New book on Barlings Abbey in its landscape - a massive and masterly research project conducted by Paul Everson and David Stocker
Custodians of Continuity
In 1980 Paul Everson carried out a field survey of the earthworks of the exceptionally well-preserved site of the Premonstratensian abbey of Barlings, on the remote Oxney Island, east of Lincoln. In collaboration with David Stocker, that work was to develop into a study of the archaeology of the abbey’s social, economic and religious ‘home estate’; an area extending to nearly 200 square kilometres north and east of Lincoln itself. In addition to detailed surveys and reconstructions of the abbey buildings, and of its fate after the Dissolution (when it was converted into a major country house), the authors have also investigated the abbey’s six granges within this area, its villages (Caenby, North and South Carlton, Newball, Reepham, Scothern, Snelland, Stainton, Sudbrooke), the monastic town of Langworth and many other notable landscape features. The authors go on to suggest that this monastic estate had its origins long before the abbey was founded, and may even extend back as far as the Romano-British period.
Custodians Of Continuity is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Lincolnshire, in the history of landscape or in the study of monasteries.
Custodians Of Continuity is published as an A4 monograph of over 450 pages.