Skellingthorpe is a village and civil parish in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. The population of the village at the 2011 census was 3,465. It is situated west of Lincoln, southeast of Saxilby, northwest of North Hykeham and east of Tuxford.
The village of Doddington and Doddington Hall lie to the south-west. Birchwood estate, built in the 1970s on the site of RAF Skellingthorpe, is to the south-east.
Toponymy The earliest-known spelling of its name, Scheldinchope, suggests an enclosure in marsh associated with a man named Sceld.Mills, A. D. (2003); A Dictionary of British Place-Names. Oxford University Press. Another theory for the name is that it derives from the Anglo-Saxon words 'scilling' (shilling) and 'thorf' (village) – the 'shilling village'.Illustrated London News, p.13 (Saturday 6 June 1857)
Domesday Book (1086) records the name "Scheldinchope" and that it contained 12 carucates of land worked by 18 villeins, two sokemen and four bordars.
Up until the second half of the 18th century Skellingthorpe was pronounced and written ‘Skeldingthorpe’. A periodical in 1785 refers to the presentation of the Rev George Hare to the 'vicarage of Skellen-thorpe otherwise Skeldingthorpe, in the diocese of Lincoln’.The London Magazine (Volume the Fourth from January to June 1785), Isaac & Edmund Kimber (1785) p.150
History A small paleolith found in gravel was presented to the British Museum in 1922, hinting at the presence of some ancient tribe.Archaeologia: Or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, Volume 72, p.26, Archaeological Society (1922) An ancient hand-axe was reported as being discovered in gravel ballast during the construction of the railway line in 1897.Quaternary of the Trent, p.278, edited by David R. Bridgland, Andy J. Howard, Mark J. White, Tom S. White (Oxbow Books, 2014) The area was marsh and woodland at the time of the Romans and there is no evidence of a permanent settlement by ancient Britons, although it is possible that nomadic forest or swamp dwellers occasionally passed through. Roman engineers excavating what is now the Foss Dyke were in the vicinity as evidenced by a Roman bowl found in the parish. Other Roman-era discoveries include a copper alloy bell found in Main Drain,Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, Volumes 16–19, p.99, Lincolnshire Local History Society (1981) and 13 coins (dated to the third or fourth century) unearthed in 1978.Lincolnshire Archives
The settlement may have originated with Danish occupiers.Streatfeild, Reverend G. S. (1884). Lincolnshire and the Danes.p.86 Around 1953 a blue and white ring (dated by the British Museum to ) was found in Stoney Yard. This and the fact that the Danes established themselves elsewhere in Lincolnshire by the year 876 reinforce the supposition that Skellingthorpe became a settlement in the late 9th century.
In the Middle Ages the manor was held by the Norman Wak, or Wake, family. On 4 January 1283 the manor of Skeldingho and all Baldwin's other lands were granted to Edmund, Earl of Cornwall; although Baldwin's widow, Hawisia, and others were allowed their rights as adjudged in the king's court.Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Volume 8, p.53 (1893)
By the 1360s the manor had passed to Gilbert de Umfraville, 3rd Earl of Angus and Kyme. By February 1399 the manor of Skellingthorpe was all but deserted, with much land left uncultivated through a lack of tenants. In the May the Rectory was appropriated to the Hospital of Spital in the Street (the Spital Charity) by Thomas de Aston (Canon of Lincoln), and they farmed out the rectorial tithes to laymen. The vicar was paid £5 a year by the charity.
On the attainder of Sir William Tailboys, his estates were escheated to the crown and a portion, including Skellingthorpe, were granted to Thomas Burgh and his male heirs by King Edward IV in 1460.Oldfield, Edmund. A Topographical and Historical Account of Wainfleet and the Wapentake of Candleshoe (1829). p.134.
The medieval settlement was in the vicinity of Lower Church Road, to the north of the church and most of the present village. There were three sub-rectangular fishponds, orientated north–south, near Manor Farm. It is unknown at what point that settlement became fully deserted. (In 1981, it was reported that the remains of the fishponds, water channels, ridges and furrows were in excellent condition but by 1987 they had been largely obliterated. The site is now largely given over to livestock.)Unpublished report for Lincolnshire County Council Archaeological Section (June 1998). See http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-1045-1/dissemination/pdf/943_StoneNookHighStreet_Skellingthorpe.pdf
In 1563, a Record of Marriages was begun for the parish.Lincolnshire Parish Registers: Marriages, Volume 4, p.31 (Issued to the subscribers by Phillimore & Company, 1909)
The manor was inherited by Henry Stone.Architectural Societies. (1899). Reports and Papers Read at the Meetings of the Architectural Societies… p.302. He died aged 62 on 26 June 1693, and the following year the governors of 'Christ Hospitall' in London arranged for a tomb to be erected in his memory, which is now in the grounds of the church. As his relatives had all predeceased him, he willed his estate to Christ's Hospital. His will also benefitted neighbours and tenants, local schools and the church.
Throughout the late 1600s and early 1700s the village economy stemmed from duck decoys, but began to decline with the drainage and enclosure of the land. The earthwork remains of an old decoy pond, which had been established in 1693, can be found on private land to the east of the village.Lincolnshire Archives Duck Decoys, p.16, Andrew Heaton (2001). In 2010 it was announced the surviving decoy pond was one of 79 historic sites to be protected under an environmental stewardship scheme, run by Natural England.Lincolnshire Echo (25 August 2010)
In 1710, surveys by Christ's indicated that Skellingthorpe estate consisted of 2,872 acres let to fourteen tenant farmers, 900 acres was newly planted ground, 600 was uncultivated and the rest was wooded.Report of the Commissioners appointed in pursuance of an Act of Parliament (32 pt. VI), p.155, Commissioners for Inquiring Concerning Charities (dated 30 June 1837)
An 1872 gazetteer of Skellingthorpe records it as "a scattered, but well-built and pleasant village" which consisted of "726 souls, and 6220 acres of land, extending to the Fossdyke... including 600 acres cleared of plantations, and some fertile and well-drained marshes".
In the 1850s a new National Society School, called St Lawrence's after the adjacent church, was established in 1855. Compulsory attendance was not enforced until 1870.
By the beginning of the 19th century large parts of the parish were still little more than a morass, and the risk of flood was a constant one. The Catchwater Drain was planned from 1805.Stamford Mercury, p.1 (Friday 29 March 1805) By the middle of the 19th century, Skellingthorpe had been well-drained for some time and two small steam engines were erected near the Decoy Farm to pump out floodwater.Clarke, John Algernon. On the Farming of Lincolnshire. (1852). p.51.
In 1905 an epidemic of typhoid swept Lincoln, killing at least 110 people and making over 1,000 ill. It was alleged that Skellingthorpe's Catchwater Drain, which flowed into the city, contributed to this.
In 1914 Christ's Hospital sold off all their properties in the parish, effectively ending a connection between Skellingthorpe and the capital that had existed for over 200 years.Wilkins, Harold Tom. Great English Schools. (1925). p.287. A small number of buildings. including St Lawrence's School, still bear Christ's coat of arms on their gables or wall.
During the 1915–1918 aerial bombardment of Britain by German Zeppelins 14 bombs damaged an engine shed and a railway track at Skellingthorpe on the night of 12/13 April 1918.Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh, Henry Albert Jones. The War in the Air (1935). p.124.
A war memorial in the church grounds shows that the village lost 19 men during the Great War, and a further five during the Second World War.
In 1948 there was a proposal to develop RAF Skellingthorpe into a civil airport, but it came to naught.Mysterious Lincolnshire, p.121, Daniel Codd (2007).
On 15 July 1949 an RAF bomber of 61 Squadron from Waddington crashed near Jerusalem Road, Skellingthorpe.July 1949 crash
Electricity and running water came in the 1930s. Before this, houses shared pumps that tapped underground wells. The first street lights were erected in 1956–57. Main drainage came in 1964.Lincolnshire Echo (The Gossiper column). (6 June 1974). p.8.
By 1971, Skellingthorpe's population had risen steadily to 2,593. This was more than three times what had been just forty years earlier, and thirteen times what it had been in 1801.
A village hall had been built in 1928. By the 1970s this was judged too small.Skellingthorpe Chatterbox, No.351, p.5. (July 2017) In 1973 a larger Community Centre and Youth Hall were built on the site of the railway station.
In 1986 the BBC Domesday Reloaded project captured a snapshot of the village. Among the village curiosities was an antiquated post-box that still bore the initials of King George VI, despite that monarch having been dead 34 years by that time.
On 26 July 2010 there was an explosion at a bone-meal factory. A second fire at the same plant occurred in the early hours of 16 August 2011.Lincolnshire Echo (27 July 2010, 16 August 2011)
In July 2015 an event was held in the village to commemorate an incident in 1944 when a Lancaster Bomber that had taken off from RAF Skellingthorpe was shot down over the French village of La Chapelle-Thecle. Six crewmembers died in the incident, and the villagers of La Chapelle-Thecle defied Nazi occupation to lay flowers on the bodies of the airmen.Lincolnshire Echo, p.16 (30 July 2015)
A slaughterhouse in Skellingthorpe has been the site of a number of small, and peaceful, demonstrations against the treatment of cattle being transported to the premises. The vigils – called ‘Cow Save’ – were organised by the Boston and Skegness Vegans and Vegetarians Group, and occurred in 2016 and 2017, aiming to highlight what they perceived as the animals’ distress before being slaughtered. Some of the demonstrators requested that the transporting lorries be allowed to stop for three minutes so that the animals could be wished a dignified ‘goodbye’.
Transport Rail
Skellingthorpe has been served in the past by two different stations on two different lines. Neither station is now in service.
Between 1865 and 1868 there was a Skellingthorpe station at the end of Ferry Lane, about northeast of the village, on the Great Northern Railway. Today, the lines through the site are still in use but the platforms are long gone.
A second Skellingthorpe station was opened in March 1897 by the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway on its main line from Chesterfield to Lincoln. It was closed by British Railways in 1955.
The site of the later station is now occupied by a community centre, park, car park and footpath passing through it. The footpath continues down towards Fledborough in Nottinghamshire via Harby, Doddington, North Clifton, South Clifton and over the listed viaduct near Fledborough. The footpath ends abruptly near Lincoln due to the A46 cutting through part of the former trackbed near Pyewipe Junction.
Road In 1985 the Lincoln Relief Road (A46 Bypass) opened.Lincoln: History and Guide, p.76, Michael J Jones (A Sutton, 1993) Part of this route skirts the Skellingthorpe Moor Plantation, although this is obscured by trees. There is a roundabout connecting Lincoln Road with Skellingthorpe Road, Birchwood. Further north, the Relief Road briefly enters the parish of Skellingthorpe, west of the Decoy Farm and the Duck Decoy.
Local buildings