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Bicker is a village in the Borough of Boston, Lincolnshire, England. It is situated approximately 9 miles (10 km) west-south-west from the town of Boston, and on the A52 road. The medieval estuary, Bicker Haven, after which the village is named, originally formed the outlet of the River Witham which diverted to Boston after a flood in 1014. When the Anglo-Saxon settlers enclosed the marsh for pasture, and the tide no longer reached the haven, it silted-up, whereby Bicker ceased to be a port and became a farming village. This process had already begun with the Donington branch of the haven. The civil parish has an area of around 3,800 acres (15 km2), and includes the hamlet of Hoffleet Stow. In the 2001 UK census the population was 862. Bicker and Donington lie either side of the South Holland District and Borough of Boston boundary. The boundary follows to the south of the B1181, north of Donington Eaudike. To the west is North Kesteven District on the other side of the South Forty-Foot Drain. [edit] Research TipsLincolnshire is very low-lying and land had to be drained for agriculture to be successful. The larger drainage channels, many of which are parallel to each other, became boundaries between parishes. Many parishes are long and thin for this reason. There is much fenland in Lincolnshire, particularly in the Boston and Horncastle areas. Fenlands tended to be extraparochial before the mid 1850s, and although many sections were identified with names and given the title "civil parish", little information has been found about them. Many appear to be abolished in 1906, but the parish which adopts them is not given in A Vision of Britain through Time. Note the WR category Lincolnshire Fenland Settlements which is an attempt to organize them into one list. From 1889 until 1974 Lincolnshire was divided into three administrative counties: Parts of Holland, Parts of Kesteven and Parts of Lindsey. These formal names do not fit with modern grammatical usage, but that is what they were, nonetheless. In 1974 the northern section of Lindsey, along with the East Riding of Yorkshire, became the short-lived county of Humberside. In 1996 Humberside was abolished and the area previously in Lincolnshire was made into the two "unitary authorities" of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. The remainder of Lincolnshire was divided into "non-metropolitan districts" or "district municipalities" in 1974. Towns, villages and parishes are all listed under Lincolnshire, but the present-day districts are also given so that places in this large county can more easily be located and linked to their wider neighbourhoods. See the WR placepage Lincolnshire, England and the smaller divisions for further explanation.
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