ARCHAEOLOGY

The whole estate is of national importance and can be seen as an increasingly rare site of ground archaeology ranging over 4000 years which has been little interferred with by farming & building activity in the last nearly 150 years.

 

The remaining mansion buildings - as there were more medieval & post medieval buildings to the rear - are themselves a unique collection of standing buildings ranging from the late 1300s until late 1800s, and an important and under researched resource for the building archaeologist'.

​

Almost all pre-existing descriptive, illustrative and drawn plans of Ashton Court Mansion give conflicting information. Datable finds are concentrated in the 17th and 18th centuries but with some earlier 15th/16th century material. A lot of archaeology remains in the ground but excavations so far suggest a more complex picture than expected.
The first dig, covered by the 2019 report, was carried out with the assistance of local schools, unfortunately the dig planned for 2020 had to be abandoned and may not even happen in 2021 because of problems with forward planning in a time of Corona virus.

'