page_title: Branston, Lincolnshire
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Branston, Lincolnshire / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Branston Water Wheel
context_page_description: Branston is a large village in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. The village is situated approximately 4 miles south-east from the city and county town of Lincoln on the B1188 road to Sleaford. It is the principal settlement in the civil parish of Branston and Mere, population 4,019.
context_section_description: Neolithic and Bronze Age axes have been found in the village, including ten Bronze Age axes in the grounds of Branston Hall in 1906. Evidence has also been found of a Roman villa or villa farm near Folly Lane: a Roman memorial stone, part of a statue, a bronze candlestick and pottery fragments. The inscription on the Roman memorial stone is incomplete but has been translated as 'In this estate (lie the bones of) Aurelia Concessa, a very pure girl'.
  The 1086 Domesday Book records a village population of 350, a figure which stayed relatively stable until the 19th century. In the 19th century the population almost tripled, rising to 1216 in 1901. In the 20th century the population trebled further, to exceed 4000. The character of the village changed much over the second half of the 20th century but Branston has retained much of its historic centre, where the majority of buildings are constructed from local limestone.
  The 'Bran' in 'Branston' may refer to a leader with the Norse name 'Brandr', in which case the name was likely coined during the Danelaw in the 9th-11th centuries, or it could be from the same Saxon root as 'bourne' in old English and 'burn' in Scots, referring to the three streams in the village. In the Domesday book it is listed as Branztune or Branztone. In the Norman Conquest, land in Branston was passed from Haminc (Hemming, Thegn of Blankney) to Walter de Aincurt (a Norman Baron and kinsman of Remigius de Fécamp). In 1219 the De Aincurt estate passed from Oliver De Aincurt to his wife Amabila Camville, who remarried to Henry Le Eueske. Farming in Branston followed an open-field system, with commons for grazing, until Enclosure in 1765.
  The village's most notable buildings are Branston Hall, built 1884-86 and Branston All Saints' Church (parts dating to the 11th century). Branston Hall was preceded by Branston old hall, dating to 1735, which burnt down in 1903. There was also a major fire at Branston All Saints Church on Christmas day in 1962.
  Other historic buildings include a rectory house, built in 1765, and a Wesleyan Methodist chapel, built in 1883, which is of Gothic style, previously seated 300 and closed in 1998. An earlier Methodist chapel, beside it, became a sunday school. A former public primary school on Branston High Street was built in 1873, and preceded by a fee-paying school on Hall Lane, built in 1837. Opposite the church still stands a blacksmith's forge.
  Two other public houses were once located in the village; The Plough which stood on the High Street opposite the Waggon and Horses, which was demolished in the 1970s to straighten a dangerous bend at the centre of the village, and the Bertie Arms, a small public house on Hall Lane, long ago converted into a private dwelling. The Bertie Arms was named after the family which built Branston old hall. The building now occupied by the Home Guard Club was formerly a hops store. 19th Century communal water pumps have been preserved on Hall Lane and Waterwheel Lane. The village used to have a railway station which was in the parish of Heighington. Before then, Station Road was called Heighington Road. Silver Street was formerly known as Bleak Street.
  A war memorial to men of the parish killed in the First World War was erected on the village green in 1920.
  The civil parish of Branston was merged with that of Mere to form the present unit in 1931. In the early 1930s parish occupations included twenty-one farmers and one smallholder, two poultry breeders, a horse dealer, a haulage contractor, two coal dealers, a motor bus proprietor, a cycle dealer, a fried fish dealer, three blacksmiths, a wheelwright, a plumber, two carpenters, a boot maker, two butchers, two grocers, three shopkeepers, two tailors, one of whom ran the post office, and four pub landlords.
  Abel Smith Gardens was built on former allotments. In July 1977 more than fifty children from the junior school had to go to Lincoln County Hospital after a crop spraying aircraft inadvertently sprayed their playground. The insecticide was a mixture of meta-systox and aphox; organophosphate an
caption: Waterwheel formerly used to supply several country houses from the beck
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