More information : [Centred TF 014716] Greetwell is listed as a lost village with parish church, which had fewer than ten householders in 1428 (1).
Air photographs show sunken fieldways with small crofts (2). (1-2)
There are definite indications here of an old village, principally a N-S hollow way with some flanking platforms, one prominent building site, and field banks. Later developments of Greetwell however, the railway cutting, modern roads, quarrying, buildings and encroaching ploughland, have obliterated so much of the evidence, that the characteristic pattern of a D.M.V. is destroyed. (3)
The Medieval settlement of Greetwell lies on the south facing slope
of the Witham valley. The settlement has a long history of
depopulation from at least the early C15 Enclosure in the early
C17 may have further reduced the settlement, but the virtual
abandonment of Greetwell took place in the first half of the C18,
perhaps the result of estate reorganisation. The surviving
earthworks form two groups: One lies near the C11 church and C16
or C17 Greetwell Hall, and the other to the north around Greetwell
Hall Farm along the east west through road. Ploughing and
construction of the railway in 1848 have destroyed the link between
these groups. To the east of the church a well marked hollow way,
centred at TF 0147 7156, runs across the slope, with terraced and
embanked closes on either side. Clear building foundations are
visible within some of these closes. To the north of the railway
surviving earthworks consist of closes, centred at TF 0137 7183,
some of which are lined on the west side of a north-south ditch,
perhaps a continuation of the hollow way. Others, particularly
those ploughed out but visible on air photographs, centred at TF
0124 7173, may have been oriented on the east west through road to
Cherry Willingham. The east fringe of the surviving earthworks
apparently overlies abandoned arable, this may support the idea of
a shift of properties from the lower part of the village, sometime
in the C17. Post Medieval garden remains to the south west of the
Medieval settlement are described in TF 07 SW 75.
(4)
The tofts and crofts, described as 'closes' by the previous
authorities, and the other associated Medieval settlement features
have been mapped as part of the RCHME: Lincolnshire NMP.
(Morph Nos. LI.537.6.1-16)
(5) |