The settlement of cottages
Though small and today seemingly remote, the two clusters of dwellings known as Coton Priory (Near Coton) and Far Coton sit within a landscape whose soils preserve a story stretching from the Bronze Age to the present day. In 2023, the Bosworth Links project excavated eleven 1m-square archaeological test pits, uncovering 1,559 artefacts, along with several distinctive features including a stone yard surface,. These discoveries reveal how the people of Coton lived, farmed, and interacted with the land across nearly a millennium of recorded settlement, with hints of even earlier activity.
A Landscape Touched by Prehistory
Before Coton ever existed, its ridgeline had already attracted human presence. The excavations produced a scatter of worked flint, including primary and secondary flakes, retouched pieces, and a thumbnail scraper from Far Coton. These pieces are small but significant: they point to Bronze Age toolmaking, carried out not systematically but intermittently, the sort of flintwork described as the “background noise” of prehistoric life – fleeting, practical, and repeated over generations – with one subtle cluster of flint at Far Coton hinting more strongly at past settlement or repeated activity on the high ground that overlooks the Sense Valley.
This low but persistent prehistoric signal places Coton within a broader landscape where Bronze Age activity is already known. Burial mounds, flint scatters, and ceremonial sites cluster around nearby Market Bosworth and Sutton Cheney, forming a prehistoric arc of activity along the higher slopes above the valleys to the west. Coton sits naturally within this continuum.
Roman Fields and Distant Farmsteads
Roman Britain also left its mark on Coton – albeit faintly. Only three small sherds of Roman pottery were recovered from the test pits, all abraded and widely dispersed. Their condition suggests they did not come from settlement nearby but instead were brought onto the land mixed with manuring material.
Even this modest presence is significant: it aligns Coton with a regional pattern of Roman agricultural landscapes. Within a few kilometres stand the remains of Roman farmsteads, systems of rectilinear fields, and a notable villa on the northern edge of Market Bosworth. These formed part of the hinterland of Manduessedum (modern Mancetter), a Roman town to the south-west. Coton, though not a Roman village, lay within a countryside managed, worked, and renewed by Roman farmers.
The First Farmers of Coton
No pottery from the earliest Anglo‑Saxon centuries (5th–9th century) was recovered, but the soil did yield a small but secure assemblage of Saxo‑Norman wares dating from the late 9th to 11th centuries. These sherds were few and worn, almost certainly brought to the fields as part of domestic refuse used as manure.
Even so, their presence is important: it confirms that by the 10th–11th century, the land around Coton was already part of the agrarian system feeding nearby Market Bosworth. The earliest clear documentary mention of the settlement is not until 1200, when it is recorded as Cotes, a name derived from Old English cot, meaning “cottage.” A chapel dependent on the mother church at Market Bosworth is mentioned by 1220, showing that by this time the area supported a recognisable, if small, community.
Fields Before Houses
Across the test pits, pottery of the 12th to 14th centuries appeared consistently, but almost always as small, abraded sherds scattered through garden soils and subsoils. These tell a clear story: throughout the High Medieval period, the areas tested at both Near and Far Coton were cultivated fields, regularly manured with household waste from settlement nearby.
These medieval wares include pottery from major regional production centres – Stamford, Potters Marston, and Chilvers Coton – indicating that Coton participated in familiar networks of provisioning and disposal typical of the East Midlands countryside.
What they do not show is settlement in the test‑pit areas themselves. Instead, the medieval hamlet must have been concentrated elsewhere, most likely around Upper and Lower Farm at Far Coton, where earthworks and enclosures visible in aerial photography point to the location of medieval habitation.
A Surprise Beneath the Orchard
While most test pits contained only the thin signature of passing centuries of cultivation, one location stood out. At Coton Priory Farm, one test pit revealed a stone surface sealed beneath layers of soil, and on top of it a distinctive collection of late medieval pottery, including Midland Purple and Cistercian Ware. Unlike the usual worn and widely dispersed manuring sherds, these pieces were larger, less abraded, and tightly clustered, clear signals of nearby occupation.
This discovery pushes back the date of settlement at Near Coton by at least 100 years earlier than previously recognised. The pottery and associated yard surface point to 15th‑century habitation, pre‑dating the earliest timber in the current 17th‑century Coton Priory Farmhouse (tree‑ring dated to AD 1600–1610). This is the single strongest archaeological indicator of medieval domestic life anywhere in the hamlet.
A Landscape of Pasture
From the 16th century onward, the test pits show a subtle but major shift in land use across Coton, with arable fields gave way to pasture. The post‑medieval pottery assemblage is modest across most of the hamlet, and ridge‑and‑furrow earthworks visible in aerial photographs reinforce the story of cultivated medieval fields later abandoned to grazing.
At Near Coton, the area immediately around Coton Priory Farmhouse shows heavier post‑medieval deposition, consistent with continuous occupation from the 17th century onwards. By contrast, Far Coton shows very little post‑medieval domestic debris, suggesting sparse population and largely agricultural use.
Among the finds were fragments of clay tobacco pipes, Staffordshire mottled ware, Midland Blackware, and salt‑glazed stonewares, domestic objects that mark the everyday lives of early modern farmers and labourers.
Estate Cottages, Gardens, and Everyday Rubbish
The upper layers of almost every test pit held the familiar traces of 19th‑ and 20th‑century rural life: red ceramic brick fragments, bottle glass, iron nails and screws, broken pottery, children’s toys, garden plastics, plant labels, and household debris. Several houses in both Near and Far Coton were constructed as estate cottages in the early or mid‑20th century, and the archaeological record reflects this recent occupation vividly.
One particularly poignant discovery was a disturbed dog burial at Far Coton, its bones found together in the lower layers of a garden test pit, a small but personal reminder of the hamlet’s recent inhabitants. Elsewhere, a .32 rimfire cartridge case from the late 19th or early 20th century speaks to the presence of firearms on the farms, while occasional fragments of agricultural machinery hint at the mechanisation of Coton’s fields.
A Hamlet Defined More by Fields Than by Houses
Across every period examined, a clear pattern emerges: for most of its history, Coton was far more landscape than village. Archaeological evidence repeatedly points to a place defined by its fields rather than by its buildings, a stretch of open, worked land punctuated only by small, long‑lived pockets of habitation. Wide expanses of arable fields dominate the story, enriched over centuries through deliberate manuring with domestic refuse. The settlement pattern remains strikingly consistent: scattered cottages and farms rather than a single nucleated core. Even the layout reinforces this dispersal, with a firm distinction between Near and Far Coton and no indication that “Middle Coton” ever existed as a medieval settlement in any meaningful sense.
Coton, then, was never a bustling village but a modest, dispersed agricultural community. Its identity formed around a constellation of tiny clusters – farmsteads, cottages, and workyards – stitched together by the wider agrarian landscape and by the economic pull of nearby Market Bosworth. The people who lived here shaped the land, but the land in turn dictated the rhythms of their lives: steady, local, and deeply tied to cultivation.