A final edit and I published this website (the link above) describing the history and lives of my Ascough ancestors:
THE ASCOUGHS - A HISTORY OF LIFE ON THE BORDER OF EAST FEN
This is the story of the Ascough family who
lived for centuries in the two neighbouring Lincolnshire villages of
Toynton St Peter and Toynton All Saints that are situated on the northern
border of East Fen where it meets the Wolds.
My great grandfather was George Ascough (known in later life as George
Askew) the first for many generations to leave this rural community to
work in the coalfields of Rotherham.
His ancestors were fen commoners for hundreds of years, but the dramatic
changes of the nineteenth century through drainage and enclosure of the fens
led to George, and many others like him, seeking employment elsewhere.
INTRODUCTION
My
great grandfather George Ascough left home in 1870 at the age of nineteen, to
seek employment in the coalfields of Rotherham.
All his male ancestors lived off the land around the two small Lincolnshire villages
of Toynton St Peter and Toynton All Saints that are situated on the northern edge
of the East Fen, just where it meets the higher ground of the Lincolnshire
Wolds. The villages are only a mile apart.
So what I wanted to know was what happened to prompt George to make this move
after so many generations had made their lives on the edge of fenland.
Joan Thirsk, in her book “English Peasant Farming – The Agrarian History of
Lincolnshire from Tudor to Recent Times”, summarises the changes that affected
those who lived and worked next to the fen.
In the fenlands of Lincolnshire, more perhaps than in any of
part of the country, the agricultural revolution transformed the landscape and
began a complete re-orientation of the fen economy. The original inhabitants of
the fen villages had specialised in rearing livestock and catching fish and
wildfowl, but it was their children and grandchildren who gained their living
as labourers on the newly rich corn lands. New parishes were carved out
of East West and Wildmore Fens. The fenlander, who had been accustomed to
making many journeys by water, now became a land lubber.
This
was particularly true for those living close to East Fen as this was the place
where stood the Deeps, the network of meres and shallow lakes.
I
find it hard to be precise about the lives of my ancestors in the sixteenth,
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the one hand, their villages,
especially Toynton All Saints, were situated on fertile higher ground that
was the start of the Lincolnshire Wolds. Before the enclosure of 1773, there
was still common land within the parish in the form of open fields. This would
have been available to the commoners for cultivating crops and the grazing of
livestock. However, there were other fields that had been enclosed over previous
centuries. Were the Ascoughs employed as farm labourers for the landowners or
their tenants? Possibly part time. But I am convinced that the rights of common
that they enjoyed on the fen was always a large part of their livelihood.
My researches have taken me back to the lives of the Ascough family as they
took advantage of the natural landscape of East Fen to the south and the higher
ground of the Wolds to the north. But all this was to change dramatically when
enclosure and drainage of the fens took away their rights of common which
eventually led to them becoming full time agricultural labourers in the employ
of the new landowners and their tenants. That is until George decided this
wasn’t for him.
But
this is not just a story of the family. It has become more of a history of East
Fen itself. Very different today to what my ancestors knew hundreds of years
ago.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
and Permissions
The
Ascough Family History
Toynton
St Peter and Toynton All Saints
Maps
of East Fen
The
Landscape
Life
on the East Fen
The
Toynton Villages before and after Enclosure
The
Ancient Fen
The
Sixteenth Century
The
Seventeenth Century
The
Eighteenth Century
The
Nineteenth Century
The
Effects of the Changes
Sources
