MDE800 - Netherton (Monument)

SS 588 471. There is the site of a deserted Medieval village at Netherton. [1,2] The name Richard de Nithereton appears in unprinted Lay Subsidy Rolls for 1330. [3] Netherton is shown on the 1843 Combe Martin Tithe map as a farmhouse and three outbuildings to the west, with the landowner and occupier given in the Apportionment of the rent Charge as William Willis. There is a garden and an orchard shown to the northeast of the buildings. [4] A William Willis of Netherton is recorded at a meeting of landowners on 8th December 1840 to discuss the first steps towards Tithe Commutation on Combe Martin. [5] SS 5909 4730. The remains of a post-medieval farmstead set into a east facing hillslope mainly on the east side of Netherton Lane. The buildings are now ruinous though their original plan as shown on the Tithe Map is still discernible. The western gable end of an outbuilding, at SS 5907 4729 to the southwest of the farmhouse, still stands to a height of about 4 metres. but otherwise the walls vary from foundation level to about 2.7 metres high and they are generally overgrown with scrub and thick vegetation. The remains of the north and east walls of an outbuilding lie on the west side of the lane. To the northeast, in the field corner, there appears to have been a constructed platform, about 18 metres square. The orchard has been ploughed out as have the surrounding fields; there is no evidence of further settlement in the adjacent valley bottom area or anything to suggest this was ever more than a small farmstead. [6] The farmstead is depicted and labelled "Netherton" on the 1st and 2nd Edition Ordnance Survey maps. [7,8] The farmstead appears to have been ruinous by the time the Royal Air Force photographed the area from the air in 1946-8. [9] Monument record reviewed as part of NRHE to HER pilot project. [10,11]