1953; Beacham 1990.

30 e.g. Cash 1966, inventory 39 of 1605 for Philip Duck of Heavitree.

31 In a major project preceding the construction of Roadford Reservoir, Broadwoodwidger, in c. 1985, two cottages were recorded before demolition and the sites excavated. Their publication is in preparation (Rainbird forthcoming).

32 TNA, PROB 11/265, f. 321v.

33 As, for example, the 12 hearths at Bowhill, St Thomas, Exeter, the home of a branch of the Carew family: Blaylock 2004, 40. For the Sowton hearth tax information, see Appendix 2.

34 TNA, C 11/706/9; C 11/879/12 includes depositions in the case. Richard Beavis was the owner of the manor of Bishop’s Clyst and lived at its manor house, Clyst House (the later Bishop’s Court, Sowton).

35 Online census enumerations.

36 The results for EWS44a and EWS46 are discussed below, but the other samples failed to give consistent matches.

37 This combined date is based on the assumption that the two timbers had the same felling and heartwood-sapwood boundary dates.

38 C.M. Tyers, pers. comm. Research is being carried out using Bayesian statistics to provided probability estimates for such combined dating evidence.

39 In relation to the Moor Lane holdings, the previous survey of ownership and occupancy of the farms in the parish (Alcock 1975) has been superseded by the present study.

40 Lysons 1822, II, 263.

41 Reichel 1912, 342.

42 Its history is traced in detail in Collings et al. 2010, 92–3; it was also known as South Wonford. However, for the other Heavitree manors his summary confuses Wonford Speke and Wonford Prodhome, and he fails to realize that East Wonford and Ringswell were identical.

43 It was given by Robert de Mandeville to Nicholas Gervais and descended to his granddaughter who married Sir William Speke (Lysons 1822, II, 263); it is directly documented in TNA, WARD2/1/5(2) (1589) and DHC Box 51/8/8–10 (1685–86). In 1822, it was owned by Sir Moris Ximenes.

44 Reichel 1912, 342. Other manors of William de Capra in Wonford Hundred passed to the Honour of Bradninch, although Polsloe Priory later claimed to hold Whipton from the Crown. Neither the foundation of the priory, nor this inferred split of the manor is specifically documented.

45 Feudal Aids, 316, 346, 387 (cited by Reichel 1912); Hundred Rolls, vol. 1, 86. A William Prodhome was probably the owner between the two Johns (referred to in 1304–05, though not identified as holding the manor: TNA, C 241/45/288, 289; SC 8/272/13565). The John, son of William Prodhome involved in a fine in 1322 (Feet of Fines, 1113), provides confirmation for this inference.

46 Cal. Papal Letters, III, 113. In the same year, he and his wife Sibyl also received a grant of absolution in their hour of death (ibid., 109).

47 Feet of Fines, 1486: Nicholas and Margaret Whytyng v. Thomas Prodhomme, including the manor of Ryngeswille Prodhomme. The remainder, if Margaret had no heirs, was to the heirs of Elizabeth her sister.

48 Oliver 1840, II, 302; Register Stafford, 282.

49 DHC, ED/SC 1–45.

50 Translation by Nat Alcock the script appears to be too early for this William Prodhome to be the same as the probable owner in c. 1305. He may well be the William who in 1238 held property in Upton, Payhembury (the later Upton Prudhome, that belonged to the family) (Feet of Fines, 310).

51 The pattern of property ownership in Heavitree has not been worked out in detail, but the location of Windout Hill can be identified from the Tithe map, as plot 417, lying just across the brook to the west of St Loyes, south of the road (Fig. 2b). Windout Hill is therefore the present East Wonford Hill.

52 Alcock 1975, 104.

53 DHC, 1926B/ET/8/1. This is the counterpart indenture, sealed by William Porter, which must have passed to the Walrond family from the Whitings after 1529.

54 DHC, 1926B/ET/8/2. This deed is very unusual for its date in being written in English.

55 TNA, C 142/14/23, C 142/15/77 and C 142/49/9. Inquisitions post mortem were inquiries made by the Crown into the landholdings of their tenants-in-chief (direct tenants) at their decease.

56 The Inquisition post mortem for his Dorset lands (TNA, C 142/49/20) recites a will dated later than that proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (TNA, PROB11/23), which only named three daughters); the corresponding Devon Inquisition is damaged. The daughters were: Mary, aged 27, wife of Humphrey Kaynes (Keynes); Agnes, aged 25, wife of Henry Walrond; Isabella or Isabel, aged 15; Jane, a nun at Wilton Abbey; Joanna and Elizabeth (respectively 12 and 4 years old). TNA, WARD 9/129, f. 108, concerns the provision for the last three. Isabel was later the wife of Nicholas Ashford of Ashford, and Joan/Jane of Robert FitzJames. Elizabeth presumably died unmarried, since she is not mentioned in later documents.

57 DHC, 3004A/PFT/2.

58 The ownership of the capital messuage of the manor, St Loyes is included, as this allows the succession to the ownership of the shares in the manor to be established. Many of the deeds have survived among those of the feoffees of Heavitree parish, who eventually acquired both the capital messuage and a quarter share of Little Moor farm.

59 The crown lease of the ‘manor’ in 1658, when it was extended for debt, is most probably of the former Asheford share, since it does not include Great Moor among the tenanted farms listed.

60 TNA, C11/706/9; see also Alcock 1975, 100–3.

61 The identification is confirmed from the list of its fields in 1809, included in the abstract of title for its purchase by John Garratt of Bishop’s Court in 1833 (DHC, D5308/Box 7/Abs. 11); the corresponding deeds are in Box 3.

62 For details of the family, see Alcock 1975, esp. 100–5.

63 Earlier lay subsidy listings (in TNA, E179) do not name any tenants recognizably from the Moor Lane farms.

64 John Forward’s father, another John, leased Seldons in 1652 (listed in DHC, ECA/ED/SC/45) and he was buried in Sowton in 1657. The earliest Forward baptisms in the Sowton register are of the second John’s children, starting in 1659. He is recorded as licensed to practice in 1665 (Lambeth Palace, MS 639, 306, 399).

65 TNA, E 179/245/17/22; see Stoate 1982.

66 DHC, D5308/Box 3.

67 TNA, IR58/30535, hered. 4.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nat Alcock

3 Colleton Crescent, Exeter EX2 4DG, UK (JT) [[email protected]]

18 Portland Place, Leamington Spa CV32 5EU, UK (NA) [[email protected]]