Making a Living on the Severn Vale: The Invisible Potters of Domesday Haresfield.
Jon Hart, Cotswold Archaeology
When Domesday Book was compiled in 1086 following the Norman Conquest, it was to assess the value of William the Conqueror’s new kingdom. Land holdings were listed, but of the potters who produced the ceramics used across England only three groups were recorded, one of which was at Haresfield, Gloucestershire, a parish spanning the Cotswold uplands and the Severn Vale clays. In 2019, the construction of a business park on the Vale afforded the opportunity to excavate a small part of this historic parish, where researchers have long sought evidence for the Medieval kilns. The developers (St Modwen Ltd) funded a multi-disciplinary approach, combining archaeology, radiocarbon dating, and detailed study of finds and environmental evidence, with documentary and landscape research, allowing us to imagine what life might have been like in ancient Haresfield.
