More information : The site of the ancient village of Walworth in an adjacent field to Walworth Castle (NZ 21 NW 37) was reported as decaying in 1626. Now (1885-6) no remains of the village are to be seen except for a considerable portion of the Norman chapel, with a 14th century piscina, at a little distance north of the castle. In 1870 the chapel was used as a barn and the few remaining details showed it to have been erected circa 1180. In 1908 it was incorporated with a cow byre on Chapel Garth Farm. (1-3)
NZ 2325 1913. Traces of the village are still visible north of the castle in the fields immediately east and west of North Farm (referred to by Authority 3 as Chapel Garth Farm). The surface area is very disturbed and banks and fragmentary banks divide the area into small enclosures. Two rows of building foundations can be seen as well as other isolated steadings. Extending south east from the north west angle of the area is a hollow way, 15 m wide and 1.8 m deep, evidently representing a roadway into the village.
At NZ 2324 1909 is the chapel mentioned by authorities 1, 2 and 3, now incorporated in the main farm outbuilding. It is a rectangular stone building with the upper portion of the east wall partly rebuilt and modern subdivisions inside. It is now used as a granary and for housing pigs. The date and reasons for depopulation of the village were not ascertained. (4)
NZ 231 191. A clear pattern of earthworks recognisable as roads and croft boundaries together with the shapes of houses still remain. The erection of farm buildings on an area formerly the village green, well away from the more obvious stone structures of the village, was watched by D Austin but no archaeological deposits were revealed. (5-7)
Minor changes only. Published survey (25") revised. (8)
NZ 231 191 Medieval Village of Walworth (NR) (site of). (9)
NZ 231191. Deserted village. Scheduled. (10)
Existing survey revised by RCHME during a project on scheduled monuments in County Durham. The remains of Walworth deserted Medieval village are generally well-preserved in modern pasture. The village was arranged around a green c 220m east-west by 160m transversely, roughly in the centre of which stands the modern farm. The longhouses are located immediately adjacent to the green with their crofts leading away from it. The longhouses are up to 33m long and 12m wide, and several are sub-divided into two or three compartment structures. The crofts are of a regular plan, normally rectangular or trapezoidal in shape and not more than 25m wide (their original length is no longer surveyable, they are now truncated by modern field boundaries). A sub-rectangular earthwork is situated upon the village green some 70m west of the modern farm and 20m from the nearest longhouse to its west. The site is enclosed by a ditch 3.5m wide and 0.4m deep surrounding an area of 11.5m north-south by 10.3m transversely. No
entrances are visible; this may have been a stack stand. In the south east-area of the village green a hollow way, now eroded to 0.7m deep, leads to a pond. This pond, although reduced in size, was originally defined by a pronounced scarp on its north edge surviving up to 1m high. The fragmentary remains of a 13th-century chapel have been
incorporated into the modern farm buildings at NZ 2324 1909 (11a). To the north-east of the deserted Medieval village the present field now extends north into an area of improved pasture. On the east side of the modern track which bisects the field lie the abraded remains of ridge-and-furrow cultivation aligned east-south-east/west-north-west, up to 3m wide and no more than 0.4m high. Throughout this part of the field the modern track is raised upon a linear mound 4m wide and up to 1.2m high, which may originally have been a headland. To the west of this feature few prominent earthworks survive, although slight undulations visible on aerial photographs may indicate the former presence of further houses and crofts on both sides of the track (11b). Several access routes in to the village still remain, firstly through a break in the north-east corner of the village green; secondly, via a hollow way 1.8m deep which cuts through the north-west corner of the village; and finally along a hollow way 1.6m deep in the centre of the east side of the village. The south limits of the deserted Medieval village are now lost beneath a modern road and recent buidlings to the south. (11)
NZ 2326 1911. Deserted medieval village at Walworth. Scheduled RSM No 20872. (12)
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