 |
 |
The manor was owned by the Archbishops of Canterbury for much of the medieval period, and was used by them as an occasional residence, and an administrative centre for their estates in Middlesex. The oldest part of the manor is the aisled hall (of which only the western bay survives), and the cross-wing. This is a timber-framed building which has recently been dated by dendrochronology to 1310 AD. In November 1996, an archaeological evaluation of the buried remains of the medieval aisled hall was carried out to inform the planned restoration work on the medieval building, and as part of our ongoing research programme into site assessment and evaluation techniques.
The excavation showed that the hall had probably been a four-bayed timber-framed building, 16m in length, with wall foundations of flint and mortar, and a clay floor. To the east of the aisled hall, a long thin building was uncovered with similar foundations and floor. This structure appeared to have been a suite of rooms attached to the east end of the hall. As well as the remains of the hall and the building to its east, evidence was recovered to suggest that there were also rooms or buildings located to the south and north of the hall, indicating that the moated enclosure may have been full of buildings during the medieval period. The excavated evidence suggests that sometime after the reformation (1543), when the manor was privately owned, the buildings to the south of the surviving part of the manor house were demolished, the remains covered in soil, and a formal garden laid out. This consisted of six square flower beds of varying sizes, separated by gravel paths. The layout of the garden was recorded on a number of maps dating to the 1860's. By the late 1930's, the formal gardens had become the rough lawns that can be seen to the south of the manor house today.