KYME,
SOUTH
TF
168496
The
earthworks surveyed are the northern and western sides of a large moat that
enclosed the manor house built by Gilbert de Umfraville, third earl of Angus
and lord of Kyme, between 1339 and 1381 (1). The site, to the south of the
priory church (Fig 70), was probably of some antiquity as a seigneurial
residence. In 1066 Earl Morcar held a manor of four carucates and two bovates
in South Kyme (2). The church - a foundation of some considerable importance,
for seventh- to eight-century sculptural fragments suggest that it was an early
religious centre, and the rights of the thirteenth-century Priory indicate that
it had been a minster before the Conquest (3) - belonged to the estate, and it
can therefore be presumed that the earl's hall was situated in its vicinity. By
the time of Domesday Book the estate was in the hands of the king, and subsequently
it passed to the Kyme family, along with fourteen bovates from the honour of
Gant, and they held it as a demesne manor until it was acquired by the
Umfraville family (4). The moat of the fourteenth-century house, then, may
therefore have enclosed an earlier curia
on the same site.
Of the Umfraville house, a four storey
battlemented tower with a square corner turret survives. Its original extent is
unknown, but marks on the south side indicate an extension which may have been
a hall. The house and estate passed to the Tailboys family and was described as
'goodly' by Leland in the 1530's. It remained occupied by the Dymoke family
into the eighteenth century until it was dismantled in the early 1720's when
chimneypieces were bought by Mr Chaplin for Blankney Hall. Shortly afterwards
the manor was sold, first to the Duke of Newcastle and then in 1748 to Abraham
Hume from whom it descended to the Brownlow family. A new manor house to the
south-east of the site was built in the second half of the eighteenth century,
and the enclosure that includes the moated complex seems to have been given
over to agricultural uses (5).
The earthworks that survive are not
remarkable, consisting of a series of ditches, the main ones appearing to be
parts of a moat which formerly surrounded the tower house (Fig 71). Along the
north side of the site is a ditch 200 metres long with a further 150 metre
length on the south-east side. The ditch continues for a shorter length of 60
metres on the east of the site. The location of the original entrance is not
clear. The fields round the tower and round the priory site to the north, both
of which formerly contained features, have never been scheduled, and although
there have been many alterations in the vicinity over the last 30 years, the
site surveyed remained pasture at the time of writing.
1. Trollope, 252; Pevsner, 641.
2. Lincs
DB, 1/4.
3. Pevsner, 641-2; TLA files.
4. Lincs
DB, 24/76; Trollope, 249-52.
5. Trollope, 254; Pevsner, 641.