Tree-Ring Analysis of Oak Timbers from The Abbot's Hall and Parlour at Wigmore Abbey, near Adforton, Herefordshire
Author(s): Ian Tyers
An extensive tree-ring dating programme was commissioned of timbers in the Abbot's Hall and Parlour range and its associated Undercroft at Wigmore Abbey, near Adforton, by English Heritage in AD 2001-2. Wigmore Abbey contains the remains of an Augustinian monastery founded on this site c AD 1179. The site was supposedly destroyed, except for the church, by the Welsh in the early thirteenth century and not reconstructed till the later fourteenth century. The site includes surviving fragments of the nave and transept of the ruined monastic church that are possibly of twelfth-century date. By the road entrance are some surviving building fragments of possibly fourteenth-century date. Dominating the site is a building that stood to the west of, and connected with, the now ruined cloistral ranges. Extending this building even further to the west is a gatehouse range. This building, excluding the gatehouse section, is the subject of this report. The tree-ring results identified three extensive phases of modification in the Abbot's Hall and Parlour areas, above the Undercroft, dating to the AD 1482-5, AD 1682, and AD 1729. Whether these and a documented repair of c AD 1965, are responsible for introducing the twelfth-, thirteenth- and fourteenth-century timbers identified in the Undercroft, or whether any of these earlier timbers are in their original location, is currently unknown.
- Report Number:
- 112/2002
- Series:
- CfA Reports
- Pages:
- 51
- Keywords:
- Dendrochronology Standing Building
