The Ettington Project

We’re lucky in South Warwickshire to be surrounded by areas of fascinating historical and archaeological significance. Amongst these places, Ettington Park, that surrounds the magnificent, Ettington Hall Hotel, is of particular interest.
The hall itself has an impressive history, which we’ll get to in a moment, but for now, lets just take a look at the general area and what it has to offer us as archaeologists and historians…

Within just a ten-mile radius of Ettington Park there are 388 known sites of archaeological interest, and who knows how many more are hidden away just waiting for us to discover them! These known sites include 113 Roman sites, 21 Anglo Saxon sites, 37 Iron Age sites, 33 Bronze Age sites, 116 Medieval sites, 10 Mesolithic sites and 15 Neolithic sites.

Ettington Hall itself has a known and fairly well documented history. Though the hall now exists as a hotel that is run by a large corporate company, the building and grounds are still owned, and leased from, the Shirley family that have lived at Ettington for more than 1000 years, with ancestors being directly engaged in just about every major historical event from the Crusades to the Second World War.

According to the Doomsday Book, Lower Eatendon, as it was then known (Anglo Saxon meaning – ‘Ea’ – water - and ‘Don’ – meadow) already consisted of a Church, a mill, 1700 acres of land and a village that was adjacent to a manor house. The Anglo Saxon Church was rebuilt in the 12th century in Norman style around the existing Anglo-Saxon structure, the remains of which we can still see and visit to this day.

The manor was held by Sewallis, a Saxon thane of Henry de Ferrers, his Norman overlord, and the present-day Shirley family are descendants of Sewallis, who is their earliest recorded ancestor.
Archaeological evidence shows that immediate surrounding area has been occupied for over 2000 years. Roman coins and pottery have been unearthed on the site and there is the possibility that there was once a Roman Villa, perhaps on the site of the present hall itself.

During the re-moddelling of the house and grounds in the 18th century, the adjacent Medieval village was demolished (the residents of which were removed to live in the present day Ettington village a few miles away). At this time the mill was also demolished, leaving its previous location unknown.

During an eyes-only search of the Ettington Hall grounds, our SWAS founders discovered several clues as to the positioning of this mill, and also located Medieval pottery fragments both from the river and from an area of woodland close to the house itself. Also collected were some small fragments of worked flint, a material that does not seem to occur naturally in this area and which points us to the use of flint implements having been used here in an even earlier period than has previously been recorded.

It is our hope that SWAS may attain permission for some archaeological test pits and perhaps a formal archaeological excavation based upon evidence we have found, correlated to aerial photographs and lidar images that may shed more light upon the history and significance of this area.