ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the development of Caldecote from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the present day. During this period the farmsteads at Caldecote were gradually deserted, and by the end of the seventeenth century only two survived: the Bury and Caldecote Marish. The parish church of St Mary Magdalene, the centre of a small and relatively isolated community, seemed to have escaped the zeal of church reformers in the sixteenth century. The consolidation of the Caldecote Estate around the old Wealden house on the manor site after the desertion of Caldecote Marish in 1698 is attested by the construction of a range of four substantial barns, which were still standing at the time of the excavation. The wagon shed, 21.33m long and 7.62m deep, was a timber-framed structure of six bays, and like the cattle sheds, the roof was clad with sheets of galvanised corrugated iron.
