Brauncewell: a Lincolnshire hamlet where a lost village still lingers

Brauncewell is a hamlet and former civil parish in North Kesteven, Lincolnshire, now within the parish of Cranwell, Brauncewell and Byard's Leap. The village was founded well before Domesday Book and flourished in the early medieval centuries before entering a long period of decline. By the 18th century only one family is said to have remained in Brauncewell, giving it the character of a shrunken village whose past far exceeded its later size. The parish church of All Saints, rebuilt in the Elizabethan period and again in the 19th century, remains its key historic survival.
Population: 521 inhabitants (2001 census, wider civil parish context).
Distance: south of Lincoln and close to Cranwell and RAF Digby.
Traditions and culture: Brauncewell’s story is one of medieval settlement, decline and parish continuity, tied to the broader history of the Lincolnshire heath villages.
Highlights: All Saints Church, the surviving earthworks and traces of the old settlement, and the open heathland landscape of North Kesteven.