Place:Quarrington, Lincolnshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Quarrington is a village and former civil parish, now part of the civil parish of Sleaford, in the North Kesteven District of Lincolnshire, a non-metropolitan county in the East Midlands of England. The old village and its church lie approximately 1.2 miles (2 km) southwest from the centre of Sleaford, the nearest market town, but suburban housing developments at New Quarrington and Quarrington Hill effectively link the two settlements. Bypassed by the A15 road, it is connected to Lincoln and Peterborough, as well as Newark and King's Lynn (via the A17). At the 2011 UK census, Quarrington and Mareham ward, which incorporates most of the settlement, had an estimated population of 7,046.

Quarrington was a rural community during the early and middle Anglo-Saxon period, while mills along the River Slea in the Middle Ages gave the village its name. The Bishop of Lincoln and Ramsey Abbey held manors in Quarrington after the Norman Conquest, but the Carre family of Sleaford were the principal land-owners between 1559 and 1683, when its estate passed by marriage to the Marquesses of Bristol. Although the growth of Victorian Sleaford saw the town encroach into the parish's boundaries, the old village remained a small cluster of farm buildings and cottages for much of its history. The sale of most of the surrounding farmland by successive Marquesses of Bristol in the late 20th century led to the rapid development of residential estates on Quarrington Hill and in New Quarrington which have engulfed the original settlement.

The medieval St Botolph's Church, a grade II* listed building, lies at the heart of the old village and remains a hub for the Anglican community. In the 19th century the most common employment was in agriculture and more than half of the village's population were farm labourers. By 2011, most residents were employed in the wholesale and retail trades, public administration and defence, human health and social work and manufacturing.

The ancient parish of Quarrington lay within Kesteven's Aswardhurn wapentake. It was incorporated into Sleaford Poor Law Union in 1851. The Public Health Act 1872 established urban sanitary districts (USD) and Quarrington became part of the Sleaford USD, which in turn was reorganised into Sleaford Urban District (UD) by the Local Government Act 1894.

Sleaford Urban District was abolished by the Local Government Act 1972 and, by statutory instrument, Sleaford civil parish became its successor, thus merging Quarrington, New Sleaford, Old Sleaford and Holdingham civil parishes. Subsequently, the community of Quarrington has been served by Sleaford Town Council, North Kesteven District Council and Lincolnshire County Council.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Quarrington.

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.