OUR INVESTIGATION

Field Investigation

A number of earthwork ‘humps and bumps’ on the site are just visible from the public road but so that we could take a closer look, we asked permission from the landowner, the Lockinge Estate, to walk across the fields.

Click here to view our video record of Tulwick.

The initial field evidence suggests this is the site of a deserted village. We are keen to know when the site was occupied and when and why it became deserted but in order to gain a clearer understanding of how this ‘lost’ settlement relates to its neighbours, we must also ask questions about the appearance of the site.

Until fairly recently, ‘deserted’, ‘shrunken’ and ‘shifted’ were the key terms talked about in settlement studies. However, the debate has now moved on to identify settlements according to the character of their nucleation (where houses are grouped together in a compact settlement) or dispersion (where isolated farmsteads and cottages are scattered throughout the parish or township) than the extent to which they were deserted. We therefore want to use the fieldwork evidence not only to discover when the settlement was occupied but also to understand its form and character. This will help us to place Tulwick in its wider landscape setting of field systems and neighbouring settlement territories.

Click here to read more about nucleated and dispersed settlement patterns

Although only a single farmstead remains at Tulwick today, the earthwork evidence indicates that one time there were more buildings here. Do they represent a compact (nucleated) settlement? Did Tulwick have a separate field system that was worked independent of its neighbours?

In 1977 the site was surveyed to create a plan of the earthworks and associated features. Earlier in the 1960s, Wantage and District Field Club undertook a number of small-scale archaeological excavations here.

Click here to view the site plan and excavation details.

The earthworks have been interpreted as house platforms clustered around a triangular green, but no evidence has been found to indicate the existence of a church or manor house. We will explore the implications of their absence later, but first we will look at the earthwork evidence for the field system associated with this settlement.

Also marked on the 1977 plan are areas of surrounding ridge and furrow. These corrugated patterns of earth-banks preserve the outlines of narrow strips of land held by individual farmers in a former open field system. Landscape historians have used evidence from fieldwork and documentary studies to demonstrate how the earthworks of ridge and furrow can be precisely matched to open field arable strips. Can we tell if the ridge and furrow earthworks at Tulwick date from the time when the settlement was occupied? We do not have any exact dating evidence but the settlement earthworks do not overlie the ridge and furrow, nor vice versa, and so they would appear to be contemporary.

Click here to read more about the open field system

What can we tell from the field archaeology about the field system at Tulwick? The presence of surrounding ridge and furrow does suggest that the arable land (used for growing crops) was organised as strips in open fields but it is difficult to say whether a fully-developed ‘classic’ open field system operated here. We cannot infer solely from the layout of the strips whether they were managed in a communal regime; the land may have been held in a number of compact blocks of strips managed by individual farmers working independently of each other. Where strips are held intermingled - that is, each farmer holds strips of land scattered throughout the field system, no two strips lying next to each other - some form of communal co-operation would seem to have been necessary, but we cannot tell if this was so from the fieldwork evidence alone.

The township (or its subdivision known as a hamlet) is the unit of a community which forms a complete, self-contained farming regime. Can we identify in the landscape a field system at Tulwick which is distinct from those of the neighbouring hamlets of Grove and Charlton?

Studies of the layout of open field systems show that they were managed by communities acting independently within their own boundaries where there is no indication of any collaboration between neighbours to co-ordinate the alignment of furlong boundaries (blocks of strips) across the administrative boundaries that divided them. This implies each township was agriculturally independent of its neighbours. Unfortunately we cannot apply this test to Tulwick with any confidence. The extent of the ridge and furrow recorded in 1977 is limited and recent agricultural activity has significantly eroded any traces of ridge and furrow across the wider area. However, there are a number of field names in vicinity which suggest they may relate to Tulwick and therefore provide some indication of the extent of the settlement’s territory.

When considering the evidence for Tulwick, it is worth remembering that open field systems are varied and complex. Fully developed forms of this type of farming - where all the arable land is held in numerous small strips intermingled and scattered throughout two, three or four huge un-hedged fields, and where farming operations such as crop rotations and the use of fallow (uncultivated land) for grazing are organised with the co-operation of all the farmers - are not seen until about the thirteenth century following a long and complex evolution. Indeed, many nucleated villages and hamlets do not show evidence for all the elements of this complex system and instead practised some variation on the classic pattern.

Here is a summary of the archaeological evidence:

• The layout of the earthworks suggest a cluster of houses around a triangular green cut through by a road
• Pottery and other dateable evidence found during excavations in the 1960s indicate that the site was occupied between the twelfth and the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries
• Ridge and furrow earthworks surround the settlement site and may be contemporary; however, it is difficult to identify the full extent of the field system