Gunby and Stainby is a

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 ...

in the South Kesteven 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. According to the 2001 Census it had a population of 141, falling to 136 at the 2011 census. It includes the hamlets of Gunby and

Stainby __NOTOC__ Stainby is a hamlet in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated west from the A1 road, east from the Viking Way and the Leicestershire border, and south from Grantham. Stainby is nominally in the civil ...

Stainby, the last bridge on the High Dyke Branch (Geograph 1925475 by John Sutton)

For administrative purposes parish affairs are handled by the combined ''Colsterworth District parishes council''.

Geography

The only major road is the A151 Buckminster road which crosses the parish from west to east. The northern boundary lies some way north of, and very roughly parallel to this road. The parish extends a considerable distance to the west of the villages, as far as the Lincolnshire-Leicestershire border, which forms the western edge. Out here all is farmland, over former Ironstone workings. The eastern extent reaches not quite as far as the A1 because the

River Witham The River Witham is a river almost entirely in the county of Lincolnshire in the east of England. It rises south of Grantham close to South Witham at , passes through the centre of Grantham (where it may be closely followed using the Riversi ...

forms the boundary. The South is delineated by nothing more substantial than the ancient fieldlines dividing the parish from North Witham. The land to the east, between Stainby and Gunby, is gently undulating around 125m above sea level. To the west, the contours are only about 10m higher. There is little woodland, is perhaps the largest. Stainby and Gunby are each founded around minor streams that flow from west to east into the River Witham, flowing north toward Colsterworth.

Geology

The bedrock is mostly Jurassic sedimentary Ooidal ironstones of the Northampton Sand Formation. East of Gunby Road, Stainby and south of Gunby village it is Jurassic sedimentary limestone, of the lower

Lincolnshire limestone The Lincolnshire Limestone Formation is a geological formation in England, part of the Inferior Oolite Group of the (Bajocian) Middle Jurassic strata of eastern England. It was formed around 165 million years ago, in a shallow, warm sea on the ma ...

series. The small streambed south of the Buckminster road is of Sedimentary Whitby mudstones, also dating back to the Jurassic.

Ironstone mining

The west of the parish was the site of Buckminster Quarries, site of extensive ironstone mining for around a hundred years. Operations ceased in 1972. A series of industrial railways linked to the High Dyke Branch with an end-on junction at Stainby. There is now little trace of the Ironstone workings.

Community

Bus route 28 (Grantham-South Witham) serves both Stainby and Gunby at times to suit schoolchildren attending schools in Grantham.

References

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External links