The Land
What about the land of the parish? Fields are the most familiar feature of the English landscape, except in the most rugged moorland areas. Indeed, they are so common place we don’t stop to think about them, and we take them for granted until they begin to disappear as the have in huge acreage in the parish of Adwick-Le-Street, there maybe more people but there is a lot less ground to stand on.
Each part of England has fields and boundaries typical of its area; from the irregular shaped bank-bounded fields of Devon, the ditched fields of the Fens, the geometrical fields of the Midlands and the dry stoned walls of the northern valleys.
The history of our fields is directly related to farming needs and abilities. Farming is dependent on the soil and the lie of the land, which the underlying rocks provide. So we must, therefore begin our search by looking what is beneath the fields.
The Parish of Adwick lies on a narrow belt of magnesium limestone running from north to south. This belt of limestone has not only influenced its agriculture and to some extent its field pattern, but has had its influence on the major events in Adwick’s history as we shall see. This belt of limestone was formed as part of the great Pennine outline, and is a layer of tilted rock buried by the sands and loam of the low lying York plain to the east, and giving way to the coal measures in the west (which have been exhausted for quite some time now). On the West side there is a steep scarp slope, which is noticeable, for example at Hooton Pagnall and Barnborough cliffs. The long dip slope is easily seen in the ascent from the railway line in Adwick up to the “Rig” where the Colliery yard, in Woodlands once was.
This belt of limestone is, in our area cut through quite dramatically by the River Don at Sprotborough, almost as dramatic as the River Went at Wentbridge, and without fuss our very own Ea Beck at Hampole. In addition the dip slope minded streams of its own, as Adwick’s southern boundary in Langthwaite Dike and also now Highfields Lake, as well as the Skelbrooke further North. This provides us with a multitude of springs and wells, not to mention our water supply. The Town’s Well at Hampole, Robin Hoods Well and the Pump well originally sited at Adwick’s Village Street..
Notice, therefore, that limestone provides us with three important requirements for the farmer to work and settle.
1. Good, well drained soil
2. Easy gradients
3. Plentiful water supply
A fourth feature of our area was communication. The limestone belt, away from the wide rivers and the flood plains of the Vale of York and Humber, was the most effective dry land route north to south on the eastern side of the Pennines. Along the scarp side and through Hampole there still runs a prehistoric track way. The Romans built their roadway north along the same belt, and turnpike and motorways have followed suit. Route ways attract settlement, encourage trade and need staging posts.
So this leads to the question, When was this area first settled and what kind of farming and fields might we have seen?. Well, here, in the main, we can only make observations from evidence from the country as a whole, remembering that if any farming was to be done, this area had certain features of advantage.
It may be a good idea to look at a rough time scale….approximately 1000 years ago – Doomsday book……. 2000 years ago- The Roman Invasion. It was 5000 or more years ago that the farming revolution of the New Stone Age or Neolithic peoples reached England. Before this date we have to think in terms of small groups of nomads (Mesolithic peoples) who hunted wild animals such as deer, cattle and pig, fished in the rivers and gathered nuts and fruits and berries, but seemed to have domesticated the dog.
The Neolithic revolution saw the beginning of cultivating cereal crops. Excavations on Neolithic sites have bones of cattle and sheep, suggesting domesticated herds. Microscopic investigation of the soil from these site points to a massive clearance of woodland in England around 3000 BC. The evidence of Neolithic people in this area comes from flint head finds.
The knowledge of metal working spread to these islands about 2000 BC and with improved tools for farming; axes knives, sickles etc. This was the bronze age. A possible bronze age site was discovered in Adwick by aerial photography near the Red House Cemetery. So there is some evidence that farming type people settled in the area.
Bronze age gave way to the iron age which came around 1000 BC or possibly a little later, and to the dominance of the Celtic people throughout the British Isles and Northern Europe..
It is now becoming apparent that over much of prehistoric Britain, the picture was not one of small groups of people living in isolation, cultivating a few piecemeal fields, but a large number of farmers living fairly closely together, cultivating large tracts of land. The factors we have seen that favour Adwick as an agricultural area, point to the strong possibility the parish of Adwick was extensively cultivated by Celtic farmers.
Part of the attraction of the Roman Invasion of Britain was its agriculture and its wheat exports the Romans wanted to acquire.
Now although the Romans imposed a political system on this country they built towns and roads throughout most of England the agricultural basis of society was largely unchanged. The Iron age estates became Roman estates, still controlled by descendents of their prehistoric owners, while the individual fields continued to be cultivated by the children of the Iron age peasants. Clues to Adwick’s Roman period could lie in the “wick” part of the name, it could have likely been derived from “vicus” which means Roman settlement outside town as the Danish for dairy farm. 45 degrees north of the church gives us a clue as to the older origins of the parish. We do have proof of Roman settlement as coins dating from that period have been found in this area..
There is a theory that the Roman estates were taken over by their Saxon invaders, and these Saxon estates were to become the basis of later parishes. So many parish boundaries may give clues to the estates of Roman Villas. Note the boundary of Adwick-Le- Street is two sides’ streams and the third side is a Roman road….boundaries as obvious in Roman times as they are centuries later.
I have dwelt for a long time on the possible early periods of farming and fields in this area, partly to dispel any ideas that until the Anglo-Saxons invaded most of the country was wild woodland.
Let’s jump forward to the years 300 ad to 1300 ad to look at the common-open-field system that had developed fully by that time. I do not want to get bogged down in the theories of its origin.
Most people know something about the open field system. It consisted of huge unenclosed arable fields, divided into strips. A typical village consisted of three open arable fields, one lying fallow, and then meadowland, commons and wastes. The main crops were wheat on one field for bread, barley corn on another for beer and animal feed, with hay cut from the meadows and cattle grazing on the common, the fallow field and along the lanes. This gives us some idea of the village of Langthwaite.
As the population increased in certain areas, the open field system could enlarge, taking in tracts of rough land, but not the main village common. The growth of towns meant nearby villages producing surplus food in order to sell at market. So the whole system was adaptable.
This system was badly affected by the Black Death in 1348 – 50 and its recurrent outbreaks. At least a third of the population died around 1349. Some villages disappeared altogether, in many the common fields became reduced in size. Many also consolidated by using the strips or enclosed the fields to provide for their sheep or cattle.
The system was also affected by the demand for England’s wealthy asset, wool. Sheep farming also led to villages being depopulated and the enclosure of old common fields to the advantage of the squire, and to the hardship of the peasantry..
We know that Adwick contained the village of Hangthwaite, which seems to have been abandoned sometime in the 1600’s.There are references to tenters .. cloth framers and bleaching croft which suggests a woollen industry, and quite likely, sheep farming.
We know it was close to the market town of Doncaster and had important route ways, this encouraged land owners to grow and surplus food for sale and therefore open up as much land as possible for arable use.
So to summarise Adwick , close to a major market town, two sides water one side route way, fertile soil, lots of springs and wells. Neolithic finds, iron age finds, roman finds, I f I had written this when I lived in Adwick I would have said and nothing much has really changed.. Adwick did not change its shape or its character at all over 1000 years of people living there until 20 years ago. Now it is just like any other commuter village no character no style too many people.
