Gainsthorpe

Name: Gainsthorpe
Reason for desertion: enclosure
Period of desertion: late 15th C.

Gainsthorpe was the first deserted village to have been recorded from the air, in 1925. Lying 400m west of Ermine Street, it comprises two main elements, and displays evidence of being a planned village. A ‘T’ junction of the village street has been identified by archaeologists. The village plots follow the typical medieval pattern of ‘toft’ (houses and rear yards) and ‘croft’ (enclosed paddock behind). Larger, courtyard farms indicate the changes in late medieval agricultural practice. – changes which eventually killed many communities. In 1697 a local curate observed that Gainsthorpe had “been eaten up with time, poverty and pasturage”.

Gainsthorpe DMV

The site is in Hibaldstow parish located on a minor road west of the A15 road, south of Hibaldstow and 5 miles south-west of Brigg. The village was deserted by the late 17th century.

It is now in the care of English Heritage. There is a small car park from where a footpath of about two hundred metres leads to the site. The typical medieval layout of sunken roads and raised rectangular tofts and crofts is clearly seen in the humps and hollows of the field.

Gainsthorpe DMV

Gainsthorpe lost village was called ‘Gamelstorp’ in Domesday Book, 1086, where Gamal is an old Danish personal name. The change to Gain- from Gam- , which appears in the sixteenth century, might be due to a simple misreading. The name means, according to Prof Kenneth Cameron 3 , ’Gamal’s secondary settlement, outlying farmstead or hamlet’ – secondary presumably to Hibaldstow which is 3 km away to the north-east.

However, as noted above, Dr O.G.S Crawford of the Ordnance Survey was prompted to take an aerial photo of the site in the following year and realised immediately that this could not be a Roman town. He remembered an account by the curate of Broughton, Abraham de la Pryme who had described a visit to the site in his diary of 1697 which includes the comment ‘…..I fancy that the town has been eaten up with time, poverty and pasturage’……

In the late 15th century wool production became relatively more profitable than that of corn and in consequence landowners converted fields from arable to pasture so sheep could be grazed. In the process, they enclosed the common fields and often evicted the peasants that had tilled them. Perhaps this is what happened to Gainsthorpe; the peasants were evicted, and they crossed back over Ermine Street and rejoined the larger settlement of Hibaldstow, leaving a deserted village for sheep to nibble and for historians to ponder.

From http://www.diplomate.freeserve.co.uk/gainsthorpe.htm

A note on lost villages and enclosures

Throughout most of the Middle Ages, labour was plentiful and cheap, but after the Black Death, labour became in short supply. This improved the bargaining position of labourers, who demanded better pay and conditions from landowners.

In response, many landowners discovered that the rearing of sheep for wool, was far more profitable than rent from tenants. Common land was then enclosed – a flock of sheep only needed a handful of shepherds to look after them, and villagers who were no longer required were evicted from the lands.

The process of enclosures flourished throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, and led to many thousands of villages being deserted. This led to poverty and homelessness amongst rural dwellers, and gave rise to mass revolts in 1536, 1569, and 1607. Most notoriously, the Highland Clearances in northern Scotland led to significant depopulation.

Sources:

National Trust