‘John O'Gaunt's House’, Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire: a fifteenth-century landscape

Abstract

Tbis paper describes a remarkable archaeological site at Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire. It is interpreted as the remains of a late medieval house and elaborate garden of a type hitherto unknown in Britain. Tbe documented history suggests that it was created by john Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, between 1461 and 1470. It may partly have been based on the then new gardens of the Renaissance that Tiptoft had seen during a visit to Italy in the late 1450s.