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Toad Hall on the left and The Old Medicine House on the right

Toad Hall and The Old Medicine House stand at the heart of the township of Blackden

  


 

Toad Hall, on the left, was probably built and lived in by the aristocratic Eaton family in the later Middle Ages, but its manorial status faded and, by 1880, it had been divided into two tied cottages. Since 1957 it has been the home of Alan Garner.

In 1970 The Old Medicine House on the right, a 16th century timber-frame apothecary's house was threatened by demolition on its original site at Wrinehill.  It was dismantled, repaired and re-erected alongside Toad Hall.

The combined structure is a Grade II listed building.

The site

The area would have been ideal for occupation as a winter camp at the start of the Mesolithic, c.8000 BC.  The archaeological evidence supports this, and also hints at activity here in the Upper Palaeolithic.

The same features attracted settlement in subsequent periods.  Each of later prehistory's conventional ages - Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age (including Rome's colonialism) - is represented by artefacts from the site, whilst materials such as glass, metallurgical waste and pottery witness people living or working before the present Toad Hall was built around the end of the Middle Ages. Whether this long sequence reflects uninterrupted settlement or a series of episodes is a question for research.

The Bronze Age is particularly well represented, with burials intercalated between other land-uses.  Another research question is thus whether the entire landscape, as distinct from reserved areas within it, was suffused by rituality.  As new evidence emerges, ideas will change.

© The Blackden Trust 2008
    Updated: 10/03/2009		 The Blackden Trust is a registered charity no. 1115818