19th century formal garden of Colne Place, Earls Colne (EHER 80816)

The garden recorded at the rear of Colne Place represents a good, albeit unkempt, example of a relatively small formal garden associated with a large house. The cartographic evidence places the garden's inception to between 1839 and 1876 and the layout seems to have changed very little since.

January 2017. Level 1 building survey. The garden recorded at the rear of Colne Place represents a good, albeit unkempt, example of a relatively small formal garden associated with a large house. The cartographic evidence places the garden's inception to between 1839 and 1876 and the layout seems to have changed very little since. As they use the same types of bricks, the garden features recorded at Colne Place (the wall, gate and steps) were all likely constructed during the same period. The only feature that is clearly depicted on historic mapping is the wall, which first appears on the 1896 OS map, giving a construction date of 1876 to 1896. Although it is possible they were constructed when the garden was initially laid out and just deemed too small to warrant being included on the 1st edition OS map. The evaluation phase of work undertaken in the garden revealed no evidence of other garden features or any other archaeological remains. This, paired with the historic mapping, indicates the layout of the garden is much the same today as it was when it was first laid out in the Victorian period, although the definition of some of the gravel paths has been lost. <1> January 2017. Trial trenching. No features were discovered during the trenching. The sherds of pottery recovered from the topsoil indicate nearby multi-period occupation, which is unsurprising due to the site’s proximity to the historic centre of Earls Colne. <1>