What they found

In 2004, Julia Plaistowe, the owner of Chesham Bois House, invited the local archaeology group, the Chess Valley Archaeology and Historical Society (CVAHS), to investigate the gardens surrounding her home. CVAHS carried out a resistivity survey and a small-scale excavation.

They found a large hearth and identified a possible building approximately five times the size of Julia's current house. The 'lumps and bumps' in the surrounding landscape were revealed to include several rectangular features that it was thought might indicate the presence of a deserted medieval village. In addition, the geophysics survey showed a hexagonal or octagonal feature on a part of the garden known as the bowling green.

Limited resources meant that CVAHS were unable to investigate further. So Time Team's first step on arrival at Chesham Bois was to take up the investigation where the local archaeology group had left off.

69 loaves
The team re-dug CVAHS's test trench and put in a long trench in St Leonard's Church Field, where there were various promising 'lumps and bumps', as well as 'geofizzing' a large part of the site. They identified the hearth originally excavated by CVAHS as part of an early 17th-century bakehouse – which contemporary accounts suggest was operating on an almost industrial scale, producing 69 loaves for a single meal. The discovery of Tudor bricks and distinctive white Tudor mortar indicated an earlier building phase from around 1520-40 on this site. But that was as early as the Team got in Julia Plaistowe's garden.

Different building phases
What seems to have happened is that the medieval manor house first occupied by the Cheyne family in the 1420s actually stood on the site of a different building nearby, rather than where Chesham Bois House is today. Then, in the early 16th century, Robert Cheyne, who made a fortune from sheep farming (he is reported to have owned 8-10,000 sheep), built a new, grander house on this new site. A second phase of building was carried out about a hundred years later by Francis Cheyne, following his marriage to Anne, the daughter and wealthy heiress of Sir William Fleetwood.

As for St Leonard's Church Field, there was no sign of a deserted medieval village – or any other habitation – when the lumps and bumps were excavated. This was despite the discovery of some 12th-14th-century pottery that initially raised hopes that there might have been medieval dwellings here. A feature that had been thought to be a path to the church was identified as more likely to have been a boundary.

Key to the door
The top find of the dig, meanwhile, was a large iron key. Helen Geake identified it as late 14th-century and speculated that at one time it may even have opened the front door of the manor house itself.

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