BURTON
PEDWARDINE
TF
119423
The
place-name Burton connotes 'the ton
next to the borough', a fortification that is also commemorated in the nearby
settlement of Burg, and hints at the
vill's pre-Conquest role as a subordinate element in a large multiple estate
which was probably based upon Sleaford and/or Kirkby Laythorpe (1). Sometime
before the Conquest, however, the vill had been booked out. Two carucates of
land, together with soke in Helpringham, were attached to the manor of
Folkingham and had passed to Gilbert de Gant by 1086. Throughout the Middle
Ages they remained subordinate elements in manors located ouside of the vill
(2). The remaining ten carucates, along with sokeland in Heckington and
Aswarby, constituted a manor which was held TRE by Athelstan, a king's thane
who held extensive estates in Kesteven and Holland. By 1086 the whole of his 'fee'
was held by Guy de Craon, and he retained Burton as a demesne vill (3). In the
twelfth century some two and half carucates were granted to various religious
houses, and four bovates were let to a mesne tenant for the service of one
ninth of a knight's fee (4). Most of the estate, however, was retained in the
hands of the capital lord of the fee, and the manor seems to have functioned as
the centre of the honour of Craon in South Lincolnshire, but was itself
subordinate to the caput of the fee
in Freiston. By 1276 Burton was held by Walter Pedwardine, and his descendents
appear to have retained their main residence in the village until the early
fifteenth century, for a chantry was founded in the parish church in which the
lords of the manor were buried (5). The manor was alienated in c.1450, and passed to Thomas Daniel and
in 1464 to William Hussey who did not live in the village. Mareham Grange was
reabsorbed into the estate in 1552 with the purchase of the manor by Sir Thomas
Horsman, and the estate descended almost intact into the present century (6).
The earthworks surveyed relate to a
major multi-period site (Fig 37) and can be identified as the caput of the Craon estate, for the fee
of the thirteenth century mesne tenant was small and had been resumed by the
principal lord of the fee by 1346 (7). No detailed account of the complex has
been found, but in the light of the manor's importance in 1066 and the
proximity of the site to the Domesday church, it is possible that it has
pre-Conquest antecedents. Its earliest discernible phase, however, seems to be
a motte, presumably of the twelfth century, on which Manor Farm House now
stands. An engraving of 1812 (Fig 38) illustrates the feature from the south
with the church beyond. The substantial ditch which occupies the foreground
still surrounds the earthwork (Fig 39), but the indications of a bailey are not
immediately apparent. Subsequently, the site seems to have been remodelled, and
the whole was probably surrounded by a wall in the fourteenth century; the
curious deep double ditches on the south and west of the sub-rectangular area
beyond the motte (Pl VII) suggest either stone robbing on a grand scale or a
very wide ditch in the bottom of which dumping has been carried out in such a
way as to create parallel ridges. East and south-east of the church and manor
there is evidence of a shrunken settlement, with crofts at the north end of
which is a hollow way and a small triangular area that was probably a green.
The detailed interpretation of these very extensive earthworks remains
difficult to elucidate, and the site would merit intensive archaeological
investigation.
1. D. R. Roffe, 'Origins', Sleaford, eds C. M. Mahany, D. R. Roffe,
Stamford 1979, 11-16.
2. Lincs
DB, 24/105; RH i, 242
3. Lincs
DB, p.13; 57/30.
4. BF,
179, 1052; RH i, 242.
5. CI
ii, 128;, D. M. Owen, Church and Society
in Medieval Lincolnshire, Lincoln 1971, 92, 99, 114.
6. Trollope, 346-8.
7. CCAP, CLJ 49.