Trust excavations at Brightlingsea completed

Last week (on the 1st April), the Trust completed our long excavation at Moverons Quarry in Brightlingsea. [See previous posts in this blog for short summaries of results covering the Bronze Age cemetery and field system through the Iron Age, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and later periods.]

Brightlingsea is, historically, quite a significant place, and the Moverons site is of archaeological importance like other archaeological sites in the area such as the Bronze Age cemetery at Ardleigh. Interestingly, our excavations at Moverons also link up with our recent fieldwork last year at Hedingham Castle, as the de Vere family owned Hedingham Castle and they were related to the de Seyntclere and Darcy families who held the manor of Moverons. [Brightlingsea is defined by the River Colne and its estuary to the sea, and the Brightlingsea peninsula lies within the Tendring peninsula (a peninsula within a peninsula!)]

Brightlingsea and Moverons would appear in several very interesting linked chains of association/groups:
# Brightlingsea was one of a group of Anglo-Saxon royal manors which, in Essex, included Lawford, Lexden and Maldon
# Moverons manor was one in a chain of coastal estates in Tendring peninsula held by the de Veres and related families (eg Maldon, West Donyland, Wivenhoe, Beaumont, Moze, Great Oakley, Little Oakley, Dovercourt, Harwich, St Osyth, etc)
# Brightlingsea is a ‘limb’ of the Cinque Ports, ie the five ports in Kent and East Sussex (Sandwich, Dover, Hastings, Hythe and New Romney) and eight surviving ‘limbs’, seven of which are in Kent
# Brightlingsea church and manor were once among the possessions of the great St John’s abbey in Colchester and, later, among the possessions of St Paul’s in London and the bishop of London
# both places have the remains of a Roman villa
# the tower of All Saints’ church was one of the historic sea marks on this part of the coast
# being on the River Colne, Brightlingsea is one of the river places: ‘… The Colne rises in the parish of Ridgwell, and in its course passes by the Hedinghams, Halstead, the Colnes, and Colchester; after which it receives two considerable brooks from the vicinity of Fingrinhou and Brightlingsea, and discharges itself into the sea between St Osyth and the isle of Mersey …’ (Wright 1831)
# Brightlingsea was a small Naval base during WW2 known as HMS Nemo

The images are two site photo.s from the end of our excavations.

 

 

 

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[* From The history and topography of the county of Essex, comprising its ancient and modern history. A general view of its physical character, productions, agricultural condition, statistics &c. &c., by Thomas Wright, illustrated by W Bartlett, 1831
Moverons: ‘just over half a mile from the church. The name in deeds and records, Monviron, Mewarones, Maronis, Morehams, Morehouse. Moverons.
Osbert de Brightlingsey, who died in 1247, had three sisters, coheiresses, of whom Rhoese, the youngest, was married to Richard [Monviron], and he is supposed to have lived here; and also John de Monviron, and his daughter Mariote in the year 1260. John Seintcler died in possession of Moverons in 1493, and so did his son, Sir John St. Clere, in 1546. It next went to the Darcy family, being1 in the possession of Thomas Darcy, esq. in 1554; and his son Thomas was his successor in 1557; afterwards, sir Thomas Darcy, bart., sold it to Robert Barwell Baymaker, of Witham … Brightlingsea church is dedicated to All Saints; it is on a very elevated station … seen at a vast distance both by sea and land, and used as a sea-mark … Both the church and the manor originally belonged to St. John’s abbey; but, in 1237, the abbot and convent gave the patronage of it to the church of St. Paul, and the bishop of London and his successors …’]

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