Morton and Hanthorpe
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Morton and Hanthorpe is the new name of Morton by Bourne in Lincolnshire, England. There are several villages and hamlets in the county with the name of Morton. They were once far enough apart not to be confused but in an age of easy communication it has become necessary to distinguish between them. This Morton is at TF090240.
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[edit] Geography
[edit] Geology
Morton lies on the western margin of The Fens on three sorts of land, the upland, the fen edge and the fen. The parish was laid out in an elongated form so as to provide access to each of these. At the highest edge, in the west, the geology is chalky glacial till (boulder clay) but most of the upland is Jurassic, including a little Oxford Clay but mostly Kellaways Sand and some Cornbrash and Kellaways Clay. The fen edge consists of First Terrace Gravel with a little Glacial Gravel. The landward part of the fen was black soil, composed largely of peat. Over the two and half centuries since the land was drained, this has largely oxidized away leaving the underlying First Terrace gravel and the mainly clays of the Barroway Drove Beds. These beds form the central part of the fen as well, as they do at the eastern end of the parish. However, there, there is a broad ridge of the Terrington Beds, the remains of a huge marine creek which was not laid down until the Bronze Age and was still active when the Romans diverted Bourne Eau into it by means of what is called by archaeologists 'the Bourne-Morton Canal'. Our medieval ancestors knew it as 'the (Bourne) Old Ea'.
[edit] Settlement
The village is in two parts, one each side of the fen-edge road, the A15. To the fenward side is Morton and to the upland side is Hanthorpe. The earlier name is that of Morton which will come from the acid peat land which the Anglian settlers found in the fen in around the year 500. The name therefore indicates that the fen was to a significant extent better called the bog in modern terminology. They were Germanic speakers so they called it a moor. Hanthorpe is a name indicating a subsidiary settlement established in the period of the Danish settlements, probably in the tenth century. The church and the later signs of the manorial centre are in Morton.
