Sibbertoft Castle And Coombs

Please refer to my pictures of Sibbertoft Castle, the Long Coomb at Sibbertoft, the church door at Marston Trussell and the earthworks by the Marston Road at Lubenham. LocalPictures

Years ago I read that in early times the English peoples used rivers rather than roads where possible and it seemed to me that the Scandinavians may have developed trade between the Welland and the Avon further when they were in control of much of England. A castle is clearly marked at Sibbertoft which might have been used to control this route. It is on private land belonging to Marston Lodge Farm, which is owned by Mr Shepherd and eventually I asked him to let me take photographs for my Internet sites.

Some years ago when I enquired at Hothorpe Hall about the Welland's course beyond there, I was told it was believed that Hothorpe had been named originally after a Dane called Ude and that timbers from his boat had been taken out of the river there in recent centuries and used for the doorway of Marston Trussell church. See my pictures. 'Ude' is actually a Danish word for 'outside' which fits for Hothorpe which is outside the larger settlement of Theddingworth.

It seems clear that 'Ude' was a name of Danish origin and Sibbertoft is also. In his treatment of English place-names Ekwall suggested that the 'Sibber-' of Sibbertoft was from 'Sigbiorn', a Danish personal name. He needed a reason for the letter 'r' to appear in the name and could not conclude that it was from a personal name 'Sibba' or 'Sibbi' for grammatical reasons although he gave them as origins of other place-names with 'Sibb-'. A connection with shipping gives a simpler origin for the form of the name, Sibbertoft, because Danish for ship is 'scib'. Furthermore, Ekwall seems always to conclude that places with names somewhat like early forms of a word for 'ship' are always named for a connection with sheep and never for any association with shipping. That seems unlikely and also, for him, names containing early forms of 'raven' such as Ravensthorpe, were from personal names although the famous battle standard of the Scandinavians showed a raven. So he may have missed the possibility that Sibbertoft gained its name from a connection with shipping because, it seems, he did not give much attention to Scandinavian cultural contributions.

I think that the people who said the timbers now in the door of Marston Trussell church were from a boat were mistaken and that actually they are from a lock used to raise boats on the river. The timbers seem too heavy to have been from any size of boat likely to have been used on a small river, they don't seem to be joined in a way used in shipbuilding if the joining is original and also it seems unlikely to me that a boat would have been allowed to sink in a river and remain there, blocking it and rotting away. However, lock gates would easily have been forgotten and it would not have been worth the considerable amount of labour required to dig them out to reuse the timbers when new, more valuable wood was readily available. Carbon dating would reveal the age of the timbers.

Mr Chamberlain, who owns the land, agreed to me showing photographs of the western coomb at Sibbertoft. At first I thought it quite likely, since it seems certain that boats must at times have been hauled between the rivers, that some would have been hauled through this coomb. They may have been but although there are earthworks in it, that earth may only have been moved to facilitate drainage. I included a picture of that section, which I have called the 'Switchback Section'.

Lower down in the coomb there is a sink hole where earth has gone down into a break in a ceramic drainage pipe below the surface and it seems unlikely that such a pipe could have been produced in very early times so perhaps the earthworks at the switchback section were raised in connection with drainage works in modern times. Still, it is just possible that the earthworks were raised to block the coomb and that later a smaller channel was cut through. There is no evidence at the lower entrance to the coomb that earth was moved to make a path for boats and where the reeds are shown on another picture the channel slowly peters out running first a little one way and then the other. That seems to be a completely natural feature.

An important objection to the idea that the western coomb was used for hauling boats between the rivers is its steepness, especially compared to the coomb running beside Sibbertoft Castle. A river route up beyond Theddingworth which loops southward and would require boats to be hauled somewhere over what is now the airfield is one alternative. The river is very narrow beyond Theddingworth and it would probably have required locks of which there might still be remains. On the Avon side the building of Sulby reservoir and of the arm of the Grand Union canal may have unearthed evidence about earlier works. A route beside the castle seems very viable although it would have required the longest overland haul. It would possibly have reached the Avon somewhere between Welford and what is now the eastern end of Sulby reservoir. One advantage of a longer haul would have been speed and also larger boats could have been taken. Warships of the Scandinavian period and later might have been moved between the coasts quickly and at no risk of shipwreck.

Putting all these considerations together it seems to me that Sibbertoft Castle probably was built eventually to control or prevent movement between the rivers and there was a small entrance on the side next to the coomb which is marked at the moment by a fallen tree shown on my picture of the barred entrance. A small ramp leads down from that entrance suggesting that the castle could have collected tolls. That entrance was missed by the person responsible for the treatment of the castle in the Victoria History of Northampton and mention there of a tumulus shown on maps 3/8 miles south of the castle which that author couldn't find is perhaps explained by the copse of which I have included a picture which perhaps contains a shallow burial mound and is about 3/8 miles from the southern entrance.

The river at Lubenham was diverted when the railway was built which complicates a study of how the river may have been used in early times. I have included pictures of earthworks by the Marston Road on my Internet sites and thought they may have some connection to the now unknown site of the councils of Clovesho, which H.P.R. Finberg said in his work on the formation of England, was probably at Lubenham. Probably what is visible there is to do with attempts to contain the river and with old channels from previous meanders of the river, which filled over time. There seem to be two old channels north of the river and one to the south of it and they can be seen most clearly when looking from the end of the public footpath nearest to the Marston Road. One of my pictures shows a large cutting, which is now on the north side of the river and it doesn't seem to have been produced naturally. It may have been a place where boats were hauled out if in those early times it was on the southern side.

My interest was originally drawn to the river at Lubenham by the possible connection with those early council sites of Clovesho and how they fit at the origin of the Round Table of the Arthurian legends. So some of my earlier thinking about these things is in my booklets, which are available on my home page at www.geocities.com/andrewburbidge. Following my discussion of the earthworks by the Marston road above, if Clovesho was at Lubenham it was more likely to have been on higher and drier ground.