The Mount
Was the ice-house purpose built or
was it built into the existing structure of a Mount?
Katy Cox kt_4_u@hotmail.com
The Mount, corner of Uxbridge Road and Hounslow Road, Hanworth.
part one
Here is a summary of my research so far:
Why is it that area of Hanworth always referred to as the Mount?
I discovered that Mounts were placed into parkland of large houses, as far away as possible to give a view back over the park and house, and that mostly Mounts were topped with a summerhouse.
The position of the Mount, Hanworth is at the furthest point of the parkland of the old Manor House, Hanworth.
General Roy, before Hanworth Park House was built, used a summerhouse in his base line for the first ever ordnance survey of Britain. A summerhouse is shown on his map smack bang where the Mount is. Sadly, in his book, Roy mentions the summerhouse many times bet never refers to a mount. Is that because it was taken for granted that people would know or because the summerhouse was on the ground and not on a mount?
Carillion (Hounslow Council) and Paul Bassi, did give me permission to carry out an archaeological survey. My thinking is that if the ice-house was built into the Mount then the ground under the floor would be older than the surrounding land. A radiocarbon dating survey was discussed between myself and Wessex Archaeology (they carried out the T5 digs!) and we came to the decision that although radiocarbon dating is brilliant, as it is only accurate to within 50 or 100 years, the answer we could get would not be definitive, so we put that on hold. [see part five]
[I have contacted Hounslow Council various times to get a look inside and the answer is always: its not safe - even to stand outside the door!]
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part two
More detailed info below….
This is the hypothesis that I sent to Carillion and Wessex Archaeology:
· Current thinking is that The Mount was an ice-house built for a local manor house: Hanworth Park House.
· My research has led to me question that theory and to wonder why an ice-house would be called The Mount.
· Manor houses often had a mount at the furthest point from their house, in their garden, topped with a summerhouse to give a view back over their park\gardens. That would have been for Hanworth Manor House not Hanworth Park House.[1],[2], [3] Hanworth Manor House had extensive gardens which reached to where the Mount is situated.
· Hanworth Manor House totally destroyed by fire in 1797.
· 1600s, Lord Cottington effected several improvements to the gardens of Hanworth Manor, also acquiring an extra 50 acres.[4]
· 1784: On the first Ordnance Survey of 1784 there is noted a summerhouse in the current position of The Mount.[5]
· 1798: A house [elegant villa] was built next to St George's Church[6]
· 1801: Ice-house mentioned in an advertisement for the lease of an elegant villa situated in Hanworth Park.[7]
· 1872 Ice House - beneath a large mound at S.E. of estate. (1872 HPH auction catalogue)[8]
· 2011 The Mount is listed on the Greater London Historic Environment Record [GLHER], who stated, “Though they have The Mount listed as an ice-house that is only through information that was supplied to them, and not from any archaeological research. It seems unclear whether the icehouse was built for the old or the new house, so its date of construction is uncertain.”[9]
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part three
2019 Sonia Ferdousi very kindly sent me an article from the Middlesex Chronicle, and this is an extract from that article, (the first part is referring to General Roy and is not relevant to this point.)
· 2019 Sonia Ferdousi very kindly sent me information from Hounslow local archive team: [11]
· · part four
2020 This has been added since my previous research - Greater London Archaeology Advisory Service, Historic England:
Formerly in the grounds of Hanworth House (which was rebuilt in 1797 - as a small villa). The icehouse probably dates from earlier than that and may have belonged to the previous house on the site. Access to the interior of the icehouse was blocked in the early 20th century when the surrounding houses were built. If it survives, the interior should consist of a brick-lined and vaulted chamber [see Middlesex Chronicle above] covered over with earth and reached by a short tunnel like entrance. It is a particularly large example of the type and would be impressive when viewed from the inside. It would be capable of storing a large amount of ice. On Sir General Roy's map of 1785 a "summer house" is marked at the edge of the park of Hanworth Manor, in the location of the icehouse. The summer house probably surmounted the icehouse structure. [12]
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part five
This is the very detailed explanation kindly supplied to me by Andy Crockett of Wessex Arch., after I had asked him if my queries, to him about dating, were pedantic:
"Hi Katy
Not pedantic at all, these are concepts that even hardened archaeologists sometimes flounder upon.
With absolutely no wish to patronise, it’s probably easier if we think about this as a simplified bullet point list, on the assumption that the Ice House is later:
1 You start with flat ground.
2 At some point you build a mound, formed of material acquired from elsewhere (usually a surrounding ditch), and burying the patch of flat ground its built upon forever.
3 The mound, and indeed the ground beneath it, can contain anything of almost date, but only up to the actual date you built the mound – so you may unknowingly either dig up and include the remains of (for instance) Neolithic archaeology in the fabric of a late medieval/ early post-medieval mound, or indeed unknowingly bury such pre-existing archaeology beneath your mound.
4 Conversely, anything you do find in or under the mound is the earliest possible date for the mound; i.e. if it’s already there, you can’t have built the mound earlier than that, but #3 above means it could still be later.
5 An Ice House is then built into the mound at a later date, which we may be able to date from available sources (e.g. construction style, dating evidence from foundation features, documentary evidence etc.), but not necessarily.
6 We can potentially demonstrate that the Ice House is a later insertion into the earlier mound on stratigraphic grounds (i.e. we can see evidence of a ‘cut’ into the mound, rather than the mound being built up around the Ice House, but stratigraphic relationships are simply relative (i.e. which is earlier or later) and not evidence for absolute dating.
7 Whatever dating evidence that can be recovered from the mound tells us the earliest possible date for the mound (Point #4), so even if we recover 15th or 16th century finds (remember also Point #3), that still is not definite dating. Stratigraphically (Point #6) we may be confident the mound is earlier than the Ice House, but getting absolute dates is problematic – the 15th/16th century dating evidence shows us the mound can’t be earlier than that, but it could be later.
8 The exception would be if we could find evidence within the mound for anything actually part of the intrinsic structure of the mound – a timber frame for instance. This could be radiocarbon-dated, and would provide a much more confident means of dating the mound…
9 …of course notwithstanding the possibility that the #8 timber structure could be built of oak from a 200 year old tree, so you then have a 200 year bias on your radiocarbon dating.
Possibly not the answer you were hoping for I’m afraid. The bottom line is that there is a real possibility that a considerable amount of money could be spent, and you’d be no closer to definitely proving your hypothesis I’m afraid".
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[1] ‘Other common features of medieval castle gardens include turf seats and high mounds, or mounts, which provided a view over the castle walls or over some part of the garden itself. These mounts could have decorative pavilions on top. Good examples of medieval mounts can be found at New College, Oxford (well covered in trees and bushes now), and Little Moreton Hall, Cheshire.’David Ross, Britain Express, Medieval Gardens, http://www.britainexpress.com/History/medieval/gardens.htm. (19-05-2015).
[2] ‘An extant example can be seen in The Lawn, Swindon, where the icehouse mound is topped by a small square building described as a gazebo.'email, Greater London Archaeology Advisory Service (2011).
[3] ‘The (apparently) non-axial arrangement of the rectangular garden features supports the view that the mount is contemporary with the formal medieval garden, as this layout suggests that the grid was aligned to provide symmetrical views from the mount.’Peter Brown, Whittington Castle, The Medieval Garden, http://www.whittingtoncastle.co.uk/history/the-medieval-garden.shtml (Peter Brown Associates), (19-05-2015.)
3A, The Mound, Norfolk; POST MEDIEVAL GARDEN FEATURE 1700 - 1799 18th century garden feature in Gunton Park. Very large mound of pudding basin stucture, constructed as a viewing point. http://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=517563&resourceID=2 [12Jul2017] http://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?MNF7406-The-Mount-Blickling-Park&Index=6771&RecordCount=57339&SessionID=cba2b76b-3f6b-4449-96de-08e48b845aa0
[4] british-history.Ac.UK., Hanworth, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22214
[5] ‘Major General William Roy’s first action was to measure a survey base-line across Hounslow Heath during the summer of 1784.’Gemma, Ordnance Survey blog, Heathrow Airport honours the work of Major General William Roy, http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/2013/11/heathrow-airport-honours-the-work-of-major-general-william-roy/ (04Nov2013), (19-05-2015).
[6] The rebuilding of Hanworth Palace as Hanworth Park House, on a new site, commenced in 1798 and was completed in 1802.[New info now shows HPH built late 1820s and a smaller house built before that next to St George's Church] Hounslow.info, Hanworth Park House, http://www.hounslow.info/parks-open-spaces/find-your-park/hanworth-park/hanworth-park-house/ (19-05-2015).
[7] Morning Chronicle, Friday, 24 July 1801.
[8] The London Metropolitan Archives, REF: The Mansion - Hanworth Park DRO/018/H/02/025.
[9] email, Greater London Archaeology Advisory Service (2011).
[10] Middlesex Chronicle, 29Mar1957.
[11] Sonia Ferdousi, email, 22Oct2019.
[12] Link supplied from a comment in a fb group
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archsearch/record?titleId=2806886