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Founded 1955
Found it! The 'lost' Bowling Green House site revealed, by Martin J. Dearne
Bowling Green House, the (perhaps originally Elizabethan)predecessor of the present Myddleton House, demolished in the 1820s when Myddleton was built, has always been presumed to have lain in what are now the gardens of Myddleton House. But just where and what traces of it might survive archaeologically has always been the question. Along with the Hendon and District Archaeological Society the EAS has been trying to answer that question for a couple of years. Two large resistivity surveys by HADAS were inconclusive and a test pit at one end of the flat lawn south east of the present house (?perhaps the bowling green after which the house was named)called 'Tom Tiddler's Ground' cut in 2003 only produced a dump of ?eighteenth century bricks. However, at the other end of this lawn the garden staff remembered a gas pipe trench hitting brick work some years ago. Meanwhile Les Whitmore, working from maps and an original illustration of the house owned by Brig. Parker–Bowles (the Bowles family having been the builders of Myddleton House), suggested another possible location for Bowling Green House immediately south of Myddleton House. So, with the kind permission of the Lea Valley Park who now own Myddleton House and gardens and with the enthusiastic cooperation of the gardens' staff, over two weekends in April Mike Dewbrey and the author directed the excavation of two test pits, one near the gas main and one in Les's suggested location.
Fig. 1 – Wine bottle of c. 1720–35 with scratched inscription
Trench B near the gas main was negative. There was pottery and clay pipe of later–seventeenth and eighteenth century date, but only in the topsoil and the top of the natural which had probably got there through horticulture.
Trench A in Les's suggested location was a different matter. Below a pit cut in recent years to remove an old tree we found layers of redeposited clay sealing a large area of dumped demolition rubble.
It was absolutely packed with large pieces of mortar, roofing tile (including one complete tile)and slates, pieces of dressed limestone flooring flags, decorative window surround, window glass, nails and especially brick; including not just fragments but complete bricks of a range of thicknesses and fabrics indicating that what had been demolished had used building materials dateable to the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. When the demolition happened it seems too that stores may have been cleared out because, although there was not a lot of pottery around, there were many pieces of two different types of olive green or green glass wine bottles, dateable to c.1720 – 35 and c.1735 – 1820 (and possibly of a third type dateable to c. 1680 – 1720)). Indeed, one virtually complete example of the 'mallet' shaped type of c.1720 – 35 with a scratched inscription R+R (Fig.1) had survived, where it had rolled into a gully with a complete brick on top of it.
Below the rubble there was a robber trench running north north west–south south east, representing the robbing out of one, presumably brick, wall foundation so that the bricks could be reused; and at one corner of the trench a wall foundation corner built of bricks perhaps of the early–to mid– seventeenth century survived next to an iron boot scraper that was still in situ and leads one to presume that there was an entrance if not into a building then perhaps into a courtyard in the vicinity. Further, before or perhaps more likely during demolition, a pit containing animal bone and oyster shells had been dug just inside the robbed wall line and then covered with a layer that included both probable demolition rubble and animal bone etc. A notable find from this was the stub of an iron knife retaining a 'pistol grip' ivory handle ((Fig.2).
Fig. 2 – Iron knife retaining a 'pistol grip' ivory handle.
It therefore seems virtually certain that we have located, probably the south eastern end, of Bowling Green House and from the rubble and surviving wall foundation can begin to put together elements of a picture of it. By the time of its demolition in the 1820s it had probably seen a considerable number of phases of alteration or repair to judge from the variety of dates of the materials used. The surviving wall foundation indeed need not have been part of the original structure as there were earlier bricks in the demolition rubble, besides which it was so flimsily founded (being little more than a line of bricks sitting on mortar cut only a short distance into the ground)that it might only have been a courtyard wall added later, or indeed a brick 'skin' added to an earlier timber structure; a common occurrence as brick became cheap enough to be widely used but still expensive enough to be desirable as a sign of prosperity in the seventeenth century. By the 1820s it also evidently had good quality glazed windows and a combination of tiled and slated roofs; but again all these elements as represented in the finds from the rubble are likely to have been eighteenth century not 'original features'. Other elements like the limestone flooring flags might more likely be original but as yet we cannot be sure as, for one thing, we do not yet know what part of the house we have found; are we in the residential part, a service area or even out on the edge of a courtyard? This and many other questions will only be answered by further excavation if the chance arises but at least we now know where to