More information : A leat, centred at c SE 5464 7912, can be traced running for c 700m first east and then south from a dam (SE 57 NW 113) across a narrow valley north-west of Byland Abbey (SE 57 NW 1), as far as the documented site of a corn mill (SE 57 NW 129) within the monastic precinct. For the first part of its course between the dam and College Farm, the leat is either a partly embanked or cut channel depending on the lie of the land, and still carries water. But south of the farm it was diverted between c 1730 and 1853 into a covered conduit passing beneath farm buildings, and here survives as a dry earthwork channel or else has been infilled and is known only from historic map evidence (1a).
The leat was first identified as monastic by McDonnell and Everest in 1965, but was thought by them to feed a second millpond lying above the precinct mill (1b), even though McDonnell later surveyed the earthwork channel that survives south of College Farm which actually runs across the floor of his alleged second pond (1c). The channel was subsequently correctly interpreted as part of a leat by Harrison, although strangely he perpetuated McDonnell's idea of a second millpond (1d). The supposed dam to this millpond is demonstrably neither a monastic feature or a dam, however, but more probably a post-medieval prospect mound (SE 57 NW 115).
Although it supplied a mill, the leat's primary purpose seems to have been for land drainage, for in conjunction with the dam at its head it controlled the flow of the stream which formerly ran through the monastic precinct, diverting the stream out of its natural course in the valley, thereby draining the site of the abbey, and only letting it back into its former course below the conventual buildings.
The leat lies within the area of RSM 13279 (1e).
Surveyed at 1:1000 scale as part of the EH: Byland Abbey Survey (leat LT1). See plans and report (1f) in the NMR for further information. (1)
|