Saundby

The Library at East Retford will prove useful in your research.

Alternatively, the Gainsborough Library also has a Local History section.

People from Saundby are also likely buried in the Beckingham "Beecher Lane Cemetery" which is managed by the joint Parish Council with Beckingham. That cemetery did not open until 1972.

• The parish was in the Misterton sub-district in the Gainsborough Registration District.
   
• The table below gives census piece numbers, where known:
   

• The Anglican parish church is dedicated to St. Martin of Tours.
   
• The church was built before 1504, because that is the year when the tower was added.
   
• The church chancel was built in 1885-1886.
   
• The church nave was restored in 1891.
   
• J. HANNAH-BRIGGS has a photograph of the Church window depicting St Martin of Tours on Geo-graph, taken in November, 2013.
   
• William HENDERSON has a photograph of St. Martin's Church on Geo-graph, taken in 2004.
   
• The church is now closed for services (as of 1986) and is disused.
   
• The church is maintained by the Church Conservation Trust.
   

• The Anglican parish register dates from 1568 but is missing entries from 1600 through 1662.
   
• The church was in the rural deanery of Retford.
   

• The parish was in the Misterton sub-district in the Gainsborough Registration District.
   
• Civil Registration began in July, 1837.
   

Saundby is a small village and a parish 148 miles north of London, 7 miles north-east of East Retford and 3 miles south-west of Gainsborough (in Lincolnshire). The River Trent provides the eastern border of the parish. In the 1800s, much of the parish was grazing land.

If you are planning a visit:

• By automobile, take the A620 arterial road north out of Retford. This road runs right through the village.
   
• Alternatively, take the A631 arterial west out of Gainsborough, turn south at the A620 interchange and you'll be in Saundby before you can get up to the speed of traffic.
   
• There is bus service to Saundby with a stop on the A620, but no rail service. Mat FASCIONE provides a picture of the A620 Bus Shelter on Geo-graph, taken in May, 2016.
   
• For photographs of the parish, see those taken by Barbara Whiteman on Pictures of England.
   

• Geograph
• Flickr

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

The STAVELEY family of Saundby dates back to 1665.

• In the 1800s the parish had a small ship-yard, wharves and an oil mill on the River Trent just opposite Gainsborough.
   

• See our Maps page for additional resources.
   

You can see maps centred on OS grid reference SK784881 (Lat/Lon: 53.383937, -0.822768), Saundby 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.

• Saundby had a firing range during Queen Victoria's reign (around 1880), east of the village near the River Trent. 
   
• During the Great War of 1914-1918 the Royal Flying Corps had a landing ground in the Parish of Saundby, in the area south of the Ramper Road (A631) where the Firing Range was situated. It was a busy airfield, using FE-1 fighter planes. Eight aircrew died during the war and most of them are buried in Gainsborough. 
   
• Saundby War Memorial for World War I consists of a brass plaque on the south wall inside St Martin’s Church. 
   

These are the men from the parish who fell in World War One:

William Arthur CHAMBERS was born in 1886 in Saundby lived with his parents John and Elizabeth CHAMBERS and brothers and sisters at The Gables Farm, Saundby. He became a soldier rather late in his life, as he was thirty three years old when he died in the war. Perhaps he was conscripted under the Military Service Act of 1916, which made it lawful that men between the ages of 18 and 45 years could be conscripted into the Army or Navy (there was no separate Air Force before 1918). A Memorial Lectern, made of oak, was commissioned by his family, and used in Saundby Church where Arthur CHAMBERS was christened and was formerly a member of the congregation.

Herbert VALLANCE enlisted into the army at Gainsborough he served with the 7th battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment where he was promoted to Corporal. On 8th March 1918 when he died of wounds, they were in the front line trenches near Flesquieres, France, where he is buried.

Corpl Herbert VALLANCE Retford Times 22nd March 1918
Mrs VALLANCE, Garnett’s Yard, Bridgegate, Retford has received information that her son, Corpl Herbert VALLANCE, Lincs Regt, was killed in France on March 8th. He was 23 years of age and was formerly in farm service with Mr Selby, Saundby Park. He has seen 2 ½ years service and had taken part in some hard fighting. Another son, Pte Samuel VALLANCE was killed in France on September 15th 1916. Mrs VALLANCE has five other sons serving – Pte W Johnson VALLANCE, in France with the Sherwood Foresters who has been twice wounded: Pte John VALLANCE, Leicester Regiment, who has served in India and Mesopotamia and is now in Egypt and has been wounded: Pte Ernest VALLANCE, Sherwood Foresters, in Egypt, once wounded: Pte Albert VALLANCE in the RAMC in Italy and Pte Bert VALLANCE, RAMC in England. The Captain of the company in which Pte Herbert VALLANCE was serving, in a letter to Mrs VALLANCE writes:- “Nothing I can say will appease your sorrow for the loss of your brave boy but it will, I am sure, be some consolation to you to know that he met his death gallantly with his face towards the enemy. We all feel his death keenly as he was always a cheerful, trustworthy NCO and one of the most capable in his Company.”

John WAINWRIGHT and was a Private in the 5th Battalion, the Lincolnshire Regiment pre-war Territorial Army unit which recruited across North Lincolnshire, and he had probably joined up at the Drill Hall in Spital Terrace, Gainsborough, before the war. When war broke out he enlisted at Brigg . The Lincolshire Regiment were heavily involved in the Battle of St Quentin during the 21st to 25th March 1918, when a sudden German assault by overwhelming numbers forced the British to move back in the area of Poziers and Somme. One of the Lincolnshire Battalions involved was reduced to six officers and eighty soldiers, from about five hundred all ranks. John WAINWRIGHT died on 23rd March 1918, aged 29, service number 45841 and his grave/memorial reference panel 29 and 30 at the Pozieres Memorial in the Somme area of Northern France

• This place was an ancient parish in the county and became a modern Civil Parish when those were established.
   
• The parish was in the North Clay division of the ancient Bassetlaw Wapentake (Hundred) in the northern division of the county.
   
• You may contact the joint parish council of Beckingham and Saundby for civic or political issues, but they will NOT perform family history work for you.
   
• In 2011 Saundby became a civil parish in its own name.
   
• District governance is provided by the Bassetlaw District Council.
   

• Bastardy cases would be heard at the Retford petty session hearings held in West Retford.
   
• As a result of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, the parish became part of the Gainsborough Poor Law Union.
   

Year	Population
1801	100
1841	107
1851	88
1861	86
1871	98
1881	113
1891	126
1901	103
1911	101
1921	98
1931	101

The children of this parish attended schools in Bole and Beckingham parishes.