SPLASH! Rediscovering Studley’s Bathing House- is the bathing house still lost? Trial trenching Day 2

Mark Newman 21st July 2013

One of the seven hundred plus people who saw the trial excavations over the weekend was called George. He was short, blonde, four years old and full of lots of clear, penetrating, questions. After we had dispensed with “Why do you have a bucket?” and its natural follow up “Why do you have another bucket?” he Paxman-like moved to the killer blow. “Why are you doing this?”
Excellent question and not the easiest to answer simply.

There is the pragmatic answer: we want to improve the drainage here, and want to be sure that we don’t damage any archaeology. But its not the full answer. There’s a big dollop of curiosity to see a building we’ve known about for years but none of us have ever seen, too. And then there’s the bigger picture, learning more about how the gardens at Studley developed, so that we understand them better. George didn’t look entirely (or, to be honest, even slightly) convinced. He could see it was really a first class excuse to play with “boy toys” like the mini-digger, as he eyed it keenly over my shoulder. O.K, I admitted, so there’s probably a bit of that in there too…..

Yesterday did come as something of a shock. Before setting out to dig one tries to understand the “site formation model”. That’s the way in which archaeological remains are likely to have been formed, what they are likely to look like, how deeply they are likely to be buried, and what’s likely to have happened to them after deposition. The map and illustrative depictions of the Bathhouse are all pretty consistent, leading to expectations of remains of the building within 30-40cm of the ground surface next to the present path (and that that path is unchanged from its Georgian form).

The uncertainties we sought to resolve by trial trenching were intended to be two fold. Firstly, it wasn’t clear what sort of masonry remains we’d find. Depending on what the demolition men were told to do, we might find the bases of walls (or even floors) left in situ, or failing that clear foundation trenches cut into the substrate and filled with rubble. What was likely to survive would in part depend on how the lower part of the building was constructed (illustrations show it approached up steps, so the floors would have been above contemporary ground level). Secondly, as there was no clear horizontal platform on the valley side where the building had been sited, we could be certain there would be deposits of landscaping materials put in place to blend its site into the natural slopes behind. We didn’t know how deep these would be – a matter of small interest in terms of the history of the garden, but of much greater interest for planning the August excavations. It’s a tight site, and we need to plan for the size and location of spoil heaps.
Against such a reasonably predictable site formation model, the discovery of deep stratigraphy right across the site came as a considerable surprize. But by close of play on Sunday, a reasonably coherent story had emerged. It was really useful to extend the trench south towards the present path early in the day. The direct physical relationships between the path and the substrates were obscured/destroyed by an early-modern drain (which had undergone several episodes of failure and repair), but there was no sign of natural substrate rising up towards the path. This strongly suggests the rather unexpected conclusion that the path’s height has been raised. If so, then this probably occurred during the landscaping works after demolition of the bathing house.

The post-demolition landscaping layers were certainly present, and in considerable depth. We will need to plan a broad trench in August if we want to dig deeply down through these layers (which we will want to).
But the rest of the deposits we saw will need a lot more thinking about. The amount of building material – including brick, tile, slate, paving stones, floor tile, and decorative wall plaster – present, strongly suggests we are in the right location. By the end of the day on Sunday, Nicky, Justin and I were reasonably open to the possibility that the major deposit of rubble seen in the floor of the trench was perhaps filling a foundation trench at greater depth. On reflection, it was about in the position where we’d predicted the location of masonry when we’d picked the trench location in the first place.

The water-logged, smelly, clays at the same depth remain a bit of a mystery. As speculated yesterday, they might be something to do with a sub lining below the pool, but this isn’t incredibly convincing. That would only really work if all of the deposits we saw were filling a large pit, cut – perhaps - for the pool. We can test that quite easily by further trenching (at 90 degrees to the first trench) in August. On the other hand these soils could have formed under a pond fed by the spring, predating the bath house. If the ground continued to stay wet and smelly during the building’s life, then that might have contributed to its demise. It might even have been the cause for greatly raising the level of the ground surface, which we now seem to have evidence took place.

But it has to be admitted that, for the moment, the lost Bathing house remains lost. We have clear clues to follow up in August. There’s every chance that the main rubble layer in the trench floor is in a foundation, just as we predicted, and that the back of the building lies further north than we trenched. The unpredicted depths of deposits certainly raise the likelihood of extant masonry, if we can get down to the previous ground level. On the other hand the nature of the rubble we’ve seen so far suggests that building materials were carefully gathered for reuse, perhaps encouraging thorough reuse..

That drain at the southern edge of the site provided one last clue. Although it obviously postdated the re-landscaping and included lC19/eC20 building materials, it didn’t just run parallel with the path. In the west section of the trench we could see the drain spurred, with a branch heading off to the north-west away from the path and towards the suspected site of the west wing of the building. It’s hard to see what this could have been intended to drain…. except perhaps the outflow from the former plunge pool?

SPLASH! Rediscovering Studley’s Bathing House- Day one in the sun-are we having fun?

Mark Newman 20th July 2013

At last, years of planning and anticipation are over, and it’s finally time to put spade (or rather mini-digger) in the ground. It’s always one of the best moments of every project, the moment when there’s a return for all that planning and the thrill of the unknown about to become known.

The premise was simple enough. We’re hoping to rediscover the lost bathing house. It’s an honest premise – the building is lost and we’re hoping to find it, but given the strength of the documentary evidence that shouldn’t be too challenging a task. It is true that we don’t know precisely where it stood (and getting that right to a few centimetres either way is crucial; a trench misplaced by only a few inches will just not see what you’re looking for); and we certainly don’t know how thoroughly the building was demolished or how the site was treated after demolition – all of which will affect the nature of any archaeological deposits.

So, the gameplan was that we’d find either intact masonry or rubble filled foundation trenches, probably within 30-50cm of the surface. With luck we might find floors, and perhaps the remains of the plunge bath. We weren’t sure exactly where the walls would be, or what alignment they’d be on. Neither did we know how much mid-nineteenth century landscaping they’d be under. But finding all that out was the object of the exercise.

Against such easy expectations, the first hour grew increasingly nerve-wracking. The mini-digger exposed greater and greater depths of what looked just like the local natural substrate, with no evidence of building rubble or other remains at all. Thankfully, it eventually became clear that it was too loosely packed to be truly “natural”, but the absence of any trace of the building was puzzling and worrying. Finally we started to see tiny fragments of wall plaster (and then roof tile) turning up, and eagerly hurried them into plastic finds bags, thankful to be finding something! (The desperation of that moment is a bit emphasised now by the piles of plaster fragments we had by the end of the day, and the amount we’re leaving in the spoil heap!).
And so the day went on. What we’ve ended up with is entirely unexpected. We’ve excavated the trench to the full 1.20m depth that Health and Safety regulation permits. Right along its length it seems that we’re only encountering man-made archaeological levels, but they are not from discrete features like foundation trenches. Instead they are much larger horizontal layers. Some are rich in building waste, almost certainly from the bathing house, which had clearly been systematically sifted for anything reusable. At the base is a denser grey clay, smelling of sulphur – typical of soils formed in waterlogged conditions. Could this be is a lining put in under the plunge pool, or even relate to a pond formed by the spring before the bathing house was built.

This unexpected sequence asks many more questions than it answers. It’s possible that we happen to have hit the site of the plunge bath, and that we’re effectively working in the filling of a large, atypical, hole in the ground. The other alternatively is that the garden landscape here has been radically remodelled over time – an exciting and hitherto unsuspected alternative.

Tomorrow’s work will take our understanding another step further forward, but more than likely we won’t get a grip on the full answers until the dig in August.

So, at the end of day one we’re not where we were expecting to be at all. But we’re somewhere pretty interesting.

Just like Dr Johnson’s Dictionary in Blackadder….

Mark Newmam 13th June 2013

The real beginning of any good archaeological project, especially in a place like Studley Royal, is grappling with what we think we know about the site. Sometimes that’s just the formality of making sure you’re on the right track, but on other occasions it can be a surprisingly productive activity, long before the first spade has come into any sort of proximity with the ground.

To be honest, though, it’s not really the start of the story. There’s all the work rationalising and recording the reasons why a project might take place in a Project Design. Does it seek to investigate and research (and if so what and how) or – as is far more common in the National Trust – is it needed to mitigate for a development impact required by the operation of the property. In the case of the Bathing House, our motivations are a mixture of the two. We need to understand what’s happening to the bath’s spring water supply, as it often spills over onto the adjoining path and is a nuisance to visitors. But we’re also taking the opportunities to learn a lot more of one of Studley’s more significant lost buildings, and engaging people with archaeology and some of the property’s myriad hidden stories.

With the Project Design in place, the project then has to argue its case with all the other potential calls on the estate’s resources. We had hoped to dig here in 2012, but other priorities had to be addressed, so our plans were put on hold for a year. Buy now, with the estate’s long term commitment to archaeological conservation, its moment has come.

The actual excavations, in July and August, will be carried out for us by archaeological contractors, Field Archaeology Specialists, with whom we’ve worked very successfully on a number of previous Studley projects. Most memorable was the investigation of The Quebec that we carried out in 2011, our last major public archaeology project on the property.

It’s my role to project manage their input, but also to do the majority of the background research that will guide the excavations and, later, explain the findings. Having been looking at it for almost a quarter of a century, much of the source information is pretty much at my fingertips, and I’d have thought that I understood it pretty well and fully. However, that’s where Dr Johnson comes in…

Blackadder encountered Dr Johnson just after he thought he’d finished the manuscript of his complete English Dictionary. With no love lost between them Blackadder plagued Johnson by dropping words into the conversation that Johnson had missed. Queue much scribbling into the manuscript….

It’s been a bit like that with the documentary research so far. I thought we understood the available evidence pretty thoroughly, but I’m now looking at it with different eyes, asking it new questions. And, amazingly, there’s rather more to know than I’d previously recognised, telling us a whole lot more.

Exactly what? Well, you’ll have to read future Blogs……

SPLASH! Rediscovering Studley’s Bathing House 

 Why the details matter, and why we look for them

 MN 13th June 2013

 Looking at the Studley Royal designed landscape through an archaeologist’s eyes, it often strikes me how much it is like a worn coin found in a ploughed field. It’s an exciting discovery. It obviously has a long history – public and private – imbued in what it is and what it looks like, though that story may take effort to read, and not be obvious at first glance. It’s also that it was once more detailed and has become worn through use.

Wonderful as the gardens remain – more than fully justifying their recognition as a World Heritage Site, a place of “outstanding universal value” – when one starts to investigate them it is immediately obvious that much has been changed or lost since the death of William Aislabie in 1781. William himself, unusually amongst Georgian garden makers, was concerned with the preservation of his creation and addressed this through conditions in his will. But whatever he may have wanted, all gardens are organic and simply won’t stand still; features and buildings decay and may or may not be replaced; others may come, filling the gaps created, to meet new needs. Over the course of time, just like the worn coin, much detail has been lost from the gardens. But, with care, you can often make out where and what those details were, or even identify those lost completely.

 If we’re going to understand and conserve William Aislabie’s masterpiece those details matter. Every designed landscape (landscape-scale garden) is a work of art, a unique sculptural essay. Designed Landscapes marry planting, built structures and the management of views with the natural (or modified) topography to produce a range of sensory, aesthetic and emotional effects. Little, if anything, that remained within them was there by accident. Even in its degraded state, Studley is a defining example of this genre.

 There are a range of reasons why it’s a unique masterpiece, one of which is the intricacy with which John (and later his son, William) Aislabie fitted so many experiences and episodes into a relatively restricted piece of landscape. This is especially true of John’s work (at the core of the present gardens) mainly developed at the 1720s and 1730s, when he was effectively writing the rules of contemporary landscape design. The Skell valley was laid out with statues, water features, buildings and paths (great and small, at a range of heights up the valley side) serving a series criss-crossing network of carefully contrived set-piece views and experiences. The whole was as precise and co-dependent on its parts as a watch mechanism.

 What we are left with today works, brilliantly, but many of the mechanism’s parts have vanished. Some, such as smaller paths, were of lesser significance; others, like statues, perhaps of rather more. And then there are the missing buildings.

 We have long known that one of these was a Bathing House, which once stood on what is now one of the main paths through the garden. However, we know comparatively little of its form, and there is nothing there today to suggest that there was once a handsome building on the site. But it is a location still focussed on by other elements of the garden design, and therefore experienced – unnoticed – by the majority of Studley’s visitors.

 This summer’s work aims to discover more about this missing detail, to think about it seriously for the first time since the building’s demolition in the 1850s. The work will (hopefully!) rediscover what the building looked like, and perhaps more about the reasons for its construction and the full role that it played in the garden design.

 It will also ensure that we are looking after any archaeological remains properly – and explore the potential to some way 'restore' the Bathing House to people’s understanding and experience of Studley. And thus an important worn-away detail will be returned to its rightful place.