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Witham on the Hill is a village and civil parish in the South Kesteven District of Lincolnshire. It was the ecclesiastical parish for the townships to its east, Toft and Lound and Manthorpe. The two townships became civil parishes from 1866 and from then on had separate governmental structures. The village lies between the east and west tributaries of the River Glen. The peak of Witham's hill is within the parish but 1 mile (1.6 km) west of the village towards Careby. The parish to the west of Witham is Little Bytham. The predominant landowner in the area is the Grimsthorpe Estate. The civil parish covers a large area, extending north into Grimsthorpe Park and Dobbins Wood where it meets the boundary of the parish of Edenham, and the boundary with Toft with Lound and Manthorpe is mostly along the A6121 road. [edit] The ecclesiastical parishAccording to GENUKI, Witham on the Hill parish registers exist from 1670. The parish once supported a Wesleyan Methodist chapel. Once civil registration began, Witham was in the Bourne Registration District. [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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