Derivation of Crowle.

1088.
Manor In Crule, Alwin has one oxgang less than six carucates of land to be taxed. Land to as many ploughs. Inland at Hubaldestorp. Now a certain Abbot of St. Germaine in Selby has there, under Geoffrey, one plough in the demesne, and fifteen villanes and nineteen bordars, having seven ploughs, and thirty-one fisheries of thirty-one shillings. Thirty acres of meadow. There is a church, and wood and pasture one mile long and one mile wide. Value in King Edwards time £12, now £8. Tallaged at 40 shillings.
£1 at this time meant one pound weight of silver.
Crowle was the most populous and valuable manor in the Isle of Axholme, indeed it would have been amongst the most valuable in the whole of Norman England.
King Edward, was Edward the Confessor, the Normans never acknowledged that Harold Godwinson had ever been king.
Note the fall in value, this affected nearly every manor in the North of England and reflects William’s Harrying of the North in 1067. In order to reduce rebellions his soldiers killed all the men they could find and destroyed the crops so that the following winter there was widespread starvation.
He may have gone down in history as William the Conqueror but I prefer his other name. He was the son of a thoroughly vicious man Robert of Normandy and a Tanner’s daughter that he found on one of his campaigns. Therefore William the Bastard is in my mind a much more appropriate name in more ways than one.
He must have been just as obnoxious as his father, which is probably why his father chose him as his heir rather than his legitimate sons.

Acre, the amount of land that could be ploughed in one day.
Carucate, the amount of land that that could be ploughed by one plough team in one year, about 240 acres.
Oxgang, one eighth of a carucate, 30 acres. There were eight oxen in a plough team.
Rev W. B. Stonehouse in his History of the Isle of Axholme, published 1836, describes the Manor of Croule. He notes the town of Crul or Croule. The suggestion is that Crul is a corruption of the Dutch word Krol which means shed or small habitaion of any kind.
In this context we should remember that the Dutch first settled Capetown and its surrounding area. The word Kraal is used in South Africa to descibe the round huts the Zulus and others used.
Read’s history published in 1858, uses the modern name, “Manor of Crowle” and records the early names Crul, Crule and Croule.
Why should there be a settlement of impotance here.
Water was the easiest and cheapest form of transport, we still have the Ouse and Trent close by joining to form the Humber with easy sea access. The Ouse takes us to York and beyond. The Trent to Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and via the Foss dyke to the River Witham, the Wash and the rivers of Norfolk and East Anglia. Add the river Don before the drainage and we can add Doncaster and Southern Yorkshire.
In addition there are two ancient pathways which met at Crowle, from the Trent at Althorpe along Crowle Causeway and ferry from Burton Upon Staher and down the Don to Crowle.
It would be so easy for the Southern Vikings, Denmark and Holland to reach us, the Norwegians went further north, Scotland, the Orkneys, Hebrides, Ireland and the isle of Man.
Indeed go back further in our history, although we do not know the names and sites, easy water transport made the Isle of Axholme and adjacent area a field of contention between The Kings of Northumbria and the kings of Mercia.
Penda became King of Mercia about 630 invading about 633.
Penda, a pagan, became king at fifty an age at which time most Anglo-saxons would be dead. His neighbours cannot have been very worried about him at first. But he turned out to be a tough old coot reigning for over thirty years lasting well into his eighties. He was quite good at slaughtering the Christian Kings of Northumbria, one of which, Oswald is whom our church is dedicated too.
In 633 Penda of Mercia met the forces of Edwin of Northumbria at Hatfield. Edwin’s forces were defeated, Edwin and his son Osfried were killed and his seccond son Egfried taken prisoner.

Peck’s History, 1815, records Crowle as being in the Wapentake of Manley of the County of Lincoln.
Wapentake , we are going back to the vikings again.
It is old Norse, translated it means Weapon’s Touch.
The Viking chief deciding on going on a raiding expedition would call his friends and followers together.
He would stand holding his spear, all who were prepared to accept his authority as leader came and touched his spear with there own.
Wapentake in Viking areas of England has the same meaning as a Hundred in Anglo=saxon area. Both meaning an area of land containing 100 Hides.
Hide. Arable 60 to 80 acres. Hill farms 150 to 200 acres.
A Hide is the area of land that will provide the resources to arm and maintain one spearman.
Each Wapentake or Hundred if called out would produce 100 fighting men. The king would always know how many men to expect by the number of areas called out.
The army was called the Ffyrrd, it would be called out after the spring sowing, when grass to feed the horses had grown, fight until harvest time and in the autumn
until grass was no longer available

Bill Goldthop