Quarrington
| Quarrington | |
| Lincolnshire | |
|---|---|
 St Botolph's Church, Quarrington | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TF054444 |
| Location: | 52°59’13"N, 0°25’49"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 7,046 (2011) |
| Post town: | Sleaford |
| Postcode: | NG34 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | North Kesteven |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Sleaford and North Hykeham |
Quarrington is a village in Kesteven, the south-western part of Lincolnshire.
The old village and its church stand just over a mile south-west of the centre of Sleaford, the nearest market town, but suburban housing developments at New Quarrington and Quarrington Hill effectively link the two.
The main A15 road to Lincoln now bypasses the village.
Quarrington was a rural community during the early and middle Anglo-Saxon period while mills along the River Slea in the Middle Ages gave the village its likely alternative name of Millthorpe. The Bishop of Lincoln and Ramsey Abbey held manors in Quarrington after the Norman Conquest, but the Carre family of Sleaford were the principal land-owners between 1559 and 1683, when its estate passed by marriage to the Marquesses of Bristol. Although the growth of Victorian Sleaford saw the town encroach into the parish's boundaries, the old village remained a small cluster of farm buildings and cottages for much of its history. The sale of most of the surrounding farmland by successive Marquesses of Bristol in the late 20th century led to the rapid development of residential estates on Quarrington Hill and in New Quarrington which have engulfed the original settlement. Low crime rates, affordable housing, high standards of living and access to good schools have attracted home-buyers to the area, contributing to a sharp rise in the population.
Parish church
The parish church, St Botolph's, stands at the heart of the old village and remains a hub for the community.
The church's 13th-century north arcade is the oldest part of the church. The tower and spire date to the following century and St Botolph's listing reflects the "excellent" 14th century tracery in two of its windows. The chancel was rebuilt when Charles Kirk restored the church in 1862−3 and an extension was completed in 2001. It is a Grade II* listed building.[1]
In the early 1900s, a second church was designed to be built on donated land in the parish but closer to Sleaford. Disruption during the first World War, parish boundary changes in 1928 and rising costs delayed the plans. Instead, a church hall was built in 1932 on Grantham Road and is now used as a community centre.
The current rectory was built around 2000 and a curate's house of a similar age was being rented by the Church of England in 2009.
History
Middle Ages
Between 1992 and 1995, archaeologists uncovered 56 ditches or gullies, a number of postholes, a large collection of pottery sherds and "extremely rare" evidence of metalworking from the 6th–7th centuries, representing an early and middle Anglo-Saxon settlement.[2] A small early Anglo-Saxon cemetery containing inhumations was uncovered in the parish in 2000.[3]
In the Domesday Book of 1086, Quarrington is recorded as Corninctune or Cornunctone, from the Old English cweorn ("mill") and tun ("homestead"), reflecting the importance of the watermills which were built along the River Slea. Bardi, one of the pre-conquest landowners at Quarrington, had owned ten mills in Sleaford and Quarrington in 1066, and the 11 or 12 in existence by 1086 represents the largest cluster of mills in Lincolnshire.[4]
In around 1051, Ramsey Abbey was granted a manor in Quarrington by Jol of Lincoln, a monk.[5][6] The Domesday Book of 1086 recorded the abbey's manor consisted of one carucate and six bovates and had two churches. Mahany and Roffe concluded that one of the churches was probably at Old Sleaford, where the abbey held a manor as sokeland of Quarrington.[7] Bardi's manor in Quarrington had been granted to the Bishop of Lincoln by 1086 and consisted of nine carucates and two and a half bovates plus 60 acres of meadow and two mills. A separate village, Millthorpe was also recorded, but archaeologists have suggested this may simply be an alternative name for Quarrington.[8]
Modern period
The Bishop of Lincoln alienated his lands at Quarrington to the Crown in 1547; they passed to Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector, but reverted to the Crown on his attainder for treason in 1549. Mary I granted them to Edward Clinton, 9th Baron Clinton and later Earl of Lincoln, who sold them to Robert Carre of Sleaford in 1559. Carre acquired numerous manors, including Old and New Sleaford, during the mid-16th century and they passed through marriage from his male-line descendants to the Earls (later Marquesses) of Bristol.[9][10]
A 1563 diocesan return shows that 17 families lived in the village and 120 people took Holy Communion;[11] by the early 18th century, the diocesan visitations by Edmund Gibson show the number of families had risen to 35.
Two 17th-century buildings still exist: the Bristol Farmhouse[12] and the coursed rubble Manor House, which one "widow Timberland" occupied in 1691.[13]
The town's fields were enclosed in 1796 and a map of the village was drawn up at the same time, showing the settlement along Town Road and Townside Road with Rector Field and Earl Field to the north and north-east respectively.[14] At the time, more than 210 acres of land were allotted to the rectory by Lord Bristol in place of the tithes it had previously been entitled to.[15] During the mid and late-19th century, the population of the old village of Quarrington declined (from 98 in 1851 to 72 in 1871). Aside from the rectory and church, the village included two large farms and a cluster of labourers cottages around Town Road.[16] By 1872, the parish spanned 1,620 acres and the village contained 63 houses. The same year, Trollope wrote that "the appearance of this small village, lying around its well cared for church, is very pleasing". As Sleaford expanded, houses were built along London and Station Roads, pushing the town inside the Quarrington parish boundaries in what became New Quarrington.[16] Sanitation in the poorest parts of Sleaford worsened during the 19th century and a Local Board of Health was charged with improving living conditions. In 1879, Lord Bristol sold land on Quarrington Hill to the board, who built a pumping station to transport clean fenland water east into the town.[17]
Most of the land remained in possession of the Marquesses of Bristol throughout the 20th century, but from the 1970s the indebted 6th Marquess and his son, the 7th Marquess, sold much of their farmland around Sleaford and Quarrington. The result was a boom in house-building, especially in the fields around Quarrington: in the 1980s, hundreds of houses were constructed in Southfields, and developments on Quarrington Hill followed in the late 1990s.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Quarrington) |
References
- ↑ National Heritage List 1360452: Church of St Botolph (Grade II* listing)
- ↑ Walker & Lane 1996, pp. 1–2
- ↑ Tania Dickinson (2004). "An Early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Quarrington, near Sleaford: Report on Excavations, 2000–2001". Lincolnshire History and Archaeology (Lincoln: Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology) 39. http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/1975/1/dickinsont5_Quarringtonpublication.pdf. Retrieved 22 August 2015.
- ↑ Pawley 1996, pp. 17–18
- ↑ Mahany & Roffe 1979, p. 13
- ↑ Wareham 2005, p. 82 (table 10)
- ↑ Mahany & Roffe 1979, pp. 11–14
- ↑ Walker & Lane 1996, p. 3
- ↑ Trollope 1872, p. 427
- ↑ Trollope 1872, pp. 129–130, 134, 427. When the male line became extinct in 1683, Robert Carre's great-great-great-granddaughter Isabella (who had married John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol) inherited the estates.
- ↑ Trollope 1872, p. 428
- ↑ National Heritage List 1062101: Bristol Farmhouse (Grade II listing)
- ↑ National Heritage List 1062099: Manor House and garden wall (Grade II listing)
- ↑ Walker & Lane 1996, fig. 33
- ↑ White, William (1856). History, Gazetteer and Directory of Lincolnshire. Sheffield: R. Leader. pp. 549. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OU1gAAAAcAAJ.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Ellis 1981, p. 125
- ↑ Pawley 1996, p. 80
