Gelston is a village in the

South Kesteven South Kesteven is a Non-metropolitan district, local government district in Lincolnshire, England, forming part of the traditional Kesteven division of the county. It covers Bourne, Lincolnshire, Bourne, Grantham, Market Deeping and Stamford, Li ...

district of

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a 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-west, Leicestershire ...

, England. It is west from the

A607 road The A607 is an A road in England that starts in Belgrave, Leicester and heads northeastwards through Leicestershire and the town of Grantham, Lincolnshire, terminating at Bracebridge Heath, a village on the outskirts of Lincoln. It is a primary ...

, north from

Grantham Grantham () is a market and industrial town in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England, situated on the banks of the River Witham and bounded to the west by the A1 road. It lies some 23 miles (37 km) south of the Lincoln and ...

, and in the

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 authority ...

Hough-on-the-Hill Hough-on-the-Hill is a village and civil parish in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. The population of the civil parish including Brandon was 399 at the 2011 census. It is situated approximately due north from the market ...

, a village to the north-east. The village is included in the

ecclesiastical parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish priest ...

of Hough-on-the Hill, part of the

Loveden Loveden is a Deanery of the Diocese of Lincoln, England, and a former Wapentake. Loveden is located broadly to the North of Grantham and includes the villages from Long Bennington in the west to Culverthorpe in the east, and from Welby in th ...

Deanery A deanery (or decanate) is an ecclesiastical entity in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Communion, the Evangelical Church in Germany, and the Church of Norway. A deanery is either the jurisdiction or residenc ...

of the

Diocese of Lincoln The Diocese of Lincoln forms part of the Province of Canterbury in England. The present diocese covers the ceremonial county of Lincolnshire. History The diocese traces its roots in an unbroken line to the Pre-Reformation Diocese of Leices ...

History

According to ''A Dictionary of British Place Names'', Gelston could be "a farmstead or a village of a man called Gjofull" – 'Gels' from an Old Scandinavian person name and 'ton'

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 settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

for "enclosure, farmstead, village, manor restate". Gelston is referred to in the 1086 ''

Domesday 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 manusc ...

'' account as "Chevelestune" in the manor of Hough-on-the-Hill, and in the

Hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101. In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to de ...

Kesteven The Parts of Kesteven ( or ) are a traditional division of Lincolnshire, England. This division had long had a separate county administration (quarter sessions), along with the two other Parts of Lincolnshire, Lindsey and Holland. Etymology Th ...

. It had 26 households, 18 villagers, 6 smallholders and 2 freemen, with 16 ploughlands, a meadow of and a woodland of . In 1066 Earl Ralph was

Lord of the Manor Lord of the Manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The lord enjoyed manorial rights (the rights to establish and occupy a residence, known as the manor house and demesne) as well as seig ...

; after 1086 this transferred to

Count Alan of Brittany Alan Rufus, alternatively Alanus Rufus (Latin), Alan ar Rouz (Breton), Alain le Roux ( French) or Alan the Red (c. 1040 – 1093), 1st Lord of Richmond, was a Breton nobleman, kinsman and companion of William the Conqueror (Duke William II of No ...

, who also became

Tenant-in-chief In medieval and early modern Europe, the term ''tenant-in-chief'' (or ''vassal-in-chief'') denoted a person who held his lands under various forms of feudal land tenure directly from the king or territorial prince to whom he did homage, as op ...

. In 1885 ''

Kelly's Directory Kelly's Directory (or more formally, the Kelly's, Post Office and Harrod & Co Directory) was a trade directory in England that listed all businesses and tradespeople in a particular city or town, as well as a general directory of postal addresses o ...

'' noted: "at Gelston there is a place of worship for Wesleyan Methodists; and an ancient cross".''Kelly's Directory of Lincolnshire with the port of Hull'' 1885, pp. 490, 491 The

Wesleyan Wesleyan theology, otherwise known as Wesleyan– Arminian theology, or Methodist theology, is a theological tradition in Protestant Christianity based upon the ministry of the 18th-century evangelical reformer brothers John Wesley and Charles W ...

chapel was built in 1839, closed in 1958, and is now a private residence. The medieval limestone cross on the village green dates from the 15th century, is

Grade II 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 and is a

scheduled A schedule or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things are i ...

ancient monument. Remains of 15th-century cross

References

External links

* {{authority control Villages in Lincolnshire South Kesteven District