Embleton Moat (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Hallgarth

In the civil parish of Embleton.
In the historic county of Cumberland.
Modern Authority of Cumbria.
1974 county of Cumbria.
Medieval County of Cumberland.

OS Map Grid Reference: NY15482915
Latitude 54.65035° Longitude -3.31141°

Embleton Moat has been described as a probable Fortified Manor House.

There are cropmark/slight earthwork remains.

Description

Some six or seven hundred yards SW of Embleton Vicarage are the remains of a moat. The west side of 126 feet, and short return lengths at each end remaining. There is a rampart external to the ditch (Curwen, 1913). Ploughing has reduced the remainder to a mere ground swelling only. (Field Investigators Comments F1 RL 18-APR-66). Site has been filled in with black debris and covered with earth, (by appearance within last two or three weeks). Only about 3m. N. end of a moat extant (Letter (TC Welsh)AO/W 1.7.74). (PastScape)

Thomas de Lucy, the feudal superior, had granted Thomas de Ireby, lord of Embleton, licence to enclose a park c.1285, in exchange for the right to take two deer from it each year (Wilson 1915, 568-9). How long the park continued to contain game is unclear: the inquisition after de Ireby's death in 1308 merely refers to a 'close', valued as herbade (TNA:PRO C 134/2/10). It may thus have already lost its identity as a park by 1322 when almost half of the houses in Embleton were burnt in the Scottish raid of that year (TNA:PRO C 134/75/7). The park had disappeared as a landscape feature by the post-medieval centuries, no hint of a park pale surviving in the field pattern. Its location can, however, be reconstructed from nineteenth-century field names containing the element 'Park', which form a block stretching south west-west from the site of the manor house (which survives as an earthwork in a field named 'Hallgarth'). (Winchester, 2007, p. 182-3)

Sources of information, references and further reading

Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 9373.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 1067.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- Old Cumbria Gazetteer
Books
- Winchester, Angus J.L.., 2007, 'Baronial and Manorial Parks in Medieval Cumbria' in Liddiard, R. (ed) The Medieval Park new perspectives (Windgather Press) p. 165-184 (plan on p. 183)
  Perriam, Denis and Robinson, John, 1998, The Medieval Fortified Buildings of Cumbria (Kendal: CWAAS Extra Series 29)
  Curwen, J.F., 1913, Castles and Fortified Towers of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire North of the Sands (Kendal: CWAAS Extra Series 13) p. 45
Periodical Articles
- Collingwood, W.G., 1923, 'An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Cumberland' Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Vol. 23 p. 251 online copy

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The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

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