Blyton is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

within the

West Lindsey West Lindsey is a local government district in Lincolnshire, England. Its council is based in Gainsborough. History The district was formed on 1 April 1974, from the urban districts of Gainsborough, Market Rasen, along with Caistor Rural Dis ...

district of

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-we ...

, England. It is situated approximately north-east from

Gainsborough Gainsborough or Gainsboro may refer to: Places * Gainsborough, Ipswich, Suffolk, England ** Gainsborough Ward, Ipswich * Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, a town in England ** Gainsborough (UK Parliament constituency) * Gainsborough, New South Wales, ...

. From Blyton the village of Laughton lies to the north, and Pilham to the south-east, while the course of the

River Trent The Trent is the third-longest river in the United Kingdom. Its source is in Staffordshire, on the southern edge of Biddulph Moor. It flows through and drains the North Midlands. The river is known for dramatic flooding after storms and ...

runs nearby to the west. Blyton had a population of 1,086 (including Thonock) in the 2001 Census, increasing to 1,383 at the 2011 census.

History

According to ''A Dictionary of British Place Names'' Blyton derives from a combination of the

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...

and

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

''Bligr+ton'', meaning "farmstead of a man called Bligr". The settlement is listed in the ''

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

'' as "Blitone".

Great Central Railway The Great Central Railway in England was formed when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897, anticipating the opening in 1899 of its London Extension. On 1 January 1923, the company was grouped into the ...

's heavy rail line between

and

Grimsby Grimsby or Great Grimsby is a port town and the administrative centre of North East Lincolnshire, Lincolnshire, England. Grimsby adjoins the town of Cleethorpes directly to the south-east forming a conurbation. Grimsby is north-east of L ...

came to Blyton around 1848, whereby Blyton railway station was established within the parish. Although the line is still operational, the station has closed. During the Second World War, Blyton was home to the bomber airfield

RAF Blyton Royal Air Force Blyton or more simply RAF Blyton is a former Royal Air Force satellite station located in Lincolnshire, north east of Gainsborough, and south of Scunthorpe, England. It was built in 1942 and was heavily used during the Second W ...

, just north-east of the village. It was abandoned in 1954. The

B1205 road B roads are numbered routes in Great Britain of lesser importance than A roads. See the article Great Britain road numbering scheme The Great Britain road numbering scheme is a numbering scheme used to classify and identify all roads in G ...

skirts the southern border of the old airfield, and the A159 runs through its western edge. Today the airfield has been converted into Blyton Raceway for

motor sport ''Motor Sport'' is a monthly motor racing magazine, founded in the United Kingdom in 1924 as the ''Brooklands Gazette''. The name was changed to ''Motor Sport'' for the August 1925 issue. The magazine covers motor sport in general, although from ...

s and karting.

Governance

From a very early time, Blyton was part of an ancient parish, ''Blyton cum Wharton'', within the historic county boundaries of the

Parts of Lindsey The Parts of Lindsey are a traditional division of Lincolnshire, England, covering the northern part of the county. The Isle of Axholme, which is on the west side of the River Trent, has normally formed part of it. The district's name origina ...

In March 1886 a part of Pilham parish, known as Pilham Carr, was transferred to Blyton. Some records refer to it simply as "Carr". For governance, Blyton parish was in the

Corringham Wapentake The wapentake of Corringham stretched for 13 miles along the east bank of the River Trent, varying in width between 5 and 8 miles, and bounded by Manley wapentake, the Isle of Axholme, parts of Nottinghamshire, and Well and Aslacoe wapentakes. ...

in the West Lindsey district of the Parts of Lindsey. From 1894 until 1974 it lay within

Gainsborough Rural District Gainsborough was rural district in Lincolnshire, Parts of Lindsey from 1894 to 1974. It was formed under the Local Government Act 1894 from that part of the Gainsborough rural sanitary district which was in Lindsey (the Nottinghamshire part be ...

in the

administrative county An administrative county was a first-level administrative division in England and Wales from 1888 to 1974, and in Ireland from 1899 until either 1973 (in Northern Ireland) or 2002 (in the Republic of Ireland). They are now abolished, although mos ...

of Lindsey. Since 1974 Blyton has been within the

shire district Non-metropolitan districts, or colloquially "shire districts", are a type of local government district in England. As created, they are sub-divisions of non-metropolitan counties (colloquially ''shire counties'') in a two-tier arrangement. Non-m ...

Churches

The

Grade I In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

listed Anglican church, established in the 11th century, is dedicated to St Martin. The lower parts of the tower are

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

and sections of the aisle are Early English. The chancel was rebuilt in 1877, but retains a window from c.1300. The font is of

Perpendicular In elementary geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at a right angle (90 degrees or π/2 radians). The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the ''perpendicular symbol'', ⟂. It ca ...

style. The north wall of the chancel bears an inscription to the children (d.1613 and 1615) of Sir John Wray. There is also a Primitive Methodist chapel built in 1851. File:St Martin de Tours (tower clock), Blyton.jpg, Church tower and clock File:Primitive Methodist Chapel, Blyton.jpg, Primitive Methodist chapel

References

External links

*
"Blyton"

Genuki GENUKI is a genealogy web portal, run as a charitable trust. It "provides a virtual reference library of genealogical information of particular relevance to the UK and Ireland". It gives access to a large collection of information, with the emphas ...

.org.uk. Retrieved 29 June 2011 {{authority control Villages in Lincolnshire Civil parishes in Lincolnshire West Lindsey District