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Greyhound Farm, Longtown
Herefordshire
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The
original house at Greyhound Farm had been a public house,
The Greyhound, for the second part of the 18th
century and most of the 19th, and has been dated
to the 16th century. |
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The
house to the south-east of the Greyhound, Glyneath,
had, at the time of the project, just been vacated by Mr and
Mrs Cartwright who had moved into the Greyhound. Glyneath
had been built in around 1880 by Mrs Cartwright’s grandfather.
Large windows in a single storey extension on its north-western
end evidence an earlier use of this part of the house as a
tailor’s workshop. Glyneath is shown as a post
office on the 1904 1:2500 OS plan.
The tithe apportionment of 1840 records that fields 1422 and
1424 were meadow. These, together with 1414 and 1429
(pasture – a few fields west of the site), 1416 and
1419 (arable) and 1418 (homestead, later the Greyhound) were
charity land in the occupation of John Rogers.
In the 20th century field 1422 and field 1424 were
both referred to as Greyhound Meadow.
The now-demolished farm buildings at Greyhound Farm were built
after the Second World War. |
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Part
of the 1840 Longtown tithe map. The Greyhound is marked
in red. |
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Fieldwork
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Four
trenches were excavated as part of the evaluation. Trenches
A and B were situated to the rear (south-west) of the farm
buildings. Trench C was at the farmyard entrance, adjacent
to the road. Trench D was in a detached part of the
development site, farther to the south-east.
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Trench A
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Trench
A was aligned north-west to south-east and situated to the
south-west of the standing farm buildings. It measured
12 metres by 2 metres. The slope of ground was 26 centimetres
from the north-west to the south-east. |
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Trench
A from the south-east. The edge of feature 36 is in
the centre.
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The
surface here was turf on topsoil along its entire length.
Below this reddish brown clay loam topsoil, at a depth of
30 centimetres, and extending for 4.5 metres from the south-eastern,
lower, end of the trench, was a layer of stone and brick in
dark clay. This was approximately 30 centimetres thick
and contained material of a mid 20th century date.
This was lying above natural subsoil which was steeply stepped
(36) down by 39cm from the subsoil to the north-west.
Such features are known as lynchets (Mr Cartwright remembered
that this area was lower before the construction of the 1960s
farm buildings.)
An alignment of flat local stone forming a path-like feature
(6) crossed trench A at 90° at its approximate centre. |
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Trench B
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The
only feature in trench B was a small (25 centimetres diameter)
post-hole (15) against its south-eastern side. Its dark
brown fill (16) contained clay pipe. |
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Trench C
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Trench
C was excavated to the south-east of the buildings of Greyhound
Farm. It was aligned parallel to the buildings and at
right angles to the road – i.e. north-east to south-west
- and measured 10 metres by 2 metres. The area formed
the access to the farm buildings from the road. There
was a 45 centimetre slope from the south-west to the north-east.
The surface was formed of concrete which had been laid in
the 1960s. Below this, a disturbed layer of stone appeared
to be the remains of the previous yard surface above a dark
humic stony soil.
A V-profiled ditch (24) curved north to south through the
north-eastern end of the trench. This
was identified as an older property boundary (see below). |
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A
vertically sided trench (22) containing a ceramic drain crossed
the cutting at 90° 3.8 metre from its south-western end.
The drain had been inserted to carry waste water, which had
been used for cooling, from the milking shed to the adjacent
field.
To the north-east of trench 22 an outcrop of rock was within
0.5 metres of the 2001 surface. A depression (20) in
this rock contained a gravelly light brown soil, which produced
two fragments of medieval pot. There was nothing to
indicate whether this depression was naturally formed or deliberately
cut.
Natural clay was exposed to both the north-east and the south-west
of the rock outcrop. |
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Trench C from the
south-west
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Trench D
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Trench
D was cut through a detached part of the property, which lay
to the south-east of the main development and was separated
from it by Glyneath House.
The trench was aligned at 90° to the road – i.e. north-east
to south-west - and measured 10 metres by 2 metres. |
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The
ground surface at the time of the excavation was formed of
recently laid stone chippings. The previous surface,
a garden loam which had been the vegetable garden of Glyneath
House, had been removed and formed a mound in the adjacent
field. Beneath the stone was what appeared to be the
original subsoil, a fairly clean yellow clay.
At the south-western end of the trench a scatter of flat stone
(29) occupied the position of a path which had connected the
house with its outside privy. This path had been removed
at the same time as the topsoil, as had the adjacent section
of the original stone garden wall between the garden and the
field to the south-west. A thin layer of clayey loam
above and around the stones seemed to represent part of the
original garden soil. |
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Trench
D - field drain 32 is in the foreground. In the
background, beyond the Olchon Valley, is Hatteral Ridge which
forms the modern boundary between Wales and England.
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Some
2.4 metres from the south-western end of the trench, a band
of red clay with numerous roots (31) crossed it at 90°.
At a distance of 6.5 metres from the south-western end of
the trench another feature (32) crossed it, also at 90°.
This consisted of a 25 centimetre wide trench some 35 centimetres
deep. It was loosely filled by vertically placed flat
stones measuring up to 35 centimetres along their longest
axis, some of them having holes typical of roof tiles.
A row of horizontally laid stone formed the top of this feature.
This structure is typical of field drains. |
Conclusions
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Taken
together, the evaluation excavation, the tithe map, earlier
excavation reports and observation of earthworks, produced
sufficient evidence to attempt an interpretation of the medieval
and later land use of the area.
Trenches A and B were both situated within the plot of land
marked 1418 on the tithe map. At this time it was described
as ‘homestead’ and was therefore within
the curtilage of the house later known as The Greyhound.
This field had been extended to the south-west by 1904 (2nd
edition OS 1:2500) and had been orcharded.
There is no evidence to suggest that this piece of land has
ever been used for anything other than agricultural or horticultural
purposes. The two post-holes found, 11 in trench A and
15 in trench B, may be associated with the 19th
century orchard. Similarly stone feature 6 crossing
trench A seemed to be path which may originally have been
ornamental as much as functional, but which seems at any rate
to be horticultural.
The 1840 property boundary marked on the tithe map was present
in trench C as the V-profiled ditch, 24. This ditch
was still visible to the south-east of the south-eastern hedged
boundary of the property - that is, forming part of the north-western
boundary of the adjacent field. |
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Property
boundary movements since 1840
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Glyneath,
to the south-east of Greyhound Farm, was built in about 1880.
It would have been this event which, by firmly establishing
Glyneath’s roadside boundary, led to the forward movement
of the Greyhound’s property boundary to the position
which it occupied until summer 2001.
Trench D traversed a piece of ground which, had until recently
been the vegetable garden of Glyneath. Until 1880 the
Glyneath property had been part of the field to the south-west,
marked as 1424 on the tithe and known subsequently as Greyhound
Meadow. The only features were a field drain (32), traces
of garden path footing (29), and an enigmatic feature (31).
This last feature took the form of a band of red clay with
numerous roots crossing the trench at an angle of 90° and
therefore parallel to both the modern property boundary and
the road.
If the tithe is taken as the earliest evidence of the property
boundaries in the immediate area, what then can be inferred
by adding some observational evidence into this equation?
Firstly, the properties running along the south-western side
of the road are all parallel to the road – none are
at right angles to it. This might suggest that all of
these properties had their origin in encroachments onto an
originally wider road. The high medieval road into Longtown
from the south-east seems to have been 22 to 24 metres wide
– this is the distance from the rear of the properties
to the opposite side of the road. The postulated original
road is marked 3 on the plan here. |
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Archaeological features in south-east Longtown
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The
property boundary south of Glyneath (between the now-detached
vegetable garden and the adjacent field) is up to 26 metres
from the opposite side of the road. However, feature
31 may represent an original boundary although it is two metres
further in than the present one. Although no boundary
is shown at this position on the tithe, it is possible that
an original linear feature was used, perhaps imperfectly,
to define the boundary of the house built in 1880.
Another feature observed during the field project was a positive
lynchet (37) forming the southern corner of the field (1419
on the tithe) to the north-west of Greyhound Farm. This
seemed similar to the eastern corner of the earthworks to
the north-east of the road. The distance from this feature
to the south-western side of the road as postulated is approximately
80 metres – the same distance as the rear of the north-eastern
earthworks is from the road. This would seem to indicate
a symmetrical plan dating from a time when the road was wider.
In this respect, feature 36 in trench A may be significant.
It may represent another terrace or lynchet of this type,
which was totally invisible on the surface. Whether
they are burgage terraces or remains of some agricultural
practice, there is no evidence of these features to the south-east
of the hedge defining the south-eastern boundary of Greyhound
Farm.
If the linear properties in the south-west side of the
road do represent encroachment, this is not the expansion
of properties which originally lay to the south-west again
of these. If this was the case one would expect that
at least some of the roadside properties would extend to their
rear – only the Greyhound Farm property is marked as
doing so on the tithe map. There is unlikely to have
been burgaging on the south-western side of the road when
these properties were established, as the latter would have
blocked the access of the former to the road.
There is of course the possibility that original burgaging
in this area was either abandoned at some relatively early
date or that any such burgage plots were never in fact built
on. If this is the case, then the possibility of an
originally burgaged area being incorporated into fields exists.
The ‘squatting’ on the roadside would then be
an attribute of a later re-expansion of the settlement.
This developmental sequence, with the later settlement pattern
imposed on the earlier one, may be a consequence of depopulation
associated with the urban decline of mid and later 14th
century.
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The
bank crossing the field to the south of the site. This
appears to correspond with part of the bounds of Merthir Clitauc
as defined in the 8th century grant.
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The
property boundary to the south-east of the old Glyneath vegetable
garden, that is between field 1424 and property 1420 (now
Denmark House) on the tithe, extends to the south-east as
an earthen bank (38). A hedgerow which once stood on
this bank, dividing field 1424 from field 1422 on the tithe
and still extant on the 1922 OS, has now been removed.
This feature is marked 4.
The 8th century grant of ‘Merthir Clitauc’
to the church of Ergyng/Llandaff specifies that its boundary
ran between the Olchon and the Monnow, enclosing Ynas Alarun.
This bank would certainly lie along a possible route of such
a boundary. Its alignment towards the Monnow may be
represented by the field boundary marked 5, and its continuation
towards the Olchon is marked 6.
The identification of the land between the Olchon and the
Monnow, north-west of their confluence and south-east of Longtown,
as Ynys Alarun, has additional support from modern names.
From the east this piece of land is approached by the road
from Michaelchurch Escley and Ewyas Harold which crosses the
Monnow via Pont yr Ynys – the Bridge of the Island
– which gives its name to the adjacent farm.
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Reporting
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Unpublished
Report - Greyhound Farm and Glyneath, Longtown, Herefordshire;
an archaeological evaluation - Huw Sherlock and P J Pikes,
2001.
This report is
available at the
Archaeological Data Service site
To view or download
the report
click here
A copy of this
report is held in the reference section
of
Hereford City Library
Clem
Lovell |
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