Appleby Magna - Dormers Hall

Dormers Hall

In the field behind the Church Hall are strange and for a long time, unexplained, earthworks. There is a large excavation, long since grassed over, with a pond near its furthest point and either side of this, to north and south, the field has ridges and ditches of different sizes and orientations, some of them overlying or cutting across others and all of them now grassed over in the pasture.

The north-west quarter of the field (towards the modern Rectory) shows ridge-and-furrow strips (i.e. ‘lands’ or ‘londs’), running roughly north-south and these appear to be the oldest earthwork preserved in the pasture as the other disturbances cut across them. These ridge-and-furrow strips are a remnant of the medieval system of agriculture in which farming land was organised in open fields.

Dominating the northern half of the field are two unusually large ridges and ditches. Any hedges which grew on the banks must have been removed and the ridges and ditches returned to pasture without being levelled. But a hawthorn bush, possibly a hedgerow remnant, survived on one of the long north-south banks until recently (1999). This system of larger banks and ditches appears to have formed a long enclosure with two squarer enclosures on each side. The size and shape of these suggest a road or carriageway flanked by four small roughly rectangular paddocks. This road lead from Rectory lane to Dormers Hall which sat behind the church hall.

Little is know about the Hall, except that it was home to the Dormer family in the 16th century. The Hall was demolished at the end of the 16th century. Bricks from the hall can still be found under the grass in various parts of the field. A dovecote from the Hall survived until recently.

The excavated area with the pond cuts into the earlier earthworks. This is the type of hollow left by clay extraction for brick-making. Other banks, ditches and irregular earthworks on the southern half of the modern field, towards Bowleys Lane, may include fish ponds. Church Street Farm house and buildings, the National School (now the Church Hall) and the new burial ground clearly have been taken from the original field at a late stage. None of their boundaries conforms to earlier alignments.