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Use of the hall site was proposed to create a new visitor centre on the headland. Using initial work undertaken by Historic Properties and the RCHME, we undertook an analysis of the building. Built in 1672 as a house by Sir High Colmley II, it seems to have been a double pile house of eleven bays with an ornate projecting centre bay. Archaeological techniques were used to suggest the original plan-form of the building, and by extrapolation a possible roof-form. Slight variations in the mouldings and the way they have been used suggest either that they were reused, or more likely, that parts of the facade have been rebuilt.
Computer generated reconstruction model of hall in Black and White.[187Kb]
Dendrochronology
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Part of our role is to liaise with the Ancient Monuments Laboratory over the commissioning of tree-ring dating projects (See section 4.14), and to provide specialist advice on timber-framed buildings and historic carpentry generally. Over the past year a number of projects have been initiated in support of building analysis and research projects. At Westwick Row, near St Albans, Hertfordshire, a combined fabric and tree-ring analysis dating project led to the remarkable discovery of a hitherto unknown early timber-framed aisled hall-house. The tree-ring analysis showed the aisled hall to have been constructed between 1184 and 1219, making it one of the earliest known houses in the country. At Fyfield Hall in Essex, another aisled hall of perhaps even earlier date, tree-ring dating was used to help unravel the complex structural history of the building. Tree-ring dating projects at three houses in London and Essex, Bruce Castle, Eastbury Manor, and Gosfield Hall, have all shed important light on the development of late sixteenth-century houses in the south-east. In the case of Eastbury Manor, Barking, an analysis of the types of trees used in the construction of the building also provided an insight into the supply of timber in the post-Reformation period.