Place:Lindsey, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

NOTE: All divisions of Lindsey are also listed in WeRelate as "Contained Places" within Lincolnshire.

The following article is based on an article in Wikipedia

The Parts of Lindsey, more commonly, "Lindsey", was an administrative county covering the northern part of Lincolnshire from 1894 until 1974. The district's name originated from the Kingdom of Lindsey of Anglo-Saxon times, whose territories were merged with that of Stamford to form Lincolnshire.

When the English shires were established, Lindsey became part of Lincolnshire. Lindsey, Kesteven and Holland each acquired the formal designation of "Parts of Lincolnshire". Lindsey thus became the "Parts of Lindsey" and was responsible for the organization of circuit courts (i.e. Quarter Sessions) for its area. (This was probably due to the size of Lincolnshire and the need to get judges to cover the complete county.)

Lindsey was originally divided into three ridings: the North, the West and the South, and then into wapentakes.

• The West Riding covered the western part, including Gainsborough, and Scunthorpe.
• The North Riding covered the northeast, including Barton upon Humber, Caistor, Cleethorpes, Brigg, Grimsby, and Market Rasen.
• The South Riding covered the the southeast, including Louth, Mablethorpe and Skegness. The point at which the Ridings touched was somewhere near Lissington.

In 1889, the division which covered the law courts was followed by the establishment of the administrative county of "Lincolnshire, Parts of Lindsey" with an elected county council. Although Lincoln and Grimsby were geographically located within Lindsey, they were independent county boroughs.

Within the rest of Lindsey there were various urban districts and rural districts, established by the Local Government Act 1894. The rural districts were

• Caistor,
• Gainsborough,
• Glanford Brigg,
• Grimsby,
• Horncastle,
• Isle of Axholme,
• Louth,
• Sibsey (until 1936 when it was merged into Spilsby)
• Spilsby,
• Welton.

Abolition 1974

The Parts of Lindsey was abolished on 1 April 1974 as a result of the Local Government Act 1972. The area of the administrative county was divided between two new non-metropolitan counties: the northern area of Lindsey was placed in Humberside while the remainder passed to Lincolnshire.

The original Lindsey was divided between six non-metropolitan districts, as follows:

Present authorities

In 1996 Humberside cease to exist and the Humberside districts were re-grouped into unitary authorities; units which performed the duties of both county and administrative district. These units are considered to be within the ceremonial county of Lincolnshire.

• North Lincolnshire (centred on Scunthorpe) includes the former districts of Glanford and Scunthorpe, as well as the Isle of Axholme which had become the southern part of Boothferry.
• North East Lincolnshire comprising the former districts of Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

These two unitary authorities represent the most urbanised part of traditional Lincolnshire.

There was no change to East Lindsey District and West Lindsey District.

Research Tips

• Maps provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time show all the parishes and many villages and hamlets. (Small local reorganization of parishes took place in the 1930s led to differences between the latter two maps.):

• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map of 1888 with Poor Law Union divisions
• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map of 1900 with early Rural District divisions (The best for WeRelate purposes, but the parish names are very hard to read.)
• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map, revised 1937 with later Rural District divisions

• The National Library of Scotland [1] also provides a large number of maps for all the counties and districts of England as well as those of Scotland. Their maps of England only cover modern placenames, but they do allow the user to view a parish in relation to its neighbours. These maps are very easy to read.
• FindMyPast now has a large collection of Lincolnshire baptisms, banns, marriages and burials now available to search by name, year, place and parent's names. This is a pay website. (blog dated 16 Sep 2016)
• GENUKI's page on Lincolnshire's Archive Service gives addresses, phone numbers, webpages for all archive offices, museums and libraries in Lincolnshire which may store old records and also presents a list entitled "Hints for the new researcher" which may include details of which you are not aware. These suggestions are becoming more and more outdated, but there's no telling what may be expected in a small library.
• GENUKI also has pages of information on individual parishes, particularly ecclesiastical parishes. The author may just come up with morsels of information not supplied in other internet-available sources.
• Deceased Online now has records for 11 cemeteries and two crematoria in Lincolnshire. This includes Grimsby's Scartho Road cemetery, Scartho Road crematorium, and Cleethorpes cemetery, council records for the City of Lincoln and Gainsborough, and older church records from The National Archives for St Michael's in Stamford, and St Mark's in Lincoln, dating back to 1707. This is a pay website.

Lincolnshire is very low-lying and land had to be drained for agriculture to be successful. The larger drainage channels, many of which are parallel to each other, became boundaries between parishes. Many parishes are long and thin for this reason.

There is much fenland in Lincolnshire, particularly in the Boston and Horncastle areas. Fenlands tended to be extraparochial before the mid 1850s, and although many sections were identified with names and given the title "civil parish", little information has been found about them. Many appear to be abolished in 1906, but the parish which adopts them is not given in A Vision of Britain through Time. Note the WR category Lincolnshire Fenland Settlements which is an attempt to organize them into one list.

From 1889 until 1974 Lincolnshire was divided into three administrative counties: Parts of Holland (southernmost), Parts of Kesteven and Parts of Lindsey (northernmost). These formal names do not fit with modern grammatical usage, but that is what they were, nonetheless. In 1974 the northern section of Lindsey, along with the East Riding of Yorkshire, became the short-lived county of Humberside. In 1996 Humberside was abolished and the area previously in Lincolnshire was made into the two "unitary authorities" of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. The remainder of Lincolnshire was divided into "non-metropolitan districts" or "district municipalities" in 1974. Towns, villages and parishes are all listed under Lincolnshire, but the present-day districts are also given so that places in this large county can more easily be located and linked to their wider neighbourhoods. See the WR placepage Lincolnshire, England and the smaller divisions for further explanation.