Bruton Deserted Medieval Settlement

1 The place name has a history from 1262 and was a hamlet of Whitchurch. The marginal notes of the court rolls include the name from 1581-7. It is represented by one house named Bruton. It is marked as depopulated on Beightons’s map.
2 A moat is visible (PRN 5193). The farmhouse is 18th century but may incorporate earlier material.
3 Archaeological evidence medium (B). Evidence for village’s former existence, but period of desertion unknown (2).
4 An area to the S could have been the site of the former village. Air photographs show an area of disturbance bounded by ridge and furrow, but the remains are too nebulous for survey.
6 The probable deserted settlement consists of a number of elements. To the S is a leat which probably carried water from one stream to another. Other features include a banked and ditched enclosure and other faint banks and ditches, perhaps once defining house sites. To the N of the road and S of the moat is a raised platform, possibly a house site.
7 These earthworks may represent a small hamlet of a few houses aligned roughly N-S on the W bank of a stream.
8 House platforms were observed between Lower Farm and Bruton, and another in a field at the rear of Brooklyn.
9 Site surveyed in 1997 as part of landscape and settlement survey of Admington parish. Site probably planned. Earthworks suggest Bruton contained between 6 and 12 households, one of the smaller settlements in the parish. Not well documented. Abandoned by 17th century.
10 Bruton was a hamlet in the parish of Whitchurch, which included four other hamlets or small villages. This fragmented pattern is unusual within this part of Warwickshire. The settlement was included in surveys of the 13th century and was under the Lordship of the De Valle family in the 14th century and the Burdets in the 15th century. It is believed to have been depopulated and converted to pasture by the 16th century. This site is important because of its survival as a rare example of a small settlement in an area of normally nucleated villages in the Medieval period
11 Monument scheduled in 1999.
12 A watching brief was carried out on the excavation of several trenches for telegraph pole renewal within the medieval settlement at Admington. A single sherd of medieval pottery was recovered.