Monument record WMP 001 - Wenham Castle; Little Wenham Hall

Wenham Castle (was Hall), Grade I listed, extensively restored in 1981, located S of present Little Wenham Hall.
Fortified brick manor house, L shape plan, built circa 1270-80 with alterations in C16. Wet moat. Two storey stone vaulted ground floor with Tudor roofed banqueting hall over. Chapel of St Petronilla with piscina, aumbry. Flint, early Flemish brick and ashlar. Embattled parapet and turret termination to winding stair to roof.
1981: Whole site in superb condition, brickwork completely free of any creeper. Major Binny says that the monument was used a farm building before being bought and restored by his grandfather (S9).
1985: He has been told that it was once complemented by a free-standing hall and a free-standing kitchen within the moated area. The moat certainly encloses a much larger area than that of the standing building (S9). Note numerous C13(?) bricks used in multi-material construction of Hall (S10).
For re-interpretation see (S11).
Wenham Hall shown on Ogilby's map, 1675 (S12).
Scheduled

Features visible on Lidar. See associated files.


Geophysical surveys (resistance, magnetometry and ground-penetrating radar) were undertaken over 0.4ha of land around the architecturally important late-13th-century Hall, with a principal aim of establishing whether there were any structures adjacent to or near the Hall. The resistivity survey (Fig. 7) was the most informative, showing a number of linear trends. One seems to be a probable recent pipe or cable running diagonally across the ground to the N.W. of the building, but several of the others relate to garden boundaries, paths and tracks shown on the 1883 Ordnance Survey map. The most interesting of the trend lines is also the shortest. This is a short low-resistance anomaly that runs westward from the S.W. corner of the building before broadening out and fading. This is on the line of the north wall of a suggested former hall adjacent to a chamber-block represented by the standing building (Martin 1998 and 2002; Goodall 2000; Quiney 2000; Emery 2000). As a low-resistance anomaly this cannot be a wall but could be a cut feature such as a robbed-out foundation trench. The full area of the suggested vanished hall could not be surveyed because of the presence of a gravel pathway alongside part of the critical south side of the building and, immediately south of that, an unsurveyable area of shrubbery and garden features. For a fuller discussion see Martin 2009. Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2008 (S13).