Levitt Hagg

Levitt Hagg (sometimes spelled Levit Hagg) is a now largely-abandoned hamlet in South Yorkshire, located approximately two miles southwest of Doncaster and near Conisbrough Castle. Limestone began to be quarried at Levitt Hagg in ancient times. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=C80QAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA196&dq=%22levit+hagg%22&ei=78XkSMueAoPctAPJ96zBDw The Geologist, Samuel Jospeh Mackie, Lovell Reeve & Co., London, 1863] ]

The area in which Levitt Hagg is located was known as Conisbrough Cliffs, which was composed of two quarries: Near Cliff, which had been exhausted by 1791; and "Far Cliff" which included the long-gone early industrial hamlet of Levitt Hagg. [ [http://www.conisbroughcastle.org.uk/Education/Key%20Stage%202/conisbroughhistory.htm An Illustrated Account of Conisbrough, Robert Allen Marsh, Conisbrough History, conisbroughcastle.org.uk] ] Limestone from the quarries at Levitt Hagg, which had a vertical height of 75 feet, was widely used in building in the South Yorkshire area since medieval times.

Levitt Hagg was also the site, along with nearby environs in the Don Gorge, of ancient woodlands rich in yew trees. Today Levitt Hagg is the site of an abandoned quarry and landfill site, providing refuge for four species of bats, including whiskered, long-eared, Daubentons and Natterers. (The bats and their habitat are protected by law.) The ancient settlement at Levitt Hagg was removed in the 1950's.

The River Don valley was a site given to limestone formations which lent themselves to early mining for building purposes. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=UucGAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA292&dq=%22levit+hagg%22&ei=wMbkSLvKGqaktAOsme3BDw The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Vol. 17, Longman, Green, Longmans and Roberts, London, 1861] ] The soft dolomite limestone from the banks of the Don east of Conisbrough made ideal building material, which yielded profits for some. An account book from the mid-eighteenth century records the expenses of quarrying limestone at the site, which belonged at that time to the Battie-Wrightson family of Cusworth. [ [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=197-ddbw&cid=-1 Papers of Battie-Wrightson of Cusworth, Doncaster Archives Department, The National Archives, nationalarchives.gov.uk] ]

The settlement took its name from Hagg, an archaic word which meant 'broken ground in a bog,' [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=00cBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA142&lpg=PA142&dq=hagg+derivation&source=web&ots=TYicUG3hzo&sig=qh9DSkf6Bki_UakpzTV4KGpSZkA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result Patronymica Britannica, Mark Antony Lower, John Russell Smith, Lewes, 1860] ] [Some ascribe the word Hagg to an Anglo-Saxon word meaning an 'enclosure made by a hedge.' Others say that it derives from the Old Norse word for small farmsteads, 'haga,' which in turn derives from the Old Norse 'hagi' meaning enclosure.] and from the Levett family, an Anglo-Norman family prominent in Yorkshire for centuries. The family also gave its name to a former holding, Hooton Levitt, close by Roche Abbey, to which the family had longstanding ties through their intermarriage with the FitzTurgis family (later de Wickersley), who co-founded the Abbey with Anglo-Norman magnate Roger de Busli.

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