According to local legend somewhere in Thurgarton Priory was a secret underground passage through which the brothers could escape the constraints of the cloister to enjoy more worldly pursuits. According to  one version the tunnel emerged in the cellar of the Red Lion pub in Thurgarton village but in the other the canons had dug a remarkable three-mile long passageway to a supposed nunnery at Halloughton. There is sadly no evidence of such an underground tunnel but the story reflects the popular image of beer swilling monks cavorting with naughty nuns.

The Red Lion pub, Thurgarton.

The canons of Thurgarton Priory were all ordained priests who had taken vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience on joining the Augustinian order. Augustinian communities were regularly inspected by their local bishop – what might nowadays be called an Offmonk report.  Between 1276 and 1316  Thurgarton Priory was severely and repeatedly censured by visiting Archbishops of York whose reports portray a sorry state of affairs in the priory.

Augustinian canon

Weak leadership

Adam de Sutton, Prior of Thurgarton, was a sick aging man in 1276 and had withdrawn from priory life.  The head of a religious house such as the Prior of Thurgarton was both a religious and secular leader and the welfare of the house depended on his ability to manage the priory estate efficiently and to provide spiritual guidance to his flock. The archbishop ordered that Prior Adam ‘ should enter the cloister and chapter more frequently and correct excesses’ and ‘to eat in the refectory as often as his illness allowed’. Evidently discipline had become lax and some brothers were leaving the priory without consent to socialise in the district. Periods of silence were ignored as were the priestly duties of alms and care of the sick.

The priory’s finances were in a mess. Prior Adam was ordered to pay the priory’s debtors and to take no financial decisions without advice from his senior brothers in open meetings. He was also directed to appoint two senior canons to visit the outlying manors and granges to ensure that the locals were not swindling the priory.

Prior Adam appears to have struggled on for at least another two years but he and the rest of the inmates at Thurgarton failed to comply with the archbishop’s demands. Certain canons were still in the habit of slipping out for an evening’s entertainment and returning to the priory in a loud and disruptive manner; these boisterous brothers had no need of a tunnel but sneaked out through gaps in the priory fences. To put an end to such revelry the archbishop ordered immediate repairs to the priory precinct walls and fences and commanded that canons could only leave the priory grounds in pairs. As punishment to the whole community the archbishop forbade them meat on Mondays.

Quarrelsome priest

Enter Hugh de Farndon, a senior brother at Thurgarton, who took great exception to the archbishop’s interference and wrote a pamphlet attacking the Archbishop of York, Prior Adam and finally all his fellow canons. Hugh was labelled  intolerant, bad tempered and a destructive influence in the priory and was promptly imprisoned by the archbishop until he repented of his behaviour. Twenty years later however, in 1295, Hugh de Farndon was found wandering the countryside in a miserable plight. He was readmitted to Thurgarton Priory but not allowed into the cloister until penance was done – but in 1301 he was again a vagrant wandering the countryside. Such behaviour raises the question of Hugh’s mental health – or was he simply an embittered grumpy old man?  Whichever was true, in a small community such as Thurgarton Priory (probably not above 25 canons) such a disruptive individual as Hugh could have a disastrous effect on the morale of the house.

Factions and fighting

In 1284 there was a vacancy for the position of Prior at  Thurgarton but the canons could not agree on the choice of a new leader. One faction supported local man Alexander de Gedling but after two abortive elections Archbishop Wickwane of York lost patience with the priory and imposed his choice on Thurgarton. He appointed an outsider, Gilbert de Pontesburgh of Nostell Priory Yorkshire, whom he described as ‘a man provided with spirituality and other marked virtues’.

Prior Gilbert’s time at Thurgarton was not dull. In May 1286 he was accused of adultery with Margery, wife of Reginald Canum of Lowdham, but was found not guilty and was reinstated as Prior. A few weeks later a business meeting of the priory held in the chapel was disrupted by an outburst from Alexander de Gedling, the previous local contender for the position of prior, who used foul and scandalous language.  In 1290 another canon, Walter de Bingham, was guilty of a violent assault on a clerk, John de Sutton, and was excommunicated. Late in 1290 Prior Gilbert had understandably tired of Thurgarton; he resigned and returned to Nostell Priory to be replaced a month later by none other than Alexander de Gedling.

Financial mismanagement again

Alexander proved to be a poor administrator and by 1300 the priory was again in serious debt and being pursued in the courts by numerous debtors including the Sheriff of Nottingham. Alexander had attempted to illegally sell off priory lands in Derbyshire (an offence called ‘alienation’) and was deposed by the new Archbishop of York. The loss of the Prior only increased the debtors’ demands which almost led to a complete collapse of the priory’s finances, and the canons pleaded with the archbishop for the reinstatement of their old Prior – to no avail. The archbishop instigated strict financial control at Thurgarton with payment of debts and restrictions of expenditure; a regime which restored stability for the time being.

More troublesome priests

Walter de Bingham is a puzzling character. We have already noted his excommunication in 1290 for assault and he pops up in the records again in 1301 when he was accused of vagrancy – a shameful condition in mediaeval times especially in a priest. He was sent to Bolton Priory for a period of penance. Surprisingly he next appears in 1310 as Prior of St Oswald’s Priory in Gloucester where he remained in post for several years, was removed, reinstated and again removed, finally returning to Thurgarton in 1312. At  Thurgarton in 1315 he repeatedly failed to attend Mass and was ordered to do penance which included the recitation of seven Psalters over seven weeks and a strict diet of beer, bread and vegetables ( the withdrawl of meat was considered a great hardship).

In 1313 Brother Hugh de Eyrton was excommunicated for a violent assault on fellow canon Roger de Scaupwyck. Hugh should have sought penance from the Archbishop of York but instead journeyed to Rome to receive absolution of his sins from a cardinal. On return to Thurgarton he was subject to further penance by order of a disgruntled archbishop. In the same year another canon of Thurgarton, Robert de Morton, began to volubly question apostolic teaching and provoked ‘contention and brawling and frequent loud noises often provoking many to anger.’ Robert was sent to Bolton Priory and after due penance returned in the following year to Thurgarton.

Sins of the flesh

In 1315  Brother Henry of Norwell was guilty of adultery (‘incontinence’) with Agnes of Newark but more shocking was the behaviour of John de Rudestan. Appointed Prior in 1304, he was convicted of adultery in 1315 with one Alice Cade of Thurgarton.  In 1316 Prior John’s position became untenable when he was found guilty of financial mismanagement and fraud and  was duly deposed.

Balance restored

After 1316 a period of calm returned to the cloisters of Thurgarton. 1316 to 1320 were terrible years of cold wet weather leading to repeated crop failures, sheep and cattle plagues and a prolonged famine with enormous loss of life. It may be that the priests of Thurgarton were too busy ministering to their hard-pressed parishioners to waste time on petty quarrels. In 1328 a survey of the priory estate showed a healthy financial balance and evidence points to a period of new building in the church probably at the east end in the new Decorated Style. In 1340 the Prior of Thurgarton was sufficiently well respected to be appointed one of the county officers responsible for raising taxes for King Edward III.

Thurgarton was not alone in being the object of a bishop’s wrath and most religious houses were at some period in need of correction. The majority of brothers at Thurgarton Priory strove to lead peaceful and disciplined lives of prayer and but as always it was the exploits of the unruly few which stayed in the common memory of the local villagers and survived as stories of high living, secret tunnels and roistering monks.

Monk sampling a brew

Sources

T. Foulds, ‘The History of Thurgarton Priory before 1316’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, (1980)  pp.21-32.

D.Marcombe, J.Hamilton, (eds.) Sanctity and Scandal The Medieval Religious Houses of Nottinghamshire, University of Nottingham (1998)

This recent photograph shows Thurgarton village war memorial standing in the centre of a small enclosure surrounded by a low stone wall – all that remains of the village pinfold.  The building beyond the memorial, now a beauty salon, was built in the 1960s as a village shop – the Priory Stores

Opening of Priory Stores , proprietor Mrs Dulcie North

Special offers

It later doubled as the village post office as well as a shop.

Mr and Mrs Williams ran the shop for many years – this photo was taken at  their leaving party.

Mr and Mrs Williams

In the 1990s Brian Noble took over but sadly the Post Office was repeatedly targeted by robbers  -on one occasion armed with a shotgun.

Newspaper report 1995

 The last post master was Mr John Holland who continues his links with the village as Parish Clerk.

The Old Smithy

Before the shop and post office the site was occupied by the old village smithy.

The large building behind the smithy in this photograph was a Dutch barn which can be seen more clearly in the view below –it was demolished in the mid-20^th century.

The Milners were the last family of village blacksmiths to work at the forge. In the photograph below Harold Milner and son Douglas are shoeing a cart horse from Manor Farm owned by the Bentley brothers. Harold Milner recalled the dangers of working with horses –  he had been laid up for 3 months after being kicked by a horse but much worse was the fate of Robert Bentley of Manor Farm who had died aged 25 in 1915 after a horse kick at the forge.

The Milners shoeing a cart horse at Thurgarton smithy

The Milners lived across the main road from the forge in one of the cottages next to the Coach and Horses (now the pub kitchen).

 The smithy and cottages at Thurgarton cross roads.

Looking further back the smithy and pinfold are clearly seen in a map of 1882.

Map 1882

At the far end of the smithy in a small lean-to was the village fire engine – we have no record of it being used in earnest but fires were all too common in cottage chimneys and hay stores.

A map of 1799 again shows pinfold and smithy –

Map 1799

 — but in 1731 there was no forge but a much larger pinfold labelled ‘Pound’ on the map.

Map 1731

 The village pinfold

The original pinfold or pound was not only larger but its walls would have been higher for it served as a pen for stray livestock. Most parishes employed a Pinder whose duties included the impounding of stray animals in the pinfold; we have no record of a ‘Pinder’ in Thurgarton but the parish Constable probably took on these responsibilities. Stray animals were a constant problem in agricultural villages; besides the danger to human life and limb of a rampaging bull or horse, stray beasts could cause serious damage to crops in the old open field system. The old maps of Thurgarton show gates across the roads and lanes especially at the edge of the village plots  – such gates were used to control the movement of animals.

Once impounded a beast was not released to its owner until a fine was paid. One can imagine the many disputes between the farmers and the parish officers – there are numerous stories of farmers racing to the village pound to prevent their livestock being corralled or covert attempts to smuggle their beasts out of the pinfold at night without payment.

The pinfold was also used to impound household goods or farm tools of villagers who defaulted on paying their parish dues – the shame of such a public display of one’s affairs  usually led to a rapid settlement of arrears.

The Thurgarton pinfold became redundant in the late 1700s with enclosure of the parish fields; about the same time the village smithy, previously on Castle Hill, moved into the village centre occupying half of the old pinfold.

St. Pancras Station was the great London terminus for the Midlands Railway Company. Opened in 1868 it was the largest single span roof in the world and dominating the southern end of the concourse was the station clock.

St Pancras station 1960s with clock

Thousands of  couples must have arranged to meet ‘ under the clock’  and tens of thousands of  travellers glanced at it, some in panic, as they rushed to catch their train.

In the 1970s the station was in a sad state and British Rail planned to sell the  platform clock to a wealthy American for £250,000 but as it was being dismantled it fell and smashed into hundreds of pieces. In stepped Mr Roland Hoggard of Priory Farm, Thurgarton.  Roland was a railway guardsman and a clock enthusiast; he bought the clock fragments for a song and bit by bit carried them back to Thurgarton in his guards van. Over the next two years he painstakingly rebuilt the clock face on the side of his barn along with the clock mechanism.

30 years later St Pancras Station underwent a massive rebuild and modernisation scheme becoming the London Eurostar terminus. Dents of London and Smiths of Derby were contracted to recreate the old station clock – which led them to Priory Farm, Thurgarton and Roland’s barn. The old clock face was too fragile to reuse but it was the ideal template on which to base a replica.

Roland was present at the grand opening of the refurbished St Pancras Station by the Queen in 2007 ; Smiths of Derby laid on transport and Ian Thompson ( Roland’s neighbour) provided a bow tie.  Roland was now well over 90 years of  age and found it ‘rather a long day’.

The new station clock

  The handsome 18ft wide clock face once again dominates the station – but its only a copy. We’ve got the real one, here in Thurgarton

In 2013 Roland Hoggard died in his mid 90s and the surviving parts of the clock face , the hands and mechanism are now at nearby Upton Hall – the home of the British Horological Institute.

To see a video interview with Roland Hoggard see https://www.gettyimages.ae/detail/video/original-st-pancras-station-clock-restored-in-news-footage/669828850

Many parishes with a ready  source of clay have evidence of old brick or tile manufacturing – field names such as Brick Close or Tilekiln Meadow are obvious clues. Those who have walked the footpaths in the north of Thurgarton  parish on a wet day can testify that there is no shortage of clay in these hills and if you walk up the track  from the village past Hill Farm you pass  Tile House Meadow which lies on the right beyond the farmhouse.

Tile House Meadow  to east of Hill Farm –  field map of Thurgarton 1950s

The name can be traced back to the early 18^th century maps of the parish when it was known as Tile House Close —

Tile House Close in grey from 1730 map of Thurgarton

— and even further back to 1537, one year before the surrender of the Augustinian Priory, when Tylehouse Close was leased for four years by Prior John Barwick to William Freeman of Goverton. For the sum of £5 he had the right to cut brushwood, dig clay and carry sand, wood and coal – all essentials for tile production. The name ‘Tilehouse’ had evidently been in use for some time before this contract of 1537 which also mentions a right of access to and from the Tilehouse Close by the ‘old accustomed way’. There is no reliable indication of the duration of industrial activity on this site but it was certainly active through the middle decades of the 16^th century.

Aerial photographs of the site taken in the winter snows of 1963 show several irregular pits and humps covering an area of at least 2 acres. Some of the hollows may have been diggings for clay but others features may represent industrial buildings and kilns.

1963 aerial photograph of Tilehouse Close.

There has been no formal survey of this site but recent casual field walking after  ploughing confirmed a series of shallow pits and humps with numerous fragments of charcoal, furnace slag and tile. The tile fragments found were unglazed and appear to be of a functional type of roof and flooring  tile with no evidence of decoration.

Tiles from Tile House Close

Castle Hill

An earlier phase of tile making was discovered on Castle Hill just 300 m south of the Priory. Excavations on this site in the 1950-60s revealed a late Anglo-Saxon and an early Norman church with surrounding burials . The archaeologists also discovered a concentration of glazed tiles and slag. Several  fragments of tile had glaze on their broken surfaces, such ‘wasters’ usually resulted from damage or misfiring in the kiln.

Waster tile with glaze on broken edge from Castle Hill

The change from a religious to an industrial use of Castle Hill probably occurred by the 13^th century and tile making may have been part of the major building phase of the Priory. The tiles had a deep brown – greenish glaze possibly from the addition of lead and other minerals and were a mixture of curved and flat forms suggesting use for both roofing and flooring.

Curved tile from Castle Hill

Encaustic decorated tiles from Thurgarton Priory.

A few decorated ‘ encaustic’ tiles have been found in and around the Priory site and are typical of high class flooring found in major mediaeval buildings. They were probably made by travelling craftsmen and show distinctive  regional patterns. A vast  range of designs were created and anyone interested can view over 2000 such mediaeval tiles at http://tileweb.ashmolean.museum/.

Only a few tiles from Thurgarton Priory have survived and are shown below.

Crowned Edwardian head also found at Leicester Abbey

Alphabet tile

Some are too small to identify – this may be another crowned figure.

This last piece appears to be part of a seated child being held by an arm

and is probably a fragment of a tile depicting Mary and the infant Jesus.

Sources

http://tileweb.ashmolean.museum/.

BrewhouseYard Museum , Nottingham

Boots Archives, Boots Pure Drug Company

Department of Archaeology, Nottingham University.

English Heritage , NMR Swindon, SK6849/5 – aerial photograph.

T. Foulds, The Thurgarton Cartulary, Paul Watkins, Stamford (1994) pp. 28-9

In Caesar’s account of his second expedition to Britain in 54 BC he writes that ‘ the number of the people is countless, and their buildings exceedingly numerous’. This picture of a well populated countryside is supported by modern landscape surveys especially aerial photography such as those of the Trent Valley which reveal a remarkable concentration of crop marks.  The locations of those  in the mid-Trent Valley in Thurgarton and its neighbouring parishes are shown in Map 1.

Map1 (click on all images to enlarge)The crops marks close to Gonalston, were investigated by archaeologists in the 1990s. Their excavations revealed a complex of field systems, trackways, boundaries and settlements which dated mostly from Iron Age and Roman Britain – a continuous pattern of farming over several centuries. Fragments of Roman building material were also discovered suggesting that a villa once stood somewhere in the vicinity.  All these features now lie under the waters of a flooded gravel pit.

The crop marks at Thurgarton , Hoveringham, Bleasby and Fiskerton-cum- Morton show similar patterns to those at Gonalston but have not undergone such thorough investigation.

Crop marks – ancient field boundaries at Bleasby, Hoveringham and Thurgarton.This stretch of the Trent Valley was well served by major transport routes including the River Trent and the Fosse Way; goods and farm produce especially grain had a ready access to markets. Potentially this area should have yielded significant wealth but as yet there is nothing here to rival the great Roman villas and estates of the Cotswolds. However much excitement has been recently generated by new finds at Southwell; claims for a palatial villa or even a temple complex await a cool professional appraisal.

The southern half of the parish of Thurgarton, lying in the Trent Valley, was part of this landscape of intensive farming in Iron Age and Roman Britain, but what of the northern half of the parish? Here one finds rolling hills of clay soil from which drains a small stream – the Thurgarton Beck. Such heavy clay soil was traditionally thought to have been unworkable by ancient farming techniques and to have remained uncultivated as ancient woodland – but discoveries in the 1950s challenged such beliefs.

 The Valley of the Thurgarton Beck

In early 1952 deep ploughing of Wood Meadow, a small field in the north of Thurgarton parish, revealed numerous Roman tiles and pottery fragments. These finds were brought to the attention of Mr C. Coulthard a keen amateur archaeologist and microbiologist at Boot’s Research Centre at Thurgarton Priory. So began over 15 years of excavation of two Roman buildings- the first in Wood Meadow ( the Thurgarton villa) and later in Spoil’s Close 200 metres to the west over the parish boundary ( the Epperstone villa).

Thurgarton (1) and Epperstone (2) villas

Numerous archaeologists, amateur and professional, were involved in these excavations including Professors Swinnerton, Barley and  Revill, but no formal report of their findings was ever published. Notebooks, site diaries, photographs, catalogues and small finds are held at Nottingham University and at Boots Archives.

Members of Nottingham Field Archaeology Club at Wood Meadow 1950sThe description below of  the Thurgarton and Epperstone villas is based on these records and I’m grateful to Prof Lloyd Laing of Nottingham University for his expert advice on their interpretation. In addition three further sites are considered.

Site 1 Thurgarton villa

Site 2 Epperstone Villa

Site 3  Brockwood Farm – probable villa  

Site 4  Roman road

Site 5 Rectangular enclosure in Souther Wood.

 Map2 Five sites in the north of Thurgarton parish

Site 1 Wood Meadow -the Thurgarton Villa

Phase 1 – early 2^nd century AD,  possibly late 1^st century.

The first building on this site was a 14ft wide timber building of uncertain length with earth floors. The post holes were 4-5 ft apart arranged roughly in two parallel rows. Rebuilding was evident from several post holes which had been reworked for replacement timbers and a new series of posts based on skerry stone footings suggesting the addition of a corridor to the south side.

Phase 2  – 2^nd and early 3^rd centuries

A rectangular building 55ft by 24ft ; the lower walls were 2ft 6 in wide courses of local skerry stone topped by slabs supporting a timber superstructure.. There were three rooms, ( labelled rooms 2 to 4 in the site notes) –  rooms 2 and 4 were 17ft by 21 ft with earth floors and painted plaster walls. The central room 3 was smaller, 12ft by 21 ft, and had a concrete floor (opus signum) but no evidence of painted plaster.

Phase 3   –   3^rd century

 A 9ft, wide corridor was added to the south face of the building together with a central entrance porch 7ft. wide. Two rooms ( 1 and 5 ) were added to either end to form a winged corridor style of building. Some rooms contained large floor slabs and wall plaster. The roof was covered with Charnwood slates several of which had survived with their nail holes intact.

Charnwood roof slate from Thurgarton Villa exhibited at Chedworth Villa Museum.

Phase 4  – 4^th century

A hypocaust heating system was built on the east end of room 4 and the walls of room 5 were strengthened to bear the weight of an overlying bath suite. The hypocaust consisted of 28 pilae of skerry stone slabs, each 1ft square, lying on a concrete floor with a supporting cross wall. The stoke hole opened on the north-east corner of the house and the main flue had two subsidiary side branches.  Typical of such heating / bathing rooms there were numerous remains of box tiles, opus signum, tufa and also evidence of a lead water tank. Room 4 contained wall plaster decorated with multicoloured stripes.

Phase 5   –  late 4^th into 5^th century.

Parts of the building had collapsed and the hypocaust was in ruins. Room 3 however had a new floor and roof and in room 4 a working clay platform lay next to an hour-glass shaped furnace for metal working. Late Roman coins and pottery indicated a late 4th to early 5th century occupation- the pottery was similar to late Roman examples from Lincoln.

Two adult males had been buried in the building both in slabbed graves. One lay against the west wall of room 2 and was severely damaged but a second burial in the north-east angle of room 4 was complete; this grave was overlain by debris from the adjacent wall so the burial occurred when the wall was still standing. The building may have been in continuous occupation or may have been abandoned and reoccupied in the 5^th century.

Depiction of squatter occupation of derelict 5^th c  Roman villa

Site 2 – Spoils Close -the Epperstone Villa.

The excavation of this site was directed by Prof  S. Revill from 1959 to 1966.

Phase 1  Iron Age ditches

Undeneath the Romano-British buildings were a series of ditches , 3ft across and 2ft 6in deep, which  contained rather crudely made Iron Age pottery some with frilled rims typical of the local Trent Valley ware. Parts of the gullies had been packed with stones to support the overlying house. These pre-Roman ditches extended beyond the buildings and appeared to be part of an Iron Age field boundary which persisted as such into the Roman period.

Phase 2 Roman timber building

The first house on this site was a rectangular wooden hall based on 7-9in wide timber beam slots most of which had been destroyed by later phases of building. The associated pottery and coins suggest a late 1st century date for the building with occupation into the 2nd century.

Phase 3  Stone building with addition of an aisle.

A 90ft long stone building resting on stone footings and later enlarged by an aisle which was supported by a row of massive posts along the whole north-east front of the house

Phase 4 Heating and bathing system

A hypocaust was built into the south-west corner of the building and in the north-east corner a bathing suite which included a semicircular water tank paved with red and grey tiles (labrum) and a well preserved drainage system which ran outside down the slope to the east. A small wooden annexe with a lean -to roof was added to the south gable wall. There is good dating evidence that this house continued in use past 300 AD  but was abandoned in the following decade.

Epperstone villa about 300AD

Labrum at Epperstone villa.

Hypocaust- Epperstone villa

Small finds from Thurgarton and Epperstone villas  

The pottery finds at these two villa sites were reviewed by Prof J May of Nottingham University who found that the majority of pots were of coarse grey ware  and sandy calcite gritted ware of local manufacture similar to those found at neighbouring sites in the district and examples of which can be seen at Newark and Nottingham Museums.  Fine quality pottery either local or from more distant kilns was largely absent – there were a few scanty fragments of imitation Samian, Black Burnished and Nene valley wares. Later period pots of the 4th century included Dales and Derbyshire Ware and Crambeck style dishes. This was workaday pottery reflecting a modest lifestyle.

Grey Ware pot from Thurgarton

Coin of Constantius AD 324-337 – Thurgarton

Other small finds included  fragments of a glass bottle (1-2^nd century) and one large piece of window glass (3-4^th century). Metal objects included a cleaver, a simple key, several nails, a bronze bracelet and a figurine.

Bronze figurine sphinx now displayed in Nottingham University  Archaeology  Museum.

Site 3 Probable villa site

Site 4 Roman road

In 1940 Adrian Oswald reported a raised ridge which extended for over a quarter of a mile across the north of the valley. He cut a section across the ridge and discovered a raised gravel trackway flanked by 2ft 6in deep ditches. He thought it ‘ to be of some age and possibly Roman’.

He was of course unaware of the villa sites directly opposite on the south side of the valley. Aerial photographs taken during the excavation of the Epperstone villa show the road quite clearly in the centre of the photograph. The route of the road follows the valley contour westwards towards the third villa site by Brockwood Farm.A less obvious trackway can be seen branching from the road obliquely across the beck and directly towards the Epperstone villa site.

Roman road and villas -aerial photo 1950s

Site 5 Enclosure in Souther Wood

A further earthwork needs to be considered in this Iron Age /Roman landscape. 300 m south of the Thurgarton villa site in Souther Wood is a 40m by 60 m banked and ditched rectangular enclosure. It appears on aerial photographs of the 1950s when the western half of the wood was occupied by saplings.

The wood is now full of mature trees but the banks and ditches are clearly discernable especially on the north side of the earthwork where the double banks and ditches measure 2-3 meters across and over 1.5 meters in height.

This earthwork has similar features to several rectangular enclosures in the Trent Valley some of which are thought to have been fields or livestock corrals and others enclosures of hut circles. The proximity of this enclosure to the villas, roads and field boundaries presented above raise all these possibilities but at present this can only be speculation – obviously a site for future study.

Discussion

This Thurgarton site also provides evidence for what happened when the Romans finally withdrew from Britain in AD 400. The survival of Romano-British life into the 5^th century is most clearly seen in urban centres such as Silchester and Wroxeter; there are precious few examples of post-Roman life in small rural sites which makes the Thurgarton site all the more interesting – it merits further study.

A traveller who turned north along the Thurgarton Beck in Roman times would have found a well built track leading to a patchwork of small fields in which were set  farmhouses with outbuildings. In the post-Roman period the landscape reverted back to woodland and scrub and many centuries would pass  before this land was cultivated and a farmer’s plough turned up a few fragments of Roman Britain..

This article has avoided the usual Roman history of marching armies and fortified camps. Such events were no doubt witnessed by the locals working in the fields of Thurgarton, but for most of the three hundred years of life under Roman rule, the average Thurgartonian was preoccupied with the important things of life -a decent shelter, sufficient food, and when possible a sneak sip of the master’s wine and a dip in his hot tub.

Sources

Sources specific to Thurgarton

 Archaeology Department, University of Nottingham. Site diaries, notes, photographs, small finds from Thurgarton and Epperstone villas.

Boots ArchivesBound volumes of site diaries, photographs and finds catalogue from Wood Meadow excavations recorded by Mr C Coulthard.

A. Oswald, ‘Some Unrecorded Earthworks in Nottinghamshire’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, (1940) Vol.43, pp.13-4.

East Midlands Archaeology Bulletins – short reports from 1959 to 1969.

M. Todd,Short report on surface finds – East Midlands Archaeology Bulletin,Vol.11 (1969-70)

L. Elliot and D.Knight, ‘Further excavations of an Iron Age and Romano-British Settlement near Gonalston, Nottinghamshire’, Trans Thoroton Soc, 101, pp65-72.

General and regional sources

The Nottinghamshire Mapping Project , RCHM (1999) , NMR English Heritage

B. Cunliffe, Iron Age Communities in Britain, Routledge (1991)

G. De La Bedoyere, Roman Britain: A New History, Thames and Hudson, (2010)

S. Frere and J.K. St. Joseph, Roman Britain from the Air, Cambridge ( 1983)

D. Knight andA.Howard, (eds.), Trent Valley Landscapes, Heritage (2004)

M.Millett, The Romanisation of Britain, Cambridge (1990)

P. Salway, The Oxford Illustrated History of Roman Britain, Oxford (1993)

R.White and P.Barker, Wroxeter: Life and Death of a Roman City, Stroud (1998)

The daily routine of a mediaeval canon at Thurgarton Priory was punctuated by the  divine offices – Matins at midnight, Lauds at dawn, Terce at mid-morning, Sext at mid-day, None at mid-afternoon, Vespers in the evening and Compline around 9pm. In addition the brothers would celebrate Mass at least once per day at the high altar and at the many side altars where prayers and masses would be said for patrons and their families. The celebrations of Easter, Christmas and the numerous other high days and saint’s days in the church’s calendar meant even longer periods of prayer and worship.

Throughout the many long hours spent in these services the canons remained standing – a life of devotion may have been uplifting for the soul but was undoubtedly burdensome for the legs. The mercy seat or misericord was a choir stall with a hinged seat which when raised provided a  ledge on which the infirm or elderly brother could perch and take the weight off his legs but still appear to be standing.

15th century misericords  from Thurgarton Priory – seat down and seat raised.

A wealth of mediaeval carved figures adorn the underside of misericord seats. Favoured subjects included biblical scenes, saints lives, popular fables and morality tales, animals real and mythological, and numerous scenes from everyday life.  All aspects of the mediaeval world can be found in these carvings from ribald humour and satirical commentary to lessons in morality and visions of the sacred – from the farmyard to the gates of heaven.

Details of carvings on Thurgarton misericords

Left hand seat – a gowned figure seated on a scroll and flanked by foliage

Central seat – face with beard , moustache and hat  flanked by two faces.

Seat on right – foliage

 The arm rests bear angelic figures

and a seated figure who appears to be deep in thought

A separate fragment of a misericord seat survives which depicts two wrestlers who bear a remarkable similarity to Cumberland wrestlers.

Mediaeval wrestlers

Cumberland wrestlers -Victorian

Although somewhat crudely carved these figures have a directness and energy.

– close up one could be face to face with a canon or a master mason?

Sources

G.L.Remnant, A Catalogue of Misericords in Great Britain, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1969. (with an essay on Iconography of Misericords by M. D. Anderson F.S.A.)

www.misericords.co.uk

Most religious houses kept a written record of all the lands and property donated to them by generations of patrons; such endowments were initially recorded in separate charters (carta) copies of which were collected into a major register or ‘cartulary’. These cartularies were a lasting record of property rights and were frequently consulted to settle the many ownership disputes of mediaeval society.

Page from the Thurgarton Cartulary – 1328 survey of the priory’s estate ( click on images to enlarge)

The contents of monastic libraries were deliberately destroyed at the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530-40s but cartularies were useful legal documents and many survived. One such survivor was the Cartulary of Thurgarton Priory which is now held at the Nottinghamshire County Archives. At the surrender of the priory it passed to the new owners, the Cooper family, and in 1677 Cecil Cooper of Thurgarton Priory donated it to the library at Southwell Minster.

Cecil Cooper’s gift to Southwell Minster 1677  – detail from flyleaf of Thurgarton Cartulary

Here it remained until the 1950s when it underwent much needed restoration and transfer to the safekeeping of the county archivists.

Thurgarton Cartulary before and after restoration in 1956

Pity the scribe

Generations of scribes were employed to copy mediaeval records. Many religious houses contained a library or scriptorium where these highly trained craftsmen having prepared parchment, pen and ink would spend long cold hours diligently copying the monastic documents.

The Thurgarton Cartulary was written in the early 1300s and contains over a thousand charters relating to property and land mainly in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire. Experts have detected the hand of three scribes who worked on different sections. The bulk of the text was written in brown ink but  major sections were marked by capital letters embellished in red and blue ink as seen in the decorated ‘S’ below.

Decorated capital ‘S’

The scribe was therefore given some scope to express his creative talent in the decoration of capital letters and headings – but some restraint was necessary for ink and vellum were expensive and legal documents were not works of art. However  boredom or a sense of mischief must have led to many of the doodles that crept into these documents.

Capital ‘O’s were easily modified into faces

Other capitals lent themselves to a variety of faces drawn in profile

Some bird like

— or jesters

— or devilish

— or plain ugly

 Are these cartoons of real people in the priory or fantasy figures? Stonemasons and woodcarvers were known to portray their fellow craftsmen or superiors in a whole gamut of figures from the respectful and heroic down to the bizarre and the downright rude. Such work was easily hidden in the less obvious nooks and crannies of a huge building but the scribe’s work was open to inspection and the wise scribe was more circumspect.

The doodle below speaks for itself .

Sources

 Nottinghamshire County Archives   SC / 12 / 1  Thurgarton Cartulary

T. Foulds, The Thurgarton Cartulary, Paul Watkins, Stamford (1994). 

This scholarly book is an essential source to anyone interested in mediaeval Thurgarton or in Thurgarton Priory or its Cartulary.

How to defend Thurgarton from the Nazis was not the preoccupying concern for Churchill in 1940-1 but it was for the 300 souls living in the village. A recently released map of 1941 shows army plans for just such an event – click on maps to enlarge.

A total strength of 37 men was deployed to three main sites in the village.

Site 1

The main strongpoint was sited on the edge of the village at the top of Thurgarton Hill. In the hedge of the White House were 10 riflemen in a trench alongside a Lewis machine gun crew overlooking the main road towards Southwell. A headquarters lay in the field behind the White House with 10 riflemen in reserve. Another 3 riflemen were posted in a trench south of the road along the footpath by the vicarage.

Site 2

Half way up Thurgarton Hill in the cutting just above the Red Lion the main road was blocked. On the north of the road four men armed with rifles and grenades directly overlooked the road block in the cutting below them. Four further riflemen manned a trench on the opposite side of the road, overlooking the Bleasby Road  which also had a road block next to the chapel.

Site 3

Five men armed with rifles and grenades were to take up a position in the garden of  Hollows Cottage  looking directly down the deep cutting of Priory Road as it turns up from the cricket pitch.

The men would almost certainly have been the local Home Guard members of which are seen in the photograph below. Their weapons were mainly old issue guns such as Enfield rifles and the Lewis light machine gun. The bombs were grenades and AWs – the latter were bottles filled with phosphorus which on impact shattered in a sheet of flame; a step up from the Molotov Cocktail they were used as anti-tank weapons.

C company  11th Newark Btln,  Home Guard  

One of the great ‘what ifs’ of 20^th century British history is the outcome if German troops had managed to cross the Channel in numbers. Stalwarts of the Home Guard will tell you that over 1.5 million riflemen were ready for them but if they had succeeded in reaching the defences of  Thurgarton then for the British the future would have been bleak – or would it ? Maybe Thurgarton would have been the turning point.

Source

Notts Archive Office DD/NM/3/1/3/8

Very few of the travellers who speed through Thurgarton on the A612 will notice the Old Rectory, a handsome white house set in beautifully manicured grounds next to the main road. This article looks at the history of the house and of some of the families who lived there.

The house and grounds are first reliably recorded in a map and survey of 1731  commissioned by Trinity College, Cambridge who were granted Thurgarton village and the southern half of the parish by Henry 8th in 1541.

Map 1  1731

Moated Manor House

The house and grounds are highlighted in map1. It was the largest property in the village, second to the Priory, and contained a house, yard , barns, stables, dovecote, garden, orchard and a home close or croft bordered on the north by a moat (blue in map1). The survey refers to the homestead as College Farm and the house  which was built of brick and tile as The Manor House.  Almost certainly this is the house referred to in Thoroton’s History of Nottinghamshire  ‘Mr John Cooper built a brick house in the middle of the town on one of the farms’ . John Cooper was a staunch Royalist in The Civil War ( see article on Thurgarton in the Civil War). He returned from exile with the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 and died in 1672. His older brother Cecil lived at the Cooper mansion, Thurgarton Priory, and presumably John built The Manor House for himself sometime between 1660 and 1672. It would have replaced an earlier farm house of which we have no record.

In 1730 the Manor House and farm had recently changed hands, the previous tenant, Henry Moore had moved to Morton and the new tenant was John Brettle (misspelt Bretton in map 1). A succession of John Brettles occupied the Manor House from the 1730s up to the 1840s.

The Brettles of Thurgarton

The Brettles were an extensive Thurgarton family who rose from relative poverty to become one of the wealthiest farming families in the district. The first Brettle in parish records is Nicholas who in the first decade of the 1600s served as a juryman in the manor court and rented a modest cottage and landholding from the College. Numerous Brettles subsequently appear in the parish records and whilst it is not the intention of this article to trace an accurate family tree at least two Brettle households emerge in the 17^th century.

17th century.

 The first family was that of Thomas Brettle who died c 1665. He was a blacksmith and in his will he left over £50, clothes, pots and pans and a feather bed to his two daughters and the rest of his estate to his older son Mark. The younger son John got the family Bible!  Son Mark evidently did well with property at Thurgarton and Upton which he divided between his two sons, Matthew and John, in his will of 1705.

The second household is that of another John Brettle who did even better for himself. He was one of the larger farmers in the parish but farming was not his only source of wealth. His will of 1701 lists a remarkable number of outstanding debts owed to him by prominent members of county society. In the 17^th century.  Before the establishment of a modern banking system, a source of ready cash was often a problem even for wealthy landowners and  John Brettle evidently had sufficient cash to become a money lender. An impressive total of over £1400 was owed to him by several members of the gentry including Cecil Cooper of Thurgarton Priory and Lord Howe of Epperstone (we don’t know what interest was charged on these loans). This John Brettle described himself as a’yeoman’ – a step up from a farmer but not quite a gentleman. He appears not to have married or left any children and his estate passed to his two nephews William and Henry Forest who had the task of reclaiming their uncle’s debts (Henry lived at Priory Farm).

18^th century  The Brettle family’s good fortune continued into the 18^th century and again two main households of Brettles can be traced in Thurgarton. John and Grace Brettle at The Manor House , John was the largest farmer in the parish renting over 100 acres. Thomas and Mary Brettle lived at a homestead which is now The Hollows on Priory Road; Thomas also rented a considerable acreage of land. Thomas and John Brettle served for many years as church wardens and evidently were promiment members of the parish establishment.

Map of lands rented in Thurgarton parish by John and Thomas Brettle 1731

 The village survey and map of 1799 shows a John Brettle living at The Manor House  now described as an old brick and tiled house with barn, stable, dovecote and other outbuildings; his land holdings had increased to over 200 acres of arable and pasture land.

1799 map with detail of  Manor House

19^th century –the last of the Brettles in Thurgarton

In an 1813 survey the Brettles had built a new extension to the house which can be seen on a later map of 1845.

1845 map with enlarged house ( 74 on map)

The last John Brettle to live at The Manor House died aged 65 in 1829; his widow Mary lived on for another 11 years (her grave stone lies on the floor of the chancel in St Peter’s church). The Brettles were now wealthy with interests in land, malting  and the Southwell bank of Wylde Bolger and Brettle. The Brettle fortune went to their daughters one of which (another Mary) in 1826 married the Rev. Thomas Coates Cane the son of a wealthy Southwell clergyman.  With this marriage the Brettles had finally reached the social status of gentlefolk ; over a span of two centuries they had climbed the social ladder from cottager to farmer to yeoman to gentleman.

The newly married couple were wealthy and built Brackenhurst Hall as their new family home in 1828; they would have need of a large house for by 1850 they had nine children and more to come.  This large house overlooking Southwell is now an Agricultural College and  part of Nottingham Trent University.

One of  Thomas and Mary’s grandchildren was General Edmund Allenby, one of the more effective British military leaders of World War 1. Nowadays he is best known for the exploits of one of his junior officers, T.E.Lawrence of Arabia, but at the time Allenby was the celebrity. The liberation of the Holy Land from the Ottoman Empire was viewed by many as an event of biblical importance and Allenby’s entrance into Jerusalem one of the most famous photographs of the time.

General Allenby enters Jerusalem

Manor House to Parsonage

In 1848 the vicar of Thurgarton died – he was the Rev. Thomas Becher who had resided at Southwell and was an uncommon visitor to his flock at Thurgarton or indeed to several other parishes in the country where he held the church living.  The livings of Thurgarton and nearby Hoveringham were controlled by Trinity College Cambridge who in 1848 decided to combine the two so that ‘ the joint living so augmented would render it acceptable to a fellow of the College’.  Trinity College Cambridge was a mainstay of the established church and churned out generations of Anglican clergymen  – usually the younger sons of the gentry.

1848 plan, the house is unchanged from 1845 but the outbuildings largely cleared

The local agent for Trinity College was a Mr T S Woolley who suggested building a new stable and coach house to the north-west of the house next to Beck St. The Manor House  was described as part old with low ceilings and part modern especially a new living room and study. There are few details of the alteration to the house but it was reduced in size and may have acquired a new roof of slate (a fashionable roofing material at the time).

Map of 1882 shows the parsonage and outbuildings.

In 1848 the Rev. Henry Lea Guillebaud  MA became the first vicar of Thurgarton and Hoveringham to live at the parsonage.  The son of a Somerset clergyman of Huguenot descent he had followed his father’s footsteps into the church after gaining a MA at Trinity College Cambridge in 1841. He married in his late 30s and he and wife Jemima raised five children at Thurgarton. He left the village in 1872 shortly after establishing the Church of England village school.

In 1873 the Rev. Atwell Mervyn Yates Baylay  MA  moved in as the new vicar along with his young wife Alice followed by the arrival of three sons and then four daughters. They remained in Thurgarton for 47 years, retiring in 1920. Atwell Baylay was a keen historian (vice president of  the Thoroton Society ) and an acknowledged expert on liturgy and ancient church music; he translated and edited Batiffol’s Histories of the Roman Mass and the Breviary and was the author of  A Century of Collects (Alcuin Club publications).

Rev Atwell Baylay

In character he was a reserved scholarly man, somewhat distant and other worldly but unfailing in his priestly duties. He great love of church music meant a busy time for the choristers with frequent rehearsals including his own arrangements of ancient chants and masses. Two of his sons served in the forces in World War 1 and Charles (baptised by his father in 1876) was killed in action in 1917 and is commemorated on the village war memorial.

Over the following 20 years three further vicars of Thurgarton and Hoveringham lived at the parsonage  – 1920 Vincent Taylor Kirkby MA, 1928 William Basil Evans and 1935 George Herbert Halstead. The Rev. Halstead found the house too large and difficult to run and so a new modern vicarage was built on Thurgarton Hill.

The Old Rectory -private house

The parsonage passed through several tenants during the war following which it was purchased by the Wigley family who sold ‘The Old Rectory’ as it was renamed, to the Farr family in the 1960s.

Hordern Farr was a director of The Home Ales Brewery in Daybrook, Nottingham and a keen sportsman. He had an impressive amateur record at football and enjoyed tennis and shooting but it was cricket that remained his life long passion and he served as president of the village cricket club.

A tennis court and outdoor swimming pool appeared in the grounds of the Old Rectory.

Over the 25 plus years that the Farr family lived at The Old Rectory the house and gardens hosted numerous Garden Fetes and Strawberry Teas raising funds for charity.

Garden Fete at The Old Rectory

 Hordern Farr sadly died in his 50s; his wife Jenny and their three children continued a close energetic involvement in village life and Jenny also served as president of Thurgarton Cricket Club.

Jenny Farr and members of Thurgarton Cricket Club

The Farr family left the village in the late 1980s since when the house has passed through the hands of several families. A large house, Rectory Cottage, has been built on the site of the tennis court but otherwise the buildings and grounds are essentially unchanged from the old parsonage of 1848.

Modern view of Old Rectory – Google Earth

Sources

R. Thoroton,  Antiquities of Nottinghamshire1677, edited 1790 by J.Throsby, p.60.

Thurgarton parish archives

K.  Train,  History of Brackenhurst Hall

Trinity College, Cambridge Archives , Box 37 , Thurgarton estate

Historians have traditionally concentrated on the ‘top’ families of society, the movers and shakers of their times, but it was the ordinary householders who wove the real fabric of village life. In the case of Thurgarton it was those families who for  generations had toiled as farm labourers; one could choose many examples but here is one family – the Featherstones.

Arthur Featherstone and horse team in a ploughing match 1950s

Arthur and his wife Elsie lived at Bramley Cottage on Bleasby Road; they had no children and were the last of several generations of  Featherstones who lived in Thurgarton. The Featherston(e) name first appears in the Thurgarton parish records in 1711.

18^th century

1711  marriage   6 May  George Brunt and Jane Featherston

1721  marriage  20 August   Henry Featherston and Eliz Bettison

Gravestone of Elizabeth wife of Henry Featherston 1777 Thurgarton churchyard.

The next entry for a Featherstone in the parish records is that of 9 July 1727 – the  baptism of  Henry base son of Mary Featherston.

Illegitimacy was not uncommon and most cases were recorded in the stark words ‘ base born’.   Besides questions of morality the main concern for the parish authorities was financial – who would support the single mother and child?  In 1727 the responsibility rested on the parish and each villager paid into a local parish fund for the support of needy parishioners – the parish Poor Rate. The identity of the child’s father would have been  vigorously pursued by the parish officers especially the Overseer of the Poor. If single the man was often ‘persuaded’ to marry and provide for the new family – to the relief of both the village’s moral majority but more importantly to the parish rates.

The church wardens’ records of 1727 mention one Joseph Hall as the child’s father but no  marriage took place . Three years later Mary married Richard Stubbins – 1730, 2^nd March  marriage between  Richard Stubbins and Mary Fetherstone. Richard and Mary lived on Beck Street in the cottage that is now called Appletree Cottage; he paid £3-18-10 per year in rent for his house and two acres of land.

House and orchard of Richard Stubbins -1730

They had six children of which only three survived. In 1733, 1734 and 1737 Mary gave birth to a daughter; each one was baptised with the name Elizabeth but none survived beyond infancy. Estimates of infant mortality in the 18^th century for England vary somewhat – about 1 in 3 children died before reaching the age of 1 year. The repeated use of the same Christian name, as seen with Elizabeth in the Featherstone family above, was quite a common practice. At the same period the Hart family of Old Farm, Thurgarton had three daughters each christened Anne of  which only one survived- the Harts were yeoman farmers but wealth evidently did not protect against the loss of a newborn child.

Richard Stubbins died in 1760 and Mary in 1770.

19^th century

Edward Featherstone was a farm labourer and married to Hannah.

1825 baptism 13 Nov Anne and Mary to Edward and Hannah Featherstone –labourer Anne died at 2 days and Mary at 8 days

1827 baptism 18 July Edward son of Edward and Hannah Featherstone – labourer

1829 baptism 23 Nov John son of Edward and Hannah Featherstone – labourer

1832 baptism 22 Jan  Mary dau of Edward and Hannah Featherstone  -labourer

In 1825 Hannah gave birth to twin girls, Anne and Mary, but sadly both died within a few days. Infant mortality remained high through the early 1800s and twin births especially in winter were very vulnerable. Within a few years Edward and Hannah were the parents of three sons, William, Edward and John, and a daughter, Mary, who was born in January 1832.

Edward Featherstone earned 12 shillings per week as a farm labourer with an extra 2 shilling in the longer working days of the summer harvest.  He paid an annual rent of £3 for a cottage and garden. Remarkably the Featherstones had £ 25-19-1 in a savings bank in Southwell. This was a considerable sum for a labourer’s family and  implies a hardworking and thrifty household with some hope of betterment.

Tragically Hannah died in June 1832 at the age of 36 years leaving Edward to raise four young children the youngest only 6 months old. A mere three months later in September 1832 the burial of Edward Featherstone is recorded in the parish register –he was 31 years old. We have no details of the cause of death for Hannah or Edward but in Edward’s case one can speculate on his state of mind after the loss of his wife.

Once again the parish was faced with the question – who would care for the children , William aged 9, Edward 6, John 4 and the baby Mary ?

In 1832 the poor of the parish were the responsibility of the Poor Law Guardians. The fate of these newly orphaned children lay with such men as Thurgarton’s  vicar, Thomas Becher of Southwell, a vigorous proponent of the  parish workhouse system and Richard Milward the squire of Thurgarton . What happened to the £25 in the bank is not known.

Southwell Workhouse

The register of Southwell Workhouse for 1833-6 records the fate of Edward and John.

Edward Featherstone aged 7 and John Featherstone aged 5  orphans, both inmates of Southwell Workhouse.

William the oldest boy was evidently old enough to work as a farm boy (see below) but we have no further information on the baby Mary – she may have been adopted.

The life of an orphan in 19^th century workhouses varied from the awful extremes of a Dickensian novel to more enlightened regimes of care and usually depended on the attitudes of the Board of Guardians and the personalities of the Master and Matron. The workhouse at Southwell was based on a harsh regime which discouraged the ‘feckless poor’ from seeking admission. The Featherstone boys were orphans and would have been regarded as the ‘blameless poor’ ; nevertheless they would have been subjected to strict discipline and an education designed to make them fit for work suitable to their class. 

We next pick up the three Featherstone boys in the 1841 census.

John Featherstone aged 11 farm servant at Bankwood Farm Thurgarton William Featherstone aged 15 andEdward Featherstone aged 14 farm servants at Hill Farm, Thurgarton.

Bankwood and Hill Farms are about 1 mile apart and in 1841 were owned by Richard Milward ( Chairman of the Board of Guardians at the workhouse) and were occupied by tenant farmers. The census records several farm servants aged 15 or less at both farms.  There is overwhelming evidence of the cruel exploitation of workhouse children as cheap labour in the factories and mills of England and it would be easy to portray the fate of these three Featherstones boys as yet another example of such practices but one cannot be certain of their circumstances. They at least were returned to their home parish and lived close together and whilst wages would have been low they were provided with board and lodging and a form of apprenticeship as farm workers.

Only John the youngest boy can be traced further through the parish records. In the 1860s he and his family received 2s twice a year from the church charity fund. He continued to work as a farm labourer and appears in the census returns of 1871 and 1881 – he lived at Hill Top Cottage above the Red Lion Pub.

1871 census John Featherstone aged 42 Agricultural labourer and wifeMary 38, sons John 8 and William 6 and daughter Harriet 2

1881 census John Featherstone aged 52 Labourer, wife Mary 47, Harriet 12

20^th century

The younger son William continued to work as a farm labourer and remained at Hill Top Cottage where he and wife Mary raised a large family seen in the following census records.

1901 census  William Featherstone aged 36 Labourer, Mary wife 28, Jessie 8, Annie 4, William 2, Arthur 9 months

1911 census  William Featherstone aged 46 Stockman, wife Mary 38, Jessie 18, Arthur 10, Edith 8, Mary 6

1906 school photo Thurgarton includes 1 Arthur, 2 Jessie, 3 Annie and 4 ? William Featherstone

Two Featherstone boys served in the forces in World War 1. One of the boys was tragically killed at Bankwood Farm in the 1930s when he was caught by the drive belt of a threshing machine.

Arthur and Elsie Featherstone

Arthur had started working life as a chauffeur at Thurgarton Priory but then worked for many years for farmer John Thornton who owned Old Farm in Thurgarton. One of his main duties was ploughing with a team of shire horses. He and Arthur Crowder of Beck St would rise at 5am; after feeding, watering and harnessing, the horses were led out to till the arable fields with a single blade plough. It was a long day of backbreaking work in all weathers. Not surprisingly he left farming in later life and took up a less physically demanding job at the nearby Hoveringham Gravel Company as a loco driver; his friend Arthur Crowder followed him a few years later.

Arthur Crowder at Hoveringham Gravel Works

Elsie Featherstone, known as ‘Feathers’ to her neighbours, had worked as a maidservant at Thurgarton Priory. She was a formidable woman. A keen gardener she was much annoyed by her neighbour planting a stand of poplar trees which shaded her vegetable plot, and she took to a nightly covert ritual of shaking the trees vigorously which eventually succeeded in killing them off.

Arthur was a quiet man, sober and careful with his money – one wonders whether the family stories of hardship and poverty moulded his attitudes. If one inspects the photograph of Arthur and his horse team in the ploughing match one can see from the immaculate preparation of the horses and his concentration that here was a man who took pride in his work and no doubt some pleasure in a job well done.

The Featherstones were not unusual, their story and similar ones can be found throughout the countryside but it was such households who formed the backbone of rural communities in England.

Sources

1 Thurgarton Parish Register of Baptisms, Burials and Marriages.

2 Trinity College Cambridge Archives Box 37 on Thurgarton Map and Survey of 1731

3 1832 Report of Poor Law Commissioners including J Cowell’s visit to Thurgarton

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qqbeAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=cowell+poor+law+commissioner+report+thurgarton&source=bl&ots=frtH6m4eXZ&sig=pGwpDROwrpEfXNRdgJJsN9rPEeQ&hl=en&ei=AXEbTZKWBcaahQfLnPi4Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCwQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

4  Records of Southwell Workhouse at Nottinghamshire Archives

NAO DDX71 Edward Featherstone aged 7 an orphan in Southwell Workhouse

NAO DX 71 John Featherstone aged 5  an orphan in Southwell Workhouse

5 S. Fowler, Workhouse The People. The Places. The Life behind Doors, National Archives, Kew ( 2007)

6 Personal communication Sid Crowder