"The Village of Adbolton"
July 2010 Meeting Report
Speaker - Gerald Fitzpatrick
The July 2010 meeting of the Keyworth & District Local History Society was held in The Centenary Lounge on Friday 2nd July. Surprisingly there was only a relatively small audience of around two-dozen members present to listen to Gerald Fitzpatrick give a presentation on ‘The Village of Adbolton’.
Adbolton is, like Thorpe-in-the-Glebe and hundreds of other former settlements, one of the lost villages of England. It was situated at the eastern end of what is now the Ladybay estate, West Bridgford, on an ancient west-east track roughly following the course of modern Holme Road and the road through Holmpierrepont to Radcliffe-on-Trent. Much of this track fell into disuse in the 18th century with the turnpiking of a ‘bypass’ from West Bridgford to Radcliffe, now the A52. Adbolton’s history stretches back to late Roman times, when the Trent followed a more southerly course than today and when the village was a river port exporting grain from its productive hinterland, sometimes to Western Europe.
The village centred on its church, All Hallowes, situated at the crossing of the west-east track already mentioned and a north-south track, which rejoiced in the alternative names of Mudpie Lane and Kingsway! A list of priests goes back to Godwin (1050), but the church was probably founded several centuries earlier. The original building is thought to have been made of wattle and mud, but this was replaced after the Norman Conquest by a stone structure. Nothing of either building can be seen today, except by those prepared to dig. Our speaker brought several artefacts with him, including two large pieces of church window frame discovered by his father on the church site. One is part of the semi-circular top of what must have been a Norman window; the other the base of two adjacent Gothic windows. He also brought many photographs and maps, together with other artefacts unearthed by his father, which now constitute the Fitzpatrick collection, held by Nottingham University archives.
When the Trent migrated north, its abandoned course became an elongated pond and swamp; fishing and reed culture replaced Adbolton’s port activities, together with continued farming of the rich alluvial soils, which surround the village.
Many lost English villages can trace their decline to the Black Death (1348) and subsequent outbreaks of Plague, or to the turning of arable land into much less labour-intensive sheep runs in the 15th century. Adbolton’s demise, on the other hand, seems to have originated in the 16th century, following fines and confiscations imposed by the authorities on farmers who refused to conform to the requirements of the newly reformed Church of England.
Adbolton church was still standing and in use in the early 18th century and the tower was not taken down until 1830. Much of the church ashlar stone was then used to repair the neighbouring church of St. Edmund in Holmpierrepont. Today there is nothing left of Adbolton above ground level except Adbolton Hall, to the east of the old village and now a residential nursing home; and its lodge (today a kindergarten). The ground itself in and around the old village, just beyond the built-up Ladybay estate, is very uneven and may contain many more artefacts yet to be discovered.