Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for ALFORD

ALFORD, a small town, a parish, and a subdistrict in the district of Spilsby, Lincoln. The town stands on a rivulet, adjacent to the East Lincoln railway, 10½ miles SSE of Louth, and 23¼ NNE of Boston; took its name from an old ford on the rivulet; gives the title of Viscount to Earl Brownlow; comprises three main streets and a market-place; is a seat of petty sessions, and a polling place; carries on brewing, tanning, dyeing, rope-making, and other employments; and has a r. station with telegraph, a head post office,‡ two banking offices, three chief inns, a police station, a handsome recent corn exchange, a neat mechanics' institute of 1854, with lecture-hall and library, an early English church, five dissenting chapels, a grammar school with £354 a year from endowment, and with a fellowship and three scholarships at Cambridge, an endowed school for girls, a mixed national school, six alms-houses, some other charities, a weekly market on Tuesday, and stock fairs on Whit-Tuesday and 8 Nov.—The parish comprises 1,410 acres. Real property, £7,893. Pop., 2,658. Houses, 592. The property is subdivided. There are a mineral spring and barrows. The living is a vicarage, united to the curacy of Rigsby, in the diocese of Lincoln. Value, £163. Patron, the Bishop of Lincoln.-The subdistrict comprises nineteen parishes. Acres, 32,570. Pop., 7,804. Houses, 1,633.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a small town, a parish, and a subdistrict"   (ADL Feature Type: "cities")
Administrative units: Alford AP/CP       Alford SubD       Spilsby RegD/PLU       Lincolnshire AncC
Place: Alford

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