All the good intentions of writing on every few days during the excavations in September went the way of all flesh, I’m afraid. Sorry. There were two main reasons – the usual maelstrom of work in other directions, but also the rather slow pace at which the Quebec’s stories revealed themselves. As was hinted at in previous blogs, the archaeology was really very different from what we had expected. Explaining that is still occupying our minds, and may take a while yet to bring to a conclusion.
The first surprise was that the islands and shoreline were never very robustly built. This explains why the pond changed shape on the different historic maps from between 1831 and 1893, but not how the feature kept its form for the hundred years or so before 1831. Obviously it was always at risk from the force of the Skell in spate – and perhaps that was part of its character, at variance with the fixed geometry of the other garden ponds.
The one bit of edging we did find was on the shoreline, closest to the nearest path access. Just below the stone edging we found a single large square posthole. There is a 1730s account book reference to repairs to a drawbridge – it’s not beyond the realms of the possible that the posthole was from one of its footings. It would certainly be interesting to excavate a larger area in this vicinity to explore this possibility further.
Another puzzle that remains surrounds the way in which the Quebec was lost. The archaeology suggests gradual silting up over a long period – but that’s very hard to reconcile with the historic maps showing a relatively uniform size of feature prior to its sudden disappearance. Our trenches were limited to a depth of 1.20m for safety reasons, so we didn’t excavate to the bottom of the silts, but before the trenches were refilled we used augurs to test for the bottom, so its now possible to draw the original profiles.
The most north-westerly trench provided the most vivid evidence for the appearance of the lost island – root boles from the trees that once stood on it, pitched at angles as they once clung to the sloping shore. These survived the infilling, and were felled much later, as the chain saw marks that survived on them proved.
The biggest, least welcome, surprises came in the southern trenches. Here no trace of the smaller islands or the shores could be found. Instead there was deep disturbance with a single dump of silty material refilling it, all “sealed” by the circular concrete pond built by the West Riding County Council in the late 1960s. (We’d questioned the date of that pond, but the plastic sheeting on which its concrete footings were cast closed off any suggestion that it was any earlier).
It wasn’t clear what had caused the damage to the southern end of the site. It’s possible that it was erosion damage: we have seen the Skell in spate gouge holes 12 feet deep in an afternoon – but only where flow is constricted. It couldn’t have been here, and we certainly don’t know of any flood events around 1910 (the local newspapers are pretty good at recording them or at least how they impinged on Ripon). It seems even less likely that such damage could have occurred after the feature was filled in.
The more likely explanation is that there was an experiment to excavate a smaller but deeper pond at some point after the initial infilling. There’s no map evidence to suggest when this might have occurred – there’s nothing on the OS editions of 1909, 1910, 1928 or 1938. We can also assume that the feature was long filled in again before the WRCC tried building their pond. They’d not have chosen this site had they known how potentially unstable the substrates were. Two likely dates suggest themselves. It might have been tried out at the point when the Quebec was infilled, between 1903 and 1909. However, elsewhere there is simplification in the garden design at this point not complication. The other possibility is in the mid 1930s. The feature was filled with dredged material, and we know that the Vyners provided employment dredging the river during the great Depression. It is possible digging the pond was another such scheme that was abandoned again for some reason.
There’s still more work to do drawing all the evidence together and further illumination may come from that. Meanwhile, the third phase of the project – excavations across the dam to the south of the Quebec will take place in November or December – watch this space!
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