Shelton - Cox Street Excavation

I have just re-found this 1750's map. I did not realise that the gate house and the mill were so close. Some of the documents I have refer to a triangle of garden turned into an orchard which can also be seen in the map.

Thanks Anne I now know the origin of that map. It is a merging of the Bradford map, the 1610 Speed map, various OS maps (although not in depth) and some of the digs, to try and pull some of the information together. I believe that Eileen Gooder was involved. Yours was created in the 70s. The updated version is at the Historic Towns Trust here. You can buy a copy or look at the older version. I have issues with some of the conclusions on both but the triangle of land between the river and one of the millraces was real and still dotted with trees in 1850. What I can't decide is if there was more than one mill depicted in 1749 (Bradford Map). I know where one of them was (the one on the more southerly channel) and that's the one pictured in the painting in post 6. However there was a second row of buildings parallel with it against the main channel (which wasn't parallel to the remaining channel like it seems). On that map there was a boundary line up the middle of Cox Street and between the two blocks on buildings, which would explain why there could have been an Earl's mill and a Prior's mill there at the same time (although I believe that at various times the prior was essentially renting what would have been the Earl's half of the town). What I don't know is if Shelton got close to any of the mills in one of his digs. The maps I've created are based on a factory that appeared between 1926 and 1937, which would fit a in 1933. Much like today, he dashed in after demolition and before new building work to see if he could find anything. Nowadays it's mandatory but in his day it was probably achieved by pester power. At this stage I can't rule out that he got to dig outside that proposed factory and the land behind the swimming baths.

Slightly off topic but this is a rough interpretation of how the maps overlay the modern layout. It's very hard to get the maps to match. Any future dig might discover the line of the wall, the loop of the river and possibly part of the wider curve of the mill pond. It all depends upon how deep successive developments dug their foundations. The pavement area at the front and the south east corner, outside Shelton's dig might reveal the most new information.