Summary of important things
- Proximity to Ouse and Trent, association of settlement with water borne transport.
- Saxon origins.
- Circular shape St John the Baptist churchyard.
- Figure-of-eight street plan (Front Street, Back Street and Cross Street ), established by the 18th century.
- Modest buildings share a common use of limestone and red brick with pantiled roofs.
- Green verges in the streets, mature trees and farmyards contained within the fabric of the village.
- Two nationally important ancient monuments - Julian’s Bower, and Countess Close.
- Walcot, by contrast, is a typical country estate with the old and new houses of the 17th and 18th centuries set in parkland with the home farm.
Brief History of Settlement
A settlement has existed here since at least late Saxon times, as fabric in the base of the church tower attests. There was also a separate settlement at Walcot from the Middle Ages.
Two early surviving features – Countess Close and Julian’s Bower – have given rise to speculation about the origins of the village. In the 18th century it was speculated that Countess Close could be a Roman entrenchment, although it is now considered to have been a fortified medieval steading. The turf maze, Julian’s Bower, has also been described as Roman, more recent historical research has ascribed it to the early 13th century.
Alkborough developed an agricultural economy, which, by the 17th century, had generated sufficient wealth to justify the building of Walcot Old Hall. Enclosure in the 1760s established the existing pattern of the village with several farms fronting the main streets rather than being isolated on their holdings.
Enclosure also coincided with the building of Walcot Hall by Thomas Goulton who, with his successors, was a significant patron of the village. The Goultons provided an infants’ school, later succeeded by their gift of the existing village school of 1874. They also provided a Reading Room in 1882 and the land for the 1905 Burial Ground.
In addition to the Church of St John the Baptist, Alkborough also supported a Primitive Methodist Chapel, built in 1827, and a Wesleyan Chapel of 1840. This is despite the population reaching a peak of 468 in 1851, which was not significantly exceeded until the late 20th century.
Until the late 19th century, Alkborough was connected as much by water as it was by road, with regular steam packets to Goole, Hull and Gainsborough.
The modernisation and intensification of farming has lead to the addition of more recent buildings to the existing farmyards and the demise of local services, such as the wheelwright, and newer housing has infilled gaps in the village streets. Local authority housing from the early 20th century has developed to the east of the village, while further housing later in the century has extended the village to the north.
Countess Close and Julian’s Bower are afforded legal protection as scheduled ancient monuments. Pre-dating the Countess Close earthwork, finds from the adjacent field of a large quantity of pottery sherds dating from the 1st to 4th centuries AD indicate that a Romano-British settlement occupied this area. In 1931, a pot containing a small hoard of Roman coins was dug up just to the south at Walcot Hall. We have evidence for several other settlements dating to the late Iron Age and Romano-British periods (100BC- 409AD) dotted along the high ground overlooking the Rivers Trent and Ouse.
Evidence for earlier prehistoric occupation was uncovered when a new drive from Walcot Hall was being constructed in 1920 and an Early Bronze Age (2350BC-1501BC) beaker vessel was found together with a boar’s tusk and burnt bone. At Kell Well just outside the conservation area at Walcot, flint arrowheads and other implements of the Neolithic period (4000BC-2351BC) including a stone axehead have been picked up.
The earthworks of the deserted medieval village at Walcot are now mostly ploughed out and are only visible on aerial photographs; the site has produced limestone building rubble and quantities of medieval and post-medieval pottery. The foundations of a medieval building were discovered during the construction of the southern end of the driveway to the Hall. These could be the remains of the house occupied by the priest who lived close to Walcot Chapel and cemetery, which was built in 1147AD by the Abbot of Peterborough and maybe located somewhere nearby in the Park.
Physical evidence for the medieval settlement of Alkborough has come from the site at College Farm, adjacent to Countess Close. Here, building debris of limestone, tile, burnt stone and areas of clay floors were uncovered when a pasture close was ploughed up in the 1960s. The pottery finds demonstrate that these house sites were occupied from the 13th to 16th centuries. This may previously have been the site of a small cell of Benedictine monks founded in 1052AD by Spalding Priory. The monks were recalled to Spalding in 1220AD.
Alkborough conservation area appraisal