Nocton

Nocton
Lincolnshire
All Saints' Church, Nocton
Location
Grid reference:	TF058642
Location:	53°9’54"N, 0°25’8"W
Data
Population:	819  (2011)
Post town:	Lincoln
Postcode:	LN4
Dialling code:	01526
Local Government
Council:	North Kesteven
Parliamentary constituency:	Sleaford and North Hykeham

Nocton is a village in Kesteven, the south-western part of Lincolnshire. It is on the B1202 road, seven miles south-east of Lincoln city centre. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 819.

To the east of the village is Nocton Fen with its small settlement of Wasps Nest. To the west of the village, at the junction of Wellhead Lane and the B1188, is a hamlet named Nocton Top Cottages, with 8 cottage. At the south of the village stand the remains of Nocton Hall, and a mile to the east the earthwork remains of Nocton Park Priory.

Church

The parish church, All Saints,. was built in 1862 by George Gilbert Scott, and according to Pevsner it is a "typical estate church" and "one of Scott's major works". The church is of Early English style in Ancaster stone, with a 130-foot steeple. It is a Grade II* listed building.

On the walls are drawn religious scenes outlined in red. There are stained glass windows by Clayton and Bell. Monuments are to the Solicitor-General Sir William Ellys (who died in 1680), attributed to William Stanton; to the Robert Hobart, 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire (who died in 1816); to the Rev. Henry Hobart, Dean of Windsor (who died 1846); and to the F. J. Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich (who died 1859). The latter was designed by George Gilbert Scott with an 1862 effigy by Matthew Noble.

All Saints was built 1862 replacing an earlier church, St Peter's, built in 1775 by the Third Earl of Buckinghamshire. The Earl built his church on the site of a previous St Peter's church, demolishing the original because it was "too near the Hall". The monument to Sir William Ellys is from the original church. Cox describes the 1775 church as having been "a mean affair".

History

Prehistory

A possible early Neolithicflint core was recovered in 2011 from Nocton Fen from which flint blades had been napped. A Neolithic polished stone axe was discovered close to the site of Nocton Hall in 1909,

There is limited evidence of Bronze Age but a cropmark suggests a round barrow 500 yards south of Abbey Hill and two 'Deverel-Rimbury'-style urns dating from 1600 – 1100 BC were found locally in 1882, possibly in Nocton Fen.

Iron Age scored pottery sherds containing animal bones were found both at the Neolithic site and to the south-western edge of the village along the bridleway to Dunston and an Iron Age settlement and rectilinear enclosures have been identified to the north-east of the village.

Roman Era

The main legacy of Roman occupation is the Car Dyke, a Romano-British canal that runs along the western fen edge from Lincoln to Peterborough linking the River Witham to the River Welland and forming part of an ancient fen drainage system. It is thought to have been constructed around 125 AD.

Two Roman clay coin moulds were found in 1811 in the bed of Car Dyke at the north end of Nocton Wood, close to Wasps Nest. The moulds are identified as belonging to Constantine the Great (AD 307-337) and his mother Helena and copies of copper alloy folles, now located at the British Museum. Other archaeological discoveries in Nocton include a beehive quern-stone, the site of a Roman settlement and cropmark and a Roman coin hoard.

A Roman road or track was thought to run south to north through Nocton. Its conjectured course starts in Metheringham and follows the course of Dunston Road to Dunston before continuing to Nocton and aligning with the western boundary of Nocton Hall's garden, then aligning with Potterhanworth Road.

Saxon and Middle Ages

The name of Nocton is from the Anglo-Saxon period, from the Old English hnoc tun, meaning 'wether village'.

At the time of the Domesday Book of 1086, the village (Nochetune) had 39 families and a church. It is recorded that all but one of 24 carucates of taxable land had been owned by Ulf of Nocton who also owned 12 carucates in Dunston that was a jurisdiction of Nocton. Oswulf of Faldingworth owned the remaining carucate Remains of the mediæval settlement were found along Main Street and the church and churchyard were traced to the south-west of the current Nocton Hall. Domesday records that Nocton was held in its entirety by Norman de Arci (later written d’Arcy), a cousin of William the Conqueror. Nocton’s entry in the Domesday Book put it in the largest 20% of settlements recorded in England. D’Arcy’s descendants held the property for 23 generations until the 1600s.

The d'Arcy family had established a deer park at some time between 1086 and the early twelfth century and it became known as Nocton Park.

In the early twelfth century, around 1140, Norman d’Arcy’s son Robert granted the church at Nocton to the Benedictines of St Mary's Abbey, York and some land to the Carthusians of Kirkstead Abbey. He also founded Nocton Park Priory, which stood about a mile east of the village on a hill overlooking Car Dyke, in or near the existing deer park, for the canons of the Augustinian Order. Its location on Abbey Hill remains evident in the shape of the ground. The grant was reconfirmed by Robert’s grandson, also called Norman, in a charter dated 17 Jun 1218. Nocton Park Priory was smaller and poorer than the other houses of the Witham Valley and never numbered more that nine canons.

Markets and fairs were held in the Middle Ages at Nocton. The first market was held in 1214.

In the mid-twelfth century the western edge of modern Nocton Parish fell within an area known as Hanehaithe that denoted part of the great heath stretching southwards from Lincoln as far as Boothby Graffoe and Blankney. The heath was given to Kirkstead Abbey around the mid-twelfth century.

A charter was granted to Philip Darcy in 1257, and another was granted to Norman Darcy in 1284 to hold a fair on 21 to 22 July.

Modern Age

Nocton Park Priory was closed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, by which time it was occupied only by the prior and four canons. King Henry VIII visited Nocton only five years after the Dissolution on 13 October 1541 and stayed with the Stukeleys; it is widely reputed that his fifth wife Katherine Howard planted a horse chestnut tree that still stands in the grounds of the Cottage Residential Home. However, this species was not introduced into England until the late 16th Century.

During the reign of Elizabeth I the site passed to Henry Stanley (Lord Strange).

In the first four decades of the eighteenth century, Sir Richard Ellys of Nocton formed a collection of books which eventually went to Blickling Hall in Norfolk by inheritance in the 1740s, though most of the books were kept in London. They form the core of the library of some 12,500 books now in the care of the National Trust.

The third Earl of Buckinghamshire, George Hobart, developed the village and also invested in the drainage of Nocton Fen. In around 1794 he paid for a windmill which pumped water from the fen into the River Witham until it was superseded in 1834 by a 40 bhp steam engine powerful enough to drain the fen faster than water ingress. A windmill for grain was erected (TF046636) on Nocton Heath before 1824, about 200 yards west of the junction of the Lincoln Road with Main Street. It was taken down in 1827 to be replaced by a new mill at Mill Corner, approximately 700 yards to the east. The second mill burned down after 6 years in service in October 1833; its replacement on the same site was pulled down in 1904.

Twentieth century

The Nocton Estates Light Railway was constructed in 1926 and used to transfer potatoes to the railhead at Dunston and sugar beet to a factory at Bardney. The light railway rolling stock and track were originally used to move munitions and troops to the front line in the First World War. The village shared the Nocton and Dunston railway station (GNR/GER Joint) until it was closed in 1955. Trains still run on the route from Lincoln to Sleaford but do not stop for goods or passengers at the old Nocton and Dunston station. There was an accident on this line on 28 February 2002 when a van fell onto the railway line and was hit by an oncoming train, killing the driver.

A survey of the East Midlands Oilfields including blocks around Nocton in 1943 resulted in short-lived production from a well, 'Nocton-2', drilled by d'Arcy Oil Company during 1943-1945 amounting to 521 barrels in total, described as a major disappointment. Oil was also found beneath Nocton in the 1960s.

Military activity

Between 1917 and 1995 Nocton Hall was used variously by the United States Army, Royal Air Force and United States Air Force as the site of a convalescent home and military hospital. The ruins of the Hall and hospital buildings remain to the present day.

In the early twentieth century, particularly during the Second World War, there were numerous Royal Air Force airfields close to Nocton; the level of training and operational flying resulted in a number of crashes within the parish.

Community

Much of the village is subject to Conservation Area status, with many Grade II and Sensitive properties. In 2007, Nocton Village Trail was opened by the local MP: the trail is a guided history walk around the village with displays of village artwork on historical themes.

The village has a number of small businesses, including a small post office and the Cottage Care Home.

Sport and leisure

• Cricket: Nocton Cricket Club

Abandoned buildings

The derelict remains of both Nocton Hall and the former RAF Hospital Nocton Hall are still present within the village but out of bounds to the public.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Nocton)