Sleaford is a market town and civil parish in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. Centred on the former parish of New Sleaford, the modern boundaries and urban area include Quarrington to the south-west, Holdingham to the north and Old Sleaford to the east. The town is on the edge of the fertile Fenlands, north-east of Grantham, west of Boston, and south of Lincoln. Its population of 17,671 at the 2011 Census made it the largest settlement in the North Kesteven district; it is the district's administrative centre. Bypassed by the A17 and the A15, it is linked to Lincoln, Newark, Peterborough, Grantham and King's Lynn.
The first settlement formed in the Iron Age where a prehistoric track crossed the River Slea. It was a tribal centre and home to a mint for the Corieltauvi in the 1st centuries BC and AD. Evidence of Roman and Anglo-Saxon settlement has been found. The medieval records differentiate between Old and New Sleaford, the latter emerging by the 12th century around the present-day market place and St Denys' Church; Sleaford Castle was also built at that time for the Bishops of Lincoln, who owned the manor. Granted the right to hold a market in the mid-12th century, New Sleaford developed into a market town and became locally important in the wool trade, while Old Sleaford declined.
From the 16th century, the landowning Carre family kept tight control over the town – it grew little in the early modern period. The manor passed from the Carre family to the Hervey family by the marriage of Isabella Carre to John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol in 1688. The town's common land and fields were legally enclosed by 1794, giving ownership mostly to the Hervey family. This coincided with canalisation of the Slea. The Sleaford Navigation brought economic growth until it was superseded by the railways in the mid-1850s. In the 20th century, the sale of farmland around Sleaford led to the development of large housing estates.
Sleaford was mainly an agricultural town until the 20th century with a cattle market. Seed companies such as Hubbard and Phillips and Sharpes International were established in the late 19th century. The arrival of the railway made the town favourable for malting, but the industry has since declined. In 2011, the commonest occupations were in wholesale and retail trading, health and social care, public administration, defence and manufacturing. Regeneration of the town centre has helped to regenerate the earlier industrial areas, including construction of the National Centre for Craft & Design (The Hub) on an old wharf.
History
Etymology
The earliest records of the place-name Sleaford are found in a charter of 852 as Slioford and in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as Sliowaford. In the Domesday Book (1086), it is recorded as Eslaforde and in the early 13th century as Sliforde. In the 13th century Book of Fees it appears as Lafford. The name is formed from the Old English words and , together meaning 'ford over a muddy or slimy river'.
Early period
Archaeological material from the Bronze Age and earlier has been recovered and excavations have shown there was unsustained late-Neolithic and Bronze Age human activity in the vicinity. The earliest known permanent settlement dates from the Iron Age, where a track northwards from Bourne crossed the River Slea. Although only sparse pottery evidence has been found for the middle Iron Age period, 4,290 pellet mould fragments, probably used for minting and dated to 50 BC–AD 50, have been uncovered south-east of the modern town centre, south of a crossing of the River Slea and near Mareham Lane in Old Sleaford. The largest of its kind in Europe, the deposit has led archaeologists to consider that the site in Old Sleaford as one of the largest Corieltauvian settlements in the period and possibly a tribal centre.