Figurative Reader,
In among my attempts to build a Halloween costume, allow me to blog a while.
Over the last two years I’ve been lucky enough to have been digging holes over the gardens at Edwins Hall in Woodham Ferrers. A few years ago I was involved in a dig to locate the back end of a lost Tudor wing before the area was built over, and these last two seasons we were kindly invited back to investigate a lawn in front of the house – searching for more of the lost Tudor wings.
Aside from discovering an incredible range of walls that established the outline of the original house, we even stumbled upon the earlier 13th-14th century foundations of a completely unknown medieval manor – sparking a new project where I researched the owners of the house, establishing a line of owners all of the way back to 1207. (Sadly missing a decade or two during the Wars of the Roses.)
With the site now closed for the year, one final task for a site open day awaited – the creation of a drawing to reconstruct the old house:
Edwins Hall, c.1560
The Daily Gargle 