15 July 2025
Recently, I have been clearing out the junk-ridden cellar of my home in Nottingham. This has helped to focus my mind on the underground elements of houses. Generally, my interest in domestic cellars has been a tad muted. In most cases, they offer relatively little information about the dating and development of historic houses. Consequently, this blog will do something slightly unusual – I am going to challenge and mythbust myself.
An Overfamiliarity?
My apparent indifference toward cellars can bewilder and even disappoint clients who are keen and excited to show me their underground world. For many landowners the awe shown towards cellars may be connected to a sense of mystery, perhaps a hint at fears of the dark, or the simple romance of an underground space. As most people do not spend a lot of time in their own cellars (let alone those belonging to others) this sense of awe remains intact.
Meanwhile, after 20+ years of working in ancient buildings, my own judgement of subterraneous spaces had become clouded by over-familiarity. When I survey a cellar, I usually trudge down the steps to look at the foundations of a chimney stack, note the presence of a segmental-arched brick vault or the underside of the floorboards, and have a quick look at the stillage (a raised platform that was usually for keeping barrels on). My formerly lacklustre response to cellars may have come across as jaded to most people.
Dating a Cellar
Ye Olde Salutation Inn, Nottingham (Picture Source: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
For many, there is an assumption that the cellar must be the oldest part of the property therefore it is the most exciting bit. Potentially, it could even be older than the structure standing above ground. Sometimes this is true. The entrance to the double basement underneath Ye Olde Salutation Inn at Nottingham is blocked by the timber-framed structure above (Waltham 2018, 18-19). Attempts have been made by the pub’s licensees to state that the origins of the cellars lie in the fifth or the ninth century (Mooney 2019, 24-25). However, all that can be confidently said is that they pre-date the standing building; which has been tree-ring dated to c 1440.
Most cellars were conventionally excavated during construction projects for the building above. Recently, I surveyed Lydes House at Great Malvern, Worcestershire. Here, the cellar was found directly beneath the earliest standing part of the house, a cruck-framed bay dated 1447-77 (Bridge 2021). Although cellar and cruck frame were probably contemporary analysis of the former added very little to the knowledge of the latter. The significant evidence for the date of the building came from its above-ground structure.
Sometimes, basements are excavated when a pre-existing building is already standing. I once worked on a planning application for an eighteenth-century house at Hampstead, London, where the landowners wished to extend the cellar to create a “man cave”. This type of project is rare, due to planning, financial and engineering issues.
The Inevitable Secret Passage Rumour
The author (right) examining the cellars of the Star Inn at Guildford with local historian Sophie Garrett (centre) and the licensee Pip (left) (Picture Source: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
One of the reasons that I may have come across as world-weary, regarding cellars, are the well-trodden rumours that they contain the entrance to secret passages. This is something that I’ve looked at many times on this blog and again in my book, Historic Building Mythbusting, so I won’t delve into this folklore too much again. Suffice to say that stories of hidden tunnels, built to facilitate covert access or secret escape, that wind miles under the landscape are usually unverified.
I could find no trace whatsoever in the cellar of The Star Inn at Guildford, Surrey, of the tunnel rumoured to connect with the parish church of Holy Trinity. In Essex, I was shown a feature purported to be the entrance to a secret passage which turned out to be a small stormwater drain just eight inches in height. The lengthy passage, now accessible from The Bell Inn at Nottingham, which is said to lead as far as the castle, is really a series of vaults created for Hickling Laing wine merchants around the year 1800 (Waltham 2018, 29-30).
Pushing Back the Date
Cellars beneath the North Range of Stone Court at Knole (Picture Source: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Stories aside, sometimes there can be elements of real intrigue within cellars. It is by considering these pieces of evidence that I have been able to lighten up a little. During an inspection of the Old Rectory at Teversal in Nottinghamshire, which is largely early eighteenth century in date, I spotted a cambered timber reused as a spine beam to support floor joists in the cellar. It may have originated as a tie beam in a mediaeval timber-framed house. Now we’re talking.
In 2018, I was asked to look at the basements underneath Kelham Hall, also in Nottinghamshire. The Neo-Gothick building dates mostly to the mid-nineteenth century. However, at least three earlier phases of the hall, none of which remain standing above ground, were identified within the cellars (Beresford 2019, 39-56).
A detailed survey of the basement beneath the North Range of Stone Court at Knole, Kent, has helped to revise the dating and understanding of the early planform of the house. Based on extant wall paintings, the basement was formerly thought to date to the 1460s expansion of the house under Archbishop Thomas Bourchier (Oxford Archaeology 2010, 4). However, a more recent survey by Triskele Heritage concluded that doorways dating to the primary phase of construction, which had been blocked during the 1460s expansion of the site, pointed to an earlier date of origin for the basement. This was interpreted as having taken place during the 1440s when the house was being developed for Sir James Fiennes, the Lord Treasurer of England. The basement may have been part of a great house which was planned to have at least three courtyards from the outset (Wright 2022, 20-21).
By the 1460s, the basement at Knole probably functioned as a buttery cellar or lesser hall – essentially a drinking den for members of the household. Perhaps it was this connection with drinking that has also helped to renew my interest in cellars.
Drinking and Status
Undercroft below the great hall at Wingfield Manor, Derbyshire (Picture Source: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
I write ‘renew my interest in cellars’ because I grew up in an 1850s Staffordshire public house. It had a two-room cellar beneath the main bar that was accessed via a hatched drop in our back yard. Within, the ceiling was low, the lighting was dim, and there was an ever-present aroma of malted barley and hops. To a small boy it was a compelling and exciting space. I was even slightly frightened by it – especially when down there, at 6.30am, loading bottles into crates to earn my pocket money.
Thinking again about cellars, there has been a growing realisation that some of the most impressive underground spaces that I have seen were mediaeval wine cellars. At 34 metres in length, the sheer scale of the excavated wine cellars at Clarendon Palace, Wiltshire, is staggering (James & Robinson 1988, 116-19). Meanwhile, the quality of the thin-bedded ashlar in the wine cellar at Leicester Castle is some of the finest stonemasonry that I have seen in any context.
Anthony Emery (1985, 292) was convinced that the mid-fifteenth century undercroft below the great hall at Wingfield Manor, Derbyshire, was a lesser hall akin to the North Range basement at Knole. However, others, such as Pamela Marshall (pers. comm.), have suggested that it was more likely to have been a wine cellar. If that is the case, then Wingfield’s patron – Ralph Lord Cromwell – may have taken great pride in the wines available at his house because the potential cellar is decorated with finely moulded vaulting and sculpted bosses.
The communication between cellars and the spaces above was an important part of the social organisation of elite architecture. For example, it has been noted that in the great tower at Warkworth Castle, Northumberland, the beer cellar had a stair connecting it to the buttery at the low end of the hall. Meanwhile, the wine cellar had a stair communicating directly with the high end of the hall (Goodall 2006, 19). Beer for lower status drinkers, wine for the elites.
The evidence from Clarendon, Leicester, Warkworth and, perhaps, Wingfield suggests that the wines kept by English mediaeval elites necessitated an elaborate housing. These were places meant to be seen. It may be that guests were even shown the cellars as part of lordly status display.
Everyday Drinking
Cellar beneath Greasley Castle Farm (Picture Source: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
So, with my interest in cellars reignited by thoughts of drink (such a cliché for an archaeologist of a certain vintage, I know), perhaps the time has come to reconsider some of the other cellars that I have looked at over my career. For example, the mid-nineteenth century patrons of a house at Cathedine, Powys, were concerned about the security of their wine collection as the numbered bins were kept locked behind a stoutly reinforced steel door. Elsewhere, I’ve seen so many stillages during surveys, including the one at Greaseley Castle Farm, Nottinghamshire, that we must recall the strong preference for the drinking of ale and beer in the pre-modern age.
Incidentally, and very much on brand for this blog, there is a persistent myth that folk drank only ale with such frequency during the mediaeval period because they were frightened that the water was unsafe (for example: Picard 2017, 68). Although some physicians warned that the consumption of such a cold beverage may cause melancholy humours, scientific reasoning was not sufficiently advanced to cause concerns over microbial infection. It was certainly understood that some sources of water were inherently unsafe – fenlands, standing water or streams and rivers close to settlements – but there were plenty of solutions available including drinking water from springs, digging deep wells and piping in water to settlements from safe sources (Salzman 2012, 80-81). Conduits and fountains were a relatively common sight, especially in the urban environment. It is true to say that water was considered a lower status drink than ale or wine but there were also several mediaeval tracts which praised the many health-giving and spiritual benefits of its consumption. The devotional aspect of water must not be underestimated, with water playing a strong role in church life through the rite of baptism, transubstantiation and the popular reverence for holy wells and springs (Salzman 2012, 165-69).
The reality is that ale was favoured, not because the water was bad but, due to its refreshing calorific content, the great taste, and because of the tremendous buzz that the drinker glories in (Bruning 2014, 16-17). The suspicion that ale was only so popular because the water was unpotable smacks of the moralising temperance of the Victorian world, which was also filled with citizens desperately concerned about the cholera epidemics (spread by infected water) which were unknown to mediaeval Europe.
Conclusions
Base of a cheese press within the cellar of the Old Rectory at Teversal, Nottinghamshire (Picture Source: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
So, it really is time for me to look again at the world beneath our feet. I now appreciate that, in my line of work, I have encountered some quite startling finds below ground – a mediaeval monastic vault beneath an eighteenth-century house at Stone, Staffordshire; a natural spring at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire; and a 30-metre-long service passage linking the basements of two towers at Ashby Castle, Leicestershire (Wright 2024a, 14-16, 26-27, 29).
Yet, I believe that the real joy lies in understanding that the archaeology of cellars usually represents ordinary daily life. Routinely these are features associated with the storage of drink such as beer stillages and wine bins. Alternatively, they may incorporate structures connected to food preparation and storage such as the base of a cheese press found in the cellar of the Old Rectory at Teversal, the cold store at Strelley Hall, or the potential icehouse at Greaseley Castle Farm (all in Nottinghamshire).
During the post-mediaeval industrial period, cellars gained a new function when coal replaced firewood as the primary method for heating homes. Coalholes were inserted at ground level so that the new fuel could be delivered directly into cellars. This happened to the cellar, which was probably constructed around 1600, below a cottage at Fen Ditton in Cambridgeshire (Wright 2024b, 17).
As time wore on new build houses were routinely constructed with coalholes integral to the cellar. In the modern age they are now mostly redundant. However, I have just rediscovered the one in my cellar, dated c 1895-99, during the recent clear out. This served as a close reminder to try and reconnect with the wonder of the everyday lived realities of the past which can be sensed in cellars.
References
Beresford, M., 2019, Kelham Revealed! Archaeology Report. Unpublished archaeological report. MB Archaeology.
Bridge, M., 2021, Dendrochronological Dating of Oak Timbers at Lydes House, 392 Pickersleigh Road, Malvern. Unpublished archaeological report. Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory.
Bruning, T., 2014, Merrie England – The Mediaeval Roots of the Great British Pub. Bright Pen.
Goodall, J., 2006, Warkworth Castle and Hermitage. English Heritage. London.
James, T. B. & Robinson, A. M., 1988, Clarendon Palace – The History and Archaeology of a Medieval Palace and Hunting Lodge near Salisbury, Wiltshire. Society of Antiquaries of London. London.
Mooney, D., 2019, Nottingham Pubs. Amberley. Stroud.
Oxford Archaeology [Forde, D.], 2010b, Knole Cellars in Stone Court, Sevenoaks, Kent – Building Investigation and Record. Oxford Archaeology. Unpublished archaeological report.
Picard, L., 2017, Chaucer’s People – Everyday Lives in the Middle Ages. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. London.
Salzman, J., 2012, Drinking Water: A History. Overlook Duckworth. New York and London.
Waltham, T., 2018 (4th ed.), Sandstone Caves of Nottingham. East Midlands Geological Society.
Wright, J., 2024a, Historic Building Mythbusting – Uncovering Folklore, History and Archaeology. The History Press. Cheltenham.
Wright, J., 2024b, Honeysuckle Cottage, 6 High Ditch Road, Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire – Historic Building Assessment. Unpublished archaeological report. Triskele Heritage.
Wright, J., 2022, The North Range Basements at Knole: Archaeological Historic Building Survey. Unpublished archaeological report. Triskele Heritage.
Acknowledgements
The section on why people drank so much ale during the mediaeval period is slightly adapted from: Wright, J., 2024, Historic Building Mythbusting – Uncovering Folklore, History and Archaeology. The History Press. Cheltenham. pp161-62.
About the author
James Wright (Triskele Heritage) is an award-winning buildings archaeologist who frequently writes and lectures on the subject of mediaeval building myths. He has over two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
He welcomes contact through email, Twitter, Instagram & Bluesky
The Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog blog is the basis of a book – Historic Building Mythbusting – Uncovering Folklore, History and Archaeology which was released via The History Press in 2024.
