Billingborough

Billingborough

There are a dozen places in England that remember the name of Billings, a famous tribe of northern invaders, and one of them is Billingborough, lying on the edge of the fens nine miles north of Bourne with the Roman built Car Dyke close by. It was here that the Saxon tribe of the Billings pitched their camp on the first rise of the lush green land after the reedy wastes of the fens. The village was also the site of an Iron Age settlement and evidence of Roman occupation has also been found in the locality together with at least nine salterns, making the parish an important place in one of Lincolnshire's early industries, salt making.

The natural artesian springs at Billingborough have been used to great effect to provide a water feature of peace and tranquillity in the very heart of the village. This spot is known as Spring Wells and probably attracted the first settlers here because the water was reputed to be chalybeate, or rich with iron salts, and to have healing qualities and other benefits for good health. Only once in recent years have the springs been known to fail. On 1st January 1967, after several dry seasons, they dried up and remained dry for six weeks before re-appearing. Summer and winter alike, the temperature of the springs is a degree or two above freezing.

The Spring Wells have been enhanced as a community facility in recent years although the water is likely to be quite insalubrious and it is therefore appropriate that the village's medical practice is located in new buildings in the immediate vicinity while this has become a place to sit and dream and watch the world go by and for swans and waterfowl to congregate for the duck house placed here by villagers sends a message to our feathered friends that they are always welcome visitors.

Today, Billingborough has the atmosphere of a small county town with a wide main street bounded by shops, garages, pubs and large houses. It could also have been a busy inland port laid out some 150 years ago but the scheme never materialised. It was announced on 3rd September 1813 that Parliament was being asked to approve a bill for making a navigable cut or canal from the Forty Foot Drain running between Bourne and Boston with locks, staunches and hauling paths, and a meeting was held at the Fortescue Arms later that year to consider the cost of the project and other implications but the enterprise foundered either through lack of money or interest.

Among the oldest buildings in the village is the Old Hall, a Tudor mansion with 18th and 19th century additions. It had been the home of the Tollers, a distinguished Lincolnshire family that flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries and reputedly descended from another prominent county line, the Custs. Henry Toller was born at Horbling and buried there in 1561.
His successor William started building this dignified stone house in 1611 and the work was finished by his son Richard in 1623. Stones from the suppressed Sempringham priory two miles away were used in its construction and many have been found during subsequent repair work bearing dates and mouldings while the main doorway on the west of the house was brought intact from Sempringham.

The Old Hall

The name Toller has been associated with several village charities known as the Toller Charity, run by trustees who administered the money derived from property at Billingborough and Gosberton left by John Toller in 1669 and Mary Toller in 1671. The charity was originally formed to provide the salary for a schoolmaster to teach poor children from the village but also financed other good deeds including the distribution of coal for the poor at Christmas. The charity was reconstituted in 1890 and from then on, the income was divided between the village schools at Billingborough and Horbling, and Billingborough Sunday School, to pay for prizes and teaching equipment that were not provided by the local education authority.

Several subsequent members of the Toller family later attained distinction, mainly in the church, but by 1802, the name had become extinct. The hall and its grounds were surrounded by a substantial wall with two entrances for carriages and in the 19th century, it was divided into three residences. There were moves in 1914 to schedule the property for preservation but the war broke out and nothing was done and in recent years it has been extensively converted for use as a retirement home for elderly residents.

Buckminster House is also 17th century and was built by Joseph de Burton in 1669, taking its name from the family who were lords of the manor until the 14th century. The de Burton family made it their home until 1913 when it was converted for use as a county council children's home.

St Andrew's Church has a slender recessed spire soaring 150 feet while the tower rises at the west end of the north aisle and has a fine vaulted roof and pinnacles linked by delicate flying buttresses to the spire which has three tiers of lucarnes in alternating positions. The tower and the church are mainly 14th century but there are traces of earlier work in the south aisle. The chancel was rebuilt in 1891 and the most impressive part of the building is the nave with four great arches on each side and the light streaming through the twelve windows of the 15th century clerestory.

REMEMBERING THE DEAD

There is a monument here to Mary Wayet from 1831 and is the work of Crake of Chelsea, the inscription in black letter capitals. The churchyard also contains a number of interesting tombstones including one recording the death of a husband and wife and their two eldest children, all within two years of each other, while an addition to the inscription remembering nine other children who died in their infancy reminds us of the hardships of childbirth before the more enlightened days of natal care.

In memory of Thomas Haddon who died May 3rd, 1826, aged 66.
Also Elizabeth, his wife, who died June 6th, 1825, aged 59 years.
Also of Joseph, son of the above, died May 29th, 1824, aged 24.
And of Ann Haddon, their daughter, died September 28th, 1824, aged 18.
And also nine children who died in their infancy.

A Wesleyan society of twenty members was active in Billingborough in 1802 but it was not until 1829 that a chapel was built at a cost of £300 plus an additional £40 for the land. There were 30 recorded members by 1838 and the 1851 ecclesiastical census recorded that there were 44 adults at the afternoon service and 190 in the evening. The premises were enlarged in 1858 by the addition of a further gallery at a cost of £160. There was also a large and active Sunday School with 146 children on the roll in 1846. A new chapel was planned and in 1899, the Fortescue Paddock in Vine Street was purchased as a site from Trolley Thomas Houghton for £150. The new building, designed to accommodate 450 people, was opened in December 1903 at a cost of £1,304, some of which had been raised from fifty children who had collected two shillings each for the privilege of laying a brick. The old chapel had become dilapidated through disuse and was subsequently sold in 1928 for £85. The Methodist cause in Billingborough began to weaken during the late 20th century and the chapel became such a drain on resources that in 1995, it was decided to demolish the building and meet in the Anglican church, a situation that continues to this day.

There was also a Baptist Chapel in the village, built in the High Street in 1868, but it was bought by the Toller Charity Trustees in 1890 and subsequently used as a Sunday School and for other parochial activities, also as a canteen for the village junior school and as a welfare clinic. It became known as Toller Hall but by 1967 the building was in such a poor state of repair, with the walls bulging and dry rot in the roof timbers, that architects decided it was in imminent danger of collapse and so it was closed as a safety precaution and demolished the following year.

Across the churchyard is a row of mediaeval cottages with a red tiled roof (above), altered over the years as family homes but containing enough originality to retain its period charm.

Red brick buildings abound in Billingborough and among the most striking is an old grain warehouse (below left), now agreeably converted into flats, but the developers have retained the name of the original 19th century owner engraved on stone tablets built into the gable end that overlooks the main street:

HARRISON CORN MERCHANT

A row of six terraced cottages known variously as Victoria Bank or Victoria Street (below right) bears witness to local philanthropy in the early part of this century and a tablet records: "Erected 1914 in memory of faithful parents" while the upstairs rooms have been labelled HIGH NESTS and the ground floors LOW NESTS.

There were once seven public houses here but the Vine, the Five Bells, the Dove, the Grapes and the New Inn have gone and only the Fortescue Arms and the George and Dragon survive. The Fortescue Arms is an imposing whitewashed building in the High Street, named after the wealthy family that once owned 6,000 acres of land in this part of Lincolnshire. Earl Fortescue was formerly Lord of the Manor here but the Crown purchased the estates and the manorial rights in 1855 although the family still has farming interests in other parts of the county.

The original property is 300 years old but started life as a private residence and has been much added to over the years. Some of the stone used in its construction is reputed to have come from Sempringham Priory after its decline at the Dissolution and later when it was sacked by Cromwell's troops during the Civil War of 1642-51. There is certainly evidence that these materials were used for the building of several fine houses in the vicinity, notably that of Lord Clinton, later Earl of Lincoln, who pulled everything down and built himself a mansion 200 feet long although he died before it was finished. The property became a coaching inn for at least 150 years and the remains of old arches through which the stagecoaches once entered can be seen where there are now doorways while the stables that housed the horses for their overnight rest still stand at the rear of the premises.

Billingborough was also a famous centre for the manufacture of clocks. The best known example locally is the village clock that can still be seen at Horbling on the side of a building that is now the Old Post Office Farm but was for many years, as the name suggests, the village post office. When it closed over forty years ago the clock survived and has been built into the side wall as a community facility. It was made by Goodacre of Billingborough, and although the original mechanism has been lost, an electrical movement has been installed and in 1991 the parish council agreed to finance its upkeep with a regular supply of batteries to ensure that anyone who passes by will always know the correct time.

A more famous name associated with clock making in Billingborough is that of Shaw, a family active in the village almost 300 years ago. The earliest name on surviving timepieces is that of Joshua Shaw who was buried in the churchyard in the early 18th century. In March 1967, the Stamford Mercury investigated the provenance of a grandfather clock that had been in the ownership of a family from Armagh in Northern Ireland for more than three generations and bore the name of Abraham Shaw of Billingborough. The report concluded that there were many other clocks made by the family in homes around Britain and in the dominions and the colonies also bearing the name of Shaw but with different first names. It was therefore presumed that the business had been handed down from father to son over four generations. Following Joshua came Matthew who died in 1769, then Abraham who died in 1833 at the age of 72 and finally Samuel Barwis who died in 1876, aged 70. All are buried in the churchyard at Billingborough. The report added: "In addition to grandfather clocks, other timepieces were made for wall suspension brackets and mantle shelves. They were renowned as exceptionally good timekeepers, even after more than a century. The outstanding craftsmanship of their cabinets made them eagerly sought by collectors and dealers."

The odd little building at the corner of Vine Street and Victoria Street in Billingborough was formerly the village fire station. A plaque over the main door announces that it was built in AD 1890 and for the next half a century it housed a Merryweather hand pump appliance that was pulled by two horses with four firemen running either side who operated the water pump whenever there was a blaze in the vicinity. The appliance was replaced by a modern fire engine when the Auxiliary Fire Service was formed at the outbreak on the Second World War in 1939 but was still used whenever necessary although it was then pulled by a tractor.

After the war it was taken out of service and retired to the Lincolnshire Fire Brigade Museum. The wooden structure attached to the left of the building is the village bus stop.