Sleaford
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  Map sources for Sleaford at grid reference TF0645
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Sleaford is a town in North Kesteven, Lincolnshire, England. It takes its name from the River Slea, a tributary of the River Witham. It is north-east of the town of Grantham and north-west of the town of Boston. Sleaford lies 115 miles north of the capital London, and the city of Lincoln is eighteen miles to the north.
Until recently Sleaford was primarily an agricultural town, supporting a cattle market and famous seed companies such as Hubbard and Phillips (whose name lives on the The Hub) and Sharpes International Seeds (whose history can be traced from their merger with Zeneca Seeds in 1996, which formed Advanta Seeds, right back to 1560 ). It is now also developing tourism and crafts, and is expanding rapidly. The town's current population is around 15,000.
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[edit] Historic buildings
The most prominent church in Sleaford is the parish church of St. Denys - the church abuts the market place, where markets are regularly held. The church has one of the oldest stone broach spires in England, and mostly dates from 1180, but parts of the church were rebuilt after an electrical storm in 1884. The altar rail (originally from Lincoln Cathedral) is by Sir Christopher Wren. The church is also known for its stained glass, elegant traceried windows, and carved heads.
Cogglesford Water Mill (open to the public), on the banks of the River Slea, dates from the 17th century. It is Lincolnshire's last working water mill, and is of national importance in terms of the history of watermills, possibly being the last working Sherrif's Mill in England. It is probably on the site of an earlier Mercian estate mill. The house where the mill worker would have lived is now a restaurant.
Sleaford's Bull & Dog pub (formerly the Black Bull) is from 1689 according to a date-stone set in its front wall, and is said to have the oldest surviving pub sign in England.
There is a large 1796 windmill in the town centre, Money's Mill, although now without any sails. At the nearby village of Heckington there is a working eight-sail windmill.
Other town landmarks include the Handley Monument, the semi-derelict Bass Maltings, the ruins of the town's castle, and the Picturedrome (once a cinema (upstairs) and a pool hall (dowstairs), now a night club called Flicks).
[edit] Recent improvements
Since 2000 the town and its buildings have undergone significant expansion & improvement; with the building of numerous new private housing estates on the periphery, a new infant school, and refurbishment of town-centre buildings with a £15-million SRB 'Sleaford Pride' grant.
In 2005, a £55-million project was announced by Prince Charles and The Phoenix Trust, to restore The Bass Maltings complex on the southern side of the town. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner considered the huge brewing malthouses to be Lincolnshire's most important industrial architecture, stating in his Buildings of England book: "For sheer impressiveness, little in English architecture can equal the scale of this building. A massive four-storey square tower is in the centre of a line of eight detached pavilions. The total frontage is nearly 1,000 feet."
In April 2005, the Channel 4 magazine Location, Location, Location named Sleaford as one of the Top 10 'house price hotspots' in England, forecasting a strong surge above Spring 2005 prices before the end of 2005.
The two main local football teams - the Legionnaires and Sleaford Town - played for many years on Boston Road Recreation Ground. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of several local Councillors (including the late Cllr John Pratt) to provide a new pavilion, the wooden pavilion finally gave way to rot and decay in 2004. Sleaford Town Football Club had fortunately anticipated this event and their new Stadium opened, located a little further down Boston Road just outside the town's curtilage opened in March 2007.
Sleaford Museum Trust, who lacked suitable premises for many years during which time their treasures have remained in storage, are hopeful of moving into one of Carre Street's historic shops during 2007.
[edit] Attractions
In October 2003 the largest public-funded crafts & design gallery outside London, The Hub, opened in Sleaford.[1] The development cost £2.4 million, offering 2000 sq.ft. of display space within a former seed warehouse. Entrance to The Hub is free. It incorporates 'The Pearoom', a major crafts gallery previously in nearby Heckington village. In the nearby courtyard are designer-maker craft studios. There is also a new riverside walk with sculptures, starting from the Hub.
There is a large street market, of around thirty stalls, in the market square abutted by St. Deny's church. Market days are on Friday, Saturday & Monday (Monday being the busiest). There is a farmers' market on the first Saturday in each month. In 2003 Daily Telegraph readers voted Sleaford the 7th best market town in England.
Maypole dancing happens in the market square on the first May bank holiday Monday. The Kesteven Morris dance team rehearses, and occasionally performs, in Sleaford.
Sleaford Wood is a Woodland Trust wood, on the northern edge of town. It is a mature 250-year old wood, with deer and woodpeckers.
Sleaford Golf Club is an 18-hole course.[2]
Approximately three miles from Sleaford are the two famous RAF Cranwell airfields. The national RAF officer training college is centred between these. The northern airfield (grassed) includes the area used by early naval airships. The larger southern airfield has supported military jet operations since the first flight of the Gloster Whittle. It currently has two paved runways. Training craft such as the Firefly, Tucano and Super King Air complement the operations at Cranwell. An independent Heritage Centre at North Rauceby near Sleaford, supported by the local Council, interprets the aviation exploits associated with the RAF airfields around Sleaford. A satellite airfield nearby, at Barkston Heath, teaches flying skills to future military aircrew.
About ten miles away is RAF Coningsby, home of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and the first operational Typhoon squadron in the RAF.
7 miles south along the Roman road of Mareham Lane is the famous village of Threekingham. Named after the famous legend where a battle was fought by three kings each of which died in that very battle. it is also famous for the gate of a large manor. The gate is made from the Ribs of (as legend has it) the world's largest Goldfish.
[edit] Education
The primary and junior schools in Sleaford are The Quarrington School, and the William Alvey which has a newly built infants block, St. Botolph's (CofE) Primary School and Church Lane Primary School. Secondary Schools for older pupils are Carre's Grammar School (male selective secondary school), the Kesteven and Sleaford High School (female selective secondary school), and St. George's College of Technology (mixed secondary school). These three schools feed a unique joint sixth-form consortium (pictured below).
There are also several privately run nurseries for pre-school age children. They include Redcroft Day Nursery, Woodside Children's Nursey, Happy Day Nursery and Sleaford Day Nursery.
[edit] Media
Local newspapers are The Sleaford Citizen, The Sleaford Standard, and The Sleaford Target. Local radio is provided by BBC Radio Lincolnshire and the commercial radio station Lincs FM.
[edit] Travel
The three-platform railway station provides a junction served by local trains using the Peterborough-Doncaster Joint Line, and the busier Stoke-on-Trent-Nottingham-Skegness line.
Grantham station - and its express East Coast Main Line rail link to London - is twenty minutes away from Sleaford by road, or around twenty-five minutes by rail. Travel by train to London King's Cross from Sleaford usually takes just under two hours (including connections).
The town is situated south of the intersection of the A17 and A15 roads at the Holdingham roundabout. The town was bypassed by the busy A17 on 27th March 1975 (opened by Joe Godber, the local MP). The section from the Holdingham roundabout to the A153 Anwick road had been opened earlier on 14th November 1973 by Dennis Monk, the chief engineer of the project. It was bypassed by the less busy A15 on 16th September 1993 (opened by Douglas Hogg MP).
There are plans to make the River Slea navigable again by boats, from the River Witham up to Sleaford. It is currently navigable only by canoes and similar lightweight one-person craft. Most of the Slea has footpaths running alongside it, and these complement the area's many public footpaths and cycle-paths.
There are several new cycle-paths around the town, including the Sleaford Cycle Trail, but Sleaford is not yet connected to the National Cycle Network. There are plans to connect the town with the existing NCN National Route 15 which currently (July 05) ends just north of Grantham - the 15 will be extended through Sleaford to meet the NCN National Route 1 at the River Witham.
[edit] History
A rare Bronze Age torc was found nearby at Sudbrook, in the early 1990s.
The modern centre of Sleaford originated as New Sleaford. Excavations in the market place in 1979 uncovered the remains of a small Anglo-Saxon settlement of eighth century date. Old Sleaford, towards the eastern end of the modern town, was probably a tribal centre of the Iron Age Corieltauvi. There may have been a pre-Roman coin mint here, since the largest hoard of coin pellet moulds ever found in Europe was excavated here. Few Iron Age coins were found here however, and it is believed that after being poured into the pellet moulds, the coins were taken to Leicester to be stamped.
A Roman road, Mareham Lane, used to run through Old Sleaford, and southwards along the fen edge, towards Bourne. Where it passed through Old Sleaford, excavations have revealed a large stone-built domestic residence with associated farm buildings, corn-driers, ovens and field systems, as well as a number of burials.
In 1858, just to the south of the town, a large Anglo-Roman cemetery was found, showing a mix of pagan and Christian burial practices. A large Anglo-Saxon cemetery, of some 600 burials was found during construction of the new railway station in 1882. Further to the south-west, in nearby Quarrington, a substantial Anglo-Saxon settlement was excavated during a new housing development. To the north of the town, a small early Saxon settlement was investigated prior to the construction of the new McDonald's restaurant at Holdingham roundabout.
Under the Anglo-Saxons, until conquered by the Vikings, Sleaford became part of the Flaxwell Wapentake. Sleaford ('Eslaforde') was then held by a man named Bardi.
William the Conqueror gave the manor of 'Eslaforde' to Remigius de Fécamp, the first Bishop of Lincoln, in around 1086.
About 1130, Bishop Alexander built a castle just southwest of the town. The footings and moat can still be seen, in what is now the Castle Fields. This was the period in which the town moved westwards. The castle was demolished in the Elizabethan era, not later than 1600.
King John who was disliked by the baronage visited Sleaford in 1216, the day after he had lost his baggage train. He was already ill but someone spread the story that while staying overnight at Swineshead Abbey, he was poisoned by a monk with toad venom. The king reached Newark and died.
From 1556 the ownership of the town and its lands passed from the church to local absentee landowners.
Carre's Grammar School was established in 1604.[3]
The common lands were enclosed in 1777.
The Sleaford Navigation was opened in 1794.
From 1829 to 1831 the street pattern of the entire town was reworked, a new Town Hall built, and better drainage laid.
The railways arrived from 1857. Sleaford was eventually the junction of six major roads and five railway branch-lines, making it a regional centre. The railways caused the decline of the Sleaford Navigation, which closed in 1878. It had much to be proud of when this description was penned in 1870.[4]
The Hubbard seed firm began in Sleaford in 1882 and then grew to become a major national business.
With the establishment of the Kesteven County Council under the Act of Parliament of 1888, Sleaford became its county town.
The Bass Maltings complex opened fully in 1905, replacing all the small malthouses in the area. The complex struggled to remain open during World War II, but survived until 1960 when it closed.
During World War I, from 1916 naval airships operated from nearby Cranwell, then known as Daedalus, and a now defunct field, RFC Leadenham provided England's main defence against Zeppelin raids. Cranwell became the world's first military air academy in 1920.
During World War II the many RAF airfields north of Sleaford played a role in the Battle of Britain, in the debilitating of the Axis war machine and RAF and USAAF airfields all around took part in the Allied invasion of Europe. (For example, see RAF Folkingham).
In the 1940s plastic surgery was pioneered at No.4 RAF Hospital, Rauceby, on the western outskirts of Sleaford. The Burns Unit was situated in Orchard House - one of the last remaining parts of Rauceby Hospital (formerly the Kesteven Lunatic Asylum) to remain in NHS use as offices for Lincolnshire South West tPCT following the Mental Health Hospital's closure in 1998. The whole site (which is now being redeveloped principally by David Wilson Homes for private housing) and its immediate environs including Rauceby railway station, has recently been renamed as Greylees, a suburb of the Market Town of Sleaford.
[edit] Famous people
- Sleaford provides a good base for those interested in following in the footsteps of Hereward the Wake, whose adventures mostly happened in the fenland east of nearby Bourne.
- Sir Joseph Banks opened the Sleaford Navigations in 1794; the river was dredged and linked to the River Witham.
- George Bass born at Aswarby helped to map the coast of Australia in 1797, and the waters between Australia and Tasmania are now called the 'Bass Strait'.
- Cecil Rhodes, the famous explorer and entrepreneur spent part of his boyhood in the manor house, on the west side of Northgate. part of this is now known as Rhodes house in his honour.[5]
- The actor Eric Thompson, the narrator of the well-known 1960s TV series The Magic Roundabout, was born here in 1929.
- Frank Whittle the inventor of jet propulsion, lodged at Dorrington. He worked at nearby Cranwell, where he took the Gloster Whittle through to successful test flights.
- Bernie Taupin, Elton John's songwriter, was born at Anwick on the road to Horncastle.
- Actress Jennifer Saunders (Absolutely Fabulous) was born in Sleaford.
- Abi Titmuss lived in nearby Heckington and Ruskington, went to school in Sleaford and took her A-levels in the town.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.thehubcentre.org/
- ^ http://www.sleafordgolfclub.co.uk/
- ^ http://www.carresgrammarschool.co.uk/
- ^ http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/descriptions/entry_page.jsp?text_id=931780&word=NULL
- ^ [1]
[edit] External links
- Cogglesford Mill, East Road, Sleaford
- Sleaford Museum Trust
- The Hub Centre for Craft Design & Making
- Sleaford Navigation Trust
- Sleaford New Life Church
- St. Deny's Church
- Sleaford Little Theatre
- Sleaford Golf Club
- Sleaford Town Council
- Sleaford Town Runners
| Lincolnshire |
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County town: Lincoln Other settlements: Boston | Bourne | The Deepings | Gainsborough | Grantham | Louth | Skegness | Sleaford | Spalding | Stamford Parliamentary Constituencies: Boston and Skegness | Gainsborough | Grantham and Stamford | Lincoln | Louth and Horncastle | Sleaford and North Hykeham | South Holland and The Deepings Districts: Boston | East Lindsey | Lincoln | North Kesteven | South Holland | South Kesteven | West Lindsey Further details: Geography | History | Education | Transport | Places of interest | Diocese |
