The deserted village of Wythmail is located 4.5 miles south of Kettering

Kettering

Kettering is a market town in the Borough of Kettering, Northamptonshire, England. It is situated about from London. Kettering is mainly situated on the west side of the River Ise, a tributary of the River Nene which meets at Wellingborough...

 in the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 county

County

A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain modern nations. Historically in mainland Europe, the original French term, comté, and its equivalents in other languages denoted a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain...

 of Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...

. The village of Orlingbury

Orlingbury

Orlingbury is a village and civil parish in the English county of Northamptonshire. It is between the towns of Kettering and Wellingborough. Administratively it forms part of the borough of Wellingborough...

 is 1.1 miles to the east. Wythmail was part of the parish of Orlingbury.

History

In the Domesday Book

Domesday Book

Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

 it is recorded that there were 17 inhabitants in Wythmail and was assessed for 2½ hides

Hide (unit)

The hide was originally an amount of land sufficient to support a household, but later in Anglo-Saxon England became a unit used in assessing land for liability to "geld", or land tax. The geld would be collected at a stated rate per hide...

; the village was also recorded as having a priest, however the manor

Manorialism

Manorialism, an essential element of feudal society, was the organizing principle of rural economy that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire, was widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe, and was slowly replaced by the advent of a money-based market...

 was certainly included as part of Orlingbury. Records of 1220 rate the village as having 12 ploughs and it was mentioned in the Nomina Villarum

Nomina Villarum

Nomina Villarum was a survey carried out in 1316 and contains a list of all cities, boroughs and townships in England and the Lords of them. The document was compiled for King Edward II...

 of 1316. A manorial chapel was referenced here in 1357. The village was assessed in conjunction with Orlingbury in the 1334 Subsidy Returns and in the 1377 Poll Tax. By 1614 the land here had become a park which existed until 1657. By 1720 only one house was left in the village.

What remains

Today there are no traces of the village to be seen, having been completely obliterated by modern farming methods. However traces of the earthwork outline

Earthworks (archaeology)

In archaeology, earthwork is a general term to describe artificial changes in land level. Earthworks are often known colloquially as 'lumps and bumps'. Earthworks can themselves be archaeological features or they can show features beneath the surface...

 of the village and its streets can be clearly seen on an aerial photograph of the site taken by the RAF in 1947.