January 1, 1970

General History of Crowle

By Angus Townley

From Read’s History of the Isle of Axholme. 1858.

After descending the downland lawns, and passing through the fertile plain called Belton Field, the traveler enters a similar tract of land, where the town of Crul, Croule, or Crowle, stands close to one of the branches of the southern Don. The word Crowle is probably a corruption of the Dutch word Krol, which signifies a shed or small habitation of any kind. It is not difficult to account for the location of a human dwelling at this place. There were two ancient pathways of the aboriginal in. habitants- one leading from the Trent at Althorpe, and the other from the passage over that river at Burton Stather, which met near this spot, then no doubt a fertile glade surrounded by forest and marsh, a situation generally selected by a barbarous people. In more civilized times, however, those who had passed the Trent at Althorpe or Burton would want to pass over the Don at this place, In order to proceed on the direct road to Thorne. The ferry would require a boatman, or, If It was a ford, a guide, which the waste beyond would make almost absolutely necessary. One family at least, therefore, would be compelled to a perpetual residence, and would, in consequence, first erect his crul or habitation. “It is one of the best established canons of topography, that, in the early stages of the settlement of a country, if there be a place where one family is compelled to constant residence, others, who may have the liberty of choice in fixing their abodes, will be found to place themselves near it.” A blacksmith would find this a situation where the passage ever the ferry would bring his art into frequent requisition; and then another family. for the same reason, would find It worth while to afford a little food and shelter to the benighted traveler. Thus it is that the germs of future towns have first made their appearance on the great continent of America.

An ancient forest, girded the fertile field of Crowle on all sides; and when it was destroyed left extensive peat moors, marshes, and bogs. The navigable channel, however, of the Don gave the inhabitants free access to the Humber, as well as to Thorne and Doncaster, and was probably the means by which a Christian missionary visited this spot in very early times and dedicated a church, before the Conquest, to St. Oswald, the pious King of North-humber-land, mention of which Is made In the Doomsday Book :-“Manor in CrowIe,’.—AlwIn had one oxgang less than six coracutes of land to be taxed. Land to as many ploughs inland as Hubaldestrop.- Now a certain Abbot of St. Germains in Selby has there, under Geoffrey, one plough in the demesne, and fifteen villashes, and nineteen borders, 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 broad. Value in King Edward’s time, £12, now £8. Tallaged at 40s.

From this entry we learn one or two curious particulars: that Crowle, at the time of the Conquest, was the moat populous and most valuable manor in the Isle of Axholme; that the original Lord Paramount, Geoffrey de Wirce, had established a demese., dominium, or piece of land, which he kept in his own hands; that there was an ancient inclosure; and that the great meres in this neighbourhood were then is existence, as they afforded situations for thirty-one fisheries, valued at a shilling each. Crowle must have suffered severely from the works of Vermuyden, for he took from them the navigable branch of the Don, and, by his works of drainage, left them surrounded by an extensive tract of soft ground, which before was passable in boats over the open surface of the meres, or by guts and lodes, which connected one piece of water with another. The high bank, formed by the earth east out in making his drains from Hirst to Althorpe might compensate in some measure for the loss of Crowle Causeway, by which, in the more ancient times, the inhabitants had a road to the Trent.
In the Nona Villarum the ninth sheaf, the ninth lamb, and the ninth fleece is valued at £10 taken on the oaths of Hugh Caffingham, GaIfri de Milford, Robert Scott, and John Worme.