About the villages

Carlton Scroop

Carlton Scroop is a straggling village built on the cliff range of hills and lies on the A607 7 miles NE of Grantham.  It is mentioned in the Domesday Book 1086 “ In Carletune (Earl) Harold had 5 carucates of land……)  There is a priest there and a Church”. Further evidence of a settlement can, however, be traced back to Neolithic times (4000BC) through the finds of a partially worked flint and axe head.  In recent years “Time Team” on the BBC undertook a partial excavation of a Roman British farmstead and the adjacent burial ground on the northern edge of the village.  The area has always been rural and agricultural, though open cast ironstone quarrying took place in the 18th and 19th Centuries and again for a short time during the second World War.  In the 1700’s the village for a brief period boasted the activities of two highwaymen – Thomas Watson and Spence Broughton, who took tolls and occupied an old farmhouse in the village.  Thomas Watson was finally shot near Grantham and Spence Broughton “expiated his offences on the gibbet”.

In 1253 a weekly market was held on a Tuesday and a yearly fair held on the eve day and morrow of Whitsunday.

Normanton-on-Cliffe

The village of Normanton-on-Cliffe is similarly situated as linear development along the A607 as a rural settlement and agricultural bias.  The name derives from two old English words, Norman and ton, meaning ‘the village of the Norwegians’, and is probably an English name given to an isolated settlement of Norwegians, who accompanied the Danes in the settlement of Lincolnshire before 920 A.D.  It is mentioned in the Domesday Book (1087) as Normenton, when it was part of the estates of Robert De Vessey, who had a castle, or fortified manor House, in Caythorpe.  The extant Parish Records date from 1670, and are now part of the Lincolnshire Archive.  In 1754, an Act of Enclosure was passed for Normanton and a plan of the parish was prepared at that time.  The village then consisted of some twenty homesteads, plus cottages.  The Lord of the Manor was Lord Brownlow – the Buckminster Estate of the present day is the remains of his original holdings.  The Industrial and Agrarian Revolutions saw the population gradually decrease from 204 in the 1830’s to 143 in 1896.  By 1901, the motor car had become a common sight passing through the village, and gradually throughout the 20th Century has spelt the end of the traditional village community, which lasted for perhaps as long as 2000 years.  The great estates have been broken up by death duties, and local services have disappeared altogether.  The village has been labelled ‘unsustainable’ by the local council, and the church, the bastion of village life for a thousand years, is redundant.