Place:Amber Hill, Lincolnshire, England

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

Amber Hill is a village and civil parish in Lincolnshire, England, approximately west-north-west from Boston. The 2001 Census measured its population at 268, increasing to 294 at the 2011 census.

The distance omitted in the excerpt from Wikipedia is "approximately 6 miles (10 km) west-north-west from the town of Boston.

History and Governance

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

The name Amber Hill reputedly comes from the village standing on a seam of amber coloured gravel. Amber Hill was a plot of 30 acres allotted under the Holland Fen Enclosure Award to provide materials for repairing the roads of several parishes having rights of common on Holland Fen. It was formed a civil parish in 1880.

The village is one of eighteen parishes which, together with Boston, form the Borough of Boston. The local government has been arranged in this way since the reorganization of 1 April 1974, which resulted from the Local Government Act 1972. This parish forms part of the Swineshead and Holland Fen electoral ward.

Hitherto, the parish formed part of Boston Rural District, in the Parts of Holland. Holland was one of the three divisions (formally known as parts) of the traditional county of Lincolnshire. Since the Local Government Act of 1888, Holland had been, in most respects, a county in itself.

Landmarks

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

Amber Hill church, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, was built in 1867 and is a Grade II listed building. It was made redundant in 1995 and sold as a private dwelling house. The graveyard is still public, and interments still take place there.

Amber Hill Tower Mill was one of several pumping windmills once standing in Holland Fen. Late in the 19th century it was converted to steam power and continued to work driven by traction engine and finally by tractor, until about 1960. The engine at Spinney Farm has a brick tower, internal gearing and its scoop wheel (rebuilt 1960), although its cap and sails were removed when it was converted to be driven by steam.

A scoop wheel and channel on Claydike Bank was built in the 19th century of red brick, cast iron, and wood. It was originally belt-driven, and is Grade II listed.

Research Tips for the Boston, Lincolnshire, Area

From 1889 until 1974 Lincolnshire was divided into three administrative counties: Parts of Holland (in the southeast), Parts of Kesteven and Parts of Lindsey (further north and/or west). These formal names do not fit with modern grammatical usage, but that is what they were named, nonetheless.

The southern part of Lincolnshire, particularly the Parts of Holland, is very low-lying and land had to be drained for agriculture to be successful. These areas are named "The Fens".

Fenland is a feature of the Boston Rural District and Horncastle Rural District areas. Fenlands tended to be extraparochial until the mid 1850s, but were then identified with names and given the title "civil parish". Many were abolished in 1906, and became parts of larger neighbouring parishes. As a result, Wikipedia no longer provides articles on some of these small low-populated areas.

Sources

• OS New Popular One-Inch Map, Sheet 114, provided online by A Vision of Britain, is an early 20th century map covering the east part of Lincolnshire from Boston to Skegness. It does not list all the fen settlements, but does list all the towns and hamlets. Degrees of longitude and latitude are given along its sides. The map magnifies to a very high scale.

• Normally, A Vision of Britain would also be suggested as a source for parish boundary maps for the area. Unfortunately, this website has made an error in its map indexing and the sub-heading "Boundary Maps" repeats the maps given under "Topographic Maps". It is not possible to view outlines of the parishes located in this area.

• The National Library of Scotland [1] [1] also provides a large number of maps for all the counties and districts of England as well as those of Scotland. Their map indices for England only cover modern placenames, but they do allow the user to view a parish in relation to its neighbours. These maps are very easy to read.

• FindMyPast, a pay website, now has a large collection of Lincolnshire baptisms, banns, marriages and burials now available to search by name, year, place and parent's names.

• 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.

• GENUKI also has pages of information on individual parishes, particularly ecclesiastical parishes. The author may just come up with morsels of information not supplied in other internet-available sources.

• Deceased Online, a pay website, 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 church records from the UK's National Archives for St Michael's in Stamford, and St Mark's in Lincoln, dating back to 1707.