ABSTRACT
The second half of the fourteenth century at Caldecote is marked by the development of six substantial farmsteads, four of which, within the excavated area, were superimposed upon the site of the earlier crofts. The new farmhouses were fully framed hall-houses like the surviving medieval houses standing in nearby villages. A further two farmsteads lay outside the excavated area. This chapter describes the archaeology of these new farmsteads and their associated barns and outbuildings, with local and regional parallels. It provides fresh evidence for the rebuilding of the Caldecote manor house as a Wealden farmhouse in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. During the later medieval period, the rectory house drew its water supply from a stone-lined well approximately 4.88m deep, 6.7lm from the southwest corner of the cross wing. The burial of a donkey was excavated beneath the large rectangular kiln, lying towards the north-western end of the fifteenth-century barn.
