NHER 11874 (Monument record) - Site of medieval moated rectory

1975.
Cropmark, irregular rectangle, possibly a moated site, west of village.

1 July 1976. Ordnance Survey air photography.
Positive cropmarks.
Moat?
D. Voisey (NLA), 14 February 1995.

June-July 1996. Excavation.
Carried out in advance of pipeline across site, which partly remained as an earthwork.
Three periods of occupation revealed; firstly in the 12th century, to enclose a building platform in which a large building was erected in the 13th/14th. The building collapsed in the 15th/16th and the moat seems to have fallen out of use. Evidence for timber framed buildings and in period 2 a brick building whose tiled roof was later used for ground consolidation.
Finds of pottery, ironwork, and stone mortar.
This excavation was fully published in (S1). See also interim report (S2), publication synopsis (S3) and publication draft (S4). The results of this work are also summarised in (S5) and (S6).
The associated archive has been deposited with the Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2017.468).
E. Rose (NLA) 29 November 1996 amended by M. Langham-Lopez (HES), 8 July 2013 and P. Watkins (HES), 27 May 2019.

Published excavation report (S1) identifies this as the 'site of the rectorie' shown on a map of 1626, reproduced in (S2). The rectory is mentioned in a Dragge of Ingoldisthorpe Manor' of about 1412. The later history of the rectory is obscure, and it was united with the living of Stow Bardolph in 1769.
See (S1) for more detailed information on the history of the rectory.
S. Spooner (NLA) 28 April 2006.

September 2007. ALSF NHER Enhancement Sub-Unit D.
The moated site at Wimbotsham was constructed on a green-edge site towards the end of the 12th century, probably by the de Warenne family. The earthwork is the remains of a moated rectory. The excavation revealed evidence on the island within the moat for two earth building platforms, a series of internal drainage channels and the remains of a 13th or 14th century timber-framed building. A large number of finds relating to the medieval and late medieval occupation of the moated rectory were also recovered. The site appears to have become progressively more dilapidated during the later 15th and 16th centuries, its ditches being infilled with refuse and a tile roof to one of its buildings apparently collapsing. The rectory was eventually abandoned in the first quarter of the 1600s.
Information from (S1).
M. Dennis (NLA), 17 September 2007.