More information : TF 043882 (centred). Shrunken village remains, formerly part of Toft are situated on a S-facing slope from 14 to 10m above OD on a low island of Oxford clay or Kellaways sand and clay almost surrounded by alluvium of the drainage systems of the rivers Ancholme and Rase. Toft shares the modern civil parish with the separate settlement of Newton. They have always been closely associated and were normally returned as one for medieval taxation; they probably formed a 12-carucate fiscal unit with West Rasen in the 11th and 12th centuries and topographically the parish appears to be cut out of the SW corner of the larger area of West Rasen. Yet Toft and Newton both had medieval parish churches and their own field systems from at least the late 12th century: there is pre-Conquest sculpture at Toft church, and pre-Conquest pottery (in addition to Roman and late medieval sherds) was recovered at Newton when village earthworks were bulldozed and ploughed in 1964.(a)
Toft was a single manorial holding in 1086 belonging to the Bishop of Bayeux. As a result it was later held of the honour of the castle of Dover by Manasiet Arsic and his heirs: when in the hands of John de la Lada (?Louth) in 1258, the manor included a capital messuage with garden, ditches, dovecote etc. The advowson of the church of St Peter and St Paul exercised by Osbert Arsic in 1228-9 and by John de la Lada in 1268-9 was evidently a manorial appurtenance.(b)
John gave the manor and advowson to Robert Burnell, bishop of Bath and Wells, who in 1279 granted them to the Gilbertine priory of Sixhills, and the estate remained a valuable possession of the priory, perhaps run from a grange farm, until the Dissolution.(c)
It is not obvious from the population figures when there has been any marked decline at Toft; though significant reductions are obvious in the late 14th century, the principal loss may have
been that of the manorial residence described in the later 13th century coupled with some recent decentralisation of properties. The manor in 1086 had a minimum recorded population of 14; in 1258, of a total of 30 free tenants 20 paid for a toft as well as land and 1 for a house; with Newton in 1327-8 and 1332-3 29 and 27 taxpayers are named, jointly amounting to about the settlement average for the wapentake but individually clearly already marking a decline. The Black Death brought reliefs of just below 50% in 1352 and a total for the two settlements of only 70 persons over 14 years old in 1377, but neither community was exempt from the Parish Tax in 1428 so both must have had more than the minimum of 10 households. It is unclear whether reliefs of nearly 20% in the mid 15th century reflect a greater impact on Newton or Toft since in 1524 there were 12 and 13 taxpayers in Toft compared to 10 and 8 in Newton, in 1539 Toft apparently produced only 6 men for the Lindsey Musters to Newton's 14, in 1542-3 18 paid tax in Toft against 9 in Newton, and there were 18 households in Toft compared with 16 in Newton n 1563, 80 communicants against 50 in 1603 and 45 against 31 in 1676.(d)
A drop to 13 households by the early 18th century may arise from enclosure. Already, the survey of 1607 found in Toft Newton (undifferentiated) one farmhouse stood empty and that 2 other persons had engrossed the land of a total of 5 farms, letting the houses to cottagers: before 1671 the parish had been enclosed by Lord Castleton, which led the rector to petition for release from the necessity to maintain one of the two former tithe barns, and an exchange of land to facilitate enclosure in 1660 refers directly to 'parcels uninclosed but staked out'.(e)
In 1802 a small single-cell church was built to replace its medieval predecessor and was replaced again in 1891 by a scarcely larger structure: the population showed hardly any upturn even in the mid 19th century and actually fell to 11 households in 1901.(f)
Despite their extent, the earthworks do not allow a fully convincing analysis. The church lies within a rectangular block defined on the N by a ditch or hollow-way ('a'-'b' on plan) which
appears to continue westwards a section of road serving properties to N and S shown on the 1824 OS 1" sheet: it may pick up the alignment of the road from West Rasen to the E. At 'b'
it turns S through a right angle and runs straight down the slope to the edge of the stream's flood plain. The E side may be marked by a N-S street of which only a short section along the E of the churchyard survives, but a further section to the N was still in use in 1956 and a link N to the E-W street seems to be shown in 1824. Across the centre of the block an E-W hollow-
way, parallel with 'a'-'b', seems formerly to have continued E along the S side of the churchyard to link up with the surviving stub of street at 'c'. The closes within this block for the most part are very regular and orientated N-S relating to the E-W axes, but N of the church the orientation may be E-W against the N-S street: those S and SW of the church were hedged plots until recently, whose hedge banks appear in the earthworks, and there was a house at least until the mid 19th century at 'c'.(g)
Between the S boundary of this block and the river at least 4 E-W ridges seem to be cut through by an L-shaped pond shown on OS sheets as a water-filled or marshy feature on the S and an
earthwork hollow on the W. The field name in 1841 was Launces.(h)
Along the N side of 'a'-'b' is an elongated close with traces of buildings and a yard at the E end. The way that fringes it serves an E-W row of closes to the N at 'd', also with traces of buildings, that is part fossilised in surviving property boundaries. To the E of the modern N-S through road, the fragmentary earthworks around the handful of village properties appear principally to define a large squarish block centred on The Limes and sliced through by the existing road. A right-angle of scarps defines its NE corner: a hollow-way, 'e', marks its E side and turns at right angles to the W to be blocked by the dam of a large beast pond 'f' cut into its S scarp. Although now obscured by a tangle of successive late hedgebanks and boundaries, the hollow may have turned at 'g' S to the stream, perhaps to a crossing point predating Clay Lane Bridge that is
also approached by hollows from the NW. (The bridge and the stretches of Clay Lane approaching it may be relatively late features that have distorted and cut through the earlier layout.) To the S and E of this suggested way, a patchwork of perhaps as many as 7-8 rectangular ditched closes show few definite traces of buildings but may nevertheless be village closes. Along the S of the stream, the area of closes from the W of Clay Lane to Field Farm look as though they might have formed part of the settlement. Such earthworks as survive or traces that can be plotted from aerial photographs lie in the E around Field Farm and may relate to surviving boundaries there: all overlie ridge-and-furrow. No buildings except Field Farm existed in 1824. If they are not solely paddocks associated with a post-enclosure farm, the earthworks might be those of a monastic grange, since they resemble those identified elsewhere in this study whether on chalk (Cabourne (1)), limestone (Riseholme (2)), or clay (Collow (Legsby (4))). The alternatives may be physically almost indistinguishable for as
stock farms they had a nearly identical function. Other boundaries overlying ridge-and-furrow to the NE of the settlement also form small enclosed fields and a building platform at 'h' may mark an associated structure similar to those identified as sheep folds at Riseholme (1) and Firsby (West Firsby (1)).
Because of its definition by a boundary way, the regularity of the closes within it (some of which bear no obvious sign of early buildings), its association with the church, and the manner in which other elements in the settlement seem to group around it, the block W of the church suggests itself as a manorial element. It nevertheless has some features, perhaps principally the axial way W from 'c', that suggest rather a planned village layout. The block centred on The Limes might be an alternative focus of manor and later grange, or that at Field Farm for the
grange. (1-2)
Partly flattened in conversion to arable. (3)
The Medieval settlement referred to by the previous authority has also been mapped at 1:10,000 scale as part of the RCHME: Lincolnshire NMP. (4) |