Archaeology
During the autumn of 2002 an archaeological survey of the possible site of the original Dumbleton Hall was undertaken. It was instigated by Marjorie Crook who wrote the following article for the Dumbleton Society Newsletter.
GADARG (Gloucester and District Archaeological Research Group) is a group of local people with a keen interest in archaeology. They arrange talks, go field walking, help with local digs and have recently bought some resistivity equipment. I got in touch with the group because they were keen to use and practise with the equipment and I wanted to find out for sure that the site of the old manor was the big hollow in the Park. Ever since moving here I had been told that the first Dumbleton manor was sited in the Park to the west of the church, and the big, wet hollow was, in fact, the site. Having no reason to dispute this information I thought it would be a good idea to verify it. My partner in this was Shelagh Crowther, we spent some time doing research in Gloucester Record office and trying to place buildings using the well known Kip drawing.
The GADARG group came out twice during October and November 02. Shelagh, Peter Hogg and myself helped them measure out grids for the survey. Both of the days were cold and wet but it was still very interesting to watch and help our own "Time Team" at work. We walked up and down the grid lines with the resistivity machine, recording what was under the ground every meter or so. There is a computer attached to the equipment and so an electronic picture is built up and eventually printed out. Don Mayes did some amazing magic with his computer - as can be seen from the printouts he sent to me. The end result of all this activity is that:
a. The hollow is not the site of the old manor but is the sunken garden as seen the Kip drawing. The resistivity equipment picked up the semi-circular water feature and the raised walk ways nearer to the church and under the garden of Polo cottage.
b. The Kip drawing is remarkably accurate. Don made a ground plan of the manor house from the drawing and overlaid this onto a map, the scale and positioning of the house in the sketch is pretty well spot on.
I would like to thank the GADARG group for coming out and providing so much interest, also thanks to Peter and Shelagh for braving quite unfriendly weather and helping to provide the material printed out.
The original Kip drawing which was used as reference during the survey
The following documents were produced during the survey described above.
A plan was made from the Kip drawing by using CorelDraw to trace, and "deperspectivize"
Section from the Dumbleton Estate sale map of 1822
The plan based on the Kip drawing overlaid on the 1822 sale map. This shows good positional correlation between water channels on the Kip drawing and 'fish ponds' on the 1822 map, strongly suggesting that the 1822 fish ponds are the remains of the water channels in the garden of the 17th century manor.
Section from the Ordnance Survey map of 1891
Resistivity data overlaid onto the 1891 Ordnance Survey map
Orientation of the survey data relative to the modern village.
These two images show the Kip plan overlaid onto the resistivity data.
This highlights the shape and positional similarities between the outline of the semi-circular water feature together with raised walkways on the Kip plan and the resistivity survey plot.
The survey in the house area is indeterminate probably due to buried rubble; however there may be linear features parallel to the house outline on the Kip plan.
In addition to the features described above this image shows positional similarities between NS high resistance linear feature in the resistivity survey and the road on the Ordnance Survey 1891 map. The origin of the short eastward spur from the road is not known, but it could be an entrance track to the farm.
