York Historic Environment Record

Village of Knapton. The hamlet of the middle ages had open fields, evidence of which is preserved in the local names of Lowfield and Northfield. Enclosure, which took place mainly in the 18th and 19th centuries, created a landscape of defined, enclosed fields divided by hedgerows. Some of these field boundaries preserve the “s” shape formed by the medieval ploughing system in narrow strips. Fields today are mainly large and result from the amalgamation of the smaller fields of the enclosure period. The village itself has a simple plan with a single principal street (Main Street) and, on the east side, a “Back Lane”. It is likely that the village was originally laid out as a ‘single-sided’ village, with the main street lined by houses and the back lane by farm buildings, with easy access to the adjacent fields. Later expansion caused new building on the west side of Main Street, but no back lane was ever created here.