Dry weather has revealed historic features
Lost buildings under lawns and parkland across the country are being revealed this summer, as a result of the exceptionally dry weather this year.
Parchmarks form in very dry weather and are where grass over buried walls or other archaeology dries out at a different rate to nearby areas. Sometimes they leave a clear map of the underground structures.
Parchmark visibility varies from year to year, historically only showing well every 15 years or so. This year parchmarks are showing more clearly, and have also been recorded earlier in the year, after an exceptionally dry spring.
In more recent years the frequency has noticeably increased, including in 2018 and 2022 due to the hotter, drier weather in spring and summer.
Some have shown up again across the country, including at Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire and Mottisfont in Hampshire.
At the National Trust’s Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire, the trace of lost buildings can be seen on the West Green. They show foundations where buildings once stood and only show up occasionally.
The marks represent some important lost buildings of the abbey with the largest an aisled hall, believed to be a large Guest Hall. The interior space was divided into aisles by rows of columns, which show up in the parchmarks. The base of one also still survives above ground. It would have had the capacity, with medieval lifestyles, to have accommodated hundreds of people. It shows that Fountains Abbey has welcomed visitors in large numbers for hundreds of years.
Also now visible, closer to the abbey, is the Lay Brothers’ Cloister, a colonnaded building.
The remains of this were removed by William Aislabie in the 1770s to make the west façade of the abbey look more impressive.
The remains of buried 13th- and 16th-century wall foundations at the National Trust’s Mottisfont near Romsey in Hampshire have appeared as parchmarks on the south lawn.
They are the buried remains of monastery buildings including a cloister and various other buildings, as well as later Tudor alterations.
Mottisfont was once a prosperous Augustinian Priory, founded in 1201 by William Briwere or Brewer. It declined after the effects of the Black Death and was dissolved in 1536 by Henry VIII who gave it to a favoured statesman, Sir William Sandys - who died in 1540 - who turned the entire priory buildings into a Tudor house.
It remained until remodelled in the 1700s into its present form, when some of the remains of the former priory as well as Tudor buildings would have been buried under the lawn.
National Trust have carried out some geophysical surveys but the buildings have never been dug so their secrets remain hidden except for these rare moments when their outlines appear in the lawns.
Picture: National Trust