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Summary

Settlement with early Saxon origins and complex history, including a 75% drop in population at the time of the Black Death

Monument Types

• VILLAGE (Sub Roman to Modern - 410 AD to 2050 AD)

Associated Events

• Test pits in Pirton village, 2008 (Ref: PIR/08)
• Test pits in Pirton village, 2009 (Ref: PIR/09)
• Test pits in Pirton village, 2010 (Ref: PIR/10)
• Test pits in Pirton village, 2011 (Ref: PIR11)
• Test pits in Pirton village, 2007 (Ref: PIR/07)

Full description

Pirton has a long history of movement, expansion and contraction. For 5th to 9th century settlement NE of Priors Hill, in a field without later occupation, see [31108]. For 7th-9th century buildings, church and churchyard in the present village centre, see [9676, 9677], and for mid-late Saxon to medieval features between these two areas see [31388]. The standing parish church [4315], in a different position, dates to the 12th century and can be associated with the construction of the 12th century castle [32].

Test pitting across the area of the existing village in 2007, 2008 and 2009 confirmed the overall picture of a dynamic settlement sequence. A sherd of early/middle Saxon pottery, with some Roman pottery, residual in a medieval pit at Walnut Tree Farm [13757], may indicate some continuation from Roman to post-Roman. The test pits yielded nothing more until the later part of the late Saxon period, when settlement evidently became 'widespread across the eastern side of the present village, focused in particular on Burge End Farm, the area south of West Lane and the area north of Walnut Farm' <3>. Gaps in evidence between these areas may suggest polyfocal settlement. Nearly all the 56 2008-9 test pits yielded mid 11th to mid 14th century pottery, indicating a larger and more densely settled village which had become nucleated alongside the construction of the motte and bailey castle. After the 14th century the village contracted, test pits in the centre of the present village NE and SW of the church producing almost no contemporary pottery. It may have shrunk to no more than five clusters of farmsteads or cottages 'within an otherwise largely deserted landscape. Recovery does not seem to have been established until the 17th or even 18th century, and even then the volume of pottery recovered does not match that of the high medieval period' <3>.

Further test pitting in 2010 concentrated at the north end of the village, where there is a notable lack of early to mid Saxon pottery; the later Saxon material suggests scattered farms rather than contiguous settlement here. These farms suffered less from the late medieval contraction than the village itself <6>.

Test pitting in 2011 aimed to fill a number of gaps, and confirmed that the part of the settlement west of the motte and bailey 'came into existence at or shortly after the time when the castle was built', and was apparently less affected by the severe later medieval contraction of the rest of the village <7>. This contraction indicates that Pirton was severely affected by the Black Death. In a review of the test pitting programme across East Anglia <9> it became apparent that the drop in population at Pirton was especially severe; in 115 test pits across the village the amount of pottery for this period fell by 75%.

The later 19th century OS maps show two greens, Great and Little Green, SW and NE of the castle and the parish church. Great Green [12427] is still lined with 15th to 17th century buildings, some of comparatively high status. Little Green, at the end of what in the 19th century was known as Town Street, is smaller and different in character but also has 16th to 17th century houses scattered around it. These greens are two of the post-medieval focal points of the village, but are relics of its earlier topography. <8> sees them as the remnants at each end of a 'once large tract of common pasture', upon which the Norman castle [32] was built. These remnants were gradually made even smaller by encroachment. A pre-1066 church and cemetery [9677], superseded by the present parish church [4315] within the castle bailey, 'lay to the north, on the edge of the former common'. Saxo-Norman settlement [9676] is also known adjacent to the earlier church.

Blinkhorn, Paul, 2007, Pottery from Pirton test-pits (PIR/07) (Unpublished document). SHT18153.

Blinkhorn, Paul, 2009, Pottery from Pirton test-pits (PIR/09) (Unpublished document). SHT18154.

Blinkhorn, Paul, 2010, Pottery from Pirton community test-pits (PIR/10) (Unpublished document). SHT18155.

Blinkhorn, Paul, 2011, Pottery from Pirton test-pits (PIR11) (Unpublished document). SHT18156.

<1> Lewis, Carenza, 2008, Test pit excavation within currently occupied rural settlement in East Anglia - results of the HEFA CORS project in 2007; Medieval Settlement Research Group Annual Report 22, 48-56 (Article in serial). SHT7977.

<2> Blinkhorn, Paul, 2008, Pottery from Pirton test-pits (PIR/08) (Unpublished document). SHT8425.

<2> Lewis, Carenza, 2008, Test pit excavation within currently occupied rural settlements: results of the HEFA CORS project in 2008; Medieval Settlement Research 23, 60-68 (Article in serial). SHT4322.

<3> Lewis, Carenza, 2009, Test pit excavation within currently occupied rural settlements: results of the HEFA CORS project in 2009; Medieval Settlement Research 24, 43-58, - p51 (Article in serial). SHT1074.

<4> OS 25 inch map, 1st edition, 1881-82 (Cartographic material). SHT8116.

<5> OS 25 inch map, 2nd edition (1897-1901), 1898 (Cartographic material). SHT8113.

<6> Lewis, Carenza, 2011, Test pit excavation within currently occupied rural settlements - results of the HEFA CORS project in 2010; Medieval Settlement Research 26, 48-59, - p53-4 (Article in serial). SHT2820.

<7> Lewis, Carenza, 2012, Test pit excavation within currently occupied rural settlements - results of the University of Cambridge CORS project in 2011; Medieval Settlement Research 27, 42-56, - p48 (Article in serial). SHT4479.

<8> Rowe, Anne, & Williamson, Tom, 2013, Hertfordshire: a landscape history, Fig.2.4; p42 (Bibliographic reference). SHT7337.

<9> Lewis, Carenza, 2016, Plague pits, pot sherds and the shock of the Black Death; British Archaeology (Sept-Oct 2016), 48-55 (Article in serial). SHT17850.

Sources and further reading

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