Scheduled Monument: Medieval settlement of Ashby St Ledgers (1418546)

List Entry Description Summary of Monument The site includes the earthworks and buried archaeological remains of the medieval village of Ashby St Ledgers; comprising hollow ways, building platforms (tofts), associated crofts (gardens), site of a dovecote and ridge and furrow. Reasons for Designation The medieval village site at Ashby St Ledgers, first documented in Domesday Book of 1086, is scheduled for the following principal reasons: * Survival: for the well preserved earthworks depicting the form and plan of the settlement and its associated agricultural practices; * 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 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 high level of historical and archaeological documentation pertaining to the settlement’s evolution; * Group value: for its close proximity to other related contemporary designated monuments; * Diversity: for the range and complexity of features such as tofts, crofts, hollow ways, the site of the dovecote and the ridge and furrow which will, taken as a whole, provide a clear plan of the settlement and retain significant stratified deposits which serve to provide details of the continuity and change in the evolution of the village. History The village, comprising a small group of houses (tofts), gardens (crofts), yards, streets, paddocks, a manor and a church, sometimes a green, occupied by a community devoted primarily to agriculture, was a significant component of the rural landscape in much of lowland medieval England, much as it is today. The Historic England Introduction to Heritage Assets on Medieval Settlements (May 2011) explains that most villages were established in the C9 and C10, and exhibit a variety of plan-forms, from the highly irregular at one extreme to planned villages with 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 recognising the great regional diversity of medieval rural settlements in England, Roberts and Wrathmell (2003) divided the country into three broad Provinces on the basis of each area's distinctive mixture of nucleated and dispersed settlements; these were further divided into sub-Provinces. The Northamptonshire settlements lie in the East Midlands sub-Province of the Central Province, an area characterised in the medieval period by large numbers of nucleated settlements. The southern part of the sub-Province has greater variety of settlement, with dispersed farmsteads and hamlets intermixed with the villages. Whilst some of the dispersed settlements are post-medieval, others may represent much older farming landscapes. Although many villages and hamlets continue to be occupied to the present day, some 2,000 nationally were abandoned in the medieval and post-medieval periods and others have shrunken. In the second half of the C20, research focussed on when and why desertion and shrinkage occurred. Current orthodoxy sees settlements of all periods as fluid entities, being created and disappearing, expanding and contracting and sometimes shifting often over a long period of time. Abandonment may have occurred as early as the C11 or continued into the C20, although it seems to have peaked during the C14 and C15. In the East Midlands sub-Province, Roberts and Wrathmell identified that the sites of many settlements, most of which were first documented in Domesday Book of 1086, are still occupied by modern villages, but others have been partially or wholly deserted and are marked by earthwork remains. Research into Northamptonshire medieval villages highlights two prevalent causes of settlement change, namely the shift from arable farming to sheep pasture in the C15 and C16 (requiring larger tracts of land to be made available for grazing), and the enclosure of open fields from the late C16 through to the mid C19 for emparkment or agricultural improvement. Despite the commonly held view that plague caused the abandonment of many villages, the documentary evidence available confirms only one such case in Northamptonshire, the former settlement of Hale, in Apethorpe. 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 Introduction to Heritage Assets on Field Systems explains that 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. Ashby is first mentioned in Domesday Book of 1086 when the village had a recorded population of 24. In 1377, 81 people paid the Poll Tax, in 1673, 52 people are listed in the Hearth Tax Returns and in the early C18 Bridges recorded 50 houses in the village (1791). By 1801 there were 232 inhabitants of the parish. The available evidence does not indicate a marked drop in the population of the village at any particular time so the currently abandoned areas marked by the earthworks are more likely to indicate a movement of people rather than a shrinkage of the settlement. In the late Middle Ages the Manor of Ashby St Ledgers was owned by the Catesby family. After the Reformation they adhered to their Catholic faith; Edmund Champion was sheltered here and in 1605 the Gunpowder Plot conspirators had their first meeting at Ashby, then home to Robert Catesby. After the failure of the conspiracy, Catesby was killed and the manor was subsequently acquired by Sir William Irwing, who in 1612 sold it to a London draper, Bryan Lanson. It was his son John who built the Manor House in 1652. In 1703 Ashby was sold to another draper, Joseph Ashley and then in 1903 the estate was sold to the Hon. Ivor Guest, Baronet and MP who employed Edward Lutyens in a series of commissions to remodel and enlarge the house and to layout new gardens. The evidence of Lutyens's influence can also be seen in the village with the row of 6 cottages of 1908 which are listed at Grade II. The layout of the village has at some point been very different from its current form but it is unclear when the change took place. The present Church of St Leodegarius (Grade I-listed) contains fragments of C12 fabric indicating that its location, at the extreme eastern end of the village, remains unchanged. The western end of the village has been reconfigured, attested by the earthwork remains of buildings and closes. Stukeley (1776) recorded that 'At Legers Ashby……has been another old town, as they say, destroyed by the Danes; there are great ditches, causeways and marks of streets' Parts of the abandoned areas were occupied or at least in use as late as the early C19. The earthwork remains were surveyed by the Royal Commission for Historic Monuments and published in their Inventory of Archaeological Sites in North-West Northamptonshire (1981, p23). Details PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS: the monument includes the earthwork and buried remains of the medieval settlement of Ashby St Ledgers lying on both sides of a small east flowing stream at the west end of the village around Cherry Tree Farm, and on the south side of the stream between Cherry Tree Farm and the Manor House. The remains are situated on glacial sands and clays between 132m and 145m above OD. DESCRIPTION: the settlement remains comprise hollow ways, building platforms (tofts), associated crofts (gardens), the site of a dovecote and ridge and furrow. The central axis of the site is a hollow way which runs from the Kilsby to Daventry Road on the west of the current village to just north of the church on the east. It coincides with the existing stream and now functions as a steep sided, wide stream bed. In the C19, Ordnance Survey maps indicate that it was still used as a through road at that time. Features on either side of the track respect its alignment. At the west end two roughly parallel hollow ways extend north from it then fork again. One arm runs north-west and originally crossed the Kilsby to Daventry Road and continued towards Barby but this is no longer traceable as an earthwork beyond the existing road. The other arm runs north and meets the existing road to Kilsby. Between the two roads is a disturbed area of ground in which stands a low circular mound standing up to around 0.3m high, with a slight depression within it, thought to be the site of a dovecote. Between the eastern hollow way and Cherry Tree Farm, are at least three rectangular enclosures separated by low banks and ditches, bounded on the north by a well-marked bank and outer ditch beyond which is ridge and furrow. Although the interior of the crofts show some disturbance from quarrying, traces of former buildings do survive and in the past stone-rubble foundations have been exposed in the side of the stream and the hollow way. At the time of the site assessment (November 2017) vegetation has obscured these remains. Pottery of mainly post-medieval date, but including some of the C14 and C15, has been found in this area. To the south of the stream are other earthworks of the former village. Immediately south of Cherry Tree Farm and east of the approach road is another field containing a series of closes (crofts) containing house platforms (tofts) at their northern ends, all evident as low banks and scarps. Some buildings were still extant in this field in the early C19 along the road to the farm. Within the large field north and east of Home Farm and west of the Manor House, a series of rectangular closes align with the hollow way (now the stream bed). These are evident on the surface as slight mounds and terraces and are clearly evident on aerial photographs (Historic England, October 2013). Those towards the western end contain tofts but immediately north of Home Farm are the earthworks of a hollow way and stock enclosures. Further west again are the earthwork remains of ridge and furrow. North of Cherry Tree Farm two ponds now occupy the site of what was another hollow way running north with ditches running east and west of it. Together with the existing part of the village the earthworks suggest that at least in the late medieval period the village was Y-shaped in plan with a number of small roads extending from it in various directions. The common fields of the parish were enclosed by Act of Parliament of 1764. Ridge and furrow of these fields survives on the ground or can be traced on air photographs over parts of the parish although the level of survival has been reduced considerably since the Royal Commission Survey of the 1980s. Visible earthwork remains of ridge and furrow are most clearly evident at the western end of the village, south west of Cherry Tree Farm. Slightly more rounded earthwork remains are still evident at the eastern end of the village in the area of the Historic Park and Garden related to the Manor House (registered at Grade II). EXTENT OF SCHEDULING: the scheduled area includes the fields surrounding the inhabited settlement of Ashby St Ledgers where earthworks of the former settlement and its associated field system survive. The scheduled area is defined around most of its boundary by field hedges or fences, the exception being the northern edge of the easternmost field which is defined by the water course. There is considerable potential for undesignated heritage assets to survive within the currently occupied areas of Ashby St Ledgers. These may take the form of standing structures or buried deposits but are considered to be most appropriately managed through the National Planning Policy Framework (March 2012) and are not therefore included within the scheduled area. EXCLUSIONS: a number of features are excluded from the scheduling: these include all fences, modern path and road surfaces and signage, although the ground beneath all these features is included. Selected Sources Books and journals Allison, K J, Beresford, M W, Hurst, J G, The Deserted Villages of Northamptonshire, (1966) Astill, G, Grant, A, The Countryside of Medieval England, (1988) Aston, M, Austin, D, Dyer, C(eds), The Rural Settlements of Medieval England: Studies dedicated to Maurice Beresford and John Hurst, (1989) Christie, N, Stamper, P (eds), Medieval Rural Settlement: Britain and Ireland AD 800-1600, (2012) Dyer, C, Jones, R, Deserted Villages Revisited, (2010) Hall, D, Turning the Plough. Midland Open Fields;landscape character and proposals for management, (2001) Jeremy, Taylor, An Atlas of Roman rural settlement in England, (2007) Partida, T, Hall, D, Foard, G, An Atlas of Northamptonshire The Medieval and Early-Modern Landscape, (2013) Royal Commission for Historic Monuments, , Inventory of Archaeological SItes in North-West Northamptonshire, (1981), 23

Record last edited

Jan 28 2020 2:09PM