Бертон-Джойс: История и археология английской деревни

Village in Nottinghamshire, England

Burton Joyce (/b//ɜr//t//ən// /'/dʒ//ɔɪ//s/) is a large village and civil parish in the Gedling district of Nottinghamshire, England, 7 mile (11 km) east of Nottingham, between Stoke Bardolph to the south and Bulcote to the north east. The A612 links it to Carlton and Netherfield to the south west and Lowdham to the north east. Initially the site of an Iron age fort, it was occupied by Norman nobility, who founded St Helen's Church. From being a farming community, Burton Joyce grew in the early Industrial Revolution, earning repute up to the 1920s for its textile products. Many of its 3,500 inhabitants (census 2021; up from 3,443 in 2011) commute to work in Nottingham. It forms with Stoke Bardoph and Bulcote the Trent Valley ward of Gedling, with two councillors.

There is archaeological evidence such as a blade implement and arrowheads pointing to habitation in the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras. The Bronze Age finds have proved more numerous. They include a set of ring ditches, a rapier and several spearheads. The village is also notable for the site of a substantial Iron Age hillfort or bertune, later to be pronounced "Burton" in the Norman fashion (the name of the village until the early 14th century). It was excavated in 1950–1951. The discovery of Gaulish made samian ware and a distinctive coin, along with coarse gritted and medieval pottery, have led archaeologists to believe that the fort was occupied by Roman soldiers sometime after their invasion of Britain in 43 AD under Vespasian. Such was not uncommon in other hill forts of the Iron Age, with Maiden Castle and Hod Hill, both in Dorset, later occupied by Romans as strategic military bases.

The Domesday Book of 1086 refers to "a church and a priest, sixteen acres of meadow In the confessours time, and then at the taking the said survey, valued at one mark of silver," indicating occupancy of the then Bertune in Anglo Saxon times. Little is known of the original church, except that reclaimed skerry stone was used to build the north aisle of the village's current St Helen's Church by Norman settlers. The aisle, unusually wide for its time, is thought to represent a much larger structure than customary in that period. Restoration of the building in the 13th or early 14th century included a southward extension and rebuilding of the chancel, which may have been done by the aristocratic de Jorz family. Robert de Jorz as Lord of the Manor would become Sheriff of Nottingham in 1331. He was granted 20 oak trees on the King's behalf in 1307 and may have used the timber to benefit the church, which at the time was dedicated to St Oswald. The construction of timber farm buildings at a similar period, including barns, have proved to be some of the village's longest standing structures. Efforts by churchwardens to do repairs were reversed in 1725 when a flood inflicted damage to a cost of £1,021, with donations made by the Church of St Mary Magadalene of Newark on Trent later deemed to be squandered on a poor restoration attempt by the likes of Thomas Henry Wyatt and Sir Stephen Glynne. The school in their private residence was exclusively for boarders and did not use corporal punishment. An endowment made by Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon in 1850 allowed a purchase of land in the centre of the village, where a small infant school was built. Construction of a larger, better equipped facility ensued in 1867, with separate classrooms for the boys and the girls.

The village has regular bus links with Nottingham, Lowdham and Southwell. East Midlands Railway serves Burton Joyce railway station in the direction of Nottingham/Derby/Matlock/Leicester and of Newark/Lincoln.