What they found

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Initial investigations carried out some years ago by Gordons Lodge Archaeological Field School had indicated the presence of a two-storey 13th-century hall in a ditched enclosure on this site. The enclosure had looked prehistoric in aerial photographs. Time Team, in consultation with city council archaeologist Brian Giggins and English Heritage inspector Glyn Coppack, had a further look at this and other cropmark features in the vicinity.

Reinterpretation of the field school's open trench suggested that the stone building was too small and too poorly constructed to support a first-floor hall. Time Team's finds expert, Paul Blinkhorn, concluded that the 11th to 13th-century pottery from this site was domestic; and Gerry McDonnell, of Bradford University, quickly dismissed theories that the site had been used for metal working.

Geophysics to the south of the open excavation corroborated the aerial photographs, indicating an enclosure about 50 metres in diameter. A trench across the north of the enclosure revealed a ditch containing pottery from the 11th to 14th centuries and a large assemblage of pig bones. A trench across anomalies in the centre revealed stone kilns and post holes, possibly associated with a structure. Another trench in the centre revealed that a depression was not a quarry, as had been surmised, but had areas of burning associated with it.

Landscape analysis indicated that a moated hall may have existed on the site of Gordons Lodge Farm and that the ditched enclosures were sub-infeudations, or grants of land within the royal forest by the king. The enclosures were interpreted as evidence for organic rural industry, possibly connected with pig farming – the first recorded archaeological evidence of this kind.

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