Rhyddings Park, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire - Evaluation

Newground is preparing a detailed application to the Heritage Lottery Fund to deliver
a significant project in Rhyddings Park, Oswaldtwistle (centred on NGR 374490
427330). Working in partnership with The Friends of Rhyddings Park and Hyndburn
Borough Council, the project will aim to restore the park, protect its heritage, and
encourage more local people to use the restored buildings and facilities in the park. It
is envisaged that one element of the proposed project will allow for a community-led
archaeological excavation, which will aim to engage local communities in the rich
history of the park and highlight the site as an important local heritage asset by
investigating the buried remains of former buildings.
The site of a building identified as ‘Riddings’ on the Ordnance Survey map of 1848
occupies the eastern part of Rhyddings Park. The origin of this building is uncertain,
although it was perhaps a small hall or large farmhouse of seventeenth- or eighteenthcentury
date. It was demolished in the mid-nineteenth century, when a large villa
residence, known as Rhyddings Hall, was erected by Robert Watson, a leading local
textile manufacturer. The hall was used as a domestic residence until 1909, when the
building and its grounds were acquired by Oswaldtwistle Urban District Council, and
opened as a public park in the same year. The hall was eventually converted to a
museum and art gallery although, by 1932, the maintenance of the building was
proving to be too expensive, and it was demolished in 1938.
In order to inform the design and scope of the proposed archaeological excavation in
the park, Newground commissioned Oxford Archaeology North (OA North) to
undertake the excavation of some preliminary test pits. These were intended primarily
to establish the presence or absence of any buried remains of archaeological interest,
and thereby enable a programme of more detailed excavation to be devised. Eight test
pits were excavated in January 2015, targeted on the sites of ‘Riddings’, the midnineteenth-
century Rhyddings Hall, and ancillary buildings.