Corby Glen Motte (The Gatehouse Record)

In the civil parish of Corby Glen.
In the historic county of Lincolnshire.
Modern Authority of Lincolnshire.
1974 county of Lincolnshire.
Medieval County of Lincolnshire.

OS Map Grid Reference: SK99922512
Latitude 52.81436° Longitude -0.51785°

Corby Glen Motte has been described as a certain Timber Castle.

There are earthwork remains.

This site is a scheduled monument protected by law.

Description

The moated mound near the church at Corby is supposed to have been the site of a castellated mansion, and is scheduled as moated castle mound (White 1872).
Published survey (25") revised. A small castle mound, no surface evidence of a bailey. The work attains a maximum height of 4.8m and has a slightly hollowed top; no building foundations are evident (MoW list 1961).
The mound described ... was seen as an earthwork (centred at SK 9999 2512) on poor quality air photographs. It is approximately 48m long, oval in shape, surrounded by a deep ditch, and considered to be a Medieval motte (Morph No. LI.800.4.1). (PastScape)

Situated just to the north-east of the market place in Corby Glen, a large moated site seems to mark an early defended manor house. Although described as Castle Mound on recent Ordnance Survey maps, no trace of an associated bailey has been found. The earthwork is subrectangular and encloses a raised centre comprising some 1,000 square metres. There is a low inner bank along the north, east and southern sides of the mound, possibly marking the line of a wall, and a shallow outer bank. The western half of the main moat contained water at the time of survey and there was also water in a short length of ditch on the east side of the site beyond the outer bank. This ditch is 11 metres wide from rim to rim and three metres deep, and although from its position it appears to be part of the complex, it has been disturbed. The width of the main moat varies between 11 to 19 metres from rim to rim and its depth from five to three metres. At its north-west edge the outer bank is very slight. There are willow trees and shrubs around the edges of the moat, but most of the site is under grass. Surrounding ground levels are very irregular, again probably as a result of small scale quarrying, as the limestone here is near the surface. When a bungalow was built south-west of the site in 1973, this was confirmed by the presence of a quantity of stone, none of it apparently structural. (David Roffe ref. Lincs SMR)

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Scheduled Monument Number 1005001, Legacy Scheduled Monument Number li100
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 325412.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 30063.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- David Roffe
  Abaroth's World
Books
- Osborne, Mike, 2010, Defending Lincolnshire: A Military History from Conquest to Cold War (The History Press) p. 32
  Salter, Mike, 2002, The Castles of the East Midlands (Malvern: Folly Publications) p. 48
  Pettifer, A., 1995, English Castles, A guide by counties (Woodbridge: Boydell Press) p. 148 (slight)
  Pevsner, Nikolaus and John Harris; revised by Nicholas Antram, 1989, Buildings of England: Lincolnshire (Harmondsworth) p. 500
  King, D.J.C., 1983, Castellarium Anglicanum (London: Kraus) Vol. 1 p. 260
  Steel, D.I.A., 1979, A Lincolnshire Village: the Parish of Corby Glen in its Historical Context (London) p. 9-12
  White, W., 1872 (3 edn), History, Gazetteer and Directory of Lincolnshire p. 594 online copy
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Creighton, O.H., 1998, Castles and Landscapes: An Archaeological Survey of Yorkshire and the East Midlands (PhD Thesis University of Leicester) p. 430 online copy

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
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The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

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