Place:Hardwick, Lincolnshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Hardwick from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"HARDWICK, a township in Torksey parish, Lincolnshire; 6½ miles WNW of Lincoln. Population: 82. Houses: 15."

Until 1866 when it was made a separate civil parish, Hardwick was a township in the ancient parish of Torksey in the Parts of Lindsey in Lincolnshire. In 1894 it became part of Gainsborough Rural District.

GENUKI states that in 1881 Alexander HUNTER owned most of the land in Hardwick township.

Wikipedia redirects Hardwick to the civil parish of Kettlethorpe, but since neither A Vision of Britain through Time nor GENUKI mention this link it must be assumed that it occurred in 1974 or later. (A Vision of Britain through Time and GENUKI both cease their coverage with the alterations to local government that occurred in 1974.)

The civil parishes of Kettlethorpe, Hardwick, Fenton, Torksey and Newton on Trent are all located in the southwest corner of the former Gainsborough Rural District. To the west and south is the county of Nottinghamshire. Kettlethorpe is the most central of the parishes with Hardwick on the east, Fenton to the northwest and Newton on Trent to the southwest. Torksey is northwest of Hardwick. They all have low population densities and thus it has been economically viable to merge them given the improvements in communication over the past century.

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.