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Holbeach is a fenland market town in the South Holland District of southern Lincolnshire, England. The town lies 8 miles (13 km) from Spalding; 17 miles (27 km) from Boston; 20 miles (32 km) from King's Lynn; 23 miles (37 km) from Peterborough; and 43 miles (69 km) by road from the county town of Lincoln. It is on the junction of the A151 and A17. The main High Street is the B1515. The Prime Meridian of the world passes through the west of Holbeach and is marked with a millstone at Wignals Gate. Much of the economy has been based on food processing and bulb growing. The United Kingdom's largest supplier of tulip and daffodil bulbs is situated to the north of the town and flour milling continues at Barrington Mill. [edit] History
A number of Roman and Romano-British pottery finds have been made in and about the town. The town's market charter was awarded in 1252 to Thomas de Moulton, a local baron. All Saints' Church was built in the 14th century and the porch, which was built around 1700, possibly incorporated parts of de Moulton's ruined castle. The associated All Saints' Hospital, for a warden and fifteen poor persons, was founded by Sir John of Kirton, in 1351. It had ceased to exist before the suppression of chantries and hospitals. The antiquarian William Stukeley reported that his father removed the ruins from the site which is now occupied by the Chequers Inn. Until the beginning of the 17th century, the sea came to within of the town and there were severe floods recorded in the 13th and 16th centuries. The land drainage programmes that followed moved the coastline of the Wash to away, leaving Holbeach surrounded by more than of reclaimed fertile agricultural land. In 1615, nominees of the Earl of Argyll were entitled to the land which was reclaimed from the sea in Wigtoft, Moulton, Whaplode, Holbeach and Tydd St Mary. The Earl paid for the work, but differences of opinion stalled the project after 1634. Further enclosure of marshes were recorded in 1660, in Gedney, Whaplode, Holbeach and Moulton. The work included the building of an embankment, and resulted in being added to Holbeach parish. A second embankment was built under the provisions of the South Holland Embankment Act (1793) and added another . Following unsuccessful attempts in the 1830s, the rest of Holbeach Marsh was enclosed in 1840. The project was directed by Mr. Millington, and the total area added to the parish by all these enclosures was . In 1829 a theatre was built for Joseph Smedley as the 'Public Rooms' in Park Road. This was visited by the Lincoln Company, managed by Fanny Robertson, following their performances in Wisbech in 1841. The Spalding and Norwich Railway, (later incorporated in the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway), opened Holbeach railway station in 1862. Like the rest of the M&GN route, it closed to passengers in 1959 (before the Beeching Axe) and the line closed entirely in 1965. The 19th century also saw the building of several small churches, including a Wesleyan chapel, built on Chapel Street in 1808, and a Baptist chapel, which was built on Albert Street in 1845 using red brick and colourwashed render. The Second World War defences constructed at nearby Lawyers Creek comprise a number of pillboxes including the rare Ruck machine gun post. [edit] Geography
The name "Holbeach" also applies to the civil parish of Holbeach. The parish is one of the largest by area in England, and extends from Cambridgeshire to the Wash, measuring north to south, and about east to west. The total population of the parish is almost 24,000 with approximately 10,000 in Holbeach town. The town has the most inhabitants and services compared to the villages surrounding it which incorporate its name. Along with the town of Holbeach proper, the name is found in a number of villages in the Lincolnshire Fens: Holbeach Bank, Holbeach Clough, Holbeach Drove, Holbeach Fen, Holbeach Hurn, Holbeach St Johns, Holbeach St Marks and Holbeach St Matthew. This repetition of a name for a collection of close-lying villages is not unknown in the Fens: Gedney, Tydd, and Walpole are other examples. The drainage of land around Holbeach is now the responsibility of the South Holland Internal Drainage Board, part of the Water Management Alliance, formerly known as the King's Lynn Consortium of Internal Drainage Boards. [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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