In 2003, during a watching brief in advance of construction work at Dogmersfield House near Fleet in Hampshire, archaeologists from Wessex Archaeology discovered the remains of an updraught brick kiln.
The St. John family inherited Dogmersfield House in 1712 and the present house was built on the site in 1728, possibly incorporating an earlier Elizabethan house. Further substantial extension works were made in 1744 and it was thought that the kiln related to one of these two construction phases. It was brick-built and aligned north-east to south-west, consisting of two flues with a large stokepit at the south-western end.
Subsequent excavation showed that it had been built on top of the remains of a smaller updraught kiln on a different alignment and it appears that the later kiln was constructed as soon as the earlier one was abandoned, possibly because the latter could not manufacture bricks in sufficient quantities. The survival of the remains of two updraught kilns is relatively rare in the Hampshire region – most examples so far studied have dated from the 19th century and have been of the more substantial downdraught design (Moore 1988).
Given the importance of the discovery and its potential to relate to historical evidence as well as the likelihood that fired bricks from the kiln would contain a thermoremanent magnetisation, the English Heritage Geophysics Team was asked to sample it for archaeomagnetic analysis.
Seven bricks were removed from the kiln after attaching orientation disks which had been oriented relative to true north using a gyro-theodolite. Back in the laboratory 16 specimens were obtained by cutting away approximately 8cubic centimetres of the brick material immediately beneath selected disks. These smaller samples were then measured and the date range deduced for the last firing of the kiln is 1690 to 1725 AD at the 95% confidence level.
This is earlier than either of the two documented construction events but accords remarkably well with information discovered subsequently which indicates that the Dogmersfield estate leased a house to John Reading, a bricklayer, between 1698 and 1719. Hence it is likely that the kiln was in operation earlier than first thought and probably supplied bricks for alterations or repairs to the house and garden walls immediately after the St. John family inherited the estate.
Please contact Paul Linford for further information.
Reference
Moore, P 1988 The Industrial Heritage of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Chichester: Phillimore.
