Cherry Hall, Main Street GRINDLETON Ribble Valley
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NEIL ARCHAEOLOGICAL SERVICES Established 1994 NIGEL R. J. NEIL, MA, MSc, MIfA, LRPS 5 HILLSIDE, CASTLE PARK, LANCASTER, LA1 1YH Tel/Voicemail 01524 844 728 Mobile/Voicemail 07968 621 530 e-mail: [email protected] Desk-based assessments & evaluations Archaeological watching briefs Standing building survey & analysis Garden History projects Environmental Impact Assessment Outreach and lectures Cherry Hall, Main Street GRINDLETON Ribble Valley Borough Lancashire Heritage Statement and Desk-Based Archaeological / Historical Assessment Planning Application ref.: 3 / 2011 / 0095P (Re-submission of Application ref. 3 / 2010 / 0002) (Left) Cherry Hall in c. the 1920s (Clitheroe Library); (Right) Mr Thomas Scott (1833-1913) of Cherry Hall, village pinder [keeper of the pinfold] and respected amateur bee-keeper (Clitheroe Library) DRAFT 2 12 July 2011 m Commissioned by Mr and Mrs Simon Cherry, Cherry Hall, Grindleton, and Jonathan Hadfield (Engineering and Surveying), Chipping Cherry Hall, Grindleton, Ribble Valley, Lancs.: Heritage Statement, App ref. 3 / 2011 / 0095P 1 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. Neil Archaeological Services were commissioned by Mr and Mrs S. Cherry, of Cherry Hall, Main St., Grindleton, BB7 4QT, and their architect Jonathan Hadfield of Chipping, to provide a Heritage Statement, in support of Planning Application ref. 3 / 2011 / 0095P, for erection of two affordable dwellings in the garden to the NE of Cherry Hall. This document is supplementary to, and enhances and corrects in minor details, the Feb 2011 Planning and Heritage Statement provided by The Planning and Development Network, Clitheroe. I visited the site (NGR SD 75787 45888) on 24 May with the architect, and undertook a ‘walk over survey’ of the vicinity. 1.2. A desk-based assessment of Grindleton, with particular reference to the development site, has been undertaken, visiting Lancashire Archives, Preston (formerly Lancashire Record Office, LRO) on 26 May and 2 June, and Clitheroe Library on 11 July. The Access to Archives (A2A) and The Genealogist websites have also been used, and the archaeological significance of the site and Grindleton village placed in context with reference to the Archaeological Research Framework for North West England. Where the report refers to Ribble Valley Borough Council’s Grindleton Conservation Area Appraisal (Oct 2005), this has been abbreviated to “the CAA”. 1.3. Lancashire County Archaeology Service response: Douglas Moir, Planning Officer (Archaeology), in Lancashire County Council Environment Directorate has commented (pers. comm.): ‘although I did have a look at the [previous] application (3/2010/0002) I sent a “no comment” response concerning the application. I made that decision on the basis that - in the absence of a medieval church - the settlement was likely to have been very small in the medieval period, and therefore any archaeological deposits of this period difficult to pinpoint with any confidence, and that the concentration of post-medieval occupation was likely to be to the south of the application site (as evidenced by the few listed buildings there are). This was however only based on the information held on the Lancashire Historic Environment Record [LHER], 1st edition OS [1850s], and aerial photographs. It was considered that any recommendation for a watching brief would therefore be too speculative to meet one of the planning tests of reasonableness.’ Mr Moir does not mention the Early Medieval importance of Grindleton, or the early chapel (LHER PRN 10050; demolished 1804), to which the lane beside the proposed development led (see below). 2. DESK-BASED ASSESSMENT 2.1 Grindleton never achieved (or had already gained, then lost) the status of a medieval market or urban centre, and was therefore NOT considered sufficiently important to merit inclusion as one of the 57 towns for which brief archaeological and historical assessments were carried out (LUAU 1998), followed by 33 detailed surveys, as part of Lancashire County Council’s historic towns survey programme http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/corporate/web/index.asp?siteid=4398&pageid=20340&e=e. Furthermore, having been in the West Riding of Yorkshire until 1974, Grindleton’s history has not yet been summarised by the Victoria histories of the counties of England, unlike adjacent ‘old-Lancashire’ townships, and so sources for the place are more disparate. It is understood that no previous archaeological fieldwork in the village has been done, apart from a pre-conversion barn survey at Stone Hill Fold, c. 80 m NW of Cherry Hall (Ken Davis, LCAS, pers. comm.). The regional importance of Grindleton before the Norman Conquest was evidently considerable, though it is difficult to define the specific area to which the historical sources refer. 2.2 Whilst there is good evidence for the continuity of major land tenure boundaries created in pre- Conquest times, and for the establishment of a “nascent parish structure” (Rachel Newman 2006, 100), the origins of ‘nucleated settlement’ in the North West are difficult to pinpoint. However, it is generally agreed that Early Medieval (aka Dark Age) settlement was ‘dispersed’, in the form of For the use of Mr and Mrs S. Cherry, Mr J. Hadfield (architect), Neil Archaeological Services The Planning & Development Network, Ribble Valley Borough Council, and Lancashire County Archaeology Service only July 2011 Cherry Hall, Grindleton, Ribble Valley, Lancs.: Heritage Statement, App ref. 3 / 2011 / 0095P 2 settlement, sometimes within large oval enclosures, with the exception of slight evidence for continued occupation in some of the towns established during the Romano-British period. The nucleated plan of Grindleton village contains the text-book features of planned villages in the north of England: “a single main street, with narrow lanes extending out, and strip-like crofts extend away from the central communal village space, and often there is back lane facilitating access to the rear of the crofts” (Roberts 1990) - conforming to a pattern seen throughout Cumbria (Shap and Hale have been studied most thoroughly), and in North Lancashire, such as at Yealand Redmayne. But, whilst this village plan, as exhibited at Grindleton, is popularly believed to be pre-Conquest, research throughout North West England strongly suggests that this is unlikely to pre-date the late twelfth century (C. Newman 2006, 118; C. and Richard Newman 2007, 97). Archaeological fieldwork on nucleated villages has, however, been lamentably sparse throughout the North West, and largely comprises topographical survey, with the exception of the excavations at Rickerby (Cumbria), Tatton (Cheshire), and largely unpublished work at Easington (Lancashire), and Fazakerley (Merseyside) (C. Newman 2006, 119). 2.3 Whatever the date of the establishment of the village plan of Grindleton, the extent to which the proposed development might or might not impinge on this aspect of the village’s historical character is – from their earlier responses – clearly a matter of concern to the parish council and Ribble Valley Borough Council. An important issue for the local authority to consider is how to balance their laudable desire to retain those few examples of the former crofts/tenements at Grindleton which remain without infill, against the present writer’s submission that the retention of the boundaries of the tenements is arguably more important than the extent of infill. The boundaries of the Cherry Hall plot will be retained by the present proposal. The retention of only one or two surviving open crofts/tenements, in a village where the vast majority have been infilled, is not seen by the present writer as a sustainable heritage resource. Meanwhile, the perception of the village as formerly comprising a great many long, narrow, plots is still largely discernible, though more so cartographically than on the ground. It should be noted that the majority of those of Grindleton’s tenements/crofts which have lost their East to West integrity of boundary had done so prior to the 1884 first edition Ordnance Survey 1:2500 map, while the actual infilling of the parts of plots behind the Main Street frontage, especially those houses accessed from Back Lane, post-date 1884. 2.4 There are no indications whatsoever on the ground of the village’s pre-Conquest importance, and no reason to suggest strongly that there is likely to be below-ground evidence surviving on the proposed development site, as it is set well back from Main Street. 2.5 Early Medieval history: there is documentary evidence to show that the village of Grindleton (or more correctly the township as a whole) was of considerable regional importance in the Early Medieval period – i.e. the ‘sub-Roman period’, popularly known as the Dark Ages, between the Roman withdrawal of c. AD 410 and the Norman Conquest of 1066. Bowland was part of the British kingdom of Rheged (which extended from Galloway to the River Mersey) until it was annexed by Northumbria some time before AD 730 (Kenyon 1991, 70-1). Its inhabitants spoke Cumbric, a Brythonic dialect closely related to Old Welsh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheged). 2.6 Domesday Book (1086) relates that, twenty years earlier at the time of the Conquest, Gretlintone was the caput, or leading vill, of an estate of that name (the entry ends “these lands belong to Gretlintone”), which - with a great many other estates - belonged to Earl Tostig (killed at Battle of Stamford Bridge; brother of King Harold II). Gretlintone was a ‘multiple estate’ or maenor wrthtir, comprising 13 vills and an extent of 38 carucates (M. Higham 1985; 2007, 149-51), or approximately 38 x 120 = 4560 statute acres = c. 11,250 hectares. A carucate was the area that For the use of Mr and Mrs S. Cherry, Mr J. Hadfield (architect), Neil Archaeological Services The Planning & Development Network, Ribble Valley Borough Council, and Lancashire County Archaeology Service only July 2011 Cherry Hall, Grindleton, Ribble Valley, Lancs.: Heritage Statement, App ref. 3 / 2011 / 0095P 3 could be ploughed by 8 oxen in a year, though this varied with the quality of land (http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/28336?redirectedFrom=carucate#eid).