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Student archaeologists on trail of Yorkshire gem’s hidden past

Archaeologists from the University of York are revealing intriguing traces — hidden for more than two centuries — of the forerunner of one of Yorkshire’s great country houses.

In the shadow of Harewood House, a team of undergraduate students is carrying out the painstaking task of unearthing the remnants of Harewood’s predecessor, Gawthorpe Hall, which was demolished in 1773.

After carrying out exploratory digs and geophysical surveys over the last two years, the student archaeologists are spending three weeks uncovering the layout of the Hall of which only two contemporary illustrations survive.

Education sessions will allow school groups to explore the excavation, get their hands dirty digging and talk to the archaeologists. Workshops, lectures and public tours of the dig as well as exhibits of finds will be a feature of Harewood’s Medieval Festival on 16th and 17th July. You’ll also find out more about Harewood All Saints’ Church (founded in 1116), the 12th century Castle and medieval village of ‘Harwood’ [then spelt without an ‘e’]. Visit our Medieval Festival event webpage for details.

The archaeologists have already discovered a wealth of artefacts including a coin dating from the early 15th century, an 18th century chamber pot, decorative glassware and wine bottle fragments, decorative pins and a thimble as well as a range of ceramics from the medieval period up to the 18th century, which will help us to tell the story of how the family lived, how the hall was decorated and much more besides. The students have also unearthed a flint arrowhead dating back to pre-history.

Dr Finch said: “As well as providing a much longer history of Harewood that stretches thousands of years back into prehistory, the archaeology will give us a unique insight into the impact the Caribbean sugar industry and slavery had, not just on the fortunes of the Lascelles family, but on English landscape and society as a whole over two hundred years ago.”

David Lascelles said: “So much of what we know of Harewood’s history focuses on Harewood House and who has lived there. The excavation being done by York University students is helping to fill some of the gaps of that earlier history and – we all hope – answer some of the questions about Gawthorpe. We’ll be re-creating medieval Harewood in a digital “fly-by” to be shown as part of our Medieval Festival event in July, revealing a landscape without Harewood House and before Capability Brown’s intervention.”

Dr Finch headed a team from the University of York which travelled to Barbados last month to investigate the old Lascelles plantations, some of which still operate as sugar plantations with historic houses and factory buildings still surviving. Artefacts discovered there will be added to those found at Gawthorpe to create a new teaching resource based in Barbados and Yorkshire.

Education Sessions for Schools

Bookable education sessions will allow school groups to explore the excavation, get their hands dirty digging and talk to the archaeologists. Contact our Learning department for details on 0113 218 1043 or email.

To read more about our upcoming Medieval Festival, visit our What’s On pages here.

For more information about the University of York’s Department of Archaeology visit their website here…

You can also visit the dig to see the archaeology in action. Click here to read more…

Keep up with the progress of the archaeology team on their blog or facebook…
You can see finds from the Dig in the Terrace Gallery as part of our Summer exhibitions programme. Click here to read more…

This summer, explore Medieval Harewood with us…

Find out more on our Medieval Harewood webpages…

Work has continued today in the Learning Garden, with the help of Audrey, Trevor and his team.  Today, the focus was clearing the pond area, and preparing the vegetable plot.

After last week’s session, and our battle with the Philadelphus shrub, Trevor and his team were today successful in removing the plant from our pond area.  In addition to this, the team cleared the rest of the pond area, and dug the hole read for the pond to be put in place.

With Trevor’s expertise, the shrub is finally removed from the pond area

Once the pond area was cleared, work then began on the plot in the opposite corner of the garden.  This plot will become our vegetable garden.  Before any planting of vegetables could start, the area needed to be cleared, and Audrey spent the morning raking the leaves and weeding the flower beds, ready for the digging to begin.

The corner of our garden to become our vegetable plot, cleared by Audrey

Next session, we hope to put the pond lining in place, and finish preparing the plot ready to plant some vegetables!

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The Harewood Learning Team.

The Harewood Learning team have this Monday begun work on the Harewood Learning Garden, and have learnt first hand the hard work of gardening!

Our aims of the first gardening session were to clear the corner of the garden ready for our pond area to be built, and begin work on our habitat pile.  The corner of the garden in the picture below is going to be where we dig our pond, so the first job of the day was to clear everything from this corner, before any digging could begin.  After raking leaves up from the area to become our pond, we soon came up against a large barrier in the form of a very troublesome shrub called a Philadelphus.  With very deep roots, this shrub was well and truly rooted in the ground, and consequently delayed our preparation of the pond area, as we were unable to remove it!

The Philadelphus shrub, which needed to be removed before the digging of the pond could begin

All the leaves raked from the area and the Philadelphus shrub still not removed!

After battling with the Philadelphus shrub, our next job in the garden was to rake the many dead leaves that had fallen in the flower beds.  This was a long job, as the piles of leaves were very deep, and we had been told to watch out for toads, who liked the damp piles of dead leaves!

The flowerbeds of the Learning Garden, ready for raking

All the leaves we raked had to be collected, as we would be using them to make our habitat pile, in another area of the garden.

For the habitat pile, we needed to rake all the leaves into a very large mound, in our wilderness garden.  Once the leaves were all in a pile, we gathered lots of branches and twigs from the garden, and laid them on top of the leaf pile, to creat our habitat pile, which we will continue to add to next week.

Further progress on the garden to follow…

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This Spring the Harewood Learning Team have introduced new sessions for Schools, including a new session in the Walled Garden for pupils to get hands-on experience of planting, growing and harvesting their own crops as well as learning about the wartime ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign!

Harewood Head of Learning Jennifer Auty with one of the Kirk Hammerton pupils taking part in our new Walled Garden ‘Dig for Victory’ School Session

Head Gardener Trevor Nicholson delivered the first session to pupils from Kirk Hammerton Primary School who were thrilled to see their pupils learning while getting their hands dirty and having fun in the fresh air too!

The new ‘Dig for Victory’ School Session allows pupils to discover more about the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign and get some hands-on gardening experience to learn what life was like in the wartime years when rationing and food shortages were part of daily life.

This extended session also reveals more about Harewood’s involvement in the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign as well as the wartime years at Harewood when the Terrace was dug up to create vegetable plots and the Gallery in the House was used as a ward for the convalescent hospital.

You can find out more about our Learning Sessions for Schools on our website www.harewood.org/learn and contact us to request a brochure learn@harewood.org

Read more about the Gardens on our webpages…

The team at Harewood House are excited to introduce our new project for 2012, our Harewood Learning Garden, based in the garden of our Second Hand Bookshop at Terrace Cottage.

Trevor Nicholson, our Head Gardener here at Harewood will be leading this project, along with Jennifer Auty, Head of Learning,and the team at the Bookshop, fronted by Audrey Kingsnorth.

Using the proceeds from the extremely successful Second Hand Bookshop the team at Harewood will develop a ‘Learning Garden’, with local schools invited to take part in the care and growth of the garden.

The garden will be a focussed biodiversity and wildlife garden used for teaching children about the importance of gardening, wildlife, habitats, insects and plants.

Biodiversity is defined as the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, meaning that different plants and wildlife species will create a multi-layered habitat in the garden.

By combining sustainable practice with planting and features to increase biodiversity, the garden will offer a species-rich habitat for a range of garden insects and mammals. It will also provide a unique and rich learning experience for its visitors. The garden will offer a wealth of habitats for wildlife including:

• Insect boxes
• A pond
• Bee and butterfly friendly plants
• Log shelters/habitat piles
• Compost heap
• Bird boxes
• Bat boxes
• Hedgehog hides

The garden of the Second Hand Bookshop at Terrace Cottage is the site of our new Learning Garden

The garden will be split into two areas –

The ‘formal’ garden behind the bookshop will continue to have a lawned central area, but the borders will become a vegetable plot, herb garden, flower border, mixed shrubs, and a fern and woodland area.

The ‘paddock’ area to the side of the garden, accessed via the wooden gate will become a ‘wilderness’ garden. This will contain compost bays (for leaf mould and general compost), a wormery (potentially suppied by Willyworms), an insect lodge, habitat piles, and willow sculptures and nature themed artwork.

Our Learning Department and Gardening Team will be starting work on the garden from this Monday, to begin our fanatstic new project.

We will keep you updated with all the progress of our garden – subscribe to our blog!

The Harewood Learning Team.