Remains of East Haimes House and the adjacent section of the deer park pale

Summary

Archaeological remains of East Haimes House, the residence of the fee forester of Gillingham Royal Deer Park, and the adjacent section of the park pale.

Reasons for Designation

The remains of East Haimes House and the adjacent section of the deer park pale are scheduled for the following principal reasons:

* Historic interest: a significant building associated with an important medieval royal deer park, the boundary of which remains recognisable in the landscape.

* Rarity: although deer parks were an abundant medieval landscape feature, Gillingham is notable for its royal status, and parks with features related to their management and administration are unusual.

* Documentation: primary evidence survives providing information about the development of the deer park and the office of the fee forester.

* Group value: with the scheduled section of the park pale to the south, and with the scheduled earthworks of King’s Court.

* Survival: the pale survives in the section as a broad, low, earthwork, clearly illustrating the park boundary.

* Potential: the park pale and the buried remains of East Haimes House have the potential to retain artefactual, ecofactual and environmental materials.

History

East Haimes House was the residence of the fee forester of Gillingham Royal Deer Park. Deer parks were areas of land, usually enclosed, set aside and equipped for the management and hunting of deer and other animals. They were generally located in open countryside on marginal land or adjacent to a manor house, castle or palace, and were usually enclosed by a pale: a massive fenced or hedged bank, often with an internal ditch. Although a small number of parks may have been established in the Anglo-Saxon period, it was the Norman aristocracy's taste for hunting that led to the majority being constructed. The peak period for the laying-out of parks, between 1200 and 1350, coincided with a time of considerable prosperity amongst the nobility. From the C15 onwards few parks were constructed, and by the end of the C17 the deer park in its original form had largely disappeared.

Records of the emparking of Gillingham Deer Park have not survived, though it is known to have been in existence by 1228. The pale, which has a perimeter of approximately 7km, varies in its level of survival. A stretch of over 2km is scheduled at the south-east end (NHLE ref 1002382). Deer parks would often have contained other features such as hunting lodges, a park-keeper's house, rabbit warrens, fishponds and enclosures for game. Gillingham is particularly notable for King’s Court Palace, a fortified royal residence and hunting lodge dating from around the turn of the C13. Demolished in 1369, it survives as earthworks and is a scheduled monument (NHLE ref 1017276).

The fee forester was the principal park keeper. At Gillingham, the hereditary post came with generous accommodation, arable and meadow land, rents, pannage, timber, and the left shoulder of each deer taken from the park. East Haimes House, the fee forester’s residence, was first mentioned by name in 1431, though reference to such a ‘messuage’ is made in the early C14, and its name comes from the holders of the office for much of that century. The house, which stood just outside the park pale, is depicted on the 1624 ‘Plott of Gillingham Forest’. The following year the park was disafforested and the deer removed. The next available map is Isaac Taylor’s, dating from 1765; the house appears to have been demolished by that stage. The Tithe apportionment (1839) records the field names upon which the house stood as ‘Perns’: the family name of the occupants of East Haimes in the 1630s. These pieces of evidence suggest that the low rectilinear earthworks in the subject field are the site of East Haimes House.

Records of the holders of the office of fee forester survive, and are detailed in Porter’s ‘Gillingham’s Royal Forest: the Medieval Centuries’ (2013). The family of Joce held the office for four generations but following a dispute with the dowager Queen Margaret, it passed in 1316 to the Haym or Haime family. The Haimes, a prominent local family and landholder, held the office until 1401, when it passed to the Bydyk family, who were linked to the Haimes by marriage. In the C16 it transferred to the lords of Stourton. Thomas Jesop, the town physician, acquired East Haimes and the office of fee forester in 1615; Jessop died a few months later, and the office and residence passed to Richard Perne. Perne’s son “made over the rights” to his brother in law, John Tyse, and in 1673 the lease passed to Mary Goddard. East Haimes may have disappeared soon after this time.

Details

Archaeological remains of East Haimes House, the residence of the fee forester of Gillingham Royal Deer Park, and the adjacent section of the park pale.

Principal elements: earthwork remains of a building complex, and a section of the deer park pale.

Description: the site is at the north-west end of the former royal deer park, the pale to which is clearly discernible through extant field boundaries and hedges, and in some sections, earthworks. To the north-west side of the pale is a group of rectilinear earthworks; these occupy an area of approximately 60x80m, orientated roughly on the cardinal points, and vary in height up to approximately 0.8m. South of this is an oblong feature, possibly a further building platform or enclosure.

These earthworks stand adjacent to the park pale. The pale has a shallow ditch along the inner edge, and a hedgerow upon it. Moving eastward from the building complex, the pale survives as a broad earthwork, approximately 6-8m in width, with a height differential of approximately 1m between the bank and ditch. The length included is approximately 620m, terminating on the east at Barrow Gate.

Exclusions: fences and gates are excluded form the scheduling, but the ground beneath them is included.

Sources

Books and journals
Porter, John, Gillingham's Royal Forest: The Medieval Centuries, (2013)
Cantor, LM, Wilson, JD, The Mediaeval Deer Parks of Dorset in Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeology Society, Vol. 87, (1966), 223-233
Porter, J, Gillingham: The Making of a Dorset Town, (2011)

Websites
'Motcombe', in An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Dorset, Volume 4, North (London, 1972), pp. 48-52. British History Online, accessed 01/07/2019 from http://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/dorset/vol4/pp48-52
'Gillingham', in An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Dorset, Volume 4, North (London, 1972), pp. 27-36. British History Online, accessed 01/07/2019 from http://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/dorset/vol4/pp27-36

Other
Isaac Taylor’s 1765 map of Dorset, available at http://www.charmouthlocalhistorysociety.org.uk/isaac-taylor-1765/ (accessed 28/08/2019)
Plott of Gillingham Forest, 1624, available at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/dorset/vol4/plate-56, accessed 28/08/2019
Gillingham Royal Forest Project: inventory of sites of historical, architectural, and archaeological significance, Gillingham Local History Society (2017)

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