Wispington

 

Wispington – A Brief Historical Guide  by C. P. C. Johnson 1984

 

INTRODUCTION

 

An oasis of trees, a cluster of farm buildings and a church spire set in the midst of a broad expanse of greens and golds :   this is the casual observer's view of Wispington as it may be seen from the Baumber to Bardney road.   On the surface, little visible sign of an active community - no shops, public houses or even school.    Nevertheless if you care to dig a little below the surface, you will uncover Wispington's fundamental raison d'etre, the fertile soil. The landscape may have changed over the centuries, parti­cularly during the last thirty years, and there may be fewer inhabitants than in days gone by, but the land it­self still remains.

 

1 : Origins

 

Ekwall,  in his Dictionary of English Place Names identifies the name of the parish as meaning 'the settlement of the people at the thicket'.  This is certainly more reasonable than some of the more fanciful derivations which have been propounded, such as the one involving a Saxon invader called Wisp, but even Ekwall may not be correct.  Nevertheless, al­though some of the field names are of Danish (9th/l0th century) origin, it may well be that the original settlement was Saxon.  The mixed variety of rich soil, and the avail­ability of water from its two brooks (once named Nordike and Kidson's beck) make Wispington a natural place for settlement. Originally, and probably until the sixteenth or seventeenth century, the houses or toftsteads were mostly grouped together in the area now occupied by Grange Farm and its grounds.   An aerial photograph taken in 1948 exhibits traces of an area of settlement just south of the church, with earthworks showing prominently.   These tofts were eventually deserted and the manor house and some farm­houses built in various parts of the parish.

 

Domesday Book records that, at the time of the Norman Conquest, Wispington was divided between two estates based on Great Sturton and Kirkby on Bain, part being sokeland and the other part berewic,  meaning a detached portion of a manor.  The first known owners of Wispington are identified here as Godwin and Gonewate,  the sons of Godevert, and Grinchel, Wilmer and Harold (brother of Godevert).  This division of Wispington between two manors was retained by the Conqueror and per­sisted (at least in theory) until the fifteenth century. The Bishop of Durham and Eudo son of Spirewic, the founder of the Tattershall dynasty, were the Conqueror's tenants in chief by the time of Domesday.

 

2 :  The medieval scene

 

The Bishop of Durham's estate, or fee, at Wispington was administered in the mid-twelfth century by his steward Pincheon, whose daughter Agnes married, c1160, Walter Bek, ancestor of the Lords Willoughby d'Eresby.   The Bek family rapidly built up a substantial estate in Lincolnshire.   As for the descendants of Eudo,  they preferred to manage their part of Wispington through subtenants, among whom was the family of de la Launde from Ewerby near Sleaford, who in turn as absentee landlords tended to sub-infeudate their holdings. In this way the Bek family confirmed their ascendancy.  By the early years of the fourteenth century the Tattershall family had run out of male heirs and the Bek family made an alliance by marriage with the Willoughby family, who retained ownership of Wispington until 1585.

Despite the fact that the Willoughby family lived at Eresby near Spilsby, there was a close relationship with Wispington and it is quite possible that at least one member of the family lived in what is described in the records as a 'capital messuage' during the fourteenth century. This sizeable property seems to have been on the site of the later manor house, part of which was retained in the present Hall Farm, and was partially moated.

 

The fifteenth century was an era of change and neglect;  a con­stant theme in the surviving Court Rolls was the defective state of many of the houses and paths in the village.   The Willoughby estate was in the hands of trustees for much of this period, and at one point in the Wars of the Roses, it was in the hands of the Duke of York.   However, the end of this civil strife brought about a return of the Willoughby family, and a new pattern of tenure began to emerge, in which certain Wispington families such as Beesby, Curtas and Kirkby, tended to prosper and enlarge their own holdings.  Wispington was still at this time farmed on the open field system, with tenants holding strips in various parts of the parish, not all of which was under cultivation; enclosure would come later.

 

3 : A farming estate

 

Robert Phillips, a servant of Lord Willoughby and a tenant at Wispington since 1561, negotiated the purchase of the manor in 1585 for the sum of £1006 10s. This signified the end of one era, but the start of another.  Wispington was for the next 250 years to be the headquarters of a farming empire of its own.    In the years after 1585, the Phillips family acquired another thousand acres in various Lincoln­shire parishes, financed originally with the profits of sheep farming, but not exclusively so. The records show a variety of crops grown in Wispington :  typical cereal crops were barley, wheat, oats and rye and these were supplemented with peas and beans. Some cattle were kept and there was a variety of 'cottage industries' such as cloth-making and bee-keeping to ensure a reasonable degree of self sufficiency.

 

Sheep farming faltered in the 1630s, and Robert, grandson of the first Robert Phillips, died in 1636 leaving debts of nearly £600,  a substantial figure.  However, by pleading poverty to the Court of Wards and Liveries, and by astute property management, ruin was averted, and the third Robert Phillips was eventually able to assume a virtually un­altered estate.   He was educated at Cambridge and entered Grays Inn, in order to acquire other than farming skills : the gentleman farmer of the period was now expected to have several accomplishments.

 

The last male Phillips died in 1720, and the estate passed to the Glover family, London merchants of Kentish origin, through the marriage of John Glover and Mary Phillips in 1696. From this period onwards the estate increasingly was managed by agents employed by the family, and the Hall was leased either to farming tenants or to neighbouring landowners. Inevitably the estate suffered in the long term and the Hall gradually became dilapidated. Part of it was demolished in the latter part of the eighteenth century and rebuilt as a farmhouse.

 

The Glovers, for all of their frequent absence from Wispington, were a colourful family. Phillips Glover, the son of John and Mary was an intellectual and somewhat of a philosopher. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1723 and in 1727 was appointed High Sheriff of Lincolnshire; during the South Sea bubble he lost a substantial sum of money, but did not become financially destitute.   Some of his writings are still extant. His son, also named Phillips, was of a different mettle.   Rather less of an intellectual, although given to enthusiasms of various kinds, he made his mark on society in different ways.  He was a Colonel in the Royal North Lincolnshire Militia from 1759 to 1763, eventually retiring after one reprimand and a Court Martial, the latter for killing a man in a duel at Manchester. The cousin of the notorious Duchess of Kingston, he went to France in 1790 in an attempt to

settle her estate there (and with the intention of landing a fortune) but was forced to sell part of the Wispington estate to pay her debts.   He left Wispington to his (ille­gitimate) daughter Laura at his death in 1796, having married her mother a year previously; there was also an illegitimate son, Robert Merony Glover, who became Vicar of Wispington, but died insolvent in 1838.

 

By the close of the Glover era the pattern of farming ten­ure had altered, and some of the farm holdings in Wisping­ton were of the order of 300 acres or more. The usual practice, which was continued throughout the nineteenth cen­tury, was to transfer portions of land from one tenant to another at intervals, reflecting the ability of individual tenants.   At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was still a mixture of arable and livestock to be seen in Wispington, a great contrast with the farming practice of today.

 

Laura Glover married Robert Vyner, a Warwickshire kinsman of the Gautby based family in 1799, and they moved to Eathorpe.   Wispington was sold in 1821 to the Turnor family of Stoke Rochford and for the next sixty years or so the parish experienced an era of stability and prosperity.   The Turnor family introduced improvements in farming methods and land drainage, and the tenant farmers enjoyed great success, incidentally improving their status within the community.

 

4 : The modern era

 

In a way the year 1878 marked the end of an era for Wis­pington.   The same agricultural depression which affected much of Lincolnshire made its presence felt here. Rents were abated by as much as 15% and one tenant farmer, John Nundy, shot himself. Although the worst was over by 1883, the damage had been done, and the Turnor estate, Wispington in particular, was in the doldrums. Turnor, who had in 1868 taken out a mortgage on Wispington for as much as £15,000, was forced to arrange a further loan from the Law Life Assurance Company. As no farmland was vacant, and rents were averaging 25s per acre, Woolley the agent considered that the security was good, although his im­pression was that the tenants were still in a bad way and future prospects doubtful.

 

Prospects indeed continued doubtful and Turnor's Wisping­ton estate was dispersed by a sale held in 1911.   Wis­pington House Farm and Hall Farm were purchased by their existing tenants, the Gaunts and Evisons respectively, but many of the others were unable to purchase. Evison bought Hill Farm, the other smaller holdings going to out­side bidders. Wispington was now, for the first time in many hundreds of years, no longer in sole ownership.

 

Not long after the Second World War, Wispington House Farm was sold, and the Evison family were left as the sole "survivors" from the Turnor era (Andrew Evison first appeared in Wispington records in 1834).   Finally sold in 1968 Hall Farm and Hill Farm, together extending to 620 acres, were sold.  During the last twenty years there has been a noticeable trend back towards sole management in Wispington, and Mr Robert Craven now farms extensive tracts of farmland both in Wispington and in the surround­ing area. There have been many changes, both in the land­scape and in farming methods, but it is clear that agri­culture will always remain as the predominant feature of life in Wispington.

 

5 : Wispington today

 

To the visitor, the most prominent features of Wispington today are the wide open spaces of farmland and the now redundant church of St Margaret set in its neatly kept churchyard. The church, although unremarkable for its exterior architecture (it was designed by the York architect Atkinson and built by the Wragby builder Daniel Wray in 1863), is notable for the quality of the sculpture and art work of its interior, which were the work of the Revd Charles Pratt Terrot, Vicar here for 48 years.

 

In and around the centre of the village there are few private houses of any great antiquity. The Old Rectory, which was once the Vicarage, was built in 1838 for Charles Terrot, and the plans are still to be seen, along with many other parish and estate records, at the Lincolnshire Archives Office in Lincoln. The original Wispington House, dating from the mid-19th century was taken down and the new Grange Farm house built within the last twenty years. Some of the other cottages in the im­mediate neighbourhood were built for the tenants'

labourers during the period 1850-1875. Moving further afield,, Hill Farm dates back to the middle of the last century, but the oldest private house in Wispington is Hall Farm. The main part of the house dates from just before 1780 when the majority of the Manor house was demolished and a new wing built.    However, there are still traces of earlier work to be seen in the interior. No accurate record survives of the original house except inventories of the seventeenth century.

 

6 : Acknowledgements

 

Thanks are due to my professional colleagues both at the Lincolnshire Archives Office and elsewhere in theDepartment of Recreational Services. I must also acknow­ledge the help given by archivists at Leeds and Stratford, and by Mr James Padgett of Hall Farm, Wispington. Appended is a list of the major sources of archival information which have been used in the compilation of these notes.

 

Lincolnshire Archives Office, Lincoln :

 

                 Ancaster MSS

                 Foster Library - Glover family MSS Lincoln Diocesan Records

                 Turnor MSS

                Wispington parish records

 

British Library, London

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford

Leeds Archives Department : Vyner estate records

 

C P C JOHNSON                                                                                                                 1984

APPENDIX :   THE PHILLIPS AND GLOVER FAMILIES

 

Phillips

 

Robert (c1530-1604)       =     1.    Margaret Forman   (d1591)

                                                2.         Alice Reade

 

Stephen    (1562-1628   ) =     Bridget Dymoke   (d1636)

 

Robert (1594-1635)         =     Susanna Mosley

 

Robert (1625-1668)         =     Mary White

   

Stephen (1656-1683)                John (1658-1720)          Mary (1668-1700)

                                                                                    =John Glover     (d1706)

 

Glover                      Phillips (1697-1745)                  Maria (1699-1723) 

                              = Mary Lee (d1767)

                             

                             Phillips (1727-1796)                  Mary (1731-1782)

                              = 1. Mary Gore (d1771)                  = John Plumptre

                              2. Rebecca Shoulters

 

                             Laura (b1781)

                             = Robert Vyner of Eathorpe,   Warwicks.

 

 

 

NOTE : The chart above shows only the principal members of the family. Many details have had to be omitted for reasons of space.