More information : Tonehouse? extinct village, Harewood. Mentioned in 1309. (1)
Tonehouse, one of the lost hamlets of Harewood long absorbed in
the Park. (2)
[SE 3080 4267] Ruins of Tone House Hall. (3)
There are now no visible remains of Tone House Hall. Its site is
covered partly by pasture land and partly by a young plantation.
There are no traces of a D.M.V. in the vicinity, and no significant
features can be seen on APs. (4)
The earthworks of the well-documented deserted medieval settlement
of Towhouses (5) or Tofthouses (6) were located and surveyed in 1977
at SE 30854275, along the proposed route of the Ouse-Eccup Reservoir
pipeline. (5)
Towhouses probably emerged as a hamlet of Harewood in the 12th century or later, and a limited rescue excavation by the W Y M C C Arch Unit and YAJ Medieval Section in 1977 confirmed two occupation phases; the earlier, probably of 13th century date and the later of the 15th and early 16th centuries. The desertion of the site, before
the mid-16th century, may have been connected with the licence to
impark land there. See survey plan (5). (6)
The main features of authority 5's plan (which appear to be the
remnants of a medieval field system) are just discernible as lynchets,low banks, hollows and traces of ridge and furrow all very much eroded. There is no evidence of buildings and the site does not
warrant survey for OS purposes. (7)
SE 308 427. Tofthouses, Leeds.
The earthworks of this well documented, but previously unlocated, medieval hamlet were located by the West Yorkshire County Archaeology Unit, while examining the corridor of the Ouse extraction water pipeline to Eccup reservoir. A drawn survey identified the site as a series of shallow terraced platforms within a bank and ditched enclosures, with a further series of more regular platforms to the east. The complex lay adjacent to a twin-basined spring whose now dried-up water course formed the actual boundary between the townships of Adel cum Eccup and Harewood. Initial scraping of the topsoil revealed 15th century pottery, part of a backstone, a fragment of quern, metalwork and stone roof slates. The stripping of one enclosure within the confines of the corridor by S Moorhouse and members of the Medieval Section of the YAS revealed two buildings, one defined by a silted-up eaves drip gulley and a spread of fallen stone roof slates in situ, and the other by a hearth, a rammed clay floor and two stylobates. Pottery dates the use and desertion of these buildings to the 15th/early 16th century. A partially examined earlier, 13th-14th century phase produced a fragmented but complete iron door-band, complete with nails.
The upper phases produced two stone capitals with moulded leaf-design, dated by Dr Gee to c.1500, and fragments of an attached shaft, possibly from the undercroft of a stone building somewhere in the immediate area. The complex of enclosures under excavation, whose earthworks are more pronounced than the rest of the group and therefore may be later in date, may represent a barn complex, possibly part of a horticultural centre belonging to Kirkstall Abbey. The Abbey held most of the territorial area of the hamlet of Tofthouses from the 13th century until the Dissolution, after which the pottery evidence suggests that this group of detached enclosures was abandoned. It is hoped to continue work in 1978. (8)
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