The Oldest Features in The Deepings: Part One

St Guthlac's Church. Author's image.

I started to look into the oldest buildings and features in The Deepings some time ago but found myself struggling with illness and then engaged in other projects. I told myself it wasn't a big job and if I put my mind to it, I could easily prepare something for the Easter weekend - how wrong I was! The task of sifting through the reams of listed buildings and features has proved quite onerous at times and I was quite fed up with typing 'squared limestone' and 'Collyweston' in my notes. However, I have a new found respect for the history of The Deepings and now have to stop myself from travelling through the area and pointing at every building and shouting its date as I go!

Today's blogpost covers the oldest features in the area that can be seen (and theoretically touched - but I'm not recommending it) and include buildings and parts of the landscape. So which is the oldest?

Using the Lincolnshire Heritage Explorer website it is possible to view all of the archaeological features in the area of the Deepings, which is a brilliant resource for any endeavour such as this (see the link below). What I've been looking for are features still easily visible in the landscape, which rules out a large quantity of the crop marks visible on dry summer days from a plane or aerial photos. There are lots of Roman, Iron Age and Bronze Age features - some of the new housing estates in Market Deeping have been built on top of complex Roman and Iron Age features - but they are entirely or primarily hidden. However, there are a few worth mentioning. 

The most famous two are the ones I alluded to in an earlier post: Godsey Lane follows the route of Roman Car Dyke, continuing as a dyke to the north of Towngate East; Roman King Street runs north-south through West Deeping. What also need a mention are the two late Neolithic and early Bronze Age barrow cemeteries: one is just north of the Deeping bypass; the other is on Littleworth Drove, and they are part of the same landscape. I'm not naming the exact locations because these mounds are on private land and by people's homes - a gentle reminder, if needed, to respect people's space and property and not to go searching for prehistoric features in person.

There are another couple of mounds dating to the middle Iron Age and Roman period south of Towngate East. The mounds show up beautifully on lidar images (see the Bluesky Mapshop link below) and are part of a saltern (used to extract salt from the brackish water, which tells you a lot about the landscape) and a settlement.

Moving on from the landscape features, we've got our stone-based features. If you've read the post on Peterborough's oldest buildings, you're probably expecting a church, but you would be wrong. In contrast to the Peterborough buildings post I've also included features, which includes objects. The oldest features, therefore, are a Saxon grave cover sitting in the porch of St Guthlac's Church and part of a cross shaft in the chancel. They are dated to the late 10th or early 11th century and are in incredible condition for their age.

The Saxon fragment in the porch of St Guthlac. Author's image.

St Guthlac's isn't the oldest building, however, that award goes to the church at Deeping St James. Formerly a Benedictine priory, it was part of the wider Thorney Abbey portfolio and the settlement was known as East Deeping. The church is dated to 1139 but has, like all popular churches, had many additions and improvements over the years. The Saxon objects at St Guthlac's (a Saxon name) do provide evidence that there was a religious building - said to be a chapel - on the site before the current church and suggest that the prize should go to that site, but of course the Saxon building is no longer standing (for evidence of Saxon features in churches you need to head to Peterborough and my earlier post). The high banks that first helped to stop the river flooding the low land in the Deepings were also first created around 1,000 years ago (and should themselves be recognised as an important historical feature*) which allowed the ground to dry out and churches to be built.

St Guthlac's is dated to the late 12th century, with St Andrew's in West Deeping dated to the early 13th century. But St Andrew's is eclipsed in age by a rather curious feature practically hidden in the fields of northern Peterborough. Kenulph's Stone is the remains of a stone cross thought to date to around 1200. It marks the location where the north of Peterborough butts up against South Kesteven and South Holland. You might be thinking to yourself that surely it belongs in The Welland, for that is the boundary between Peterborough and Lincolnshire and you would be partly right. The cross was described as being in the water in the past (likely the surrounding bog rather than the actual Welland) and has been moved over time, but so has the river and banks, and there has been more than one argument over the siting of the cross. It gained an additional stone - a top - in 1819, which gives a little more height and gravitas to the cross, as have the other crosses in The Deepings.

Towngate Cross. Image by the Milepost Society via Geograph

Towngate Cross base also features in this list, the base dating to the 14th century. It too has an additional stone top which gives it the look of a stone traffic cone! It sits at the cross roads between Halfleet and Towngate and I guarantee that thousands of people travel past it everyday completely unaware that they're passing by an object that's been sat there for over 600 years.

There is another cross at Deeping St James and this is both the most impressive, but the most changed. Dating to the 15th century, the cross was made of beautiful carved stone, quite unlike any of the other local crosses. In 1819 (recognise that date?!) it was converted into a lock up, which is its current form. The old cross forms the top of the lockup, with a newer square stone room below it to hold criminals. 

The Lock Up at Deeping St James. Image by Rex Needle via Geograph

All of these buildings and features are designated scheduled monuments and/or Grade I listed buildings with the exception of the Saxon features which are named in the St Guthlac's listing and identified as monuments on the Lincolnshire Heritage Explorer website. Everything except the prehistoric features are worth a visit, and it's easy to visit two or three with a short walk, or all of them in one day if you're up for the challenge!

To recap:

• the oldest features are the Neolithic and Bronze Age barrow cemeteries
• the oldest building is the Church of St James in Deeping St James
• the oldest objects are the Saxon grave cover and cross in St Guthlac's church.

If you want to look into the records then head to the Lincolnshire Historic Environment Record at https://heritage-explorer.lincolnshire.gov.uk/map

If you want to explore the landscape using lidar and aerial photos then Bluesky Mapshop is the place to look https://www.blueskymapshop.com/maps/ 

If you want to explore the list of listed buildings in the area then the British Listed Buildings website is a good start https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/

For more information on Kenulph's Stone then this blogpost by Deepings Heritage is great https://deepingsheritage.wordpress.com/tag/kennulphs-stone/

*I appreciate they will have been adapted and even moved over the years, but so have the roads and dykes.

A Visit to St Firmin's, Thurlby

On the penultimate Saturday of November, before the temperature finally dipped to that closer to winter, I visited St Firmin’s church in Thurlby. Many churches in the fenland area are, understandably, eighteenth or nineteenth century, so it was a treat to find a substantial church with origins in the 10^th century and lots of evidence of expansion over the years. 

The church clings to the lowest part of the village, the rest of it sitting on the higher ground up the hill to the west. The church and a few houses are cut off from the rest by what is now the busy A15, but was historically King Street, a Roman road leading to Lincoln.

What delighted me most about the church was its liminal location on the very point where the snooker-table-flat fens rise up to higher ground. I had checked maps and a satellite image of the church before I arrived, and knew that Car Dyke, the local Roman canal was next to the church, but I was very pleased to see it played a part in the boundary of the church grounds.

Car Dyke is said to follow the Iron Age shoreline (there is an old book featuring a wonderful map that I last saw in a Stamford bookshop that illustrates this point perfectly, but I cannot find it – the search will continue) and there has been much discussion, therefore, about whether the dyke was built as a canal or as a drainage dyke. Frankly, it is impossible to build such a feature and for it not to act as a drainage feature and likewise to create a feature and not expect people to use it for transport. There are some signs that the dyke has been used for transport and it links up well with roads and paths that still exist in the landscape. I look forward to Rex Sly’s upcoming book on Car Dyke to read what he has made of it.

You would expect the church to be on the western ‘dry’ side of Car Dyke, but it is on the ‘wet’ eastern side instead. There are several things to remember here: firstly, Car Dyke is largely straight and the boundary between fen edge and high ground is not; the church was built hundreds of years after Car Dyke and the shoreline was not close at that point; it is possible that people were living or ploughing all the other available land and it made sense to use land that was available. We cannot rule out the fact that earlier religious features were there first (as is presumed at Maxey church) and this was a continuation of that. It’s worth pointing out that St John’s Church Peterborough/Medeshamstede was originally built on the boggy fen edge with less success and it had to be moved at the start of the 15^th century because it was often inaccessible in the winter.

                                                            

The church is lovely and there is an adjoining car park, which makes visiting easy, so I recommend you do. I didn’t get the chance to go in to the church, but I was more than satisfied with the features outside. The porch features two large coffin lids which are complemented by others used in the wall by the entrance gate to the graveyard. I am certainly no expert on architectural features, but there are a number of interesting faces and features on the walls to observe; you might want to take binoculars or a decent camera to see them. If you’re very observant, you’ll spot the faded datestone in the wall at the north-eastern end of the church by the curious feature that looks like a bowed stand for a statue. If anyone knows what it is, then do let me know!

                                                    

The graveyard is really well kept and there are some unusual and noteworthy gravestones. See if you can spot the panther family as you start to walk around, or some of the common local names such as Lenton.

                                        

The southern side of the church has a feast of different windows as if a foreman has gathered every window shape they could find in a workshop and forced them all into the part of the church they were asked to build. There is little logic to them from the outside, so I am hoping that a visit inside the church will explain the existence of such oddly placed windows.

Walking to the edge of the churchyard really gives you a sense of the churches place in the landscape, and how it was been extended into the flatter land as it has become necessary. You can also get a greater sense of how the land rises up at Car Dyke and then continues up the hill.

Should you still be curious about Car Dyke, you can follow the path that runs along it either north to Bourne or south to Kate’s Bridge. There appear to be some interesting mounds to the south, so I intend to return to see what they are. On this day I headed north and followed the footpath over the culverted dyke – it’s always nice when modern features respect the old boundary lines. The path is short and takes a quick turn over the released dyke, over which is a tiny bridge with what appear to be old footings. After crossing a (very high) style you find yourself in a field and you can follow the path across it to continue to walk along Car Dyke all the way to Bourne, should you wish. On that route you’ll pass the old manor house and The Grange, which has clear examples of ridge and furrow in the fields close to the A15.

                                                  

                                                Old coffin lids used in the graveyard wall

St Firmin's is a little oasis and a delightful site to visit if you want to blend Roman history with medieval and more recent history. It’s also delightful to stand at the edge of the graveyard, knowing it was once the Iron Age coast and that as you look northeast there is nothing but flat land (and Spalding) between you and The Wash.

All images belong to the author.