The excavated 14th century buildings
	The malthouse
	The bone flute/whistle

Fieldwork: Rob Atkins and Rowena Lloyd

Report: Andy Chapman

Medieval building ranges were excavated in 2001 in advance of a housing development at Lime Street, Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire. They had been located by trial excavation earlier in the year and an area excavation took place between September and November on behalf of Acorn Homes and the owners of the former allotment plots.

Activity on the site included part of a middle to late Iron Age settlement and some Roman pits and ditches. However, the main period of interest was the Saxo-Norman and medieval occupation.

The commencement of late Saxon occupation in the 11th century was marked by a sparse group of small postholes and pits. A system of boundary ditches may have originated at the same time or slightly later, but through the 12th and 13th centuries activity was still sparse, comprising a scatter of pits some of which were deep quarry pits. However, a pit containing a primary pottery assemblage of early 13th century date denotes the nearby presence of a house (see pottery group illustrated under Finds Analysis and Reporting).

By the early 14th century a group of three buildings were established: a long malthouse/barn to the south, a circular dovecote to the west, and a building to the north with mortared walls that might have served as a kitchen/bakehouse range, but no internal features had survived. The malting oven was certainly used for malting barley, but may also have been used as a more general drying oven, and its size suggests that it was being used for production on a commercial scale. Contemporary pit groups contained a range of materials including an animal bone assemblage, suggesting that sheep were being slaughtered nearby, and a near complete bone flute/whistle.

These buildings are clearly appropriate to a manorial farm, and probably served a nearby manor house. Later documentary evidence indicates that the land was owned by the Bataille manor of Irthlingborough. The Church of All Saints, held by the Bataille manor, lay at the southern end of Lime Street. It had fallen into ruin by the 17th century, and was excavated in the 1960s. The location of the medieval manor house has not been established, but it must have originally lain next to the church but may have been relocated in the 14th century when the manorial farm buildings were constructed.

The farm buildings and the associated pit groups were abandoned at the end of the 14th century, after less than a century of use. The direct cause of the abandonment is unknown, but these changes must probably be viewed as part of the widespread social upheaval and reorganisation of settlement that followed in the wake of the depopulation caused by the Black Death around the middle of the 14th century. The excavated site was to remain unoccupied, but by the 17th century a new manor house, with a new dovecote, was built directly fronting onto the High Street (Station Road). This perhaps completed the process of relocation of the manor house away from the old church on the edge of the river floodplain to a prime location on the main street of the growing town, and taking place in direct response to changing economic and social circumstances.

After partial robbing the site seems to have been left undeveloped until terracing and further robbing occurred in the 18th century. The site was an allotment garden prior to redevelopment. .