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Topographical field surveying on Kilnsey Town’s Piece
With the completion of the field survey and excavations of the Corn Drying Kiln by UWHG and IAG (Ingleborough Archaeology Group), on Kilnsey’s Town Piece in the summer of 2008, local residents were invited to an open meeting in the Kilnsey Village Hall to hear Dr Roger Martlew and David Johnson present the results.
The well-attended meeting was treated to two excellent presentations. Roger provided an overview of the geophysics survey of the field, which built upon data already available from the Historic Environment Record and aerial photographs. The latter, taken before the trout farm was extended over the area, had revealed several interesting features, including lynchets, field boundaries and an enclosure (the latter now half obliterated).
Roger explained the techniques that we used to survey the Town’s Piece, including a topographical survey and geophysics, which covered the remains of the enclosure (possibly Romano-British, but at this stage this cannot be confirmed), building platforms and other features. The tithe maps and early Ordnance Survey maps had already alerted us to the presence of the kiln and mill on the Green, and it was the specific feature of the corn drying kiln which we had decided to investigate in detail. The geophysics of the kiln area proved disappointing, but did imply that there may be another rectangular building not visible on the ground.
Roger concluded by saying that although the focus of the 2008 investigations was the corn drying kiln, there is much more of interest within this field which broadens the history of Kilnsey beyond the well-known association with Fountains Abbey, including possible prehistoric activity.
David followed with a presentation on the results of the excavations in the Town Piece. This included a discussion of the seventeenth lime “sow” kiln which we carried out in 2007. Lying just a few yards from the corn drying kiln, the lime kiln proved to be one of the most important kilns David has investigated as part of the Yorkshire Dales sow kiln project. Explaining the wide range of tasks involved in an archaeological excavation, David revealed how, step by step, the features of the lime kiln had been revealed. Documentary evidence had established that lime burning had been taking place in Kilnsey at least as far back as the 15th century, while archaeomagnetic dating of the excavated kiln placed a date of between 1620 and 1670 on it. This means there is a strong possibility the kiln was associated with the 1648 building of Kilnsey Old Hall.
Some of the 700+ finds from the lime kiln were on display and shown as part of the slideshow accompanying David’s talk – these included high quality 17th century pottery from the Midlands, 18th century brown glazed redware, and mediaeval green glazed ware, thatch stones, a mediaeval horseshoe, 17th Century spur, shoe, large house keys, belt and horse harness buckles, along with some artefacts of 19th century date. Of particular interest was the piece of leaded window glass from the late monastic period – which supports the claim that the small building behind the Old Hall was once a chapel. How and why all these artefacts from such a wide range of periods became mixed together into one mass remains a mystery.
The finds from the backfill in the corn drying kiln were of a different nature, being almost exclusively 19th and 20th century in date, and consisting mostly of pottery and an old iron spring bedstead. Again, David provided a step by step guide to the excavation process, slowly revealing the kiln’s unusual construction. Although the tithe map had showed a rectangular rather than a circular structure at this location, the appearance of the rectangular structure actually sitting inside the original circular kiln was a surprise. It appears this was a kiln with two distinct phases, with part of the original “Keyhole type” kiln (of the kind usually belonging to the mediaeval to early modern period) being destroyed to enable the 2nd “Upstairs-downstairs” type of square stone kiln to be built inside.
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