Summary
Abandoned medieval village.
Reasons for Designation
The remains of the medieval settlement of East Wykeham is scheduled for the following principal reasons:
* Survival: for the well preserved earthworks and parchmarks depicting the form and plan of the settlement and its associated agricultural practices;
* Diversity: for the range and complexity of features, such as the hollow ways, crofts and tofts with building platforms, and ridge and furrow, which indicate a plan of the settlement and retain significant stratified deposits providing details of the continuity and change in the evolution of the settlement;
* Potential: for the stratified archaeological deposits which retain considerable potential to increase our understanding of the physical characteristics of the buildings and settlement. Buried artefacts will also have the potential to increase our knowledge and understanding of the social and economic functioning of the settlement within the wider medieval landscape;
* Documentation: for the historical documentation pertaining to the settlement’s evolution;
* Group value: for its strong group value with the nearby West Wykeham to which it is linked by a road surviving as a cropmark, and also with the abandoned medieval villages of Kelstern, Calcethorpe and South Cadeby situated two miles away, all of which are scheduled.
History
The village was a significant component of the rural landscape in most areas of medieval England comprising a small group of houses (known as tofts which may include house platforms surviving as earthworks), gardens (crofts or closes which are typically defined by banks and ditches), yards, streets, paddocks, often with a green, a manor and a church, and with a community devoted primarily to agriculture. Most villages were established in the C9 and C10, but modified following the Norman invasion to have planned layouts comprising tofts and crofts running back from a main road, often linked with a back lane around the rear of the crofts, and typically having a church and manor house in larger compartments at the end of the village. In the medieval period the Lincolnshire Wolds were characterised as varied mixtures of low fen and march pastures, arable on rising land, with dry ridge-top pastures which supported a dense concentration of villages whose open townfields survived until the later C18 (Roberts and Wrathmell, p. 49, 2003). Although many villages continue to be occupied to the present day, some 2000 nationally were abandoned in the medieval and post-medieval periods and others have shrunken.
Recent attention on the evidence for medieval agricultural practices, typically found in the hinterland of the settlements, has highlighted the survival of the earthwork remains of ‘ridge and furrow’. The origins of ridge and furrow cultivation can be traced to the C10 or before. By the C13, the countryside had acquired a widespread corrugated appearance as settlement developed into a pattern of ‘townships’ (basic units of community life and farming activity). The cultivated ridges, individual strips known as ‘lands’, were incorporated into similarly aligned blocks known as ‘furlongs’, separated from each other by raised ridges known as ‘headlands’ which, in turn, were grouped into two, three or sometimes four large unenclosed ‘Great Fields’. These fields occupied much of the available land in each township but around the fringes lay areas of meadow, pasture (normally unploughable land on steep slopes or near water) and woodland. The characteristic pattern of ridge and furrow was created by ploughing clockwise and anti-clockwise to create lines of flanking furrows interspersed with ridges of ploughed soil. The action of the plough, pulled by oxen, takes the form of a reversed ‘S’-shape when seen in plan. The furrows enabled the land to drain and demarcated individual farmer’s plots of land within the Great Fields. The open-field system ensured that furlongs and strips were fairly distributed through different parts of the township and that one of the Great Fields was left fallow each year.
The name of the village of East Wykeham derives from the Old English Wic-ham (and Old Norse Wic-heim) which seems to have denoted proximity to a Romano-British settlement. Both East and West Wykeham are very close to the known extensive Roman settlement at Ludford. In the Domesday book East Wykeham is owned by Alfred of Lincoln and Roger of Poitou, whose holdings passed to the Bishop of Lincoln soon after. The survey suggests that the village was small with little land around it. In the 1334 lay subsidy returns East and West Wykeham are combined with a joint value of £1 15s. This is below average for the wapentake (an administrative district). In the poll tax returns of 1377 for Loutheske wapentake, the two villages have a total of 59 taxpayers, and it is thought that the vast majority of these were in East Wykeham. In the 1428 parish tax returns both villages are separately noted as parishes with fewer than ten households (even though, by then, West Wykeham had been united with Ludford Magna). It is likely that only one family remained in East Wykeham in 1563.
The church at East Wykeham was dedicated to St Mary and was granted to Sixhills Priory in the mid-C12; half from Supir de Bayeux and half from Ralf of Grimblethorpe. Included within these gifts were tofts and land in East Wykeham. Sixhills continued to present vicars to the church until the dissolution of the monasteries. In July 1519 a visitation by the Bishop of Lincoln recorded that in East Wykeham church they barely celebrated mass once a week and that the vicarage had completely collapsed. The Bishop of Lincoln’s representatives record that the church was in decay in the early 1600s and by 1637 it was described as being in ruins.
The population of the parish during the C19 fluctuated from 23 to 37 people, seemingly the population of Wykeham Hall and the one farm in the parish. In 1855 the Child family purchased the village lands from the Pownall family who had themselves purchased them from the Jenkinsons in the 1750s. The Child constructed a family vault on the site of the original church and reused some of the surviving stonework in creating a folly within their park. A plaque within the vault states that it was built in 1864. Around the time the Child family purchased the property, in 1855, Wykeham Hall, to the south-west, was substantially rebuilt on the site of the medieval manor. According to Pevsner, one room in the hall retains a C16 moulded beam (p. 267). The village remains form the parkland setting for Wykeham Hall. The Ordnance Survey map of 1888 shows numerous broadleaf trees and a drive through the remains to the house which was laid c.1870.
Details
Abandoned medieval village.
PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS
The site includes the earthworks and buried archaeological remains of the abandoned medieval village of East Wykeham, including the site of the church, building platforms, sunken roads, and ridge and furrow.
DESCRIPTION
East Wykeham is situated on both sides of a small valley which slopes slightly southwards down to a stream. The remains of the village are preserved under permanent pasture which forms the parkland setting for Wykeham Hall and is interspersed with mature broadleaf trees. The east-west aligned modern road to the Hall cuts through the former village remains. The earthworks are well-defined but not easy to interpret although it is possible to trace the site of the church, four steadings and two hollow ways, in addition to other ditches and banks.
From the north-west corner of the area under assessment (north of Wykeham Hall), the road which led from South Cadeby to Ludford survives as a sunken track running southwards towards the hall. This road is visible on aerial photographs as a cropmark as it continues westwards (beyond the area of protection) to join West Wykeham half a mile away. Directly to the east of the sunken track an area of ridge and furrow, aligned east-west, survives as earthworks. A bank to the north could be interpreted as a headland or part of a building platform. To the east of this, the foundations of the church are visible, centred at TF 22426 88277.
Approximately 7m to the south-west are the Grade II listed church ruins, reconstructed as a C19 folly using limestone rubble and ashlar dressings. The walls survive to a maximum height of 3m and consist of a nave and apsidal chancel. The upper parts of the walls and the roof are missing. There is a doorway in the west wall and a lancet window in the east wall of the chancel. A plain wall slab in the nave commemorates members of the Child family and a servant, all c.1870. There is a burial vault beneath the nave.
To the east of the church a hollow way runs north-south for c.97m. An embanked enclosure at the north end on the east side appears to represent a building platform. Further to the east (still on the north side of the modern road) is a series of ditches and platforms surviving as earthworks between 1m and 2m in height. These are interpreted as tofts and crofts although only two have been positively identified in the National Mapping Programme (NMP) at TF 22546 88248. To the east there is a large platform and a small rectangular depression. To the north there is a long linear ditch with a parallel bank on the north side. This latter feature may be a headland to the ridge and furrow which is evident in the north-east corner of the site. The bank running parallel to the modern road which bounds the site to the east appears to be post-medieval in date and possibly relates to C20 drainage works. To the west of this are three or four strips of ridge and furrow.
On the south side of the modern road running through the village there is a hollow way, centred at TF 22624 88174, which runs north-south for c.74m. To the west two tofts and crofts have been identified by the NMP. To the west again there is a linear ditch, approximately 55m long, aligned north-south. A block of ridge and furrow occupies the south-west corner of the site, but is cut by a C20 drain that runs north-south through it.
EXTENT OF SCHEDULING
The area of protection includes the site of the abandoned medieval village. The west and north boundaries are defined by hedges and post and wire fences, and the east by a road up to the drive to Wykeham Hall. From here the boundary is defined by a post and wire fence to the south-east corner at TF 22693 88105. From here the southern boundary is defined by a post and wire fence with woodland beyond until TF 22510 88141 where it runs north-westward to the drive, 11m east of the main gate to the Hall. It then continues north-westwards, defined by a wooden fence and the northern side of the stable block.
All post and wire fences, tree protection fences, wooden fences, modern tracks, drives and concrete surfaces are excluded from the scheduling although the ground beneath them is included.
There is considerable potential for un-designated (but potentially nationally important) remains to survive outside the scheduled monument.
