Page 10 - Moons Moat

Redditch Heritage Moons Moat

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Moons Moat is a large moated site which once had a farm house and outbuildings on the
island in the centre of a wide moat. It is situated within the Borough of Redditch, in
Worcestershire and on the eastern edge of the town. Its Ordnance Survey reference on
the Landranger 139 map is SP 070 682. It is easily found off Artey Close, in Church Hill
South, an area developed for housing by Redditch Development Corporation in the 1970s.
It was once a significant farm in the wood pasture of the north of the county. There are
good reasons to believe it was built in the 14th century. It seems to have been extended
in the 16th century and abandoned finally sometime in the last 200 years. It was a half
timbered house with a thatched roof. Its owners probably earned most from their cattle
and sheep, but it seems likely that they produced crops for their own use in small fields or
allotments adjacent to the house.

Buildings from castles down to humble farmsteads had moats and the sites of moated
houses are relatively common in England though not uniformly so. They are rare over
much of eastern England. They are, however, much more common in the West Midlands.
Within a few miles of Moons Moat is a moated farmstead, still occupied, at Mappleborough
Green, the splendid double moated site of the Bishop of Worcester's rural retreat in
Alvechurch and the very beautiful Shurnock Court on the Salt Way near Astwood Bank.
Still completely moated is Astwood Court. Perhaps the largest and most impressive is
Chapel House Farm, Hunt End, with water still in two of the arms of its enormous
rectangular moat. This begs the question: why did those who built these structures, all in
the Middle Ages, go to the trouble of building a moat and supplying it with water?

The answer ought to be obvious. Moats were built for defence. Before an attacking
force could storm a castle, it had to find a way across a wide and deep stretch of water.
The greater castles such as Bodiam in Sussex, Kenilworth in Warwickshire and
Beaumaris on Anglesey had very wide moats. Any attempt to wade across must have
been perilous and fighting immediately after the crossing almost impossible. Some
castles, like Ludlow or Durham used cold and fast flowing rivers as their moats.
Clearly, whether the moat held water or not, ft was a very useful and successful
defence.

It is fairly easy to accept that the occupants of castles had enemies. It is less easy to
imagine who the enemy was which threatened the hundreds of moated houses in our
area. Were the Middle Ages so lawless that even farmhouses needed the protection of
a moat? Many of these moats are so small that they can have offered no serious
obstacle to anyone intent on breaking and entering. A good local example is at
Billesley Trussell between Alcester and Stratford. The ruins of a small manor house are
on an island site surrounded by a moat which still has water in it. A child, however,
could paddle across it. It is very shallow and of no great width. It cannot have been
built for defence.
The very lovely moated house at Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire has a moat which
offered a bit more in defence, but not much. Wading across it would pose no problem.

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