Quarrington, Lincolnshire

Scattered Palaeolithic and Bronze Age materials have been discovered in and around Quarrington but while nearby Old Sleaford is known to have been settled in the Iron Age and occupied by the Romans, there is little evidence for sustained pre-Saxon settlement at Quarrington.[1]

Between 1992 and 1995, archaeologists evaluating 34 trenches across 13 hectares of land around the village 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. The site has been dated to the 5th–9th centuries, representing an early and middle Anglo-Saxon settlement.[2] Although noted for its metalworking and its size, the archaeologists concluded that it "displayed all the signs of a typical rural community", reflecting how "the vast majority" of the Anglo-Saxon population lived.[3] Analysis of animal bones revealed that sheep-farming increasingly replaced pig-rearing at the site during this period. The pottery found at the site suggests that Quarrington had a strong, southern trade network; in the early Anglo-Saxon period this network encompassed Lincolnshire and Leicestershire, while pottery from Northamptonshire was prevalent in the middle Saxon period.[4] A small early Anglo-Saxon cemetery containing inhumations was uncovered in the parish in 2000.[5]

Quarrington's medieval name was recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) as Corninctune or Cornunctone, from the Old English cweorn ("mill") and tun ("homestead"), meaning "miller's homestead",[6] reflecting the importance of the watermills which were built along the River Slea. Bardi, one of the pre-conquest landowners at Quarrington, had owned 10 mills in Sleaford and Quarrington in 1066, and the 11 or 12 in existence by 1086 represents the largest cluster of mills in Lincolnshire.[7] The archaeologists and historians Christine Mahany and David Roffe suggest that Quarrington was a specialised part of Bardi's compact estate, geared in particular to milling.[8] The historian John Blair has speculated that this specialised function may have been associated with an earlier monastic estate centred on Sleaford, also suggested by the grid-aligned 7th- and 8th-century ditches uncovered at Quarrington during the 1990s excavations and by evidence of later grain-processing at Sleaford.[9]

Ramsey Abbey was granted a manor in Quarrington by Jol of Lincoln, a monk, in c. 1051.[10][11] 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.[12] 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.[13][n 1] A separate village, Millthorpe was also recorded, but the archaeologists Fiona Walker and Tom Lane suggest this may have been an alternative name for Quarrington.[6] Amongst the bishop's tenants was Hugh de St Vedasto or Vedeto, who held a knight's fee in c. 1200–10. His family were prominent tenants in the village; Amicia, wife of Hugh de St Vedasto, died in possession of lands and tenements there in 1253, and Alexander and William de St Vedasto are named in connection in other documents.[14] Henry Selvein, a knight, held Quarrington of the abbey and in c. 1166 granted the lands to Haverholme Priory.[10]

Excavations have revealed later medieval pits and pottery in the village, with ditches reflecting a predominantly agricultural use of the land.[15] In the Lay Subsidy of 1334, Quarrington and Millthorpe were valued at £4 10s. 41⁄2d., slightly below average for its wapentake.[15]

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.[16][17] A 1563 diocesan return shows that 17 families lived in the village and 120 people took Holy Communion;[15][18] by the early 18th century, the diocesan visitations by Edmund Gibson show the number of families had risen to 35.[15] The local historian Edward Trollope recorded few changes in the early modern period, with the exception of a fire that burnt down the rectory in 1760; it was rebuilt in c. 1845.[16] Two 17th-century buildings still exist: the Bristol Farmhouse[19] and the coursed rubble Manor House, which one "widow Timberland" occupied in 1691.[16][20]

Northfield Road, 2007

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.[16][21] 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.[22] 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.[23] 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".[16] As Sleaford expanded, houses were built along London and Station Roads, pushing the town inside the Quarrington parish boundaries in what became New Quarrington.[23] 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.[24]

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. In 1989, the Bristol Estates office in Sleaford closed. The result was a boom in housebuilding, 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.[25] Low house prices and crime rates, and good educational facilities in Sleaford made the new homes attractive.[26] As the local historian Simon Pawley wrote, "Quarrington ... began to look more like a suburb of Sleaford than a village in its own right".[27] In July 2015 planning permission for a further 200 homes between Northfield Road and the A15 was granted by North Kesteven District Council.[28]

Quarrington Hill

Quarrington is a settlement south west of Sleaford, a market town in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire. Quarrington proper is clustered around Town Road and between Grantham Road (the B1517) and London Road. To the north of Grantham Road is Quarrington Hill and to the north and east of the old village is New Quarrington; all the settlements are linked by contiguous housing developments to form a suburb of Sleaford.[29][30] Lincolnshire County Council's State of the Environment Report (1994) found that roughly three-quarters of Lincolnshire is low-lying, with much of it near sea-level;[31] Quarrington lies between approximately 15 and 25 meters above sea level, close to Lincoln Cliff, a limestone scarp running north–south through Lindsey and Kesteven.[32][33] The bedrock under most of Quarrington is Cornbrash limestone belonging to the Great Oolite Group of Jurassic rocks formed 168−165 million years ago.[34] The soil belongs to the Quarrington series, a type of brown, calcareous sand.[32] The county's agricultural land is generally of "very good" quality; as a result, intensive arable and vegetable farming is predominant while pastoral farming declined in the 20th century.[35] Quarrington and Sleaford are on the edge of the Fens, a low-lying region of the East of England which, before drainage from the 17th to the 20th centuries, was marshy and liable to flooding. Draining has revealed nutrient-rich soils and enabled 88% of the land to be cultivated, especially for arable farming, and most of it is graded amongst the most productive farmland in the country.[36][37]

According to the Köppen classification, the British Isles experience a maritime climate characterised by relatively cool summers and mild winters. Lincolnshire's position on the east of the Isles allows for a sunnier and warmer climate relative to the national average, and it is one of the driest counties in the United Kingdom.[38] Although it may vary depending on altitude and proximity to the coast, the mean average temperature for the East of England is approximately 9 °C to 10.5 °C; the highest temperature recorded in the region was 37.3 °C at Cavendish on 10 August 2003. On average, the region experiences 30 days of rainfall in winter and 25 in summer, with 15 days of thunder and 6–8 days of hail per year; on 25 August 2001, hail the size of golf balls were reported in Sleaford and other parts of central Lincolnshire. Wind tends to affect the north and west of the country more than the East, and Lincolnshire tends to receive no more than 2 days of gale per year (where gale is a gust of wind at >34 knots, sustained for at least 10 minutes). Despite this, tornadoes form more often in the East of England than elsewhere in the country; Sleaford experienced tornadoes in 2006 and 2012, both of which caused damage to property.[39][40][41]

• Blair, John (2020), "Beyond the Billingas: From lay wealth to monastic wealth on the Lincolnshire fen-edge", in Alexander J. Langlands and Ryan Lavelle (ed.), The Land of the English Kin: Studies in Wessex and Anglo-Saxon England in Honour of Professor Barbara Yorke, Brills Series on the Early Middle Ages, 26, Leiden: Brill, pp. 387–406, ISBN 9789004421899
• Ellis, Charles (1981), Mid-Victorian Sleaford: 1851 – 1871, Lincoln: Lincolnshire Library Service, ISBN 9780861111022
• Mahany, Christine M.; Roffe, David (1979), Sleaford, Stamford: South Lincolnshire Archaeological Unit, ISBN 0906295025
• Olney, R. J. (1973), Lincolnshire Politics: 1832–1885, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198218486
• Pawley, Simon (1996), The Book of Sleaford, Baron Birch for Quotes Ltd., ISBN 0860235599
• Trollope, Edward (1872), Sleaford and the Wapentakes of Flaxwell and Ashwardhurn, London: W. Kent & Co., OCLC 228661584
• Walker, Fiona; Lane, Tom (November 1996), An Early and Middle Saxon Settlement at Quarrington, vol. 1, Sleaford: Archaeological Project Services, doi:10.5284/1012834
• Wareham, Andrew (2005), Lords and Communities in Early Medieval East Anglia, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, ISBN 1843831554
• Youngs, Frederic A. (1991), Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, vol. 2, London: Royal Historical Society