Appleby Magna

Appleby Magna is a village and civil parish in the North West Leicestershire district of Leicestershire, England. The parish of Appleby Magna includes the village of Appleby Parva as well as Appleby Magna. The original name "Aeppel-by" refers to apple trees, the "by" suggesting a Danish settlement as the town lies on the edge of the ancient boundary between Mercia and the Danelaw.

History

Appleby Magna was mentioned as "Apleby" in the Domesday book, when it was part of Derbyshire. It belonging to the Abbey of BurtonThe Abbey at Burton was given a number of manors in Derbyshire including Mickleover and parts of Ticknall.] and was worth sixty shillings."Domesday Book: A Complete Translation". London: Penguin, 2003. ISBN 0-14-143994-7 p.744] Mention of a ‘spellow’ field in a fifteenth-century manorial land terrier points to an earlier Saxon moot site within the parish. Before re-alignment of the county boundaries in 1897, the parish was spread across two counties, the famous antiquarian William Burton observing in 1622 that it was “upon the verie edge of the countie of Derby, with which it is so intermingled that the houses... cannot be distinguished which be of eyther shire”. Its most prominent medieval survival is the moated manor house next to the church, the ancient home of the Applebys. [ [http://www.applebymagna.org.uk/appleby_history/moat_house.htm Appleby Magna site - Moat House] ] In Elizabethan times there was a rectory opposite St Michael’s church, a large tithe barn alongside the eastern wall of the churchyard and two water mills - one near the moat house where there are traces of a sluiceway, the other, rebuilt in 1620, at Mease-meadow, on the Measham boundary.

There are some interesting earthworks near the church including defensive banks and ditches. Brick and rubble foundations mark the site of the 17th-century Dormer's Hall and numerous marl pits in an adjacent enclosure reveal attempts to improve the heavy clay soils. The principal landholders from around 1600 were the trustees for the Dixie Grammar School at Market Bosworth, and the Moores who purchased the manor of Little Abbey around 1600. [ [http://www.applebymagna.org.uk/appleby_history/in_focus12_moores_1.htm Appleby Magna History] ] The parish was enclosed in 1771 by Parliamentary Agreement after a series of piecemeal exchanges [ [http://www.applebymagna.org.uk/appleby_history/enclosures.htm Appleby Magna site - Enclosures] ] Appleby's nineteenth-century inhabitants were engaged in framework knitting and stocking manufacture. The 1801 national census records a total population of 935, evenly divided between the two counties.

Appleby has many historic buildings all worth a visit:

The Moat House; Sir John Moore School; The Thatched Cottage; The Alms Houses; The Old Forge; St Michael and All Angels Church; The Old Rectory; The White House; Manor House; Manor Farm; Upper and Lower Rectory Farm.

The Moat House

Part of the Moat House – the original stone gatehouse – was already ancient when purchased by Sir Wolstan Dixie in 1599 for the trustees of the free school at Market Bosworth. This old gatehouse and the comparatively ‘new’ timber-framed extension built after the de Applebys left in 1560 would have needed at least some occasional maintenance. The moat house had a succession of occupants after 1560. Edward Griffyn of Dingley in Northamptonshire sold the property to Wolstan Dixie of London through a series of legal processes, covenants, fines and recoveries from November 1598. The Dixies then granted the capital messuage and its attached lands to Market Bosworth Free School, who leased it to a succession of tenants for an initial yearly rent of £50. During the course of the seventeenth century a series of leases of Appleby moat house by Sir Wolstan Dixie and son, acting on behalf of the Grammar School, throws some light on the provisions made to maintain the building in good repair while it was being occupied.

In March 1619 the 'Mansion house' together with six yardlands and other appurtenances, five pasture closes, two crofts, a messuage or dwelling house, another two and a half yardlands and the water mill at Measham, was leased to Humphrey Francys of Barwell, a yeoman, for three years.

Humphrey does not appear to have occupied the premises - or stayed long if he did - for in October 1621 there was another lease for three lives which was also terminated fairly abruptly when, in December 1628, yet another lease was drawn up. This time the 'Mannor Place or capital messuage of Appulbie the greate' was granted to Thomas and William Hartill of Stretton-en-le-field as feoffees of the Grammar School. The lease stipulated that 'from time to time as the court shall appoynt’ they were required to ‘permit upon summons or warninges to the said court’ any of the lessors to enter the house and for them to 'mark and brand’ the edges of the ridges and baulkes in the common fields and other places 'with a great Roman S'. The tenants were not to 'lopp, topp shred…nor putt down' any oak, ash, elm or fruit trees, except for getting an annual allowance of timber for repairing the premises. [DE 43/107]

The eighteenth-century illustration in Nichols’ survey shows that the site was well covered with established trees suitable for this purpose. Sir Wolstan Dixie made further provisions 'at his and their charge' for 'plasteringe the outside of the dwelling house before the feast of St Michael the archangel', presumably for the repair of the timber and plaster additions. [DE 43/108]

In October 1649 another lease drawn up for eighty years reinforced these rights, inserting provision for the lessees, Dixie, Farmer and Saunders.

The tenants were thereby given an opportunity to obtain coal for fuel, stones for repairing the old gatehouse and plaster for the walls. From time to time the old moat house may have been left unoccupied. In the 1663 constables’ returns for the hearth tax assessment, for example, it is recorded as an ‘empty house’ with six hearths in the possession of John Stanton.

The reference to Richard Saunders is curious as in December 1711 he is referred to as a ‘lunatic’, an agreement having being drawn up to cover his rights and interests as a result of this and other leases made to him in his infancy. [DE 43/111]

The moat house continued to be let to a succession of farming tenants over the course of the eighteenth century. In June 1715 the ‘Manor House’ with all lands appertaining and 'three water grist mills' with fishing rights were leased to Mathew White of Great Appleby. In 1753 the land and water mills were given to William Cooper. A few years later in April 1753 an agreement was drawn up leasing the lands to Joseph Wilkes of Overseal. By the early nineteenth century the lands were being let on a yearly tenancy first to the Wilkes, then Thomas Heafield and Thomas Taverner, local yeoman farmers, a further indication perhaps that the house itself may have been left unoccupied.

Over the course of the next century the moat house gradually fell into disrepair, until its timely rescue on the brink of its being demolished and shipped off to America in 1935.

The Moat House was recently for sale for over £1,000,000 (but it sold for a little over £750,000) Fact|date=June 2007

Dormers Hall

Many people must have strolled across the field behind the Church Hall and wondered about the strange earthworks which lie there. Most obviously, as you enter the field, there is a large excavation, long since grassed over, with a pond near its furthest point. But either side of this, to north and south, the field has ridges and ditches of different sizes and orientations, some of them overlying or cutting across others and all of them now grassed over in the pasture. To explain this curious topography, it is necessary to look closely at the evidence on the ground and then search for information in historical records.

The Detailed Evidence on the Ground

The north-west quarter of the field (towards the modern Rectory) shows ridge-and-furrow strips (ie ‘lands’ or ‘londs’), running roughly north-south and these appear to be the oldest earthwork preserved in the pasture as the other disturbances cut across them. These ridge-and-furrow strips are a remnant of the medieval system of agriculture in which farming land was organised in open fields.

Dominating the northern half of the field are two unusually large ridges and ditches [second photo] . These run at a shallow angle to the ridge-and-furrow and linked to them are other ditches running at right-angles, cutting across the ridge-and-furrow [aerial photo] . Any hedges which grew on the banks must have been removed and the ridges and ditches returned to pasture without being levelled. But a hawthorn bush, possibly a hedgerow remnant, survived on one of the long north-south banks until recently (1999). This system of larger banks and ditches appears to have formed a long enclosure with two squarer enclosures on each side. The size and shape of these suggest a road or carriageway flanked by four small roughly rectangular paddocks. The excavated area with the pond cuts into the earlier earthworks. This is the type of hollow left by clay extraction for brick-making. Other banks, ditches and irregular earthworks on the southern half of the modern field, towards Bowleys Lane, may include fish ponds. Church Street Farm house and buildings, the National School (now the Church Hall) and the new burial ground clearly have been taken from the original field at a late stage. None of their boundaries conforms to earlier alignments.

References

* William Burton, "The Description of Leicestershire", (1622)
* B.H. Cox, ‘Leicestershire Moot Sites, the Place Name Evidence’, "Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society", Vol. 47 (1971-2), p. 20

External links

* [http://www.applebymagna.org.uk/ Appleby Magna]