Page 30 - ALG 1.21

Archaeology
from plot 31, Tempest Allotments, Otley
Reading the landscape takes many forms, from documentary record, through field-walking, to more formal archaeology. Each review is an attempt to throw light on historical periods from geological deposits to traces of human occupation. The length of time spent on each study is obviously in direct relation to the quality of knowledge unearthed. For example, Eric Cowling’s regular field-walking across the Sandbeds ploughlands at Farnley over a lifetime, produced hundreds of flints from the prehistoric periods that would otherwise be lost to scholarship. Such a modus operandi is clear, but does it work on other ground? Can this level
of magnification populate the soil and widen our limited field of vision closer to home? An unorthodox, but useful by- product of the growing of fruit and veg seems to support the case.
Here we focus on just one allotment
in the former town fields, personally turned seasonally for 30 years. Tempest Allotments plot 31 to the north of Cross Green is 280 sq. yards (234 sq. m.). What might the organic rootstock ecology
tell us about the archaeological story? Apples, pears, strawberries, potatoes, beans, cabbages and related plants are fed by the historic soils of the township in more ways than one. Tempest Allotments was listed shortly after World War I as 46 plots on 23⁄4 acres and dug into the former pasture of the Tempest butcher family for fattening their cattle. Grass had been previously punctured at the SE end of this ‘Intown Close’ in the mid 19th Century for the extraction of gravel from glacial drift (Allotment 25). Before that, the horse and ox yoked ploughshares inscribed this ground back to the middle ages and long before the stainless-steel spade
Small finds from plot 31 on Tempest Allotments in Otley. Paul Wood October 2019
did the same. These are the suggested patterns of human intervention on this tiny piece of old England – so what,
if anything, did the ancestors leave behind?
In reverse chronological order, here
is an attempt to read the evidence turned by spade, fork and trowel. There are no archaeological levels, just artefacts turned over to the naked eye. A superficial science possibly – but significant nonetheless. For a hundred years, countless council tenants of plot 31 have dug, delved and dumped in their heroic horticulture and period desertions. Their debris, covering an older story, is set out below, with a valiant attempt at dating.
Phase I 20th Century: Deposition leaves plastic, polythene, binder twine, glass, bricks, slate, flags, asbestos
and corrugated iron. Tool heads, nails, bolts, screws, tin and miscellaneous objects litter the topsoil. Small sherds of modern pottery include the ubiquitous
These are the suggested patterns of human intervention on this tiny piece of old England – so what, if anything, did the ancestors leave behind?
Woolworth’s blue band. As a poignant graveyard memorial to what was a probable fancy occupant of an allotment pigeon coop, is an aluminium bird ring: NU68 D21061 (Northern Union, 1968).
Phase II 19th Century: A 19th Century clay pipe bowl is accompanied by numerous stems in white and buff fabrics. Two pot heads from children’s dolls and a crude snake ring are probably from the same Victorian period and may have origins in loss or manuring.
Phase III 17th-18th Century: Slipware pottery sherds include an internally brown/yellow glazed bowl base. A probable late 17th Century pipe bowl has a so far unidentified heel stamp ‘IW’ (see Davey, P. 1980 ‘The Archaeology of the Clay Pipe, III’ BAR Series 78).
Phase IV Post Medieval: A few possible sherds from this period are represented.
30 Allotment and Leisure Gardener
Oxgang plough-team re-drawn from the Luttrell Psalter, c.1340 at British Museum. Re-drawn by PW October 2019