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Summary

Former location of a medieval fortified house within a moat, of which only slight earthworks remain

Associated Legal Designations or Protected Status

• Conservation Area: Yattendon

Other Statuses and Cross-References

• Berkshire SMR No. (pre 2000): 02403.03.000
  
• National Monuments Record No.: SU 57 SE 1
  SU 5523 7460

Monument Type(s):

• FORTIFIED MANOR HOUSE (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
• MOAT (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)

Full Description

The Manor House in Yattendon is depicted on historic Ordnance Survey mapping <1> as being on the site of a 'castle'. A licence to crenellate (fortify a private house with battlements) and to impark 600 acres was granted in the 1440s by Henry VI to John Norris for his manor at 'Yattyngden' <2><3><9>. This dwelling is more likely to have been a fortified manor house than a fortress with a keep, but it had a moat. The old manor was demolished some time before the 19th century, although apparently part of a stone window mullion was found a few hundred metres to the west, being used as a boundary marker <9>. The Victoria County History makes no mention of the licence to crenellate but noted in 1906 that 'there are traces of three sides of the moat which surrounded the castle at Yattendon, and part of one side is in a fair state of preservation' <4>. Weston's 18th century map <5> showed three sides of a water filled moat with the west side missing.

The moat was surveyed in the 1960s <6><7>; the south and east sides were represented by a scarp averaging 1m high, but there was no trace of the west and north sides. A recorded wide ditch centred on SU 5517 7463 <6> was considered to be unlikely to have been associated with the moat <7>.

Greenaway <9> considers that there is something strange about the dating of the licence and the signatories as the people who signed it were not in office when the licence was granted; one explanation could be that it was a replacement for an original licence which had been lost. He also thinks that the manor house was built on a new site on the western edge of the village, across the road to Hampstead Norreys and thus necessitating its diversion. The course of the old road was apparent as a shallow dip in the manor gardens until a short time before 2004 <9>.

Sources and further reading

Related Monuments

Associated Excavations and Fieldwork

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