Baston

For the weapon used in Arnis and Filipino Martial Arts, see Baston (weapon).

For the surname, see Baston (surname).

Baston
Closeup of village sighn, with a blue sky and green tree in the background. The sign is framed like a medieval barn, around a low relief carving, painted in realistic colours, featuring a stream with a Roman soldier on the right and an 18th centurt smock mill on the left. Signpost in Baston
Baston  Baston shown within Lincolnshire
Population	1,469 (2011 census)
OS grid reference	TF114140
– London	80 mi (130 km)  S
District	South Kesteven
Shire county	Lincolnshire
Region	East Midlands
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	PETERBOROUGH
Postcode district	PE6
Dialling code	01778
Police	Lincolnshire
Fire	Lincolnshire
Ambulance	East Midlands
EU Parliament	East Midlands
List of places UK England Lincolnshire

Baston is a village and parish on the edge of The Fens and in the administrative district of South Kesteven, Lincolnshire, England. The 2011 census reported the parish had 1,469 people in 555 households.

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, a road built in the second century, and Baston Fen which is on the margin of the much bigger Deeping Fen. Until the nineteenth century, the heart of Deeping Fen was a common fen on which all the surrounding villages had rights of turbary, fowling and pasture.

History

A significant Roman feature of Baston is the Roman road leading across the fen towards Spalding. Part of the modern fen road follows it.

At the end of the village, near King Street, was an Anglian cemetery which was in use up to about the year 500. This coincides approximately with the date of the beginning of King Arthur'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 the plague. Some Baston plague victims are shown in burial lists. A possible plague burial was uncovered during the building of a corn dryer.

Government

For the election of councillors to South Kesteven District Council the parish, as part of Truesdale ward, elects two councillors. The District Councillors current at 2011 are Kelham Cooke (Con)[1] and Rosemary H Woolley (Con).[2]

Baston has its own Parish Council

Geography

Geographically, in the fen, the parish's northern boundary lies on the River Glen, beyond which is Thurlby. To the south is Langtoft and beyond King Street in the west is Greatford.

Geology

The parish lies on a fan of gravel from the Devensian glacial period, which spreads from the upland mouth of the valley of the River Welland, to the east of Stamford, Lincolnshire. There are two main forms of business in the parish: arable farming and gravel extraction. The flooded gravel pits subsequently lend themselves to development for leisure pursuits such as angling, birdwatching and watersports. The gravel was washed down from the tundra environment to the west and deposited in the periglacial lake, known as Lake Fenland, below the icy waters of which the site of Baston then lay.

Education

Independent special school Kirkstone House School has been situated in the village since 1964.

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 2005, and joined the Grantham & District Saturday Afternoon League. The club runs two adult teams playing in the Peterborough & District League on a Saturday afternoon. It plays its home games at Brudenell Playing Field in Baston, and is sponsored by local businesses. Baston cricket club plays in the south Lincs Division 2 league. There are tennis courts for year-round use.

Both sports field and village hall are managed by the Brudenell Playing Fields Management Committee.

Further reading

• Mayes, P. & Dean, M.J. An Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Baston Lincolnshire The Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology. (1976) ISBN 0-904680-05-3
• Phillips, C.W. ed. The Fenland in Roman Times Royal Geographical Society (1970)

External links

• Media related to at Wikimedia Commons
• "Baston", Genuki.org.uk
• "The Parish of Baston", The Bourne Archive
• Baston in the Domesday Book