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North Hykeham, Lincolnshire, UK |
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North Hykeham is a village, typical of so many in its origins. In existence by Saxon times, as its name shows, its early organisation followed closely the pattern of hundreds of East Midland settlements. With water plentifully available from a Witham that came in a wide bow to the head of "Meadow Lane", with the wet riverside land giving crops of hay on the communal meadow, with two large fields of land ploughed annually for crops, it varied very little from the norm. As with so many others, its common grazing land and "moor" land provided grazing for the cattle. Moor Lane led to the "moor" on the far side of Fosse Way, now Station Road. The Roberts Housing Estate now stands on the former Common. The old village stood, as did so many Saxon villages, well away from the Roman road, the Fosse Way What the objection to living near a Roman road was is not clear. Organised like this, the village slept until the mid 18th Century. Then just as were many thousand villages, it was wrenched into its modern pattern of fields, now rapidly disappearing under housing estates. The Lord of the Manor, not a "person" but a college - Christ's College, Cambridge - enclosed all the communal land into the field pattern of today, or more accurately, yesterday. By 1807 the change was complete. When the railways came to Lincoln in the early 1840's, agricultural machinery became a staple Lincoln product. The Malleable Iron Works took a little of the prosperity into North Hykeham borders. It was not however until after 1945 that the population growth really got under way with the building of the new housing estates. The people actually born in the parish must be a very small percentage of the present pouplation. Land is now almost completely used, the future of the village would appear to be with the surrounding conurbations. A short history of North Hykeham by N. H. Ingram |
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North Hykeham was first mentioned in 836 A.D. when a land grant was made, it was known at the time as Haeccham-on-the-Weodume (Hykeham on the Witham). There were two manors, each owned by a different lord and the serfs and the villeins, as the workers were then called, were owned by the respective lord and tied to the manor and forbidden to leave. Each manor contained a mill, a church and a fishery. Eventually both manors were sold, one to Christ College, Cambridge in 1422 which remained the Lord of the Manor until modern times. The second manor was sold to St Catherine's Priory, in whose hands it remained until 1538. North Hykeham Church was first mentioned in 1160 and again in 1254. By 1535 however, it had degenerated into a Free Chapel owned by the Monks of St Catherine's and stood roughly on the site of the A.T.C. building in Meadow Lane. From 1700-1867, North Hykeham had no church and a room at the "Harrows", then known as the "Alehouse", was used for services. All Saints Church as we know it today was built in the nineteenth century along with the Methodist Chapels. From 1856-1901 the population of Hykeham was static. Between 1901-1911 it trebled. Throughout the following years up to 1945 it remained fairly constant, but thereafter development of numerous estates in the town gave rise to a vigourous increase to the present day level of 12,000. North Hykeham adopted town status in 1974. North Hykeham Town Guide |
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