Place:Kirton, Lincolnshire, England

NOTE: Kirton in Lindsey is a different place further north in Lincolnshire.

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

Kirton, or Kirton in Holland, is a village and civil parish within the Borough of Boston, in Lincolnshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 5,371.

History

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

Kirton was the seat of Lincolnshire's first Saxon kings, later becoming a market town.

In the Domesday account the village is written as “Cherchetune”. It consisted of 52 households, with 30 freemen and 16 smallholders, 12 ploughlands, 10 plough teams, a meadow of , a church and 2 salthouses. In 1066 lordship of the manor was held by Earl Ralph, being transferred to Count Alan of Brittany in 1086.

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

In 1885 Kelly's Directory recorded Kirton as having a station on the Great Northern Railway. This closed in 1961.

There existed Congregational and Wesleyan chapels and almshouses for four poor women. The village market was then disused. The Gas Consumers' Company Ltd was formed here in 1865. Principal landowners were The Mercers' Company, Sir Thomas Whichcote DL, E. R. C. Cust DL, the Very Rev. Arthur Percival Purey-Cust DD, and Samuel Smeeton, whose residence was the "modern white building" of D'Eyncourt Hall. Agricultural production within the parish consisted of wheat, beans and potatoes, and there was a "large quantity of pasture land" and of marsh land. The 1881 the ecclesiastical parish population was 2,011, the civil parish, 2,580.

Church

The parish church is dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. The transepts had double aisles like those of Algarkirk and Spalding, but in 1804 the central tower and transepts were pulled down and the chancel shortened, the architect (Hayward) using gunpowder to remove the tower. Rebuilding was completed by 1809. In 1900 a restoration of the church was undertaken by architect Hodgson Fowler.

Grammar school

In 1624 Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Middlecott was empowered by a Private Act of Parliament to found a Free Grammar School for the instruction of the Latin and Greek languages, and English commercial and agricultural education, to children from the parishes of Kirton, Sutterton, Algarkirk and Fosdyke. By 1835 the school had 40 pupils, partly free and partly fee-paying. The Master (headmaster) appointed in 1773, Rev. Charles Wildbore (c. 1736–1802), and later his son by the same name (1767–1842), were alleged to have been diverting surplus income from the school's endowments for their own use, and failing to maintain educational standards. This culminated in a parliamentary report, and the management of the school was ultimately restructured in 1851. By 1885, William Cochran was Master, and a new school house had been erected adjacent to his residence. Under a scheme of the Endowed School Act, amended in 1898, the school was ranked as a "second-grade" Grammar School.^[1][2]

In the 1830s a girls' school for 14 day and boarding pupils, and a Sunday School for 32 males and 16 females existed in the village.^[3]

The village now has a secondary modern school: Thomas Middlecott Academy.

The Old King's Head

The Old King's Head is a former public house listed as a Grade II historic building. The earlier part of it was built at the end of the 16th century and it underwent major alterations in 1661 in Artisan Mannerist Style. It is red brick in English bond, with recent tiles on a former thatched roof. It became a domestic residence in the 1960s, but had fallen into disrepair and was purchased in 2016 by Heritage Lincolnshire, which has assigned over £2 million for its restoration.

Geography

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

Kirton is on the A16, B1397 and B1192 south of Boston, near Frampton and Sutterton. Several satellite villages and hamlets take their name from Kirton, including Kirton Holme, Kirton End, Kirton Fen, Kirton Skeldyke, and Kirton Marsh. Until 1970, the village had the Kirton railway station.

Local governance of the village was reorganised on 1 April 1974, as a result of the Local Government Act 1972. Kirton parish forms its own electoral ward.

Kirton falls within the drainage area of the Black Sluice Internal Drainage Board.

Kirton Meres

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

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.