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Themes

Explorers and Adventurers

 Nobel Prize Winners
Actors/Actresses and Directors Famous People Places of Interest
Anglo-Saxons and Danes Historic Events Prime Ministers
Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty Inventors and Scientists Royal Consorts and Heirs
Artists and Architects Monarchs World Heritage Sites
Composers National Parks Writers and Poets

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire lies in eastern England on the North Sea. In 1974 the new county of Humberside was formed from part of the county together with part of Yorkshire. Humberside has since been broken up into smaller authorities.



 Towns include the county seat of Lincoln.

Anglo-Saxons and Danes
Danish Kings
Once part of the smaller kingdom of Lindsey.



 The father of King Canute and first of four Danish Kings of England Sweyn Forkbeard died in 1014 after a riding accident at Gainsborough.

Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty
The Lincolnshire Wolds are a series of chalk hills which lie midway between the city of Lincoln and the coast. They stretch from the River Humber in the north to the Wash in the south and were designated an AONB in 1973.

Explorers and Adventurers
The navigator and cartographer Matthew Flinders was born in Donington in 1774. From 1801 to 1803 he was the captain of HMS Investigator which carried out the first known circumnavigation of Australia.

Matthew Flinders



 John Franklin was born in Spilsby in 1786. He died in 1847 off King William Island in the Northwest Territories of Canada whilst searching for the Northwest Passage.

John Franklin

Famous People
Anne Askew was born in Grimsby in 1521. In 1546 she became the only woman to be tortured at the Tower of London after being arrested in London for heresy, a result of her openly preaching her Protestant beliefs. The same year she was burnt at the stake at Smithfield.

 Famous people imprisoned at the Tower of London



 The preachers John Wesley and his brother Charles were born in Epworth in 1703 and 1707 respectively. While studying at Oxford in 1729 Charles set up a religious group called the "Oxford Methodists" which his brother later joined. This was the beginnings of Methodism which the brothers would found together with George Whitefield. Originally a movement within the Church of England, the Methodists were eventually forced to separate and form their own church.

 John Wesley
 Charles Wesley
Methodism

Historic Events

Important Events
In 1131 Gilbert, the parish priest at Sempringham, a small hamlet near the village of Bourne, set up the only religious order to originate in England. The Gilbertines were a monastic order which eventually built 12 monasteries in Lincolnshire and the neighbouring counties.



 In 1143 the first Premonstratensian abbey to be built in England, was established at Newhouse Abbey, near Brocklesby. The Premonstratensians were a monastic order founded at Premontré near Laon in France in 1120. In their heyday in the 12th century the order had 31 abbeys and 3 nunneries across England.


Inventors and Scientists
Isaac Newton was born in 1642 at Woolsthorpe Manor.

Isaac Newton


If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
(Letter, 1676)

Monarchs

House of Lancaster
House of Lancaster
Henry IV who was to become the first monarch from the House of Lancaster, was born at Bolingbroke Castle in 1367. He ruled from 1399-1413 and was the first monarch since the Norman Conquest whose native tongue was English and not French.

Henry IV


Nobel Prize Winners

Peace
Born as Ralph Norman Angell Lane in Holbeach in 1872 the pacifist and writer Norman Angell won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1933. He wrote The Great Illusion in 1910 which showed how war made no economic sense for the victors.

 Norman Angell


Places of Interest

Castles
Bolingbroke Castle

Cathedrals and Abbeys
Lincoln Cathedral is the second largest cathedral in England, after York Minster.


Prime Ministers
Prime Ministers
Prime Minister in 1827-28, Viscount Goderich was buried at All Saints in Nocton in 1859.

Viscount Goderich



 Britain's first woman Prime Minister from 1979-90, Margaret Thatcher was born as Margaret Hilda Roberts in Grantham in 1925. Winning three elections in a row she became the longest serving Prime Minister of the 20th century. Thatcherism became a byword for encouraging free markets and "individualism" whilst reducing the involvement and support of the state in people's lives.

Radical and contentious the policies changed the face of British society and met with stiff opposition. This opposition eventually reached her own party and Cabinet colleagues and in 1990 she resigned having lost their confidence. She was replaced by John Major who went on to win the 1992 election.

Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher Foundation


No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions. He had money as well.
(Television interview, 1986)

There is no such thing as Society.
(Womans Own, 1987)

Writers and Poets
The poet Laurence Eusden died at Coningsby in 1730 where he was rector. He had been appointed Poet Laureate in 1718, succeeding Nicholas Rowe. He was succeeded by Colley Cibber.

Poets laureate


The poet Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 at Somersby rectory. He became Poet Laureate on the death of William Wordsworth in 1850 until his own death in 1892 after which he was succeeded by Alfred Austin.

Alfred Tennyson
Poets laureate


He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
The Eagle (1851)

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Family History Societies
Fenland
Peterborough
Record Offices
and Archives
North East Lincolnshire Archives
Societies
Heritage
Lincolnshire
Lincoln
Record Society
Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology