Baston - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Baston is a parish on the edge of The Fens

The Fens

The Fens, also known as the , are a naturally marshy region in eastern England. Most of the fens were drained several centuries ago, resulting in a flat, damp, low-lying agricultural region....

and in the administrative district of South Kesteven

South Kesteven

South Kesteven is a local government district in Lincolnshire, England, forming part of the traditional Kesteven division of the county. It covers Grantham, Stamford, Bourne and Market Deeping.-History:...

, Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

, England. Like most fen-edge parishes, it was laid out more than a thousand years ago, in an elongated form, to afford the produce from a variety of habitats for the villagers. The village itself lies along the road between King Street

King Street (Roman road)

King Street is the name of a modern road on the line of a Roman road |Durobrivae]]. The whole is I.D. Margary's Roman road number 26. -The Roman road's route:Archaeological work has revealed more of its length than is in use nowadays...

, a road built in the second century, and Baston Fen which is on the margin of the much bigger, Deeping Fen

Deeping Fen

Deeping Fen is a low-lying area in Lincolnshire in the east of England, which covers around . It is bounded by the River Welland and the River Glen, and is extensively drained, but the efficient drainage of the land exercised the minds of several of the great civil engineers of the 17th and 18th...

. Until the nineteenth century, the heart of Deeping Fen was a common

Common land

Common land is land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect firewood, or to cut turf for fuel...

fen on which all the surrounding villages had rights of turbary

Turbary

Turbary is the term used to describe the ancient right to cut turf, or peat, for fuel on a particular area of bog. The word may also be used to describe the associated piece of bog or peatland and, by extension, the material extracted from the turbary...

, fowling

Fowling

Fowling is a term which is perhaps better known in the Fens of eastern England than elsewhere. It was more than the commercial equivalent of the field sport of wildfowling, in that it includes all forms of bird catching for meat, feathers or any other part of the bird which may have been sold on...

and pasture

Pasture

Pasture is land used for grazing. Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, cattle, sheep or swine. The vegetation of tended pasture, forage, consists mainly of grasses, with an interspersion of legumes and other forbs...

Geology

The parish lies on a fan of gravel from the Devensian glacial period, which spreads from the upland mouth of the valley

Valley

In geology, a valley or dale is a depression with predominant extent in one direction. A very deep river valley may be called a canyon or gorge.The terms U-shaped and V-shaped are descriptive terms of geography to characterize the form of valleys...

of the River Welland

River Welland

The River Welland is a river in the east of England, some long. It rises in the Hothorpe Hills, at Sibbertoft in Northamptonshire, then flows generally northeast to Market Harborough, Stamford and Spalding, to reach The Wash near Fosdyke. For much of its length it forms the county boundary between...

, to the east of Stamford, Lincolnshire

Stamford, Lincolnshire

Stamford is a town and civil parish within the South Kesteven district of the county of Lincolnshire, England. It is approximately to the north of London, on the east side of the A1 road to York and Edinburgh and on the River Welland...

. There are two main forms of business in the parish: arable farming

Agronomy

Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, feed, fiber, and reclamation. Agronomy encompasses work in the areas of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and soil science. Agronomy is the application of a combination of sciences like biology,...

and gravel

Gravel

Gravel is composed of unconsolidated rock fragments that have a general particle size range and include size classes from granule- to boulder-sized fragments. Gravel can be sub-categorized into granule and cobble...

extraction. The flooded gravel pits subsequently lend themselves to development for leisure pursuits such as angling

Angling

Angling is a method of fishing by means of an "angle" . The hook is usually attached to a fishing line and the line is often attached to a fishing rod. Fishing rods are usually fitted with a fishing reel that functions as a mechanism for storing, retrieving and paying out the line. The hook itself...

, birdwatching

Birdwatching

Birdwatching or birding is the observation of birds as a recreational activity. It can be done with the naked eye, through a visual enhancement device like binoculars and telescopes, or by listening for bird sounds. Birding often involves a significant auditory component, as many bird species are...

and watersports. The gravel was washed down from the tundra environment to the west and deposited in the periglacial

Periglacial

Periglacial is an adjective originally referring to places in the edges of glacial areas, but it has later been widely used in geomorphology to describe any place where geomorphic processes related to freezing of water occur...

lake

Lake

A lake is a body of relatively still fresh or salt water of considerable size, localized in a basin, that is surrounded by land. Lakes are inland and not part of the ocean and therefore are distinct from lagoons, and are larger and deeper than ponds. Lakes can be contrasted with rivers or streams,...

, known as Lake Fenland, below the icy waters of which the site of Baston then lay.

Geography

Geographically, in the fen, the parish's northern boundary lies on the River Glen

River Glen, Lincolnshire

The River Glen is a river in Lincolnshire, England with a short stretch passing through Rutland near Essendine.The river's name appears to derive from a Brythonic Celtic language but there is a strong early English connection.-Naming:...

, beyond which is Thurlby

Thurlby by Bourne

Thurlby is a village and civil parish in the District of South Kesteven in the English county of Lincolnshire, on the edge of The Fens. It is sometimes referred to as Thurlby by Bourne to distinguish it from other villages in Lincolnshire called Thurlby...

. To the south is Langtoft

Langtoft, Lincolnshire

Langtoft is a village and civil parish in Lincolnshire on the A15 road, about ten miles north of Peterborough and about eight miles east of Stamford, Lincolnshire on the edge of The Fens....

and beyond King Street in the west is Greatford

Greatford

Greatford is a village and civil parish in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It lies west of the A15, north-east of Stamford, and south of Bourne...

History

Baston's story begins with King Street

King Street

-Australia:*King Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia*King Street, Newtown, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia*King Street, Perth, Western Australia, Australia*King Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia*King Street, Devonport, Tasmania, Australia-Canada:...

and the Car Dyke

Car Dyke

The Car Dyke was, and to large extent still is, an eighty-five mile long ditch which runs along the western edge of the Fens in eastern England. It is generally accepted as being of Roman age and, for many centuries, to have been taken as marking the western edge of the Fens...

, a Roman

Roman Britain

Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...

boundary marker

Boundary marker

A boundary marker, boundary stone or border stone is a robust physical marker that identifies the start of a land boundary or the change in a boundary, especially a change in a direction of a boundary...

, canal

Canal

Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...

or catchwater drain

Catchwater drain

A catchwater drain is a land drain, a ditch cut across the fall of the land, typically just above the level of low-lying, level ground such as The Fens of eastern England, where some land, tens of kilometres from the sea is at about sea level...

, according to one's opinion. Another significant Roman feature of Baston is the Roman road leading across the fen towards Spalding

Spalding, Lincolnshire

Spalding is a market town with a population of 30,000 on the River Welland in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire, England. Little London is a hamlet directly south of Spalding on the B1172 road....

(Margary 261). Part of the modern fen road follows it.

At the end of the village, near King Street, was an Anglian

Angles

The Angles is a modern English term for a Germanic people who took their name from the ancestral cultural region of Angeln, a district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany...

cemetery

Cemetery

A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...

which was in use up to about the year 500. This coincides approximately with the date of the beginning of King Arthur

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...

's exploits, as reported by the Historia Brittonum, when Arthur fought his first battle at the mouth of the River Glen and stopped the spread of Anglo-Saxon settlement for fifty years. The Anglo-Saxon cemetery, of funerary urns, was found by Rev. Edward Trollope in 1851. He found around 10 burials in 1863 and traces of another 16 were found in 1963

Like most places in Europe, Baston suffered from bouts of the plague

Black Death

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...

. Some Baston plague are shown in burial lists. A possible plague burial was uncovered during the building of a corn dryer.

Sport

In 2002, a group of local residents decided that the village needed an area where a range of sports could be conducted. The cost of a sports hall was thought to be prohibitive, so the project was focused on a multi-use sports and skateboarding area. Following a village-wide survey, which had a 37% return rate, a public meeting was held in June 2002. As a result of both the survey and public meeting, it was decided that there was a mandate from the village to progress the project. Consequently, B-Active was formed as a sub-committee of the BPFMC.

As part of this the Baston Football Club was formed in 2006, and joined the Grantham & District Saturday Afternoon League.

There is also Baston cricket club, who play in the south Lincs division 3 league.

New tennis courts have been built recently for all year round use.

Local administration

For the election of councillors to South Kesteven
South Kesteven
South Kesteven is a local government district in Lincolnshire, England, forming part of the traditional Kesteven division of the county. It covers Grantham, Stamford, Bourne and Market Deeping.-History:...

District
District
Districts are a type of administrative division, in some countries managed by a local government. They vary greatly in size, spanning entire regions or counties, several municipalities, or subdivisions of municipalities.-Austria:...

Council the parish, as part of Truesdale ward, elects two councillors. The District Councillors current at 2011 are Kelham Cooke (Con)http://moderngov.southkesteven.gov.uk/mgUserInfo.aspx?UID=1179&J=1 and Rosemary H Woolley (Con).http://moderngov.southkesteven.gov.uk/mgUserInfo.aspx?UID=1181&J=1
Baston Parish Council

External links