Sleaford
Sleaford is a market town and civil parish in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. On the edge of the Fenlands, it is north-east of Grantham, west of Boston, and south of Lincoln. It is the largest settlement in North Kesteven with a population of 19,807 in 2021. Centred on the former parish of New Sleaford, the modern boundaries and urban area include Quarrington to the south-west, Holdingham to the north-west and Old Sleaford to the east. The town is bypassed by the A17 and the A15 roads. Sleaford railway station is on the Nottingham to Skegness and Peterborough to Lincoln lines.
The first settlement formed in the Iron Age where a prehistoric track crossed the River Slea. It was likely home to a mint for the Corieltauvi in the 1st centuries BC and AD. Evidence of Roman and Anglo-Saxon settlement has been found. Medieval records differentiate between Old and New Sleaford, the latter emerging by the 12th century around the present-day market place and St Denys' Church; Sleaford Castle was also built at that time for the Bishops of Lincoln, who owned the manor. Granted the right to hold a market in the mid-12th century, New Sleaford developed into a market town and became locally important in the wool trade, while Old Sleaford declined.
From the 16th century, the landowning Carre family kept tight control over the town – it grew little in the early modern period. The manor passed by marriage to the Hervey family in 1688. The town's common lands were enclosed by 1794, giving ownership mostly to the Herveys. This coincided with canalisation of the Slea, which brought economic growth until it was superseded by the railways in the mid-1850s. These new transport links supported the development of light industries and expanded the town's role in the trade in agricultural goods. Long a centre for justice and administration in north Kesteven, Sleaford became an urban district in 1894 and was home to Kesteven County Council's offices from 1925 to 1974. After a period of stagnation, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries the sale of farmland around Sleaford led to the development of large housing estates, causing the population to rapidly expand and the urban area to engulf Quarrington and Holdingham.
Though its traditional market has declined in the 21st century and much of its heavier manufacturing has departed, Sleaford's economy has diversified. The town remains an important administrative, service and commercial centre for the surrounding district. It houses supermarkets, shops and a large business park with offices and light manufacturing; the headquarters of North Kesteven District Council; three secondary schools ; four primary schools; three newspapers; police, fire and ambulance stations; several places of worship; many sports clubs; a leisure centre; and several medical and dental practices and care homes. Regeneration has transformed some earlier industrial areas, including through the construction of The Hub. The town is one of the largest employment centres in the district; the commonest employers in 2021 were the public sector, retail and, to a much lesser degree, manufacturing.
Geography
Sleaford is a civil parish and market town in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire. It is bounded by the civil parishes of Leasingham to the north; Ewerby and Evedon, and Kirkby la Thorpe to the east; Silk Willoughby to the south; and Wilsford, South Rauceby and North Rauceby to the west. These neighbouring parishes are rural, comprising villages separated from Sleaford's urban area by fields, though Kirkby la Thorpe also includes the Milton Way housing estate on Sleaford's eastern fringe.Urban area
Sleaford's urban area includes the town centre, focused on the marketplace, where Eastgate, Northgate, Southgate and Westgate meet. Though some parts have been redeveloped in the 20th century, including the Riverside Shopping Precinct and Flaxwell House, the area follows a medieval street layout and is home to many of the town's oldest buildings; it is also the retail and commercial hub. Carre Street, once home to industry and wharves, has been regenerated in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.To the north-west of the centre, housing developments along Northgate, mostly built in the 20th and early 21st centuries, have brought the hamlet of Holdingham into Sleaford's urban area, which extends as far north as the A17 and A15 junction at Holdingham Roundabout. To the town's north-east, the built-up area has expanded along Eastgate, where 19th-century housing closer to the town centre gives way to modern business parks; the River Slea forms the southern boundary of these developments and, closer to the town, Lollycocks Field sits between one of the business parks, Eastgate and the Slea. South of the river, the town's urban area extends eastwards along Boston Road, which runs from Southgate to the A17 at Kirkby la Thorpe. Except for Boston Road Recreation Ground, the road is straddled by housing west of the railway; developments near the centre are mostly 18th- and 19th-century, while those around Old Place, at the 'Hoplands and south of Boston Road are mostly planned 20th- or 21st-century residential estates.
The Victorian train station can be found near the southernmost end of Southgate; Station Road includes some converted 19th-century warehouses. Mareham Lane heads south out of the town, past the vast disused Bass Maltings complex. Also forking off from Southgate are Grantham Road and London Road, which fan out in a south-west direction. They link Sleaford with Quarrington village, which has a historic core that has been merged into the town's urban area by modern housing developments. The earliest suburban housing at the base of Southgate appeared in the 19th century and was known as New Quarrington. Ribbon development along London and Grantham roads is mostly early-20th-century; much larger planned developments took place in the late 20th and 21st centuries at Quarrington Hill, Southfields and between the two roads. To the town centre's west is Westgate, medieval in origin but heavily developed with dense terraced housing in the 19th century; to its north is Westholme, parkland which houses a school; south of Westgate is West Banks and its adjoining streets, between the River Slea and the Nine-Foot Drain, an area heavily built up in the 19th century. South of Westbanks are the remains of Sleaford Castle.
Outside of the town's urban area, but included in the civil parish boundaries is Greylees', a settlement built in the early 21st century on the site of the former Rauceby Hospital.
Topography and geology
Sleaford occupies a position on the Lincoln Heath, a limestone plateau between the Lincoln Cliff to the west, and the Fens to the east, a low-lying region of the East of England which has been drained to reveal nutrient-rich soils that form some of the most productive farmland in the country.The town centre lies about above sea level and has formed around the River Slea, which runs west to north-east through it. A band of Jurassic Cornbrash limestone forms the bedrock under Holdingham, parts of central Sleaford, and most of the housing at Quarrington and southern Greylees. The bedrock on the eastern parts of the town comprises Jurassic Kellaways sandstone and siltstone. To the west, the Slea follows a shallow valley underlain by Jurassic Blisworth clay and limestone and, at its lowest elevations at Quarrington Fen and Boiling Wells Farm, earlier Jurassic Rutland argillaceous rocks and Upper Lincolnshire limestone. Greylees and the northern fringe of the Quarrington Hill estate sit on the southern edge of this valley, on the Blisworth clays and limestone. Alluvium deposits are found along the Slea's course, and sand and gravel of the Sleaford series are found to the east and south. Most of the soil is free-draining, lime-rich and loamy, though some of the eastern parts are on loamy soils with naturally high groundwater.
Two Local Nature Reserves sit within the civil parish boundaries: Lollycocks Field, providing mostly wildflower and wetlands habitats alongside Eastgate, and Mareham Pastures, consisting of wildflower meadows, new woodland, hedges and open grassland. There is also Sleaford Wood in the north of the town and Sleaford Moor to the north-east, near the A17 and A153's Bone Mill Junction.
Climate
Britain experiences a temperate, maritime climate with warm summers and cool winters. Lincolnshire's position on the east of the British Isles allows for a sunnier and warmer climate relative to the national average, and it is one of the driest counties in the UK. In Sleaford, the average daily high temperature peaks at in July and a peak average daily mean of occurs in July. The lowest daily mean temperature is in January; the average daily high for that month is and the daily low is . The East of England tends to be sheltered from strong winds relative to the north and west of the country. Despite this, tornadoes form more often in the East of England than elsewhere; Sleaford suffered them in 2006 and 2012.History
Etymology
The earliest records of the place-name Sleaford are found in a charter of 852 as Slioford and in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as Sliowaford. In the Domesday Book, it is recorded as Eslaforde and in the early 13th century as Sliforde. In the 13th century Book of Fees it appears as Lafford. The name is formed from the Old English words sliow and ford, together meaning "ford over a muddy or slimy river".Early period
Archaeological material from the Bronze Age and earlier has been recovered and excavations have shown there was unsustained late-Neolithic and Bronze Age human activity in the vicinity. The earliest known permanent settlement dates from the Iron Age, where a track northwards from Bourne crossed the River Slea. Although only sparse pottery evidence has been found for the middle Iron Age period, 4,290 pellet mould fragments, probably used for minting and dated to 50 BC–AD 50, have been uncovered south-east of the modern town centre, south of a crossing of the River Slea and near Mareham Lane in Old Sleaford. The largest of its kind in Europe, the deposit has led archaeologists to consider that the site in Old Sleaford was one of the largest Corieltauvian settlements in the period and possibly a tribal centre.During the Roman occupation of Britain, the settlement was "extensive and of considerable importance". It may have been an economic and administrative centre for stewards and owners of fenland estates. There are signs of a road connecting Old Sleaford to Heckington, where Roman tile kilns have been uncovered and may imply the presence of a market. When the first roads were built by the Romans, Sleaford was bypassed as "less conveniently located" and more "geared to native needs". A smaller road, Mareham Lane, which the Romans renewed, ran through Old Sleaford, and south along the fen edge towards Bourne. Where it passed through Old Sleaford, excavations have shown a large Roman domestic residence, associated farm buildings and field systems, and several burials. Other Roman remains, including a burial, have been excavated.