Ancient Mansion Uncovered and Discovered

post # 87  

      Since Friday afternoon I was at a reenactment in Danbury, Wisconsin.  I actually got home late on Sunday, but after unpacking I was too tired to be able to write a post.  The event was a Fur Trade era rendezvous.  The site for the event is the same site that had a fur post 200 years ago.  The North West Company built the post there to trade with the local natives who lived there, mostly Ojibwe.  The post was called Fort Folle Avoine, meaning "wild oats" for the wild rice that grew there.  After the NWCo got well established a second company, the XY Company had the gall to build a fur post 50 feet away from the NWCo fur post.  The Burnett County Historical Society along with many hard working volunteers have rebuilt the posts and the accompanying Ojibwe village on the same site.  
      The event was a great time.  We were inflicted with light rain, drizzle and mist for one of the days, but we were able to teach/interpret history to the public anyway.  Besides that, I spent a good deal of time visiting some of my greatest friends, sitting around their fires and hiding under there canvass during the times of the worst rain.  In that way the rains were a blessing.  In the evening a group of us that can play various instruments got together to play blue grass music and gospel songs.  Among them there was some really great talent.  We had a couple of banjos, several guitars, a couple of mandolins, a phenomenal fiddle player, and an equally awesome Dobro player.  Some of them also played for us at the Sunday morning church service.  I still have the sound of that Dobro going through my head two days later.  

                                                          Musicians at Church

                           Rendezvous Church Service.  Note the nicely shining sun.  

      By Saturday night the weather cleared, but was still unseasonably cold for the end of July, and on Sunday it got sunny and warm.  The weather was already nice by the time of the church service.  By the end of the day our canvass was all dry so we didn't have to deal with packing away wet canvass.  It was a necessary and restful weekend.  

      Now onto today's post.

      While building a new housing development in England the remains of a huge mansion were discovered.  The mansion was originally built near Wellington during the mid 12th Century.  By the mid 14th Century it was abandoned for reasons unknown.  According to Bob Davis the senior archeologist for Wessex Archeology, there are also no records of this mansion ever existing.  Everything about the site is a complete mystery.  
      There is a series of stone foundations for a whole series of buildings besides that of the mansion (chateau?).  After the site was abandoned stones and other building materials were cannibalized from the site and used elsewhere locally.  A piece of floor tile depicting a knight on horseback was discovered, and it matches another one in Glastonbury Abbey in nearby Somerset.  

      The researchers use this to point out the historical significance of the newly discovered building site, due to the floor tile being also found in such an important building.  Glastonbury Abbey burned during the 12th Century, and the rebuilding took until the 14th Century.  That corresponds to the same time when the "mystery" mansion was abandoned. 
      Excavation the site will continue for about another month.  
      I have my own simple, but not very detailed theories about the mansion's origins and its demise.  One just has to ask, "what was going on in England during the time it was built, and during the time it was abandoned?"  The mid 12th Century was a time of political and social turmoil.  Anglo-Saxon England had only been taken over by the Normans for a little less than a century.  The two cultures hadn't completely melded yet.  William was hated, and his son William Rufus was hated even more - enough to die in a "hunting accident."  He was followed by Henry, who did pretty good at finally beginning to unite the factions that would become the new nation.  Having no one else he felt was worthy to take his throne, he got the barons and earls to agree to pass the crown to his daughter Mathilda.  

      After his death some outlaw cousin Stephen thought he would make a better ruler, and thus began a civil war.  Yay, more chaos.  The country that was still too young to be connected, was divided, but not nice and neat.  It was spotty.  A cluster of villages would be loyal to Queen Maude, and right nearby would be a few villages loyal to Stephen.  Right on the other side of Stephen's villages would be more villages loyal to Maude, and so forth, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum,  ad nauseum.  

       It finally ended when Maude's son Henry II (of Anjou) came in and *royally* kicked Stephen's butt. (pun intended).  Peace finally reigned over the fledling nation (but not for the Archbishop of Canterbury - but that's a different story).  

      Because Henry II was also the son of Geoffrey the Duke of Anjou, this next series of Kings are called the Angevins.  Henry Married Eleanor of Aquitaine.  As a result of this, as big as England is, the Angevin kings had more land holdings in France than they did in England (or just about, anyway).  They all spoke French and most of them spent most of their time in France.  King Richard Lionheart only spent a total of six months of his reign in England.  That's why the various factions were able to meld into one culture.  They were left alone. 
      During Henry II's reign things like Parliament were established.  So was the policy of setting up totalitarian colonies in other people's lands filled with the baser sort of men and drunk and disorderly soldiers to impose brutality upon the local inhabitants.  By definition they called this latter aspect of occupation "order."  If anyone other than the monks in Angevin England could have read, the definition in their dictionaries would have given that as a definition for the word "order." ["to inflict pain, burden,  and misery until the objects are too scared and beaten to ever raise their eyes above waist level"].  This policy continued and was adopted and adapted until the days of G.A. Custer, when it ultimately failed.  
      The newly discovered buildings and mansion most likely had to have been built then by a supporter of Maude or someone who came over with Henry II, otherwise it would have been torn down.  In the rebuilding period right after the civil war, there was also a lot of unbuilding.  Supporters of Stephen were tried as treasonous dogs, and many were hung and/or drawn and quartered.  They had their lands seized and their building burned down and torn down.  It is possible though, that these buildings were built by a supporter of Stephen, but were viewed as just too nice to be destroyed and were just handed over to a supporter of Maude and Stephen.  

      As to the "mysterious" abandonment of the mansion, that is easier to guess.  In the mid 14th Century (seriously right in the middle of the century), in 1347-51, the Black Death had its European tour.  On third of the population of Europe perished, and the other two thirds were traumatized by it for life.  I'm sure that the neuroses they developed over it were also passed on to their children and grandchildren who had to put up with them.  During this short period of death and mayhem whole villages died out and were abandoned.  This is the most likely scenario here.