Archaeology & Landscape

There has never been an excavation within or adjacent to the parish church itself, but the standing fabric indicates the likelihood that the west end has at one time or another been rebuilt. The architecture of the building is of a sufficiently distinctive ‘late Romanesque’ style for us to be able to date its construction to sometime in the mid-12th century. Four archaeological trenches were excavated beyond the current graveyard to the north-west of the church in 2001, in response to a planning application to extend the present yard. Seven simple burials were located and recorded, and two of these were carbon-dated to the 11th or 12th century. They were probably part of the original cemetery that began at the same time that the church was built. Since a British church was recorded at ‘Mochros’ probably as early as the seventh century, it seems likely that it was formerly located nearby, but not on the present site. Any early church enclosure here was likely to have covered a very much larger area than the present churchyard.

The site of Moccas village in the medieval period may have been close to the church, or close to the site of the castle (just to the south of the National Nature Reserve of Moccas Park), but by the 17th century had moved southwards to a location opposite the entrance to Moccas Court. The structure that resulted from a ‘Licence to Crenelate’ granted to Sir Hugh de Freyne in 1293 was enclosed with a low stone wall, so exhibited no architectural pretension. The structure had been almost entirely quarried away for road metalling by the 19th century, but the outline is still discernible.

The deer park associated with the castle was itself enclosed by a simple sinuous bank and ditch, also still visible in its original and modified layouts lengthwise across the slopes within the nature reserve. It was later absorbed within the Landscape Park laid out across the same slopes but extending eastwards down to the road and up to the hilltop westwards. Also absorbed were woodland areas (whose former boundaries are still marked by slight and sinuous linear banks); areas of former arable open fields (marked by several areas of ‘ridge-and-furrow’ fossilised plough-ridges); and ‘pillow mounds’ (rectangular ditched former rabbit nesting facilities, dating from the time in the medieval period when rabbits were farmed and therefore protected form wild predators).

The hillslopes feature paths and rides laid out in the 19th century the better to appreciate the views eastwards and southwards over the Wye valley. On the upper slopes it is possible to view impressive former field terraces, representing the extension of the arable onto higher ground during the periods of poor harvests, over-population, famines and pestilence that plagued the 14th century. A small-scale excavation ten years ago revealed the traces of much earlier farming sealed beneath the uppermost of the terraces. This comprised a clearance cairn made from stones that had been collected together to enable simple Bronze Age cultivation plots to be created.