NEWTON (by FOLKINGHAM)

TF 049361

 

The moated site in Newton is situated to the south-east of the manor house on the south side of St Botolf's church (Fig 74). With an inner pointed mound (Fig 74) its extraordinary form was noted by Marrat in 1816 as 'a circular mound, moated round, on which has stood a kind of summer house. On the west side was a chinese bridge, and the road to the top of the mound, was a spiral going four times round before it reached the summer house.. On the top of the mound 44 churches may be seen on a clear day with the naked eye' (1). Chinoiserie of this type is characteristic of eighteenth-century garden design, but the surrounding moat is probably of medieval date. Its size, an area of 40 by 40 metres, is comparable with other sites in the survey, such as Haddington and neighbouring Haceby and there are traces of ditches continuing to the south and west (Fig 75) which suggest that it may originally have been of a more complex form, perhaps a double moat.

          The tenurial history of the settlement is also complex, and it has not proved possible to positively identify the estate to which the site belonged. In the Anglo-Saxon period Threekingham, Newton, and Ouseby had formed one large estate, presumably with a nucleus in the first settlement. Sometime before the Conquest, however, the complex was split into five manors and the lords' halls were established in, or were subsequently moved to, the new centre of Newton (2). By 1086 there were four fees, and all can be traced into the High Middle Ages (3). The bishop of Durham does not seem to have maintained a demesne in Newton, but the tenants of the honours of de la Haye, Chauncy, and Craon (which appears to have acquired Uluric Wilde's ministerial tenement) all had manor houses in the vill, and as late as 1816 there were still three ancient halls in the village. One, called West Roland Hall, was situated at the west end of the village 'near the wood' and can probably be identified with Woodside House; a second, Thorp Hall (4), was to be found to the south-west of the moated site and cannot now be located; and the third was arguably the present manor house (5). The moat is probably the predecessor of this estabishment, and its proximity to the church may suggest that it belonged to the Chauncy fee to which the advowson belonged (6).

         

 

1.       Marrat iii, 172-3.

 

2.       D. R. Roffe, 'The Seventh-Century Monastery at Stow Green, Lincolnshire', LHA 21, (1986) 31.

 

3.       Lincs DB, 3/27; 26/40; 48/5-7; 67/10; BF, 180, 1030; RH i, 154b, 156a, 158a; FA iii, 135, 163, 197; CI vii, 234, 408; CI x, 55; CI xvi, 117.

 

4.       Two maps, one apparently of 17th century date (LAO Anc 6/C/1), the other an Enclosure map of 1768 (LAO   ) do not elucidate the problem of Thorp Hall. The earlier one actually depicts the' Hall' in the close south of the church and immediately west of the present moat, with the western site near the wood noted as' Lord Herves'. The later map labels the close east of the previously marked Hall site 'Moat Close' and gives the western site as the 'Earl of Bristol's Homestead' and the adjacent wood named as 'Earls Wood'. The present substantial Newton House north of the village, which is sometimes referred to as the Hall, and might easily be assumed to be on an ancient site, is of mid nineteenth century date, and nothing appears in that area on either map.

 

5.       Marrat iii, 172-3.

 

6.       Lincs DB, 48/5.