Keal Cotes
| Keal Cotes | |
| Lincolnshire | |
|---|---|
 Former Wesleyan Chapel, Keal Cotes | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TF365611 |
| Location: | 53°7’30"N, -0°2’17"E |
| Data | |
| Population: | 327 (2011) |
| Post town: | Spilsby |
| Postcode: | PE23 |
| Dialling code: | 01790 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | East Lindsey |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Boston and Skegness |
Keal Cotes, forming part of West Keal parish, is a small linear village in Lindsey, the northern part of Lincolnshire. It is on the A16 road, a mile south of West Keal and a mile north of Stickford. The nearest market town is Spilsby, about six miles to the north. Keal Cotes has a market on Mondays.
The village is at the southern edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds north of the Fens, and about twenty-five miles east of the county town, the City of Lincoln, eleven miles north-east of the market town of Boston, and twelve miles west of the holiday resort of Skegness.
The remains of a substantial Roman villa or high status Romano-British farmhouse, the only one found in Lincolnshire, are located in a large field at the south end of the village.
The name of the village is occasionally spelt on some maps as "Keal Coates".
History
Early history
The area has been occupied by man since pre-historic times. Evidence for this can be found at nearby West Keal where an Iron Age hill fort and defensive terraced earthworks stood at the tip of the Wolds promontory overlooking the present village. The early fortified stronghold had a commanding view of the Wash and almost as far as modern day Spalding across the flat marsh and boglands below.
The Keal Cotes area was visited and occupied by the Romans during the 1st century until the 4th century AD. An archaeological dig and field walk in the village, during the 1960s, over a large field to the south of the village (in the corner where the A16 meets the Hagnaby Lane), discovered many tessellated mosaic floor tiles and roof tiles indicating that a substantial Roman villa or high status Romano-British farmhouse had once stood on the site. Several centuries of agricultural activity had plowed out any possibility of further excavations although the cropmark outlines of an extensive dwelling can be clearly seen on several aerial photographs.
With the fens drained by the Romans the area and the village settled down to 1,500 years of rural agriculture on land ideally suited to cereal crops.
Later development
Until the Enclosure Acts between 1750 and 1860 the village consisted of a scattered collection of small crofts and farmhouses. In the Victorian era several substantial houses and cottages were built in the village under the stewardship of the Weston-Craecroft-Amcotts family as Lords of the Manor.
The Coaching inn originally known as The Ship Inn, with its spare teams of Mail coach horses stabled in a coach house, was built in the late 18th century. The Inn was later renamed as The Vanguard in 1876 to commemorate the sinking of HMS Vanguard. In 1993 the public house’s name was changed for the third time and is now called The Coach House although the actual coach house building was sold separately and converted as a family home. A Victorian style conservatory was added to the pub for use as a restaurant.
Keal Cotes Post Office and village stores opened in 1795 on the same site as the village well and a 16th-century farmhouse, the oldest standing building in the village. The shop and post office was run by several generations of the local Shaw family for most of its existence. In 1923 the village telephone box was erected on a new layby outside the post office at a time when only the post office and the village blacksmith had a private telephone. The post office's telephone number was originally Spilsby 20 and later became Keal Cotes 200. The original shop and post office closed in 1995 after being downgraded to an unprofitable part-time community office, with the previous shop premises being absorbed by its adjoining house now known as 'Orchard View'. The principal factor causing the traditional levels of trade to drop was the building of the M18 motorway and the M180 motorway in the 1970s, diverting the previously busy A16 traffic. The post office franchise moved to a small house annex at the other end of the village for several years before moving yet again to the Coach House public house where it remained until it was eventually closed by Post Office Counters Ltd as a cost-saving exercise in 2005.
A Wesleyan Chapel and Sunday school was built in the village in 1891. Closed in the 1950s the building still stands and is now used as general storage facility by a local farmer. The village windmill, built in the 18th century, fell into decay and disuse before being demolished in 1949 and is only remembered by the naming of Mill Lane.
West Keal Primary School closed in the 1960s after the school roll fell below a sustainable level. After a fund raising campaign half of the school building was bought by the combined villages of Keal Cotes and West Keal and established as a community village hall, renamed as the "Craecroft Hall", with the other half of the building used as a private residence.
Between 1845 and 1930 the most commonly used route between Keal Cotes and Boston was by the daily Steam Packet passenger vessel that travelled between Spilsby and Boston several times a day, also carrying the mail. The Keal Cotes wharf on the East Fen Catchwater Drain was alongside the Vanguard Bridge, with further stops in Stickford and Sibsey the route joined up with the River Trader, past Boston Golf Course to a wharf near the windmill on the Maud Foster waterway through the centre of Boston. After a final stop near the Old Blue Anchor waterside public house on Windsor Bank the steam packet turned round and headed back to Spilsby.[citation needed]
There was a historic footpath through the fields connecting West Keal and Keal Cotes formalised by the Enclosure Act of 1750, much used by villagers heading for the West Keal Parish Church. The footpath was annexed for its entire length by the Air Ministry in 1941, as it passed across the perimeter track of RAF East Kirkby, with a firm undertaking that the footpath's right of way would be reinstated as and when the airfield ever closed. However, an administrative error by a junior Air Ministry clerk in 1965 resulted in the footpath being sold as several parcels of land by tender to a number of local farmers and subsequently ploughed up for agriculture. Several campaigns to reopen the original footpath for public leisure use over the last 40 years, but opposed by the influential landowners, have so far failed as no local residents were still alive to attest they had regularly walked the path before 1941.
Mains sewerage provision finally arrived in the village during 1994 although a mains gas supply has never been available, despite the high-pressure Boston to Spilsby gas main pipeline passing within 50 metres of the village centre. In 2005 a speed limit of 50 miles per hour was imposed on the A16 main road through the village after 40 years of campaigning by the villagers and the parish council.
Poor lands
The parish had several plots of land set aside as Poor Land, owning two adjoining cottages in the village, the Triangle Field opposite the chapel and several assorted fields. Annual revenues from these rented properties and the sale of hay cropped from the 15 metre wide verges each side of the West Keal footpath, totalling £3 11s 8d (£3.59) in 1865, were distributed annually on Lady Day (25 March) among any poor in the parish by the Parish Council. As a result of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, the parish became part of the Spilsby Poor Law Union which covered thirty-three local parishes.
In 1919 a village general meeting agreed to sell the two cottages into private ownership, as annual maintenance costs were making them uneconomic. During the Second World War several of the land plots, including the verges enclosing the West Keal to Keal Cotes footpath, were compulsorily annexed by the Air Ministry to form part of RAF East Kirkby which adjoined the village. Over the next twenty years all of the remaining plots, with the sole exception of the triangle field, were also sold. The combined sales produced a unified cash fund that is currently invested, with the annual interest income still distributed by the commissioners of West Keal Parish Charity Fund to deserving parishioners each Christmas.
Any Keal Cotes homeless poor were housed in the Spilsby Poor Law Union Workhouse at nearby Hundleby. The workhouse was recorded in 1870 as having 280 residents.[1] Inmates were free to enter and leave as they liked and would receive free food and accommodation. However, the concern was that too liberal a regime would lead to many people who could easily work taking it easy in the workhouse. This would lead not only to an excessive charge on charitable funds but a dilution of the work ethic. To counter this the principle of less eligibility was developed. Workhouse life was deliberately made as harsh and degrading as possible so that only the truly destitute would apply. Attempts were also made to provide moral guidance, training and education to the poor but it would be fair to say that the principle of less eligibility combined with the ever-present desire to save money scuppered any real chance of success in this area. The workhouse was later converted into Spilsby's Gables Hospital that was demolished in 2004 to provide land for the building of new private housing.
Economy
The village economy is predominantly agricultural. There are few major employers in the area and the majority of employed residents commute to the commercial centres of Lincoln, Boston and Skegness. In recent years a number of commercial fishing lakes developed in the village, one of which has existed for nearly twenty years. The village has a public house and a shop. The local blacksmith’s workshop closed in the 1990s. In 1994 the travelling Circus Harlequin relocated its winter quarters to Hagnaby Manor at the south end of the village, now renamed Kasanga Manor after the male African lion that died there in 1995. The manor is now home to a large collection of camels, reindeer and llamas.
Sights of the village
- The Coach House
- Keal Cotes Fishing Lake
- Keal Cotes Farm Shop
- Bolingbroke Castle - birthplace of King Henry IV on 3 April 1367
- Gunby Hall, a national trust stately home, open on selected days during summer months[2]
- Battle of Britain Memorial Flight at nearby RAF Coningsby with its historic flying collection of an Avro Lancaster bomber plus five Supermarine Spitfires and two Hawker Hurricane fighters plus a DC47 Dakota transport and two Chipmunk trainers.
- Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre is in East Kirkby, Spilsby on the site of RAF East Kirkby. The museum, which is open daily except Sundays, commemorates the RAF's presence in Lincolnshire during the Second World War, with notable airfields such as RAF Scampton being located in the flat Lincolnshire countryside. The museum contains one of the world's three remaining Lancaster bombers still capable of flying (although it does not fly, as the privately run museum cannot afford the £2,000,000 cost of an air worthiness certificate).
- Spilsby Show takes place on the town playing fields on Ancaster Avenue off Boston Road. The event is held every July and proceeds support several local charities.
- Northcote Heavy Horse Centre
- Snipedales Nature Reserve and Country Park next to the historic Civil War battlefield at nearby Winceby
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Keal Cotes) |