Place:Gayton le Wold, Lincolnshire, England

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

Gayton le Wold is a village and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. It lies west from Louth, north from Donington on Bain, and to the south of the A157. The parish includes Biscathorpe to the south-west.

According to A Dictionary of British Place Names, Gayton derives from "a farmstead where goats are kept" being the Old Scandinavian 'geit' with 'tūn', the 'le' standing in for 'on the' wold(s). In the Domesday Book Gayton le Wold is written as "Gedtune" or "Gettune". The manor was in the Louthesk Hundred of the South Riding of Lindsey. There were 22 households, four smallholders, 18 freemen, four ploughlands, one church, and a meadow of . Before the Conquest lordship was held by Queen Edith, and after, King William who was also his own Tenant-in-chief.

Gayton le Wold is recorded in the 1872 White's Directory as a small scattered village, and a parish with a population of 115 in an area of "of fertile land". At the time the manor and Soke of Gayton, of which Grimoldsby (Grimoldby), Manby and the three parishes at Saltfleetby were also part, was a parcel of land held under the Honour of Richmond Fee, a Yorkshire feudal barony dating to the 11th century. The small brick building of St Peter's Church, rebuilt in 1775 with seating for sixty, consisted of a nave, chancel and bell turret. The incumbency was under a discharged rectory – ecclesiastical parish revenues (annates) kept within the parish – and was united with the parish of Biscathorpe. This joint benefice was in the gift of the Lord Chancellor (William Wood, 1st Baron Hatherley). The rector resided at Biscathorpe and was also the rector of Calcethorpe. Parish tithes - typically one-tenth of the produce or profits of the land given to the rector for his services - were commuted in 1841 under the 1836 Tithe Commutation Act, and substituted at Gayton with a £250 yearly rent-charge payment. People in Grimblethorpe, which was part of Gayton parish, attended Gayton church. The principal inhabitants of Gayton in 1872 were the residents of Gayton Grange, Gayton Manor, and the Manor House, all of whom were farmers, and a blacksmith.

Gayton le Wold Grade II listed Anglican parish church is dedicated to St Peter. Built of red brick in 1775, it was restored in 1888. Further Grade II listings are for c.1830 Gayton Manor House and c.1620 Grimblethorpe Hall, both with their associated buildings.

In the 19th century the Wesleyans and Free Methodists had chapels in the village.

The parish lies 6 miles (10 km) west from Louth and 3 miles (5 km) north from Donington on Bain.

Biscathorpe

The parish includes the deserted medieval village of Biscathorpe 1 mile (1.6 km) to the southwest. Biscathorpe has a short article in Wikipedia. Its parish registers do not exist beyond 1837.

Grimblethorpe

Grimblethorpe is another deserted medieval village absorbed into Gayton le Wold in 1936 which also has an article in Wikipedia. Grimblethorpe was a short distance north of Gayton and somewhat larger than Biscathorpe. It was a separate civil parish from 1858 until 1936.

This Library of Scotland map shows the geographical relationship between the three places.

Research Tips

• 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 (The best for WeRelate purposes, but the parish names are very hard to read.)
• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map, revised 1937 with later Rural District divisions

• The National Library of Scotland [1] also provides a large number of maps for all the counties and districts of England as well as those of Scotland. Their maps of 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 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 of information 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.

The south of 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 (in the southeast), Parts of Kesteven (in the southwest) and Parts of Lindsey (in the north of the county). 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.