PINCHBECK: NEWHALL GRANGE

TF 195270

The ditch system at Newhall is situated on the Newdyke (now known as Beck Bank) at the boundary between the parishes of Pinchbeck and Gosberton (Fig 35). It encloses a grange that belonged to Spalding Priory. The first reference to the site is found in a charter of 1229-1253, but its antecedents may have stretched back to the early twelfth century when the 'newland' on which it stood was taken in from the fen (1). In 1274 there were a reeve and granger there, and a manor house was built by Prior William de Littleport between 1274 and 1295 (2). But little more is known about the site, for no accounts or surveys of the grange have survived. Only one reference has been found to the curia. In 1535 Prior Thomas Spalding of Spalding leased to Geoffrey Chambre, gent, certain pastures in Pinchbeck and 'theire messuage sett and lying wythout the mote of Newhall and all other houses or offices belongyng to the same and also all pastures and lands....And also all the ffyshyng and fowlyng in the little mote and the grete mote' (3). The two moats are clearly the concentric ditches that survive, but in origin and use their function can have differed little from dylings (4) (Fig 36). The system formerly extended north, south and east of the present pasture; it can be seen as soil marks in the arable, and is reflected in the field pattern as recorded on a map of 1843 (5). The central area, a parallelogram 150 by 90 metres in size, seems small to have held a range of monastic buildings, but is similar in character to both the site of Goll grange (6) and that of Wykeham, in Weston parish (east of Spalding) where the dylings can be seen in the garden on the site of the grange.

1. Hallam, 53-4.

2. Hallam, 178.

3. Hallam, 155-6.

4. Hallam, 152.

5. Emmanuel College, Cambridge ...

6. H. E. Hallam, 'Goll Grange, a Grange of Spalding Priory', Lincolnshire Architectural and Archaeological Society Reports and Papers 5, (1953), 1-18.