Dry Doddington
Note: This parish is often confused with Doddington in the Graffoe wapentake of Lincolnshire. There are at least eight Doddingtons in England.
Dry Doddington is a parish and village just east of the River Witham that borders on Balderton parish in Nottinghamshire on the west and Claypole parish to the north. It is just 6 miles south-east of Newark-on-Trent and only 9 miles from Grantham. The parish covers about 1,600 acres (some sources give a larger number).
The small village of Dry Doddington is built on a rise on a road between Claypole and Westborough villages. If you are planning a visit:
- Take the A1 motorway north out of Grantham. Turn east off the motorway at Long Bennington.
- Westborough parish lies to the south.
- Visit our touring page for more sources.
- The parish was in the Claypole sub-district of the Newark Registration District.
- Check our Census Resource page for county-wide resources.
- The table below gives census piece numbers, where known:
Census
Year |
Piece No. |
| 1851 |
H.O. 107 / 2136 |
| 1861 |
R.G. 9 / 2482 |
| 1891 |
R.G. 12 / 2716 |
- The Anglican parish church is dedicated to Saint James and is an ancient stucture.
- The church was restored in 1876.
- The church tower has a noticable lean to it (slightly greater than the Tower of Pisa).
- The church is a Grade II listed structure with British Heritage.
- A photograph of the Anglican church is at the Wendy PARKINSON English Church Photographs site.
- Richard CROFT has a photograph of St. James' Church on Geo-graph, taken in November, 2005.
- Here is a photo of the church, taken by Ron COLE (who retains the copyright):
- The Anglican parish church has no graveyard, so parishioners bury their dead at Westborough. Be sure to check burial registers from that parish as other Dry Doddington entries often appear there. The "Phillimore Atlas" shows no registers for Dry Doddington.
- The Family History Library holds the Dry Doddignton parish registers on microfilm for 1564 - 1957 under Westborough. Specifics are: Baptisms, marriages, burials, 1564-1734 Baptisms, burials, 1735-1808 Marriages, 1735-1753 Baptisms, burials, 1809-1812 Marriages, 1754-1812 Baptisms, 1813-1872 Marriages, 1813-1957 Burials, 1813-1947; film 1542307 item 3.
- The Lincolnshire FHS has a Loan Library service which has the parish registers on microfiche for baptisms from 1812 to 1846.
- The Lincolnshire FHS has published several marriage indexes for the Loveden Deanery to make your search easier.
- The Wesleyan Methodists had a small chapel here, built in 1836. For information and assistance in researching these chapels, see our non-conformist religions page.
- Check our Church Records page for county-wide resources.
- The parish was in the Claypole sub-district of the Newark Registration District.
- Check our Civil Registration page for sources and background on Civil Registration which began in July, 1837.
- Check the history of the Wapentake at the Loveden Wapentake website.
- Electricity came to Dry Doddington in 1946.
- Water mains were installed in Dry Doddington in 1948.
- The principal landowners in 1871 were George NEVILE, Esq., Miss Hall and several small proprietors.
- The principal landowner in 1913 was Sir Ralph Henry Sachevel WILMOT, baronet.
- The national grid reference is SK 8546.
- You'll want an Ordnance Survey Explorer #249 map, which has a scale of 2.5 inches to the mile.
- See our Maps page for additional resources.
- The church contains a memorial to an Avro Lancaster bomber that crashed near the village on 26 November, 1944.
- You can see this memorial at Bomber History.
- The name Doddington is a combination of Old English dryge and Dodda+ing+tun, for "dry estate of a man called Dodda". In the 1086 Domesday Book, the village name is given as Dodintune.
[A. D. Mills, "A Dictionary of English Place-Names," Oxford University Press, 1991]
- This place was an ancient Chapelry in Lincoln county and became a modern Civil Parish in April, 1931.
- The parish was in the ancient Loveden Wapentake in the South Kesteven division of the county, in the parts of Kesteven.
- In April, 1931, this Chapelry was re-incarnated as the combined Civil Parish of Westborough and Dry Doddington.
- For today's district governance, contact the South Kesteven District Council.
- Bastardy cases would be heard in the Spittlegate (Grantham) petty session hearings.
- Since the enclosure of Common Lands in 1771, the Poor's Land, purchased in 1740, has been used to generate income for the parish poor.
- An unknown donor contributed his 1871 rent income of 4 shillings to the poor.
- After the Poor Law Amendment Act reforms of 1834, the parish became part of the Newark Poor Law Union in 1837.
| Year |
Inhabitants |
| 1801 |
191 |
| 1841 |
215 |
| 1851 |
252 |
| 1871 |
245 |
| 1881 |
225 |
| 1891 |
178 |
| 1911 |
124 |
- The Public Elementary School was built in 1872 to seat 60 children, but only about half that number attended.
- For more on researching school records, see our Schools Research page.
Last updated on 16-November-2013
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