Morton and Hanthorpe
Morton and Hanthorpe is the new name of
Morton by Bourne in
Lincolnshire,
England. There are several villages and hamlets in
the county with the name of
Morton. They were once far enough apart not to be confused but in an age of easy communication it has become necessary to distinguish between them. .
Geology
Morton lies on the western margin of
The Fens on three sorts of land, the upland, the fen edge and the fen. The
parish was laid out in an elongated form so as to provide access to each of these. At the highest edge, in the west, the
geology is chalky
glacial till (boulder clay) but most of the upland is
Jurassic, including a little
Oxford Clay but mostly
Kellaways Sand and some
Cornbrash and
Kellaways Clay. The fen edge consists of
First Terrace Gravel with a little
Glacial Gravel. The landward part of the fen was
black soil, composed largely of peat. Over the two and half centuries since the land was drained, this has largely
oxidized away leaving the underlying First Terrace gravel and the mainly
clays of the
Barroway Drove Beds. These beds form the central part of the fen as well, as they do at the eastern end of the parish. However, there, there is a broad ridge of the
Terrington Beds, the remains of a huge marine
creek which was not laid down until the
Bronze Age and was still active when the
Romans diverted
Bourne Eau into it by means of what is called by archaeologists 'the Bourne-Morton Canal'. Our
medieval ancestors knew it as 'the (Bourne) Old Ea'.
Settlement
The village is in two parts, one each side of the fen-edge road, the
A15. To the fenward side is Morton and to the upland side is Hanthorpe. The earlier name is that of Morton which will come from the acid peat land which the
Anglian settlers found in the fen in around the year
500. The name therefore indicates that the
fen was to a significant extent better called the
bog in modern terminology. They were
Germanic speakers so they called it a
moor. Hanthorpe is a name indicating a subsidiary settlement established in the period of the
Danish settlements, probably in the
tenth century. The church and the later signs of the manorial centre are in Morton.
*
Village web site.
*
Morton historical summary (UK & Ireland Genealogy page)
