Lost Garden in Leeds

In May 2004, English Heritage teamed up with a group of local enthusiasts to shed new light on a lost 17th-century garden on the outskirts of   Leeds. Members of the newly formed Leeds Archaeology Group are determined to find out more about their local history and have recently received a significant sum of money from the Heritage Lottery Fund. 

Their interest soon focused on the land surrounding a minor stately home on the outskirts of Leeds, where it seemed possible that remains of a deserted medieval village might survive as humps and bumps in fields that are under pasture today. The Group contacted English Heritage for suggestions on how to proceed: we advised them that before they stumped up any cash for a Time Team-style geophysical survey to look beneath the turf, they should carry out a detailed study of the surface traces in order to target the 'geophys' more efficiently.

So, over the course of a sunny weekend, members of the Leeds Archaeology Group worked with English Heritage experts to learn how to recognise,  interpret and record the clues to past land use that so often get overlooked. It became clear that the humps and bumps initially suspected to be the remains of a medieval village were of later origin and that the land had actually been open ploughed fields in the Middle Ages.

But any disappointment was shortlived: closer examination of the stately home revealed that its core was older than had previously been suspected. Excitingly, mapping the humps and bumps around the house gradually revealed the terraces and parterres of a formal garden almost certainly laid out when the house was remodelled in 1694 - a rare and important survival of a type of formal garden often erased by changes in garden fashion from the mid-18th Century onwards.

The Group then commissioned West Yorkshire Archaeology Service to carry out geophysical survey, concentrating on the areas where the analysis of the surface remains had told them least: the ground that had been intensively ploughed from the Middle Ages onwards. Their reward for doing things right: discovery of a previously unrecognised prehistoric enclosure showing up clearly beneath the ploughsoil!

"We had a fantastic weekend - enjoyable and really informative", said Kathy Allday of Leeds Archaeology Group. "We all had a   go with the hi-tech equipment, but we also learned all about how to carry out landscape surveys using just a few tape measures. And we do feel confident now that we can go and use the techniques we've learned elsewhere. There's so much we could do. But right now, we're chomping at the bit to get on with some trial excavations here!"

To find out more about the Leeds Archaeology Group, please click here..  For more information about English Heritage's involvement in the Group's project, contact Al Oswald in English Heritage's York Office on 01904 601901 or e-mail al.oswald@english-heritage.org.uk