Summary

Trapezoidal moat including Listed house.

Monument Types

• MOAT (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
• HOUSE (14th century to 16th century - 1301 AD to 1500 AD)

Associated Finds: None recorded

Protected Status

• Listed Building (II*)

Description

Trapezoidal moat with an island of 0.8 acres. The moat is widest on the west and north sides; these two sides were wet at the time of visit (September 1990), the other two sides were largely dry. Access is via a causeway on the south side. The existing house lies at the north-west corner of the island. West and north walls of the house rise sheer from the edge of the moat; these are constructed of mortared flint (heavily repaired with brick) upto first floor level, with a jettied, timber-framed, upper storey. Dated as late C14 or circa 1400. In the middle of the west wall there is a large blocked entrance indicating that this range must have functioned, in part at least, as a gatehouse. Access must have been across a wooden bridge, now no longer extant. This suggests that the original frontage of the moat was the broad west side and that the present entrance in the narrow south side may be secondary. There is mortared flint revetting to the moated island along at least half of the north side and there is an isolated fragment of mortared flint walling lying at the bottom of the moat on the east side; elsewhere the edges are too overgrown to ascertain whether revetting is present or not. The house has a C19 brick addition at its east end. The farm buildings lie within a ditched enclosure on the south side.
The moat lies just to the north of Thorney Green. The site takes its name from the manor of Thorney Columbers (`Collobine Hall alias Thorney Columbers', 1609), held in the C13 & C14 by the Columbers or Columbiers family of Nether Stowey, Somerset (summoned to Parliament as Barons in 1314). Under tenants in the C14 & C15 were the Hotot or Hotofte family. Heiress of Hotot family married James Tyrell (d. circa 1539). The Tyrells sold it to John Gardiner in 1559. On the death of Gardiner and his wife, circa 1600, the hall passed to Sir Robert Carey, later Earl of Monmouth (non- resident owner). He sold it circa 1610 to Sir John Poley (d.1634). Continued in the Poley family down to the death of Edmund Poley in 1714. Inherited then by a nephew, Richard Gipps, who sold it to the Crowley family of Barking Hall 1735. Since than used as a farmhouse (S2).

Earthwork visible on Lidar. See associated files.

Sources

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