BRAUNCEWELL
TF
045523
In
recent years the site known as Brauncewell Lodge or Grange has developed as a
small village, but the original settlement of Brauncewell was situated on the edge
of the heath some two miles to the east where the medieval church still stands
(Fig 5). The place is first noticed in Domesday Book. In 1086 there was one
small manor of two carucates and six bovates - the area is one of extremely
high carucation - which was held by
Alfred of Lincoln in succession to a certain Aldene. Most of the land, however,
was soke of Geoffrey Alselin's manor of Ruskington, and it seems likely that
the whole of Brauncewell was formerly a minor element in a shire which had its caput there. By 1086 the tributary dues
which held the estate together were under pressure, and in Brauncewell were
already giving way to new forms of exploitation. Alfred's manor had been booked
out of the shire before the Conquest, and Geoffrey Alselin had established a
demesne there and further provided for two of his men in the reign of King
William (1). Subsequently all of the land was granted to the successors -
whether direct or otherwise is not clear - of these tenants when the land was
enfeoffed in the mid twelfth century, and Alfred's manor was likewise demised
in hereditary fee. All three fees descended into the fifteenth century, but
much of their land had passed to the foundations of Catley, Haverholme, Newbo,
and the Temple at Temple Bruer by the thirteenth century (2). At the
Dissolution almost the whole settlement was acquired by Robert Carre, and the
manor descended to the present day as part of the Bristol estate (3).
As in Dunsby, there may have been a
degree of dispersed settlement before the Conquest, but manorialisation was
probably responsible for nucleation on the present site. In 1086 there were
thirteen sokemen, three villeins, and five bordars in Brauncewell, representing
a population of perhaps a hundred individuals or so. The subsequent desertion
of the site has been attributed to a catastrophic fire (4), but the fall in
population appears to have been a far more gradual process. The grant of land
to religious houses must have taken much land out of arable cultivation in the
thirteenth century and probably led to the contraction of the village. Climatic
changes compounded the shrinkage and by the early fourteenth century there even
seems to have been a labour shortage, for direct exploitation gave way to the
leasing of estates (5). The Black Death appears to have exacerbated the
situation, and in 1406 it was reported that two tenements in Brauncewell were
wasted 'and all the land belonging to [them] lies uncultivated, and in the
lord's hands for want of tenants' (6). Despite the enclosure of land for sheep,
there was some recovery in the sixteenth century, and by 1616 there were 60
communicants in the combined parishes of Brauncewell and Dunsby (7). In the
nineteenth century there were still a few houses there, and a population of 131,
but this included the Lodge area. Only the Manor House farm and its buildings
remain on the site at the present time (8).
The larger area of settlement is
aligned east-west along one street, and the rectangular shapes of small stone
houses and stone-walled crofts are clearly visible (Fig 6). From the ground it
can be seen that these extend eastwards beyond the scheduled site into a field
now under plough, and at the time of survey the farmer confirmed that ploughing
had taken place there long before the site was scheduled. The earthworks south
of the church, in the field called Church Close (9), and aligned north-south,
are of quite different character. They consist of larger, almost square
enclosures with fewer obvious remains of buildings, although some foundations
are visible on air photographs (10). That illustrated (Pl II), taken in snow in
1978, reveals regularly spaced dark squares in each of these enclosures. On the
1839 map two large ponds are shown at the south and south-east end of the
complex and, being adjacent to the Manor House, the whole area would appear to
be formal gardens in which water was was a feature. Perhaps the square marks
represent statuary or regularly spaced ornamental trees.
1. Lincs DB, 27/45; 64/6.
2. LRdeS,
341; BF, 1024; RH i, 281a; FA iii, 154,
155, 205; CI ii, 392-3, 423; CI iv, 86; CI 181; CI 191; CI xii, 295; CI xvi, 86; CIM vii, 170;
Trollope, 213-5; 'Haverholme Charters' ed. C. W. Foster, Lincolnshire Notes and Queries 17, 29; Religious Houses ii, 95, 125, 145.
3. Trollope, 214-5.
4. Trollope, 215.
5. The
Knights Hospitallers in England being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to
the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, eds L. B. Larking, J. M.
Kemble, London 1857, 154.
6. CIM vii, 170.
7. Trollope, 216.
8. White 1856, 445.
9. LAO, BRA 641.
10. M. W. Beresford and J. K. St. Joseph, Medieval England, Cambridge 1979,
127-9, Pl. 50; CCAP, CFK 060.