The Heritage Group is made up of people from the two villages and the surrounding area who are interested in exploring some aspect of our heritage – that is, what has come to us from the past. Some bring a particular interest or knowledge - of archaeology, perhaps, or geology; of natural history, or local history.

Some have skills at mapping, drawing, photography, or with computers. Others bring their interest and their time, enjoying sharing in a community activity. Anyone is welcome to join us.
Our Current Project
One part of the whole project has been an investigation into the site surrounding old St Mary’s Church in the valley between Lockton and Levisham.

Our aim was to discover if there had once been settlement on the site, and if so, when. A local legend told of a village down there which had been wiped out by the Black Death. Was there any truth in the story?

The project was directed by Community Archaeologist Kevin Cale (Community Archaeology Ltd.). During 2004, he showed us how to look at a site, reading the clues in the landscape. We began the painstaking process of recording all we observed on a database.

We engaged a geophysicist, Mark Noel (Geoquest) to carry out a survey of part of the field where we had observed artificially levelled areas that might have been building platforms. The survey was less revealing than we had hoped. The 19th century iron water pipes that carried Levisham’s first water supply obscured much of what lay under the field. We also secured the services of a surveyor to make an accurate survey of the field.

The final phase of the archaeology project, carried out in the summer of 2005, involved digging 2 trial holes, each 1m square, on the two major building platforms. One yielded a large quantity of fragments of 13th and 14th century pottery, which seems to confirm the presence of an early medieval settlement on the site. The second hole, on the platform which we though might have been the site of an earlier church, soon came to a rubbly stone surface. This was as far as we were able to go.

We have been left with a number of intriguing unanswered questions. There is plenty more to do!

The Levisham Village Archive is a collection of copies of all kinds of documents relating to the history of the village and its surroundings. It was started by a Local History group about 10 years ago, and is continually growing. It is housed in Levisham Village Hall, where it can be consulted by appointment. We think there is nowhere so appropriate to look at the information about a place, as in the place itself!