Podington Medieval Manor reconstruction

Recently I had the honor of reconstructing what the 12th-13th century medieval manor of Podington may have looked like. Done on behalf of Context One Archaeology who excavated the manor near the coast of dorset, off Putton Lane, just outside Weymouth. Expert guidance given by the kind and enthusiastic Dr. Cheryl Green with further guidance given by the rest of the team at Context One Archaeology

The main house was a large cross passage house, across from this a single cell open hall structure, which interestingly had an infant burial beneath, a common practice in the medieval period. The third building shown here is another stone building, there was another building but this was a ruin at this time and behind the middle building shown here so not visible.

The walls were of a local stone called cornbrash with forest marble as quoin stones. The roof tiles were cotswold slates, capped by more elaborate inverted V shaped ridge tiles, with triangular knife cut crests in a cocks cromb effect, these were partly glazed giving a thin olive green colour.

A sample of some other interesting finds at the site were the holloway shown as a path the behind the houses with a horse and cart on it, these were roads that with heavy use over the centuries started to become deeper until sunken in the ground. There was also signs of ploughing found shown above the houses, fish net weights shown in fish net mending on the corner of the last house right and much more besides.