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Summary

Medieval deer park and later landscape park

Monument Types

• DEER PARK (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1500 AD)
• PARK (Post Medieval - 1501 AD to 1900 AD)

Protected Status

• SHINE: Ardeley Bury, medieval moated site, earthworks and parkland

Full description

Ardeley Bury [4211] had a medieval deerpark from at least 1220 <2> with a moated manor house [391], and later a lake and woods, but no park pale or gardens are shown on the Dury & Andrews 1766 map. Later maps including the 1st ed. OS map (surveyed 1832/3), show the park. The 1990 HCC aerial photomapping shows no obvious garden features but probably a nice park landscape - pasture with woods and tree belt on W and SW <1>.
In 1700 Sir Henry Chauncy, whose family home it was, described the house as standing 'in the Middle of an ancient Park, now disparked, well water'd with Fishponds, and heretofore moated round' <3>. It is not clear what alterations were made when the house was castellated and extended in 1820.

Although the canons of St Paul's Cathedral had held the manor of Ardeley from before 1066, it was let from the 12th century onwards. 'By the early 13th century it had become customary to lease the manor to one of the canons of St Paul's, which probably accounts for the fact that a park was recorded at Ardeley….in 1222. This states that the manor house of Ardeley was surrounded by a park of 60 acres…. The creator of the park may have been Theobald, archdeacon of Essex, who was holding the manor in 1222' <4>. It is not known when it was disparked, but 'a parish map of 1744 shows a cluster of fields adjacent to Ardeley Bury which have "park" names', and its extent can be mapped <4>. It was small, but typical of medieval parks in that it lay on a ridge of high ground with one side along the parish boundary; an earthwork boundary bank survives in one of the fields.
See [4501], earthworks in the park; [6046], the icehouse; [391], the moat.

<1> Rowe, Anne, 1997, Historic parks & gardens of Hertfordshire: pilot research project, RNO 1718 p4 (Unpublished document). SHT563.

<2> Cantor, Leonard, 1983, The medieval parks of England: a gazetteer (Bibliographic reference). SHT6459.

<3> Chauncy, Sir Henry, 1700, The historical antiquities of Hertfordshire, - p107 (Bibliographic reference). SHT2425.

<4> Rowe, Anne, 2009, Medieval parks of Hertfordshire, - p48-9; Map 2 (Bibliographic reference). SHT6026.

Sources and further reading

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