Althorp is a lost village within the grounds of the

Althorp Althorp (popularly pronounced ) is a Grade I listed stately home and estate in the civil parish of Althorp, in West Northamptonshire, England of about . By road it is about northwest of the county town of Northampton and about northwest ...

estate in the English

county A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire ( ; abbreviated Northants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Leicestershire, Rutland and Lincolnshire to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshi ...

. The village is recorded in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

. In the 15th century, the manor was held by the Catesby family who were probably responsible for clearing the settlement, for by 1505, the records show that there were no tenants. In 1508, the parish, including the cleared settlement of Althorp, was sold to John Spencer of

Wormleighton Wormleighton is a village in Warwickshire, England. It sits on Wormleighton Hill overlooking the River Cherwell. The population taken at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census was 183. The original village was on the banks of the Cherwe ...

in Warwickshire. By 1577, the land in the parish had been divided into four large sheep pastures. Althorp remains a

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

Remains today

There are some signs of earthworks on the site but much has been damaged by later activities such as ploughing. The main feature is a broad

hollow way A sunken lane (also hollow way or holloway) is a road or track that is significantly lower than the land on either side, not formed by the (recent) engineering of a road cutting but possibly of much greater age. Holloways may have been formed i ...

which runs up the hillside and is 1.5 metres in depth. There are several platforms on the south side of the hollow which are thought to be the sites of dwellings.''An Inventory of Archaeological Sites in North-West Northamptonshire'' (1981) London: HMSO,

References

{{Authority control Deserted medieval villages in Northamptonshire Civil parishes in Northamptonshire West Northamptonshire District

Remains today

See also

References