Embleton Moat

Has been described as a Possible Fortified Manor House

There are cropmark/slight earthwork remains

NameEmbleton Moat
Alternative NamesHallgarth
Historic CountryCumberland
Modern AuthorityCumbria
1974 AuthorityCumbria
Civil ParishEmbleton

Some six or seven hundred yards SW of Embleton Vicarage are the remains of a moat. The west side of 126 feet, and short return lengths at each end remaining. There is a rampart external to the ditch (Curwen, 1913). Ploughing has reduced the remainder to a mere ground swelling only. (Field Investigators Comments F1 RL 18-APR-66). Site has been filled in with black debris and covered with earth, (by appearance within last two or three weeks). Only about 3m. N. end of a moat extant (Letter (TC Welsh)AO/W 1.7.74). (PastScape)

Thomas de Lucy, the feudal superior, had granted Thomas de Ireby, lord of Embleton, licence to enclose a park c.1285, in exchange for the right to take two deer from it each year (Wilson 1915, 568-9). How long the park continued to contain game is unclear: the inquisition after de Ireby's death in 1308 merely refers to a 'close', valued as herbade (TNA:PRO C 134/2/10). It may thus have already lost its identity as a park by 1322 when almost half of the houses in Embleton were burnt in the Scottish raid of that year (TNA:PRO C 134/75/7). The park had disappeared as a landscape feature by the post-medieval centuries, no hint of a park pale surviving in the field pattern. Its location can, however, be reconstructed from nineteenth-century field names containing the element 'Park', which form a block stretching south west-west from the site of the manor house (which survives as an earthwork in a field named 'Hallgarth'). (Winchester, 2007, p. 182-3)

Gatehouse Comments

Called 'Moated earthworks of manor house' in Perriam & Robinson. Little now obvious on air photo. A relatively rare moated site in Cumberland, within a National Park, destroyed within the last hundred years.

- Philip Davis

Not scheduled

Not Listed

Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s)
County Historic Environment Record
OS Map Grid ReferenceNY154291
Latitude54.6503486633301
Longitude-3.31140995025635
Eastings315480
Northings529150
HyperLink HyperLink HyperLink

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Books

  • Winchester, Angus J.L.., 2007, 'Baronial and Manorial Parks in Medieval Cumbria' in Liddiard, R. (ed) The Medieval Park new perspectives (Windgather Press) p. 165-184 (plan on p. 183)
  • Perriam, Denis and Robinson, John, 1998, The Medieval Fortified Buildings of Cumbria (Kendal: CWAAS Extra Series 29)
  • Curwen, J.F., 1913, Castles and Fortified Towers of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire North of the Sands (Kendal: CWAAS Extra Series 13) p. 45

Journals

  • Collingwood, W.G., 1923, 'An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Cumberland' Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Vol. 23 p. 251 online copy