Goltho is a hamlet in the

West Lindsey West Lindsey is a local government district in Lincolnshire, England. Its council is based in Gainsborough. History The district was formed on 1 April 1974, from the urban districts of Gainsborough, Market Rasen, along with Caistor Rural D ...

district A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municipa ...

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershir ...

, England. The population (including Bullington) was 157 at the 2011 census. It is situated south-west from

Wragby Wragby ( ) is a town and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated at the junction of the A157 and A158 roads, and approximately north-west from Horncastle and about north-east of Lincoln. History ...

, and south from the

A158 road The A158 road is a major route that heads from Lincoln in the west to Skegness on the east coast. The road is located entirely in the county of Lincolnshire and is single carriageway for almost its entirety. The road is approximately long ...

. Wragby and Goltho Limewood Walk, through one of the Lincolnshire Limewoods national nature reserves, passes Goltho Hall, Goltho Chapel and Goltho

deserted medieval village In the United Kingdom, a deserted medieval village (DMV) is a former settlement which was abandoned during the Middle Ages, typically leaving no trace apart from earthworks or cropmarks. If there are fewer than three inhabited houses the conv ...

History

The settlement has

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

roots. There was a

Romano-British The Romano-British culture arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD 43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, a ...

settlement at Goltho in the 1st and 2nd centuries."Goltho Medieval Settlement Earthwork and Cropmark Site"
,

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

. Retrieved 3 June 2012 The origin of the name is uncertain, perhaps from an Old Scandinavian (Viking) first name or the Viking word for "ravine", or as is widely accepted locally, "where the marigolds grow", referred to in Henry Thorold's guide to the redundant St George's Church, Goltho. The remains of the early medieval village were excavated in the 1970s. A Saxon settlement on the site consisted of two houses; about 850 the site was fortified with the addition of a banked

enclosure Enclosure or Inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or " common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land ...

, and a hall was added. A

motte-and-bailey A motte-and-bailey castle is a European fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground called a motte, accompanied by a walled courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade. Relatively easy to ...

castle was built at Goltho in around 1080. Goltho Hall was the ancestral seat of the Grantham family. Sir Thomas Grantham (1574–1630) was Sheriff of Lincoln in 1600 and MP for Lincolnshire from 1621 to 1622. He was a shareholder in the

Virginia Company The Virginia Company was an English trading company chartered by King James I on 10 April 1606 with the object of colonizing the eastern coast of America. The coast was named Virginia, after Elizabeth I, and it stretched from present-day Mai ...

and is listed in the Third Virginia Charter of 1612. He was a

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. P ...

and was imprisoned in

Lincoln Castle Lincoln Castle is a major medieval castle constructed in Lincoln, England, during the late 11th century by William the Conqueror on the site of a pre-existing Roman fortress. The castle is unusual in that it has two mottes. It is one of onl ...

for refusing to pay

Ship Money Ship money was a tax of medieval origin levied intermittently in the Kingdom of England until the middle of the 17th century. Assessed typically on the inhabitants of coastal areas of England, it was one of several taxes that English monarchs co ...

. His son

Thomas Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the ...

(1612–1655) was MP for Lincoln during the

Long Parliament The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which lasted from 1640 until 1660. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament, which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640 after an 11-year parliamentary absence. In Septem ...

and raised a regiment of foot which fought at the

Battle of Aylesbury The Battle of Aylesbury was an engagement which took place on 1 November 1642, when Royalist forces, under the command of Prince Rupert, fought Aylesbury's Parliamentarian garrison at Holman's Bridge a few miles to the north of Aylesbury. T ...

in 1642. The hall was eventually sold to the Mainwairing family and demolished in 1812. The present hall was built nearby in 1875. The village is described in White's ''1842 Lincolnshire Directory'' as "a parish of scattered farms", covering about . Goltho

ecclesiastical parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

was united with Bullington to form one tithe-free parish in the peculier jurisdiction of the

Bishop of Lincoln The Bishop of Lincoln is the ordinary (diocesan bishop) of the Church of England Diocese of Lincoln in the Province of Canterbury. The present diocese covers the county of Lincolnshire and the unitary authority areas of North Lincolnshire and N ...

. Together, the two parishes covered about .

Community

Goltho is one of 128 civil parishes in the district of West Lindsey, and is approximately north-east from the city and county town of

Lincoln Lincoln most commonly refers to: * Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States * Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England * Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S. * Linco ...

. Wragby parish lies to the east,

Rand The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed ...

parish to the north and

Apley Apley is a hamlet and civil parish in the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated west from the hamlet of Kingthorpe and the site of Kingthorpe railway station, and approximately south-west from Wragby. Apley chur ...

parish to the south. The parish is skirted at the north by the A158 trunk road as it passes between Lincoln and

Horncastle Horncastle is a town and civil parish in the East Lindsey district in Lincolnshire, east of Lincoln. Its population was 6,815 at the 2011 census and estimated at 7,123 in 2019. A section of the ancient Roman walls remains. History Romans Alt ...

. The ecclesiastical parish, after the closure of St Georges, is Rand & Goltho, based around the church of St Oswald in

. The ecclesiastical parish is part of the Wragby Group of the

Deanery A deanery (or decanate) is an ecclesiastical entity in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Communion, the Evangelical Church in Germany, and the Church of Norway. A deanery is either the jurisdiction or reside ...

of Horncastle. The 2013 incumbent is The Rev'd Mark Holden Goltho is part of the Gainsborough Constituency. As of the 2005 general election, the Member of Parliament is

Edward Leigh Sir Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (born 20 July 1950) is a British Conservative Party politician who has served as a Member of Parliament (MP) since 1983. Leigh has represented Gainsborough, Lincolnshire in the House of Commons since 1983 (rep ...

. There are three

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

s in Goltho: Goltho Hall and its garden wall and pigeoncote (both Grade II), and the Church of St George (Grade II*). St George's was founded about 1640, with alterations in the 18th and 19th centuries. The church was badly damaged in a fire on 21 October 2013.

References

External links

* {{authority control History of Lincolnshire Civil parishes in Lincolnshire Villages in Lincolnshire Deserted medieval villages in Lincolnshire Nature reserves in Lincolnshire West Lindsey District