Silk Willoughby

• The parish was in the Sleaford sub-district of the Sleaford Registration District.
• Check our Census Resource page for county-wide resources.
• The table below gives census piece numbers, where known:

• The Anglican parish church is dedicated to Saint Denis and dates from Norman times.
• The church was built between 1315 and 1360.
• The church chancel was rebuilt in 1878.
• The church was restored in 1907-8.
• The church seats around 200.
• There was a small chapel, probably Anglican, in the hamlet of Silkby, still in use in 1810. But it had disappeared by 1900.
• There is a photograph of St. Denis Church on the Wendy PARKINSON English Church Photo web site.
• Ian PATERSON has a photograph of the church on a snowy day, taken in December, 2009.
• Here is a photo of St. Denis Church, taken by Ron COLE (who retains the copyright):

• The Anglican parish register dates from 1559.
• We have a small number of parish register entries in a text file. Your additions are welcome.
• The Lincolnshire FHS has a Loan Library service which has the parish registers on microfiche for Baptisms from 1652 to 1812 and Marriages from 1652 to 1812.
• The LFHS has published several indexes for the Lafford Deanery to make your search easier.
• Check our Church Records page for county-wide resources.

• The parish was in the Sleaford sub-district of the Sleaford Registration District.
• Check our Civil Registration page for sources and background on Civil Registration which began in July, 1837.

Silk Willoughby is both a village and parish about 2 miles south of Sleaford and about 12 miles north-east of Grantham. Aswarby parish lies to the south and Quarrington parish to the north. In 1841, the parish covered 2,450 acres.

If you are planning a visit:

• By automobile, the village is just east of the A15 between Bourne and Sleaford.
• See our touring page for more sources.

• Geograph
• Flickr

• Ask for a calculation of the distance from Silk Willoughby to another place.

• Anciently, this parish contained two manors, named after their families, which gave the parish their names: Silkebi and Wilgebi.
• A large ancient farmhouse in the parish was reputed to be the manor house of the ARMYN family.

• See our "Maps" page for additional resources.

You can see maps centred on OS grid reference TF056428 (Lat/Lon: 52.972164, -0.428924), Silk Willoughby which are provided by:

• OpenStreetMap
• Google Maps
• StreetMap (Current Ordnance Survey maps)
• Bing (was Multimap)
• Old Maps Online
• National Library of Scotland (Old Ordnance Survey maps)
• Vision of Britain (Click "Historical units & statistics" for administrative areas.)
• English Jurisdictions in 1851 (Unfortunately the LDS have removed the facility to enable us to specify a starting location, you will need to search yourself on their map.)
• Magic (Geographic information) (Click + on map if it doesn't show)
• GeoHack (Links to on-line maps and location specific services.)

• All places within the same township/parish shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby townships/parishes shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby places shown on an Openstreetmap map.

• "Silk Willougby" also appears as "Silkby-cum-Willoughby" in many records.

• Silkby was a separate hamlet until 1337, but its exact boundaries are unknown.
• The parish was in the ancient Aswardhurn Wapentake in the North Kesteven division of the county, in the parts of Kesteven.
• For today's district governance, see the North Kesteven District Council.

• Bastardy cases would be heard in the Sleaford petty session hearings every Monday.
• In 1718, Dame Margaret THOROLD of Syston, near Grantham, left land providing £10, generally given to the poor as coal at Christmas.
• After the Poor Law reforms of 1834, the parish became part of the Sleaford Poor Law Union.

Year	Inhabitants
1801	225
1841	227
1871	258
1881	280
1891	275
1901	226
1911	231
1921	222

• In 1841, the rector of the parish was paying for the education of 12 poor children.
• The parish had a Public Elementary School by 1900, built to hold 40 children.
• For more on researching school records, see our Schools Research page.