Ulnaby medieval village

Aerial view of Ulnaby Hall Farm, County Durham, and its surrounding landscape. © English Heritage 2001 17539/05 Ulnaby, in the parish of High Coniscliffe in Darlington, is located in rolling farmland to the north of the River Tees. It no longer exists as a separate village and only Ulnaby Hall and its farm survive, though they are surrounded by fields of intriguing earthworks. Archaeologists from English Heritage’s Archaeological Survey and Investigation team have carried out a detailed survey of these earthworks in order to interpret the banks, ditches, walls and hollow-ways so that this fascinating landscape of a vanished community can be better understood. In addition, this information will be used to improve the interpretation and presentation of the site.

While deserted medieval villages are not rare – there are an estimated 3000 of them in the country as a whole – neither the scheduled village remains nor the adjacent Grade II Listed Ulnaby Hall had been the subject of any previous intensive research. The English Heritage survey showed that the majority of the earthworks belonged to the tofts (house plots with houses or small farmsteads and their accompanying yards and gardens) of a planned, two-row village with a green that had replaced an earlier village without a green. After the initial planned phase, the village was subject to piecemeal expansion and contraction with more tofts added to the village, but other areas abandoned.

Alongside the village was an associated manorial complex with a large enclosure containing a fishpond, a dovecote and, probably, an orchard. This manorial complex may have been created by the Neville family, one of the most powerful families in England during the later medieval period, into whose hands Ulnaby passed in 1343. Ulnaby remained in the ownership of this family until 1573 when Charles Neville, Earl of Westmorland was convicted of High Treason for his part during the “Rising of the North”. All of his lands were seized by Queen Elizabeth I and on June 20th 1573 the manor of Ulnaby was granted to the Tailboys family.

The south facade of Ulnaby Hall farmhouse, parts of which date to the late 16th century. © English Heritage It was at this point, during the late 16th to early 17th centuries, that the manorial enclosure was replaced by Ulnaby Hall and its associated farm complex. The village seems to have continued, though in a much reduced state until it was eventually subsumed into the larger farm. Nineteenth-century maps show that there was one last building still standing on the village site in 1855, but this had disappeared by 1896, when a new version of the map was published, and was probably replaced by a sequence of farm cottages. Ulnaby Hall and these cottages are now the only occupied buildings on the site, leaving the remains of the village to be used solely for pasture, which is the reason for the excellent preservation of the earthworks visible today.

For further information about the site, contact Marcus Jecock marcus.jecock@english-heritage.org.uk or Al Oswald al.oswald@english-heritage.org.uk at English Heritage’s York Office, tel (01904) 601901.

Click the image to download part 1 of the Ulnaby report Click the image to download part 2 of the Ulnaby report  Click the image to download part 3 of the Ulnaby report A paper copy of the report on the archaeological investigations at Ulnaby can be ordered online (ref. RDRS 13-2008) or you can download an electronic copy of the report in three parts (2.7MB, 2.8MB & 1.7MB) here (click on the images). These documents require Adobe Acrobat Viewer to display. This is free software available from Adobe. Download Acrobat here.