Medieval settlement and chapel site N of Newbiggin-on-Lune

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1007239
Date first listed:: 19-Jul-1978

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

Not all listed places are appearing on this map. We are investigating this issue and will have a fix in place as soon as we can. Updated: 13 February 2025.

There is a problem

Use of this mapping is subject to terms and conditions.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1007239
Date first listed:: 19-Jul-1978

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Westmorland and Furness (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Ravenstonedale
National Park:: YORKSHIRE DALES
National Grid Reference:: NY 70781 05267, NY 70933 05330

Summary

St Helen's Chapel and medieval settlement earthworks either side of Chapel Butt Lane.

Reasons for Designation

The village, comprising a small group of houses, gardens, yards, streets, paddocks, often with a green, a manor and a church, and with a community devoted primarily to agriculture, was a significant component of the rural landscape in most areas of medieval England, much as it is today. Villages provided some services to the local community and acted as the main focal point of ecclesiastical, and often of manorial, administration within each parish. Although the sites of many of these villages have been occupied continuously down to the present day, many others declined in size or were abandoned throughout the medieval and post-medieval periods, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries. The reasons for desertion or the diminishing size of villages were varied but often reflected declining economic viability, changes in land use such as enclosure or emparkment, or population fluctuations as a result of widespread epidemics such as the Black Death. As a consequence these villages are frequently undisturbed by later occupation and contain well-preserved archaeological deposits. Because they are a common and long-lived monument type in most parts of England, they provide important information on the diversity of medieval settlement patterns and farming economy between the regions and through time.

St Helen's Chapel and medieval settlement earthworks either side of Chapel Butt Lane are well-preserved as earthworks and the monument will contain archaeological deposits relating to its construction, use and eventual abandonment. The monument provides insight into the importance of the church and character of village life in the medieval period.

History

See Details.

Details

This record was the subject of a minor enhancement on 24 February 2016. This record has been generated from an "old county number" (OCN) scheduling record. These are monuments that were not reviewed under the Monuments Protection Programme and are some of our oldest designation records.

The monument includes the remains of a medieval chapel and a separate settlement enclosure, both surviving as upstanding earthworks and buried deposits just to the north east of Newbiggin-on-Lune. The chapel lies within an oval enclosure surrounded by an earthen bank standing 1m to 1.5m high with an entrance to the south west on the western side of Chapel Butt Lane, just north of the junction with the A685 main road. The remains of the chapel include a sub-rectangular mound with a height of approximately 0.7m located in the south half of the enclosure. Centred about 160m to the north east on the east side of Chapel Butt Lane is a medieval settlement enclosure defined by a bank standing 0.6m to 0.7m high. Within the enclosure are the remains of a sub-rectangular building preserved as an earthwork. The settlement enclosure is considered to represent the remains of a manor house or homestead site and together with the chapel, is considered to be the nucleus of an early settlement that was subsequently replaced by the later medieval village of Newbiggin-on-Lune.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: CU 32
Legacy System:: RSM - OCN

Sources

Other
PastScape Monument No:- 14704

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.