Post by guest blogger Emily Rayner

Harewood House on the northern outskirts of Leeds is known as one of the Treasure Houses of England. This renowned eighteenth century mansion houses the precious works of famous artists and sculptors, and sits nestled within a landscape attributed to Capability Brown. But what came before all this and how did Harewood House come to be built here?  An archaeological dig within the grounds of Harewood House is beginning to shed some light on the House’s medieval predecessor, the house where the Lascelles family first made their home in this Yorkshire landscape.

Researchers from the Department of Archaeology at The University of York, alongside colleagues from the York Archaeological Trust (YAT), are beginning to reveal the foundations of Gawthorpe Hall. This is the manor house which stood in the Harewood landscape from the 13^th century until it was finally demolished under the direction of Edwin Lascelles in the mid 18^th century. The estate today is an amalgamation of the estates of Harewood in the north and Gawthorpe to the south. Historic prints and documents have shown that the estate of Harewood was once much smaller and was centred around Harewood Castle, whose ruins can still be seen today nestled in the woods on the road to Otley. The estates of Gawthorpe and Harewood always had close links, with the families from the two households linked by family and marriage throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The two estates were then joined in 1601 when the Wentworth family who lived in Gawthorpe Hall also managed to buy the Harewood estate. However, after the sudden execution of Sir Thomas Wentworth in the run up to the civil war, the house and estates were bought by Boulter and then passed to Cutler who had little interest in the site, and so they were sold to the Lascelles, the family who now own Harewood House.

Items found during last year’s dig showed an area of the house that was probably used as some kind of work yard. Around the drain in the yard, hidden between the cobbles, diggers found hundreds of tiny metal pins. These would probably have fallen off clothes as workers from the house washed and beat them dry, swilling out the dirty water into the drain as they worked.  At the other end of the site, one trench showed a series of rooms that had been demolished and packed with all the debris from this destructive process. Interestingly though, within this debris was also hundreds of pieces of bottle glass, smashed up pottery from fine tablewares, including  pottery from China, and decorative plaster from the elaborate rooms which would have housed the wealthy Wentworth family. It is interesting that all these household items, some of which were of high quality and value were smashed up and packed within the demolition of Gawthorpe Hall. When Edwin Lascelles decided to destroy Gawthorpe Hall and build Harewood House, he not only wanted to build a house that reflected the families new found wealth and status but also to completely leave behind the possessions, and image of, their old life behind in the rubble.

The site itself is situated on the slope between the formal gardens of the terrace, and the picturesque lake below. This year, the excavation of Gawthorpe will continue to reveal more of the floor plan of the hall. The trenches from the 2011 dig will be joined up so that we can get a better understanding of how the walls and rooms which have already been excavated relate to each other. During the excavation this year, we will have a marquee on the site so visitors to Harewood House can come down and find out more about the site. We will be running daily tours of the excavation as well as a series of workshops and talks for adults and activities for children. These events fit into a larger programme of events at Harewood this year focusing on the medieval history of the site. For more information about the timings and details of the public events during the dig running from 30^th April until the 20^th May please check the Gawthorpe Blog and Facebook page.

Post by guest blogger Emily Rayner