Peasants, Peers and Graziers: the Landscape of Quarrendon In
PEASANTS, PEERS AND GRAZIERS: THE LANDSCAPE OF QUARRENDON, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, INTERPRETED PAUL EVERSON The medieval and later earthworks at Quarrendon, surveyed by staff of the former Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (now English Heritage), are described and interpreted. They reveal a sequence of major land-use phases that can be related coherently to topographical, documentary and architectural evidence. The earliest element may be the site of St Peter's church, located alongside a causeway. The evidence for its architectural development and decline is assem- bled. The site of a set of almshouses in the churchyard is identified. In the later medieval period, there were two separate foci of settlement, each similarly comprising a loose grouping of farmsteads around a green. It is argued that these form components of a form of dispersed settlement pattern in the parish and wider locality. Following conversion for sheep, depopulation and engrossment by the Lee family, merchant graziers of Warwick, a 16th-century moated country mansion was created, with accompanying formal gardens, warren and park. This was one of a group of residences in Buckinghamshire and north Oxfordshire of Sir Henry Lee, creator of the Accession Day tournaments for Elizabeth I and queen's champion. A tenanted farm, its farmhouse probably reusing a retained fragment of the earlier great house, replaced this house. The sites of agricultural cottages and oxpens of an early modern regime of grazing and cattle fattening are identified. In discussion, access and water supply to the great house, and the symbolism of the formal gardens, almshouses and warren are explored.
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