The north service range,Aston Hall,Birmingham: excavation and recording, 2004

Abstract

Excavation has exposed the foundations of the early 17th-century north service range of Aston Hall, Birmingham. Consideration of the remains alongside documentary evidence and comparative analysis has allowed the room functions, and something of the range's structural character, to be established. In the 17th century it contained a washhouse, brewhouse, bakehouse, laundry and dairy, with a large cellar beneath and a building straddling a water culvert. Outhouses, a large icehouse and a new laundry were added later. With its precocious use of brick in ancillary buildings, the range occupies a significant place in the construction history of the West Midlands.