Kirton or Kirton in Holland is a historic

market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rura ...

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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the

Borough of Boston The Borough of Boston is a local government district with borough status in Lincolnshire, England. Its council is based in the town of Boston. The borough also includes numerous villages in the surrounding rural area including Wyberton, Sutter ...

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (), abbreviated ''Lincs'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber regions of England. It is bordered by the East Riding of Yorkshire across the Humber estuary to th ...

, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 5,371.

History

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 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086 terms the village ''Cherchetune''. It then had 52 households, with 30 freemen and 16 smallholders, 12

ploughland The carucate or carrucate ( or ) was a medieval unit of land area approximating the land a plough team of eight oxen could till in a single annual season. It was known by different regional names and fell under different forms of tax assessment. ...

s, 10 plough teams, a meadow of , a church and two salt houses. In 1066 lordship of the manor was held by Earl Ralph. It had passed to Count Alan of Brittany by 1086. Before the local-government changes of the late 20th century, the parish came under Boston Rural District in the

Parts of Holland The Parts of Holland is a historical division of Lincolnshire, England, encompassing the southeast of the county. The name is still recognised locally and survives in the district of South Holland, Lincolnshire, South Holland. Etymology The place ...

– one of three divisions or ''parts'' of the historic county of Lincolnshire, which the

Local Government Act Local Government Act (with its variations) is a stock short title used for legislation in Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom, relating to local government. The Bill for an Act with this short title may have been know ...

of 1888 made a county in itself in most respects. The 1885 ''

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

'' recorded a Kirton railway station on the Great Northern Railway line between

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

and Spalding line. The station closed in 1961. There existed in the 19th century

Congregational Congregationalism (also Congregational Churches or Congregationalist Churches) is a Reformed Christianity, Reformed Christian (Calvinist) tradition of Protestant Christianity in which churches practice Congregationalist polity, congregational ...

and

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 Charle ...

chapels and

almshouse An almshouse (also known as a bede-house, poorhouse, or hospital) is charitable housing provided to people in a particular community, especially during the Middle Ages. They were often built for the poor of a locality, for those who had held ce ...

s for four poor women. The towns market was disused. A Gas Consumers' Company Ltd formed in 1865. The main landowners were the Mercers' Company, Sir Thomas Whichcote DL, E. R. C. Cust DL, the Very Rev. Arthur Percival Purey-Cust DD, and Samuel Smeeton, whose residence was the "modern white building" of D'Eyncourt Hall. The crops grown in the parish were wheat, beans and potatoes. There was a "large quantity of pasture land" and of marsh land. The 1881 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 pries ...

population was 2,011, that of the civil parish, 2,580.''Kelly's Directory of Lincolnshire with the port of Hull'' 1885, pp. 504–505. Kirton in Holland Town Hall was opened in August 1912.

Church

The

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the Church (building), church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in com ...

is dedicated to King Dean Watson and son, Prince Alfie Watson. The

transepts A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform ("cross-shaped") churches, in particular within the Romanesque and Gothic Christian church architectu ...

had double

aisle An aisle is a linear space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, in buildings such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, parliaments, courtrooms, ...

s like those of Algarkirk and Spalding, but, in 1804, the central

tower A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...

and transepts were pulled down and the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

shortened, the architect (Hayward) using gunpowder to remove the tower. This was completed by 1809. In 1900 a restoration of the rebuilt church was undertaken by the architect Hodgson Fowler.Cox, J. Charles (1916); ''Lincolnshire'', p. 187; Methuen & Co. Ltd. Retrieved 23 April 2011.

Grammar school

In 1624, Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Middlecott was empowered by a private act of Parliament, ( 21 Jas. 1. c. ''8'' ), to found a free grammar school for teaching the Latin and Greek languages and providing English commercial and agricultural education to children from the parishes of Kirton, Sutterton, Algarkirk and Fosdyke. By 1835, the school had 40 pupils, some attending free and some paying fees. The master (headmaster) appointed in 1773, Rev. Charles Wildbore ( 1736–1802), and later his son by the same name (1767–1842), were later accused of diverting surplus income from the school's endowments for their own use and failing to keep up educational standards. This culminated in a parliamentary report, and ultimately a restructuring of the school management in 1851. By 1885, William Cochran was master and a new school house had been built next to his house. Under a scheme of the

Endowed Schools Act 1869 The Endowed Schools Act 1869 ( 32 & 33 Vict. c. 56) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was one of the Endowed Schools Acts 1869 to 1948. It was passed during William Ewart Gladstone’s first ministry, to restructure endowed ...

, amended in 1898, the school ranked as a "second-grade" grammar school.Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons (1835); ''Parliamentary Papers, Volume 42'', p. 527; BiblioBazaar, LLC (2010). . In the 1830s the town gained a girls' school for 14

day A day is the time rotation period, period of a full Earth's rotation, rotation of the Earth with respect to the Sun. On average, this is 24 hours (86,400 seconds). As a day passes at a given location it experiences morning, afternoon, evening, ...

and boarding pupils and a

Sunday School ] A Sunday school, sometimes known as a Sabbath school, is an educational institution, usually Christianity, Christian in character and intended for children or neophytes. Sunday school classes usually precede a Sunday church service and are u ...

for 32 boys and 16 girls. The town now has a

secondary modern school A secondary modern school () is a type of secondary school that existed throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland from 1944 until the 1970s under the Tripartite System. Secondary modern schools accommodated the majority (70–75%) of pupil ...

: Thomas Middlecott Academy.

''The Old King's Head''

'' The Old King's Head'' is a former public house listed as a

Grade II In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

historic building. The earlier part of it was built at the end of the 16th century. It underwent major alterations in 1661 in Artisan

Mannerist Mannerism is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, when the Baroque style largely replaced it ...

Style. It is red brick in

English bond Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and mortar. Typically, rows of bricks called '' courses'' are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick wall. Bricks may be differentiated from blocks by s ...

, with recent tiles on a former thatched roof. It became a domestic residence in the 1960s, but had fallen into disrepair and was purchased in 2016 by Heritage Lincolnshire, which has assigned over £2 million for its restoration. It opened as a cafe and bed & breakfast on 1 October 2021.

Geography

Kirton is on the main A16, B1397 and B1192 roads south of

, near Frampton and Sutterton. Several villages and

hamlets A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. This is often simply an informal description of a smaller settlement or possibly a subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement. Sometimes a hamlet is defined f ...

take their name from Kirton, including Kirton Holme, Kirton End, Kirton Fen, Kirton Skeldyke, and Kirton Marsh. Until 1961/64, the town had a railway station on the

Lincolnshire Loop Line The Lincolnshire loop line was a railway built by the Great Northern Railway, that linked Peterborough to Gainsborough via Spalding, Boston and Lincoln. It ran through the counties of Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire (then the Soke of Peter ...

from Boston to Spalding. It is now part of the

A16 road This is a list of road designation, roads designated A16 (disambiguation), A16. Roads entries are sorted in the countries alphabetical order. * Grand Junction Road, in South Australia connecting Port Adelaide and the Adelaide Hills * A16 motorway ...

which runs through the old station site and on the trackbed.

Kirton Meres

The parish contained the ancient manor of ''Kirton Meres'', the seat of Roger de Kirton (d. 1383), ''alias'' de Kirketon / Roger de Meres / Meeres), a

Justice of the Common Pleas Justice of the Common Pleas was a puisne judicial position within the Court of Common Pleas (England), Court of Common Pleas of England and Wales, under the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Chief Justice. The Common Pleas was the primary court o ...

(1371–1380). The manor house (later known as "Orme Hall") was demolished in 1818 but the arched gatehouse (Porter's Lodge, built of brick, guard room, and chambers over it, with stone dressings, windows, archway, door-ways, and copings, surmounted by highly pitched step gables, with 15 sculpted heraldic shields, some now held by the Spalding Gentlemen's Society, Broad Street, Spalding, Lincs) survived until 1925 on the south side of the Willington Road, one mile west of the town of Kirton. Another of this family resident at Kirton Meres was the churchman

Francis Meres Francis Meres (1565/1566 – 29 January 1647) was an English churchman and author. His 1598 commonplace book includes the first critical account of poems and plays by Shakespeare. Career Francis Meres was born in 1565 at Kirton Meres in the par ...

(1565–1647).

Local governance

Local governance of the town was reorganised on 1 April 1974, as a result of the

Local Government Act 1972 The Local Government Act 1972 (c. 70) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales on 1 April 1974. It was one of the most significant acts of Parliament to be passed by the Heath Gov ...

. Kirton parish forms its own electoral ward. Kirton falls within the drainage area of the Black Sluice

Internal Drainage Board An internal drainage board (IDB) is a type of operating authority which is established in areas of special drainage need in England and Wales with permissive powers to undertake work to secure clean water drainage and water level management wit ...

Research centre

The former Kirton Research Centre was nearby. Ownership of the centre for horticultural research was transferred from the

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for environmental quality, environmenta ...

to the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...

in April 2004 and it became part of

Horticulture Research International Warwick HRI (formerly Horticulture Research International) was a United Kingdom organisation tasked with carrying out horticultural research and development and transferring the results to industry in England. History Horticulture Research Inter ...

. In August 2009 the University closed it, as public and private funding fell £2 million short of covering its annual running costs.

Notable people

In order of birth: *

(1565/1566 – 1647), churchman and author * Joseph Gilbert (1732–1821), born in Kirton, was Master of HMS ''Resolution'' on Cook's second voyage. *Dame

Sarah Swift Dame Sarah Ann Swift, GBE, RRC (22 November 1854, Kirton Skeldyke, Lincolnshire – 27 June 1937, Marylebone) was an English nurse and founder in 1916 of the College of Nursing Ltd. which became the Royal College of Nursing. The College of Nur ...

(1854–1937), born in Kirton Skeldyke, set up the

Royal College of Nursing The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is a registered trade union and professional body in the United Kingdom for those in the profession of nursing. It was founded in 1916 as the College of Nursing, receiving its royal charter in 1928. Queen Eliz ...

. * Harold Jackson VC (31 May 1892 – 24 August 1918), a sergeant in The East Yorkshire Regiment who received the Victoria Cross in 1917 and was killed a year later, came from Allandale, Kirton. * Oliver "Ollie" Ryan (born 1985), footballer, attended Kirton Primary School.

References

External links

Parish councilKirton NewsKirton Brass Band Sea ScoutsKirton Primary SchoolMiddlecott SchoolKirton Town Hall

Media

Horticultural research station to close in 2009
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kirton, Lincolnshire Towns in Lincolnshire Civil parishes in Lincolnshire Borough of Boston