Wold Newton, Lincolnshire

Although archaeological evidence and analysis of place names indicates millennia of settlement within the current parish boundary, the etymology of the name 'Wold Newton' dates the village to about the 8th century. It is therefore assumed that today's settlement began as a new Anglo Saxon farm in an otherwise largely Danish landscape. Coates' commentary on the place-names of Lincolnshire analyses the name 'Enschedik', the ancient name of a ditch running between the parishes of Wold Newton and Hawerby-cum-Beesby, and says that it is "tempting to regard it as a feature made when the 'new farm' of [Wold] Newton was inserted into an essentially Danish landscape".[1]

The most significant archaeological discovery in Wold Newton was the discovery of Anglo Saxon urns in the field, Swinhope Walk, in 1828 by road workers quarrying gravel. The site was subsequently excavated by the Rev. Dr. Oliver, Vicar of Scopwick, Lincoln, who reported at a meeting of The Archaeological Institute the discovery of a:

large tumulus, spreading over about three acres, and composed entirely of gravel.... Upon this tumulus was ... a long barrow ... in which more than twenty urns, of various forms, had been deposited, arranged in a line, the whole length of the mound, the mouths upwards,. They lay about three feet from the surface, and at irregular distances, some being close together, others three or four feet apart. Three only were preserved, and they were sent ... to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. They were fabricated without the use of the lathe, and rudely scored with lines and circles; these urns were half filled with ashes, calcined bones, and black greasy earth. [He supposed] that this tumulus had been a family burying-place of some British chief, the larger mound being possibly the cemetery of his tribe.[2]

English Heritage NMR Monument Reports record a range of possible historic sites within the parish from analysis of cropmarks. These include prehistoric or Roman enclosures; boundaries; trackways and the remains of a settlement consisting of tofts, crofts, buildings, boundaries hollow ways. English Heritage also records the finding of a Roman coin, a silver denarius of Trajan, dated to 114–117 AD.[3]

Field walking in 1989 collected mediaeval and Roman pottery, and flint artefacts.[4]

The Grimsby to Wold Newton Turnpike Act was passed in 1765.

Until the advent of the turnpike trust system, local villagers were responsible for the upkeep of the roads in their parish. As road transport increased in the 17th and 18th centuries the concept of charging travellers for using the road spawned the idea of the turnpike trust, each one created by individual act of parliament. A turnpike trust could borrow money to pay for road improvement and charge people for using it.

The Wold Newton turnpike, the only turnpike out of Grimsby, provided a route across the low-lying marshland surrounding Grimsby up on to the dry lands of the Wolds, ending at Wold Newton church. From Wold Newton, the traveller had to resort to the existing unimproved roads. There were toll gates at Brigsley Beck, where the toll house still stands on the north side of the road on the west side of the beck. An iron milestone still stands on the side of the road, two furlongs from the end of the road in Wold Newton.

Wold Newton sits in a dry valley of the Lincolnshire Wolds. The nearest running water is 2.5 miles (4.0 km) away in the beck which flows through Swinhope and Thorganby and alternative sources of water would have been required. In Wold Newton people both collected rainwater and exploited ground water sources, and considerable evidence remains as to what they did in Victorian times and in the early decades of the 20th century.

A borehole was sunk for general village supply in 1910 and powered by a John Wallis Titt wind pump, which was latterly converted to electricity. To supply the livestock in the fields a second John Wallis Titt wind pump took the water up to a smaller reservoir in what is now Martin's Wood. Mains water only arrived in the village in the 1970s.

The Earls of Yarborough owned Wold Newton from the late 18th century until the agricultural depression towards the end of the 19th century, when the estate was sold, to pay off debts,[5] to one of their Wold Newton tenants, William Wright.

The Yarboroughs had acquired the estate from the Welfitt family, who had held it during the 17th and 18th centuries but had to relinquish it after having mortgaged it too heavily.[6]

Immediately after the Norman conquest the parish was split between three feudal lords: the Bishop of Durham, Earl Alan and a group of thanes including one Sortibrand. In turn they had between them five tenants: Grinchel, Walbert, Ingemund, Wimund and Justan.