West Midlands Regional Research Framework for Archaeology, Seminar 6: Soden
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Early Post-Medieval Coventry: Resource Assessment
c1539-c1750
Iain Soden
Coventry City Council
Iain.soden@coventry.gov.uk
The historic walled city of Coventry which emerged from the medieval period was
essentially that which the 15th century citizens had known, but for the loss of many of
its major landmarks, principally the monasteries.
Gone were St Mary's Benedictine Cathedral and Priory, the Greyfriars, the
Whitefriars and just outside the walls, the Carthusians at Charterhouse. Further afield
the Hospitallers had gone too, with the Cistercians being evicted from Coombe.
The effect was to leave large demolition sites blighting the city-scape. In the suburbs,
the former monastic ring around the city was broken, and all the former church land
came into private hands. The institutions were felled along with the farming, the
distribution and the supply networks.
In 1523 there were already over 500 empty properties in the city, which was
experiencing a period of extreme hardship with near-breakdown in the woollen cloth
industry on which so much of late medieval Coventry had depended. The Dissolution
was a bitter blow from which the planning of the city would not recover properly until
the 18th century.
The survival of above-ground remains of the former monastic houses became subject
to the haphazard whims of their owners. Some contained elements which survived as
new great houses - and still survive, some well (Charterhouse, Whitefriars), while
others suffered badly (St Mary's, Greyfriars). A digest survey of the early postmedieval descent of these is due for publication in the next few months in the
SMA/SPMA monograph 'The Archaeology of Reformation'.
The archaeology of this period in the walled city is therefore one which reflects decay
at worst, stagnation at best. Poverty is attested in documents and some contraction
can be seen in suburbs between maps of 1610 and 1749. Most city centre sites,
however, do contain a degree of continuity. The only large new development in the
period was that of the aptly named New Buildings, on the former Benedictine Priory
site. This provided accommodation for those whose houses were demolished outside
the city gates to facilitate a clear field of fire by the city's defending artillery in the
Civil War. The city's population rose dramatically by 50% during the Civil War
(from 6000-9000) just to accommodate the parliamentarian garrison and refugees
from across the midlands, displaced by hostilities.
The Civil War provided the last and biggest test of the City Walls, which were by
then aged between 100 and 280 years old. One length had already had to be hurriedly
West Midlands Regional Research Framework for Archaeology, Seminar 6: Soden
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rebuilt because it had fallen down in the 1630s, repaired with stone from the old
Greyfriars site.
A short, abortive siege in August 1642 provided almost the opening shots of the Civil
War. Concentrated on New Gate, the entrance from London (ironically named since
it was the first to be built and therefore the oldest), the King, present in person,
breached the wall with his artillery but was driven off by the citizen-militia. Recent
excavations by Warwickshire Museum in Whitefriars Street identified a horizon
containing a spread of musket shot and a small-bore cannon ball which probably
represent the poorly-aimed overshoot of this attack since the site lies in direct line
with that of New Gate and the King's gun emplacements in the medieval Cheylesmore
Park quarries.
The result of the attack was a movement to strengthen the existing defences. Most of
the quarries were filled in. Close to New Gate a multiangular tower with gun-loops
was added to provide additional fields of fire covering the gate. Elsewhere eight of
the gates into the city were blocked up to concentrate access on the other four, the
biggest and best defended, New Gate, Gosford Gate, Bishop Gate and Spon Gate.
Outside these and some of the others, houses were pulled down in 1643 to facilitate
clear views and deny an approaching enemy cover. Some were documented as being
taken down and the timbers stored for subsequent re-erection. Thus these properties
have the potential to contain clear TAQs, valuable for ascertaining the nature of
material culture and the economic health of the city on the eve of the war. Close to
the four main gates, deep entrenchments were dug, called half-moons, to turn the
flank of an approaching enemy to the defenders' fire. The walls were dramatically
drawn in a detailed engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar of 1656, just before their demise.
The destruction of the medieval walls by the Earl of Northampton in 1662 provides
another dramatic red-letter date after the Dissolution and enabled the city to begin to
expand, although only ever so slightly. The gates mostly lingered until their
piecemeal destruction in the late 18th century, usually to widen the roads.
The defensive ditch in front of the wall had always been a problem to the city since all
and sundry dumped refuse in it. The late-medieval records relate numerous cleanouts, although whether many of them constitute re-cuts is unclear. It was a losing
battle and the loss of the wall removed the raison d'etre of the ditch. Most now began
to be filled in, although in no great desire to remove it from the landscape; moves to
keep it clean simply stopped. Some lengths were mapped as remaining open in the
19th century, a fact corroborated by an alehouse dump in the ditch on Friars Road of
c1805.
Elsewhere the hinterland of the ailing city still focussed on its surrounding villages,
which were the basis of agricultural stability and continuity, although it is clear that
great changes were brought about by the collapse of the open field system and
wholesale early enclosure by private agreement, such as at Stoke in 1655. With the
local economy poleaxed by the Dissolution, economic depression and then a Civil
War, there were certainly no conditions which might engender the traditional Great
Rebuilding of the period. Many such newly enclosed estates became the site for new
farms and great houses which were in no small part an expression of an emergent and
independent farming gentry:
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Swanswell House, Primrose Hill House, Stivichall Hall, Fletchamstead Hall (on the
site of the former Templar/Hospitaller manor), Pinley House, Whoberley Hall,
Willenhall Hall and the sumptuous New House in Radford were all new foundations
or wholesale reinterpretations of old manorial properties, mostly monastic, which
reflected the emergence of a new breed of local landowner. The sites of all these
houses are known and form distinctive below-ground foci in the modern suburbs.
They form valuable TPQs for material culture as they are to be associated with newly
created estates in an upper wealth bracket. Others mask the site of medieval
precursors already considered of archaeological significance. Many were illustrated
before their demolition in the 19th and early 20th centuries; some were photographed.
Mills continue to figure strongly as archaeological foci in the landscape, although
most were in fact merely the old medieval mills continuing in use, some with
upgraded buildings; again focal points for continuity. A new double mill was
constructed in 1551 on the southern edge of the Swanswell, together with an elaborate
conduit system to increase the city's water supply. A tower-mill just north-west of the
Swanswell may be a pump for the same system, in the Dutch fashion (there is no
evidence for a medieval post-mill precursor). It was both mapped and drawn in 1800
but the date of its construction is not known.
The coal mining which can be traced to beginnings in Wyken in the 1520s began to
expand in the 17th and 18th centuries, with a string of pits, many of them abortive,
being dug all over the eastern suburbs. Lacking informed geological advice, many
were doomed to premature flooding with no prospect of reaching coal since they were
nowhere near the seams. Their scars, however, which mostly did not survive to be
mapped, since the coal-leases include making good, will have been considerable. The
locations of some can now be pinpointed and they extend the range of the later,
successful collieries. The site of one is about to be developed.
The early post-medieval period ends with the coming of the canal (1769).
Thus the modern city contains archaeological aspects relating to the early post
medieval period as follows. These will need to be borne in mind when setting a
research strategy:
Dissolution horizons
Urban and rural continuity but at a reduced level
Suburban contraction and demolitions
Garrison and refugee influx
Civil war military earthworks
Water technology
Great houses
Mining