York Historic Environment Record

This document presents the results of a staged archaeological monitoring of groundworks for the construction of new retirement accommodation on the site of the Old Tannery at 11 The Village, Wigginton, York. The works were monitored by archaeologists from Cura Terrae Land and Nature (formerly Ecus) between April 2024 and May 2025. The archaeological monitoring recorded the remains of a 19th-century tannery complex, including two wells, in the north of the site, with earlier ridge and furrow cultivation to the south. The earliest part of the tannery was mentioned in tithe records of 1842 and depicted on Ordnance Survey maps dating from 1848. One large building set back from the road in the northwest corner of the site had been demolished and rebuilt in the 1980s and had truncated most below-ground remains in the immediate vicinity, although well- reserved structural remains survived to the south and east, in the form of a second, large rectangular building and two tanning sheds. The surviving large building was orientated north to south and set back from the road. It was subdivided into three rooms with intact stone and brick floors and has been interpreted as a beamhouse, where processing to prepare the hides for tanning would be carried out. Voids within the floor potentially indicated where hide processing devices were situated. To the south of the beamhouse building were two smaller, rectangular sheds, each containing at least four wooden tanks set into the floor. The tanks were square and of wooden construction, lined externally with puddling clay to keep them watertight. The western tanning shed was later subsumed by a larger building that expanded to the north, south and west, recorded on the Ordnance Survey map of 1891, that contained additional ordered rows of tanks. By 1909, the eastern expansion of the larger tanning shed was shown to be open along its eastern side. The open aspect of the structure either reflects a change in the tanning methodology that required a greater need for ventilation, possibly due to the use of chemicals rather than the traditional organic matter, or a change to a more agricultural purpose. In total over 52 wooden tanks were recorded at the Site during the course of the archaeological monitoring, though more would have likely existed to the south but had been truncated by later activity. The Victorian tanning process involved many potentially hazardous substances, including animal fecal matter, acids and chromium salts and therefore hand excavation of the tanks was minimal. Excavation of one tank demonstrated a thick tree bark deposit synonymous with the vegetable tanning process By 1928, the large tanning shed and external tanks along the eastern boundary are not shown on the Ordnance Survey and this suggests that operations at the tannery had either been scaled back significantly or that the site had been repurposed. No diagnostic finds were recovered from the excavations.