Prolonged dry weather in Sheffield has exposed parch marks outlining the foundations of a medieval hunting lodge at Sheffield Manor Lodge. The discovery offers a clearer picture of the site’s earliest known building and underlines how drought conditions can reveal otherwise hidden archaeological features.

The marks indicate walls and towers that predate the surviving Turret House by at least a century. Records show repairs to the lodge in 1479, while earlier excavations found pottery, window glass and deer bones; the surrounding deer park was once about eight miles around and held roughly 3,000 fallow deer. The lodge was dismantled towards the end of the sixteenth century as the Tudor manor was expanded, a site later associated with the imprisonment of Mary, Queen of Scots.