Dothill moat

Description

Dothill Moat is known from documentary sources to have been the site of a medieval manor. A 1626 plan shows a large house with outbuildings, and the remains of a moat around the garden at the southern end of the house. In the C18 the house was extended to the north, and in the C19 the earlier part of the house was demolished. The site was finally abandoned and cleared in the 1960s. The development of the house from the C17 onwards is well documented by a series of estate maps. In 1626 Dothill house consisted of a five bayed N/S range with a two storied porch to the east. The range appears to have incorporated an earlier, probably medieval three bayed hall. ... The moat was partially infilled to accommodate the then recent expansion of the house...A cluster of agricultural buildings .... lay to the north, an arrangement which continued up to the C20. (Hannaford and Litherland 1989)

Members of the Geography Department, Sheffield University, excavated one of a number of sites discovered from air-photographs by F. W. Carter. A trench across site 'A', a raised plateau some 300 ft. in diameter, due to be destroyed by building work, produced 12th- and 13th-century sherds, a lead seal, a ditch and a possible post-hole filled with packing stones. (Med. Arch. 1961)

Comments

An excavation in 1989 found some medieval pottery but mainly features of the post medieval house. What was the reason for Jackson feeling a need to put this site in his castle book and then reject it? Did the description of the site as a raised plateau 300 ft in diameter lead him to feel it might by confused for a motte? This was a medieval manorial centre and, even though it is only 1km from Apley Castle, it is impossibly to entirely dismiss this as the site of a motte or to suggest the medieval house did not have some other fortification beyond the moat.