Find of the Month – December
- 29th December 2017
‘An archaeological Christmas present and thrilling to find!’ This is how lucky archaeologists Tim and Jesse describe our December find of the month – a well preserved medieval oven.
Cooking Christmas dinner probably conjures up images of gas hobs and electric ovens. Cooking dinner in this medieval stone built oven would definitely have required a lot more effort though.
The oven was found in the village of Felmersham, Bedfordshire, just before Christmas. The oven is 12th to 14th century and appears to be inside a large building, possibly a hall. Domed stone built ovens like this one are found both in and outside buildings, but the suggestive clues here are an adjacent stone floor surface and what we’re fairly sure is a giant posthole, for supporting a structure. It seems the oven was inside a large building.
We can tell that many meals have been cooked in the oven, as lots of the stones are heat affected. An area of heavily fire-reddened stones at the back on the oven shows this was the hottest part; presumably where the fire was located. Food would have then been placed towards the front of the oven on the stone slab floor. A flue extended out of this front side, through which fuel was put in and swept out. Helpfully, the nearby stone floor was built in between two episodes of oven cleaning, showing that this internal floor surface was in use at the same time as the oven.
Who did this large medieval building belonged to? We have two suggestions. Given the enormous posthole and seemingly internal oven, all evidence points towards this building being a hall. Could it belong to one of the two medieval manors recorded in the 1086 Domesday survey? Or perhaps it’s connected to the Lenton Priory monks who built Felmersham Church between 1220 and 1240? Without excavating a larger area we may not know. Either way, this oven is a particularly well preserved and nice find. Perhaps medieval Christmas feasts were even cooked in it.