More information : TF 074927. Settlement Remains formerly part of Osgodby lie at about
21m above OD, on Blown Cover Sands overlying Boulder Clay/Till.
Any assessment of population trends is almost equally
difficult as the settlement's tenurial history (see Osgodby (1)).
For Osgodby is regularly recorded in combination with Kirkby,
which is treated as the senior (though not therefore necessarily
the more populous), and frequently with Usselby too. No precise
minimum figure for 1086 is possible because of two combined
holdings: the rest have a total of 20 persons named, with one
manor waste. In the early 14th century the three settlements
together produced 49 taxpayers in 1327-8 and 41 in 1332-3,
between a half and three-quarters above the wapentake average by
return. The impact of the Black Death was sharp: relief of
94.2% was allowed in 1352 and only 79 persons paid the Poll Tax
In 1377. Yet 22 persons are named paying rent to the Tournay
manor in Osgodby in 1414 and a similar number in 1428, the Parish
Tax of 1428 was paid and mid 15th-century reliefs were just below
20%. In the early 16th century Kirkby and Osgodby had 10
taxpayers to the lay subsidies of 1524 and 1525, Usselby 13 and
11 respectively; Osgodby (?with Kirkby) produced 28 men for the
Lindsey Musters in 1539 and Usselby 12; in 1542-3 Osgodby with
Kirkby had 24 taxpayers and Usselby 21, in 1563 the former 38
households, the latter 18, in 1603 238 and 56 communicants.(a) No
enclosure, engrossment or depopulation is recorded in 1607;
nevertheless in 1676 Kirkby plus Osgodby were reduced to 160
communicants and Usselby to 38. By the early 18th century
Kirkby, Osgodby and 'Owersby End' numbered 45, 56 or 58
households, the majority by now obviously lying physically at
Osgodby. But this disparity was further and strikingly
accentuated in the 19th century. From 33 dwellings in Kirkby
and Osgodby in 1801, there was a rise especially in the 1820s to
57 in 1831 and then almost a doubling to 101 in 1841. This is
attributable to the sale and fragmentation of the dominant estate
and creation thereby of an open village, where in contrast to its
closed neighbours cheap and poor housing could be provided to
profit from the needs of rural and urban expansion.
Many of the resultant buildings, notably the speculative
development of Nash's Row, remain (or did so until recently) in
Osgodby village and around the parish. A later fall to 86
dwellings in 1891 reflects the onset of the agricultural
depression.(b)
At first sight Osgodby is morphologically a simple two-row
street village based on a slightly meandering E-W road. The N
row is almost completely built up: gaps on the S side contain
earthworks of former properties that complete the pattern. To
the E of Osgodby House especially, perhaps six closes with
platforms and hollows representing former buildings and yards
fronting the street run back from the street to a ditch or back
lane along their S side, with a bank beyond that perhaps served
as a headland. The varied ridge-and-furrow between this and the
stream has been divided by ditched boundaries into later small
rectangular fields or paddocks. Several of these boundaries
though in existence before 1806 were still shown on recent OS
sheets: by contrast the closes or properties are shown vacant in
1806, 1886 and subsequently.(c) At the W end of the settlement
and N of the road, too, are at least two narrow plots at 'b' on
plan, bound on the W by what appears to be a N-S way with
flanking ditches perhaps formerly giving access to Manor Farm but
later blocked by a tree-planting bank, and with traces of what
are presumably abandoned buildings on their street end. These
plots and way are not mapped in 1806 or later.
A more complex pattern may lie behind this, however. It
perhaps takes better account of the documentary evidence that, if
only in its treatment of Kirkby, may suggest an early multifocal
arrangement of settlement nuclei and certainly implies the growth
of Osgodby from a minor to a dominant position in terms of size.
The earthworks E of Osgodby House appear quite regular in plot
width; in plot depth they are almost identical to the
corresponding properties N of the road; though the ridge-and-
furrow to their S may just possibly have been ploughed or dug to
the short length between the back lane and the stream, it is
unlikely that they were laid out so. This block N and S of the
street, then, could be a planned settlement addition over earlier
arable. Further to the E on the N side the properties become
shorter; a corresponding shortening on the S may be seen on the
enclosure award map, and the whole may represent a further
expansion. To the E again, the Primitive Methodist Chapel and
Nash's Row certainly mark a 19th-century expansion beyond the old
enclosure.
The original core of the settlement may have been to the W of
Osgodby House. Here the 1806 map indicates the remnants of a regular
plan now only partially recoverable on the ground. It is possible
that this may have been a planned creation and perhaps incorporated a
triangular green or outgang, a fragment of which survives by the
Wesleyan Methodist chapel: personal names referring to a green are
found in the 14th century.(d) This may have been infilled by
properties along a street striking off WSW, that may represent a
further distinct expansion. The plots on its N side at 'b' overlie
ridge-and-furrow and the property boundary at 'c' on the S may
fossilise an arable reversed S. As it goes W the present road cuts
across a N-S arable furlong with which it could not have co-existed:
the N-S track W of 'b' and corresponding lane to the S evidently
therefore formed a termination for this stage of the settlement's
development.
Although some topographical control may be exercised on the
settlement plan by the lie of the settlement along a narrow ridge
with the land falling S to the stream and N to low land flanking
the beck, a chronological development seems best to explain the
detailed features. Its dating is uncertain and may belong
principally to the pre-14th-century growth of population to the
high levels of the lay subsidies or to the late medieval recovery
from the set-backs of Black Death or partly to both. In 1424
John Tournay was given as free gift a 'lande ende' in a new close
he had made on the S side of Osgodby, but it is uncertain whether
this might refer to expansion of the settlement or simply piece-
meal enclosure of arable, large areas of which appear as old
enclosure in 1803-6.(e)
A series of developments as proposed or analysed might give
some explanation of the sinuous line of the main street if it
originated in cumulative sections added on slightly different
alignments.
At 'd' on plan, the site of a building marked in old
enclosure in 1806 has produced post-medieval pottery.(f) Pre-
enclosure hollow-ways passing it and branching S to Middle or
West Rasen and SE to Market Rasen ('e') perhaps significantly seem,
like Washdyke Lane from the N, to focus on the suggested early
core of the settlement.
TF 068928. Moated Site lies completely separately to
the NW of the village (2) and in a shallow clay-bottomed valley
at about 15m above OD. The valley draining N into the Kingerby
Beck marks the W end of the settlement remains and cuts down
through the Boulder Clay/Till to the underlying Oxford Clay.
The medieval tenurial history of Osgodby is excessively
complex and concerns relatively small holdings. In 1086 8
holdings are recorded spread among 7 lords; 3 of them were small
manors and the rest sokeland; none was assessed at more that 5
bovates and the total amounted to only 2 carucates or slightly
less. In 1115 at least 5 separate lords had interests in the
place. In neither instance is any holding recorded under the
name of Kirkby: one or more of Osgodby's entries must in
practice refer to Kirkby. Usselby also has no explicit DB
reference, but appears in two holdings in 1115.(a) Only in the
later middle ages does a consolidated estate seem to be put
together by the Tournay family. They held lands and tenements
in Osgodby by the early 14th century: the estate was termed a
manor in 1362, and the licence for divine service 'in capella
sive oratorio de Osgodby' in 1406-7, confirmed in 1409, must
refer to a manorial chapel and therefore manorial residence. It
was confirmed in the same terms to Agnes Tournay in 1414.(b) But
with their principal residence at Caenby not far distant the
Tournays are unlikely to have had much use for a major residence
at Osgodby: in 1445 the site of the manor was held by William
Otryngham, a tenant at will; in 1548 John Tournay let his
lordship at Osgodby to William Osgodby of Osgodby, yeoman, and
this pattern may have secured the continuing occupation of the
manorial site as a tenanted farm to the present.
Earthworks partly obscured by Manor Farm and cut through by
the modern drain channelling the stream may be those of the
Tournay manor. They consist of a broad straight moat or
fishpond at 'a' on plan, with a bay or return about halfway along
that strikes E into what is presumably the moat's platform and
perhaps the traces of a filled-in return E at the N end. Along
its W edge is a bank acting as a dam, with a gap near its S end.
This moat must have been sited more or less on the line of the
natural course of the stream, which would have fed it from the S;
a narrow outlet at the N end was controllable by a sluice.
Parallel on its W side is a narrow channel that could have
functioned as an avoidance leat: it seems to have been cut
through ridge-and-furrow which then reformed a headland by
continued ploughing against its W side. This seems to show the
monument as a later medieval innovation in the landscape. Water
could be carried away NW in a curving leat, which also fed a
rectangular network of ditches cut through ridges on low land
between it and the beck. Their function is unclear but may be
irrigation for a specialist crop. (1-2)
The closes (crofts), yards, hollow ways, fields and moat described
by authorities 1-2 were mapped from good quality air photography as
part of RCHME: Lincolnshire NMP. Also recorded as part of that
project are eight possible crofts at TF 0670 9296 and a field
system which surrounds the village. Twenty eight blocks of ridge
and furrow were recorded, ranging in length from 50m to 310m,
located at TF 0661 9282, TF 0752 9283, TF 0834 9268 and TF 0757
9162.
(Morph Nos. LI.514.5.1 - 5.7, 6.1 - 6.3, 7.1, 8.1, 9.1 - 9.10,
515.2.1, 3.1, 5.1)
This description is based on data from the RCHME MORPH2 database.
(3)
The moated platform measures 86m by 34m and has been truncated to the east by a modern drainage ditch. The western moat arm is broad and grass covered; to the south the moat turns to the east and peters out toward the line of the modern ditch while the northern return to the east has been infilled and is visible as a shallow depression. The northern half of the island is flat and slightly raised, perhaps suggesting a building platform.
Some doubt has been cast by other authorities on whether this is in fact a moated site; it is suggested that the remains may be part of a fishpond.
As only part of the moat can be traced it cannot be considered for scheduling. (4) |