Listed Building record MDR5309 - Barlow Grange, Barlow

Barlow Grange was connected with the Cistercian Abbey at Louth. Visual earthwork remains include a possible partial enclosure [see SMR 1215]. (1) The Grange buildings date to the early 18th century. They are now [in 1977] ruinous and empty. (2) There is documentary evidence for the existence of a grange (Barley Grange) in 1306. (3) Barlow Grange was a large estate in Barlow given by Hasculus Musard to the abbey of Louth in the 12th century. Louth Abbey set about developing their new lands at Barlow almost immediately, probably mainly on a pastoral basis, but also exploiting their mineral wealth. Documentary references indicate that the abbey owned a good stretch of arable, wood and pasture in Barlow at 'Birley' now known as Barlow Grange. In the 12th century they had a house there with a courtyard and a ditch, possibly a sewer ditch, possibly a boundary ditch. It lay apparently outside the little settlement of Birley, just north of the road from 'Birlei' to 'Barleia' and lying south of the Ridgeway brook into which the ditch presumably drained. The estate included a bloom smithy in the woods and a forge in the monks' courtyard. It is extremely unlikely that the Abbey itself ran Barlow Grange or the rest of its estate there for long and it was being rented out by 1535. (4)