Wilsthorpe, Lincolnshire

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Wilsthorpe
Lincolnshire

St Faith's Church, Wilsthorpe
Location
Grid reference: TF091138
Location: 52°42’41"N, 0°23’11"W
Data
Post town: Stamford
Postcode: PE9
Local Government
Council: South Kesteven
Parliamentary
constituency:
Grantham and Stamford

Wilsthorpe is a little village in Kesteven, the south-western part of Lincolnshire, about six miles north-east of Stamford and four miles south of Bourne.

A possible Roman villa has been located as cropmarks to the south-east of the village,[1] and King Street is a Roman road.[2]

The village appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, which records it as having 20 households, 40 acres of meadow, 12 acres of woodland, and two mills.[3]

The church, St Faith's, was built in 1715, it was restored and altered by James Fowler of Louth in 1869. It is a Grade II* listed building. In the sanctuary is a late-13th-century effigy of a knight in chain mail;[4] perhaps a member of the Wake family.

To the west of the village is the site of a former railway station, Braceborough Spa Halt, which was on the Essendine and Bourne Railway line. It opened in 1860 and closed in 1951. The old station house is now a private house.[5]

Nearby is the pumping station house from the old Peterborough Waterworks with its artesian well 52 feet deep, drilled during the late 19th century. At that time the well provided a million gallons of water each day to supply Peterborough 14 miles away.

Literature

Wilsthorpe appears as a real world location in Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance a short ghost story by M.R. James first published in More Ghost Stories in 1911

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Wilsthorpe, Lincolnshire)

References

  1. National Monuments Record: No. 348304 – Wilsthorpe Roman Villa
  2. Roman coins and possible Roman station, Braceborough and Wilsthorpe: Lincs to the Past
  3. Wilsthorpe, Lincolnshire in the Domesday Book
  4. National Heritage List 1062675: St Faiths, Wilsthorpe (Grade II* listing)
  5. National Monuments Record: No. 506986 – Braceborough Spa Halt