page_title: Ulnaby
section_title: English Heritage and NDVA Group
hierarchical_section_title: Ulnaby / Archaeological surveys and excavations / English Heritage and NDVA Group
caption_attribution_description: English: The lost village of Ulnaby, County Durham, England. Occupied 13th-16th century; now visible only as lumps and bumps in a field at Ulnaby Hall Farm. Picture adjusted to show up lumps and bumps in ground. View north to Walworth Castle Hotel, showing Ulnaby's little old ridge and furrow fields in the foreground.
context_page_description: Ulnaby is an abandoned village and scheduled ancient monument in the grounds of Ulnaby Hall Farm, near High Coniscliffe, County Durham, England. The toft village was occupied from the late-13th to the 16th century and temporary buildings were erected in the 19th century. Ulnaby Hall farm appears to have been built in the late-16th century, supplanting a high status medieval manorial enclosure associated with the original village. It is thought that the village shrank because of the change from labour-intensive arable farming to pasture, before being abandoned and the site was subsumed into the farm as pasture.
context_section_description: A non-intrusive earthwork survey was done by English Heritage's Archaeological Survey and Investigation team in 2007. This suggested that there had been a village there without a green, then a toft village consisting of two rows of small farmsteads around a green. After that, some tofts were added and some abandoned. Next to the village there was an enclosed area including a manor, fishpond, dovecote and orchard. At the same time as the English Heritage survey, the Northumberland and Durham Vernacular Architecture Group undertook a measured survey of Ulnaby Hall. They thought that a raised rectangular earthwork in the old village green could possibly have been the earliest evidence of village habitation, perhaps indicating an earlier manor or even a Roman building. They found possible lynchets on the north side of the old road as the hollow way enters the village from the east.
  The manorial enclosure was at least 1.6 hectares, and is considered to have been fairly high status. It was bounded by a wall of dressed limestone blocks, and contained a fishpond and dovecote. The fishpond was cut into an old ridge and furrow field, and the residence itself is believed to be underneath the present Ulnaby Hall. There is evidence of a succession of buildings on the site, terminating in the 19th century, but the village had shrunk by the 17th century, indicating the effect of the change from labour-intensive arable land to pasture. A survey of Ulnaby Hall shows a single-phase build in the late 16th century of a south-facing building of one large room over another and two wings at the back, with service rooms to the west. Two of the original gardens, to the south and east of the hall, still exist, and the third was probably the garth field or paddock to the south of the farm track. There was a smithy, five barns and orchards. One of the peasant houses was quite large, having three rooms. It is thought that the southern end of the site, around the water channel, was a marshy area that provided the village with various resources, and that it was drained in the 18th century.
caption: View north to Walworth Castle Hotel, showing Ulnaby's ridge and furrow fields in foreground
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