![]() | Burton Dassett Southend, Warwickshire: A Medieval Market Village Southend, one of five medieval settlements in Burton Dassett parish, Warwickshire, was the site of a market promoted by the manorial lord Bartholomew de Sudeley, with a charter being obtained in 1267. The settlement prospered, becoming known as Chipping Dassett, and approached urban status, but then declined throughout the 15th century. It was subjected to depopulation in 1497. The site survived as earthworks in pasture until construction of the M40 motorway necessitated the archaeological programme described here. The only building to survive was the 13th-century chapel of St James, reduced, along with an adjacent post-medieval priest's house, to a cow-shed.
Although the excavated area lay away from the original settlement nucleus, the investigation revealed the mechanics of 13th-century market development with two separate stages of planned development apparent. After the mid-14th century the tenements show a complex pattern of decline leading up to the depopulation of 1497. The different properties followed varying development paths and the excavations chart a process of general community decline against a background of increasing individual prosperity. The evidence of material culture and settlement morphology, taken together, are relevant to the discussion about differentiation and similarities between urban and rural settlement. The medieval pottery has been crucial to the development of the Warwickshire type series. Identification of the pottery sources provides evidence for trade connections between the settlement and the wider market network, with the quantities of material from the Chilvers Coton kilns suggesting that manorial connections with North Warwickshire, where the Sudeley family also held land, were significant. The summary narrative and thematic discussions (focused upon material culture, spatial organisation, buildings and economy) in this volume are supplemented by detailed stratigraphic description and specialist reports available online through the Archaeology Data Service. Nicholas Palmer and Jonathan Parkhouse |
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