Place:Old Leake, Lincolnshire, England

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

Old Leake is a village and civil parish in Lincolnshire, England. The population of the civi parish at the 2011 census was 2,022.

Old Leake is situated approximately north-east from Boston, and on the A52 road between Leverton and Wrangle at the junction of the B1184 (from Sibsey). Areas included in the parish are The Gride to the north-west, Leake Commonside and Lade Bank to the north, and Leake Hurns End to the south-east. The coast of The Wash lies to the east of the village.

The distances omitted in the excerpt from Wikipedia are "approximately 8 miles (13 km) north-east from Boston" and "The coast of The Wash lies 3 miles (5 km) to the east of the village."

A nearby parish is New Leake which is located across the border in East Lindsey District.

Geography

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

Old Leake is one of eighteen parishes which, together with Boston, form the Borough of Boston in the county of Lincolnshire, England. The local government has been arranged in this way since the reorganisation of 1 April 1974, which resulted from the Local Government Act 1972. This parish forms part of the Old Leake and Wrangle electoral ward.

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 traditional county of Lincolnshire. Since the Local Government Act of 1888, Holland had been in most respects, a county in itself.

Community

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

The parish church is a Grade I listed building dedicated to St Mary, and dating from the 12th century, with the chancel being restored in 1875 by Temple Moore. There is a 15th-century alms box The lychgate is Grade II listed and may have been built by Temple Moore.

Howsams Mill, built in 1859, is a Grade II listed building at Leake Commonside.

A water tower of Swedish design was erected in 1966.

The village public houses are the White Hart on Church Road and the Bricklayer's Arms on Wainfleet Road (A52). There is a National Health Service doctors' surgery, Old Leake Medical Centre, which takes patients from Old Leake and the surrounding villages, including Eastville, Wrangle, Friskney, Leverton, Butterwick, Freiston, Sibsey and Fishtoft.

Giles Academy, a secondary school with sixth form, is on Church End. Old Leake Primary School is on Old Main Road.

Lade Bank Pumping Station

Lade Bank lock was built on the Hobhole Drain in 1805 by John Rennie and 1867 the Lade Bank pumping station was built of red and yellow brick. Originally a lock of four cutwaters and two abutments with grooves and fixings for lock gates. In 1867 an engine house and pumping station with tall chimney were built above. The engine house contained six boilers to raise the steam to operate the two pumps. It was replaced by a modern station of 1936 also partly built on the original lock bases.

Population

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Old Leake from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"LEAKE, a parish in Boston district, Lincoln; on the East Lincoln railway, the Hobhole drain, and the coast, 7 miles NE of Boston. It contains Old Leake [railway] station and New Leake village, and has a post office under Boston. Acres: 7,655; of which 1,775 are fen. Real property, £15,312. Population in 1811: 922; in 1851, 2,062; in 1861, 1,912. Houses, 376. The increase of population from 1811 to 1851 arose chiefly from the enclosure of 1,537 acres in the East Fen. The property is much subdivided, but is largely held by four. Moat House, about 1½ mile E of the church, occupies the site of an ancient chantry; was rebuilt, in 1835, by the Hon. B. Percy; and contains wainscotted rooms, and some curious carving. Derby Hall, at a short distance, is a large ancient mansion. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lincoln. Value: £200. Patrons: the Governors of Oakham and Uppingham schools. The church has a clerestoried nave, partly later English, but chiefly Decorated, and a tower built in 1490-1547; and contains three sedilia, an octagonal font, and an alabaster effigies of a knight. There are two Wesleyan chapels, a Primitive Methodist chapel, a British school, and charities £150."

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.