P2

Riseholme

This week we find ourselves in possibly the most featureless grid square yet - Riseholme Park.  Tantalisingly out of reach is the beating heart of Lincolnshire agricultural industry, Riseholme College - but we have to make do with a lake and some sheep.

Thankfully Jo Hughes comes to our rescue, as usual, with some historical fact, and regular contributor Tref chips in too.  Back in the studio, we also speak to former Radio Lincolnshire presenter Tim Johns about his experience of shooting a music video in the grid square (see the CHANGINGHORSES video below) and his work on Lincoln's very own short film festival Lincoln Shorts.  All this plus another round of A Question Of Lincoln.... Click the player below to listen online or subscribe to our iTunes feed using the button on the right.

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The History of P2

by Joanna Hughes of the Lincolnshire Archives

Although now long gone, the lost medieval village of Riseholme was an important settlement with good arable land and a stream that was strong enough to drive two watermills. Some of the land was held by Lincoln Cathedral. Kirkstead Abbey established a grange in the 12th century as the area was an important resource for sheep grazing and the production of raw wool. The Grange eventually passed to Barlings Abbey until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century. Then it passed into the hands of the Duke of Suffolk who married Henry VIII’s sister, Mary.

By the end of the medieval period the village of Riseholme was severely depopulated partly due to disease, a fate suffered by many of Lincolnshire’s now lost medieval villages. It continued to decline in the 15th and 16th centuries. By 1428 documents state it had fewer than 10 householders. By 1602 only one house was left and the church was described as “ruinous”. Earthworks of the medieval village and monastic grange lie all around, with remains of houses, paddocks and other buildings existing as humps and bumps in the landscape. You can make out the deep rut of the old main street near Riseholme Lane. Both the remaining Grange earthworks and deserted medieval village are scheduled ancient monuments.

The Riseholme estate eventually passed into the hands of the Chaplin family in 1721, who built a small country house, completed in 1744, small parts of which survive within the fabric of Riseholme Hall at its east end.

After the death of Robert Chaplin in 1839, the estate was sold to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and became the palace for the Bishops of Lincoln. The hall was extensively remodelled by William Railton (the architect of Nelson's Column) and a new church was built in 1850, financed by Bishop Kaye himself. He’s buried there and there’s a monument to him, along with Christopher Wordsworth, nephew of the Romantic Lakeland poet, William.

The Bishops lived here until 1877 when Bishop Edward King moved back into the Old Palace in Lincoln. The estate was sold to Capt Thomas Wilson in 1890 who'd just taken over the Burton Hunt and built the kennels at Riseholme to house the foxhounds, towards the end of the 19th century. His son sold it to Lindsey County Council for the purposes of establishing an agricultural institute.

It’s quite interesting how circular the story of this gridsquare is; land which originally started out in the ownership of the monks of two of Lincolnshire’s great Abbeys and farmed the land to produce the renowned Lincolnshire wool, was then taken during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, passed through secular ownership of families like the Duke of Suffolk and the Chaplins, only to return to the Church again to become the principle Victorian residence of the Bishops of Lincoln to then, finally, return to its agricultural origins (in a sense) as a centre for the development of agricultural technologies and training.

This video was shot in our P2 grid and features “Media Luvvie” Tim Johns as a vicar...