Alkborough
Alkborough is a parish of 471 people in 192 households in North Lincolnshire, England, located near the northern end of The Cliff range of hills overlooking Trent Falls, the confluence of the River Trent and the River Ouse.
Alkborough, with the hamlet of Walcot about south, forms a civil parish which covers about. The village was once thought to be the location that the Romans called Aquis, but that name is now usually associated with the town of Buxton in Derbyshire.
Toponymy
The place-name Alkborough seems to contain an Old English personal name, Aluca or Alca, + berg , a hill, a mound; an artificial hill; a tumulus, so 'Alca's hill'. Cameron derived the place-name Walcot from "the cottage, hut or shelter of the Welshman" and suggested that the name might represent an isolated group of Welshmen, identifiable as such in Anglo-Saxon England.Alkborough appears in the Domesday survey of 1086 as Alchebarge.
History
Neolithic
The earliest evidence of settlement in the area has been found near Kell Well in the form of a stone axe head, flint arrowheads and other finds thought to date from the Neolithic period.Bronze Age
Artifacts including a beaker, dating from the early Bronze Age, were unearthed in 1920, in the grounds of Walcot Hall.Iron Age
During the late Iron Age, Alkborough lay within the territory of the Corieltauvi tribe.Roman
Following Roman invasion of the area, some time after AD43, the local Corieltauvi tribe became a Roman civitas. Pottery sherds dating from the 1st to the 4th century AD have been found in the fields south of Countess Close. These finds, along with a pot containing a small hoard of Roman coins, which was unearthed in the grounds of Walcot Hall, indicate the possibility of a Romano-British Settlement here. A geophysical survey taken in 2003 showed clear evidence of a Romano-British ladder settlement.Medieval
The village is the site of the former Alkborough Benedictine Priory Cell. It was founded before 1052, when it is recorded as being given by its founder, Thorold, High Sheriff of Lincolnshire, to Spalding Priory. It was a small priory, being a cell of only three monks, a secular chaplain, and a prior. The cell was dependent on Spalding Priory from 1052 to 1074, then its staffing levels were reduced, until 1220, when it ceased to exist as a monastic house and was abandoned.It was located at, which is in the south of the village in the grounds of College Farm. A Field Investigator's comment from 17 February 1964 states that there is no material evidence of antiquity.
Alkborough Priory Cell is included in the English Heritage Archive.
Wartime
Bombing range
was home to a bombing range during the Second World War. The following is a summary of an oral history provided by an Alkborough resident who was school age during Second World War:The bombing range itself took the form of a chalk marker on Alkborough Flats, and two observation posts positioned on the ridge overlooking the target. An RAF detachment from RAF Elsham Wolds, including two sergeants, were billeted in the southern of the two observation posts. Bombers would take off from Elsham, and drop smoke bombs on the target. Following a bombing run, a bearing on the bomb's landing site was taken from each observation post, and the position of the site calculated using triangulation. During one bombing run, a horse was killed, and another bomb narrowly missed a group of children sledging. After the war, agricultural workers ploughing on the Flats regularly reported releasing smoke. During the establishment of the Alkborough Flats Tidal Defence Scheme in 2005/2006, a large quantity of World War II ordnance was removed from the site under supervision of bomb disposal officers. Currently, very little remains of the southern observation post, though an entire wall of the northern observation post is still standing.
The southern observation post was located at
, and the northern at
. They are both accessible to the public via a public footpath. The location of the chalk target marker is not known exactly, but was somewhere to the west of the new bird hide, which is located at
Defensive structures
A number of Second World War defensive structures were also in the Alkborough area, including:- Three searchlight batteries. One of these. A typical installation of this type comprised a small ring ditch, a light anti-aircraft machine gun pit, a generator and hutted accommodation for the crew. This site is included in the English Heritage Archive.
- A heavy anti-aircraft battery. It was located just south of West Halton Lane, at, and was listed as 'unarmed' in 1942. This site is included in the English Heritage Archive.
Governance
Population history (1801–2001)
The population history of the area is reported as the following, transcribed from North Lincolnshire Council website.| Year | Population | Year | Population | |
| 1801 | 345 | 1901 | 420 | |
| 1811 | 368 | 1911 | 418 | |
| 1821 | 428 | 1921 | 432 | |
| 1831 | 467 | 1931 | 397 | |
| 1841 | 528 | 1941 | N/A | |
| 1851 | 468 | 1951 | 448 | |
| 1861 | 497 | 1961 | 470 | |
| 1871 | 487 | 1971 | 468 | |
| 1881 | 399 | 1981 | 482 | |
| 1891 | 427 | 1991 | 454 | |
| 2001 | 455 |
Conservation Area
The older part of Alkborough, including Julian's Bower, Countess Close, and Walcot, lies within a Conservation Area.Geography
Alkborough is situated on an escarpment formed of Triassic Mudstone, known as The Cliff, which runs roughly north–south. The steep mudstone escarpment is to the west, with a shallow slope to the east formed from shale of the Lower Lias in the Jurassic system.Alkborough Flats
Alkborough Flats is an area of low-lying arable farmland of nearly situated at the "Confluence of the Rivers" where the Rivers Trent and Ouse join to form the Humber Estuary. The alluvial plain is now jointly owned by the UK's Environment Agency and English Nature. Flood defences, which were built in the 1950s to protect the area, have been breached to allow water to reclaim the land at high tide and in times of flooding. The project created of new intertidal habitat in the inner part of the Humber Estuary. The new grassland will be managed to encourage biodiversity, with reedbeds, lagoons and grazing areas.Alkborough Flats is the first coastal realignment site to be developed as part of the Humber Shoreline Management Plan. This "managed retreat" strategy should lessen the risks of flooding in low-lying towns along the Ouse and Trent by realigning existing flood defences to create compensatory intertidal habitat around the estuary. The relatively new island of Whitton Island in the Humber Estuary falls partly within the parish.
Walcot
Walcot is an outlying hamlet situated to the south of Alkborough, and within the same parish.Landmarks
Julian's Bower
Close to the Cliff edge is Julian's Bower, a unicursal turf maze, 43 feet across, of indeterminate age. Although referred to as a maze, being unicursal it is more accurately a labyrinth.According to Arthur Mee's book Lincolnshire the maze was cut by monks in the 12th century, but White's Lincolnshire Directory of 1872 maintains that it was constructed in Roman times as part of a game. Others think that while the feature is of Roman origin, it was later used by the Medieval Church for some sort of penitential purpose and only reverted to its former use as an amusement or diversion, after the Reformation.
Firm documentary evidence of its existence only seems to date from 1697 however, when it was noticed, on his travels, by the Yorkshire antiquary Abraham de la Pryme.
In case the maze becomes overgrown or otherwise indistinct, its pattern is recorded, in a 19th-century stained glass church window, on the floor of the church porch and also on the gravestone of James Goulton Constable, which is in Alkborough cemetery.
Julian's Bower is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Countess Close
Countess Close is a rectangular earthwork lying a few yards to the south of Julian's Bower. It measures approx. 80 m × 90 m internally.It was recorded by the 18th century antiquary, William Stukeley on a visit to the area whilst researching his book Itinerarium Curiosum. He thought Countess Close to be a Roman Fort, as did the earlier Abraham de la Pryme. However, a 2003 archaeological project carried out by Humber Field Archaeology concluded that, despite evidence of a Romano-British ladder settlement running south along the ridge from Countess Close, it is probable that the earthwork is the remains of a medieval fortified manor house.
It is thought that Countess Close is named for a Saxon heiress called Countess Lucy of Leicester, Lincoln and Chester. She inherited the land from her husband Ivo Taillebois, who was given the land by Peterborough Abbey. Following Lucy's death, Countess Close passed to her son, who then gave the land to Spalding Priory in 1147.
Countess Close is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.