Place:Fleet, Lincolnshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Fleet is a village, civil parish and electoral ward in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire, England. It lies on Delph Bank, south-east from Holbeach. The population of the civil parish, including Fleet Hargate, at the 2011 census was 2136.

In 1086, Fleet was listed as Fleot (Old English: the stream, estuary or creek), in the wapentake of Elloe in the Parts of Holland of Lincolnshire.

The Grade I listed Church of England parish church, dating from the late 12th century, is dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. The church tower with spire is detached from the nave by . The fabric is mainly Decorated in style, with Early English arcades and a Perpendicular west window. According to Cox (1916), the church was restored in 1860, when the chancel was rebuilt, although the canopied sedilia was retained. In 1964 Pevsner noted 1798 repairs and considered the church "over-restored". He dated a chancel rebuild to 1843, questioned if it was "done correctly", and recorded Victorian tracery in the aisle windows, a blocked doorway to a previous chapel in the chancel, "fine busts of great variety", a Decorated-style sedilia and piscina with ogee arches and crocketed gables, a reredos dated 1790, and a defaced 14th-century effigy.

Pevsner also recorded an 1854 red-brick rectory designed by Benjamin Ferrey and restored in 2005 by Steven Holmes and Peter Day. A motte south-west of the village where 11th- and 12th-century pottery has been found.^[1] The English Heritage record for the now ploughed-down motte site details finds from the Iron Age to the 18th century.

In the 2011 UK census Fleet had a population of 2,136. The parish includes the hamlet of Fleet Hargate.

Research Tips

Lincolnshire 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.

• Maps provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time show all the parishes and many villages and hamlets. (Small local reorganization of parishes took place in the 1930s led to differences between the latter two maps.):

• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map of 1888 with Poor Law Union divisions
• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map of 1900 with early Rural District divisions
• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map, revised 1937 with later Rural District divisions

• FindMyPast now has a large collection of Lincolnshire baptisms, banns, marriages and burials now available to search by name, year, place and parent's names. This is a pay website. (blog dated 16 Sep 2016)
• GENUKI's page on Lincolnshire's Archive Service gives addresses, phone numbers, webpages for all archive offices, museums and libraries in Lincolnshire which may store old records and also presents a list entitled "Hints for the new researcher" which may include details of which you are not aware. These suggestions are becoming more and more outdated, but there's no telling what may be expected in a small library.
• GENUKI also has pages of information on individual parishes, particularly ecclesiastical parishes. The author may just come up with morsels not supplied in other internet-available sources.
• Deceased Online now has records for 11 cemeteries and two crematoria in Lincolnshire. This includes Grimsby's Scartho Road cemetery, Scartho Road crematorium, and Cleethorpes cemetery, council records for the City of Lincoln and Gainsborough, and older church records from The National Archives for St Michael's in Stamford, and St Mark's in Lincoln, dating back to 1707. This is a pay website.