Coates medieval settlement facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Coates medieval settlement |
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The site of the village, in a field north of the road near Grange Farm
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| Location | Lincolnshire |
| OS grid reference | SK 911 834 |
| Designated | 24 November 1999 |
| Reference no. | 1016979 |
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Coates medieval settlement is the site of a very old village in Lincolnshire, England, that is now empty. It's about 2 miles east of a village called Stow. Today, you won't find many buildings here, just a farm and a church. It's a special protected place called a Scheduled Monument, which means its history is important.
Contents
The Story of Coates Medieval Settlement
How Old Is It?
The village of Coates was first written about in a very old book called the Domesday Book in 1086. This book was like a big survey ordered by William the Conqueror to count everything in England! Back then, Coates had six families living there.
Growth and Decline
Later, in the late 1100s, the church and land in Coates were given to a place called Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire. The village grew bigger by the early 1300s. But then, a terrible sickness called the Black Death arrived in the middle of the 1300s. Many people died, and the village never really recovered its size.
The Church of St. Edith: A Survivor
The church, dedicated to St Edith of Polesworth, is very old, probably started by the Anglo-Saxons. Most of what you see today was built in the late 1100s. Over time, parts of it were changed and added to, even up to the Georgian era. Look closely, and you can see its unique double bell tower!
Inside, the church has a small main area (called a nave) and a smaller section for the altar (called a chancel). It has a special wooden screen from the 1400s called a rood screen, which is the only one like it in Lincolnshire. There's also an old family bench from the time of King James I (the Jacobean period) and some simple wooden benches. You can even spot a royal coat of arms from King Charles I dating back to 1635.
What Can We See Today? Earthworks and Clues
Today, Coates-by-Stow has two farms, a hall, some cottages, and the very old Church of St Edith. If you look closely at the fields, you can still see signs of the old village!
Traces of the Past
In the field next to Grange Farm, you can see faint lines in the ground. These are called ridge and furrow patterns. They show where farmers used to plow their fields in medieval times. In the field next to that, you can see the actual earthworks of the village. Earthworks are bumps and hollows in the ground that show where buildings and roads once were.
Roads and Houses
There's a long ditch, about 430 meters long, that shows where the main road of the village used to be. On both sides of this old road, you can see rectangular areas marked by ditches. These were the plots of land where houses and other buildings once stood. North of these house plots, there are signs of larger rectangular areas. These might have been paddocks, which were small fields for animals. Inside these paddocks, you can even see older ridge and furrow patterns, showing that this area was farmed before the village was built.
The Moat and Grange
Further west, near the church, there's an L-shaped ditch filled with water. This is what's left of an old moat! People think there was a group of buildings inside this moat, possibly where Coates Hall and Hall Farm are now. This might have been a grange of Welbeck Abbey. A grange was like a farm owned and run by a monastery. The church, with its oldest parts from the 1100s, might be the only building left from that time.
