Page 31 - ALG 1.21

Phase V Medieval: 62 abraded pottery fragments consisted of 52 body sherds, 4 rims and 4 bases. There were no jug handles. 11 sherds are glazed apple green and 50 are unglazed. The majority of finds are in a pinkish gritty fabric, often micaceous and some comparable to ‘East Pennine Gritty Ware’ (224 sherds) from Otley (see Le Patourel, J. & Wood, P. 1973, YAJ Vol. 45 pp. 134-8. Otley Museum, O/MH/py).
A smaller sample of off-white fabrics appeared in allotment scatter and thought to be made in the wider West Yorkshire area. The heavily abraded sherds from plot 31 suggest kitchen midden and manuring origins, followed by seasonal ploughing and allotment cultivation.
The exercise of contract archaeology in Otley, lack of local consultation and uncertain final location of finds, leaves comparative studies unresolved.
Phase VI – unknown: 1 grey/black gritty striated sherd is possible of pre- conquest date yet to be determined.
The majority of artefacts suggest a fairly
convincing date range of at least 750 years from the beginning of the borough and early farming of this intown ploughland. The scatter of medieval kitchen pottery comes from domestic town use and the spread of manure over 500 years of arable crops and fallow feeding up to the post medieval period.
By the late 18th Century, Samuel Stokes held the middle of the three Intown closes which was let to Joshua Roberts (Land Tax, 1781-1792). Was Robert’s ploughman, pastoralist, farming wheat, barley, oats and legumes or meat
and milk? The mid 19th Century Tithe Award gives us the field names and numbers them from west to east as: Intown Closes 362 (Wharfe Street),
361 (Tempest Allotments) both under grass and 360 (Rugby field), arable. The contemporary 1st ed. OS map shows Intown close and the gravel pit which divides the south end of close 361 (see Wood, P. 2013 ‘Townscape’ pp. 72-3). Obviously, some backfilling must have been made to level this hollowing out of the drift to the side of plot 31. The well documented Tempest family of butchers, whose surname marks the holding of Intown close at a later date
As autumn pears are picked, sprouts swell and topsoil is turned yet again on our 280 sq. yards, the rest is history, so to speak
are first listed in the Market Place in 1811.
20th Century Tempests traded
from 3-5 Boroughgate with an old slaughterhouse in New Inn Yard. The Meat Market’s George Tempest built Mayfield House on Cross Green in 1866 and it was successively Mrs. Tempest who was leasing the family field to
the Urban Council in 1921. Defence
of the Realm regulations, which had compulsorily taken lands for the war effort, had to be returned by March 1923. Leaseholds continued until the final purchase, recorded in the OUDC Yearbook as in May 1965.
As autumn pears are picked, sprouts swell and topsoil is turned yet again on our 280 sq. yards, the rest is history, so to speak. We look forward to the fruits of our labours next season and
a continuing archaeological harvest. Multiply this plot by the whole allotment estate and we could certainly read the landscape.
Paul Wood and Christine Dean, October 2019
Plan of the area around Tempest Allotments, showing the wider Cross Green context. Paul Wood October 2019
Allotment and Leisure Gardener 31