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Digby is a small village and civil parish in the North Kesteven District of Lincolnshire, England. The village is situated in the vale of the Digby Beck watercourse, 6 miles (10 km) north from the town of Sleaford and 12 miles (19 km) south from the city and county town of Lincoln. The village has a population of about 574 (undated, probably 2001 or 2011). Near the village is the Royal Air Force grass airfield of RAF Digby (formerly RAF Scopwick). During the Second World War the station was home to Hurricane and Spitfire squadrons and to Douglas Bader, Guy Gibson, and poet John Gillespie Magee. The airfield was taken over by the Canadians later in the war, as RCAF Digby Fighter Station, with the Operations Room and billets at nearby Blankney Hall. [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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