Building record IKW 017 - Rotunda Basement - Ickworth House

The removal of the overlying material in Room 19 revealed two architectural features of the house . The first of these was a culvert; a brick and mortar domed structure with a relatively flat base. This ran through the room on a NNE-SSW alignment from the NW-SE wall, before curving NW-SE and heading underneath the remaining modern footings. At some point a small stretch of the top of the culvert had been removed at the NW-SE wall and it had been bricked-up to be flush with the wall. It measured c.0.52m across externally. From the internal base to the top of where the bricks had been removed during the blocking of the culvert it measured c.0.26m. The base of the culvert was relatively smooth. It had been bricked up with a mixture of red and pale yellow bricks, which had been laid in an English bond pattern. The NW-SE alignment of the culvert lined up directly with a now disused down pipe that had carried excess water from the roof. As such it seems likely that the culvert drained the water from this pipe. The other prominent feature of the room was the brickwork relating to the foundations of
the house. These ran along the NW-SE wall between the culvert and the modern door and along the N-S wall from the modern concrete approximately 0.9m north. In the northern corner of the room it looked as though the brickwork had been removed. The bricks in the top course were relatively uniform in size at c.0.27-0.3m long x c.0.1m wide and c.0.7m tall. The two courses below this were less uniform, and below these were some very roughly laid stone blocks that were set into disturbed grey clay. Along the N-S wall the second and third courses of brickwork stepped out from the top course. Overlying all of these contexts was a rubble infill of fragmentary bricks, mortar and other rubble that was thought to have been placed there in the 1960s (S1).