Monument record 0200402002 - Gardens of Bradenham Manor

Watching brief and trial tenching carried out by Northamptonshire Archaeology during service trenching in March and April 2003 indentified a number of post-medieval garden features. 2 undated flower beds were recorded in trench 4, the rubble hardcore base of a former path was found in trench 9 and the base of a wider path than currently exists was found in trench 6. Trench 13 investigated the western boundary wall of the gardens and confirmed that the wall was purpose built in the late 17th or early 18th centuries and was not part of an earlier structure. At the bottom of the slope between the upper and lower terrace a brick wall was revealed in Trench 3. The wall survived to a height of seven courses with red bricks made from a sandy fabric bonded in a creamy white lime mortar and measuring 23cm x 10cm x 6cm (9 x 4 x 2 3/8 inches). The bricks were laid in an irregular bond with the lowest course resting on a levelling layer of mortar. The wall footing was 0.5m thick at the base narrowing to 0.4m at the top course. Its position at the very base of the slope suggests that there may formerly have been a vertical retaining wall separating the two terraces. The type of brickwork suggests a late seventeenth/early eighteenth century date. A small number of finds were recovered from the construction trench, none of which could be closely dated. The finds comprised mostly fragments of roof tile, a single fragment of bottle glass probably from an onion/mallet bottle (dated to 1650-1740) and a single clay pipe stem fragment. The construction trench for the wall cut through a levelling layer indicating that the main levelling was completed first and the wall built later rather than the wall being built and the levelling layer built up against it [1].