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Keal Cotes, forming part of West Keal parish, is a small linear village in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated on the A16 road, south of West Keal and 1 mile north of Stickford. The nearest market town is Spilsby, about to the north. Keal Cotes market day is on Mondays.
The village is at the southern edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds north of The Fens, and approximately east from the city and county town of Lincoln, north-east from the market town of Boston, and west from the holiday resort of Skegness.
The remains of a substantial Ancient Rome or high status Romano British, the only one found in Lincolnshire, are in a large field at the south end of the village.
The name of the village is occasionally spelt on some maps as "Keal Coates".
The Keal Cotes area was visited and occupied by the Romans during the 1st century until the 4th century AD. An archeological dig and field walk in the village, during the 1960s, over a large field to the south of the village (in the corner where the A16 meets the Hagnaby Lane), discovered many Tessellation mosaic floor tiles and roof tiles indicating that a substantial Ancient Rome or high status Romano British had once stood on the site. Several centuries of agricultural activity had plowed out any possibility of further excavations although the cropmark outlines of an extensive dwelling can be clearly seen on several aerial photographs.
With the fens drained by the Romans the area and the village settled down to 1,500 years of rural agriculture on land ideally suited to cereal crops.
The coaching inn originally known as The Ship Inn, with its spare teams of mail coach horses stabled in a coach house, was built in the late 18th century. The Inn was later renamed as The Vanguard in 1876 to commemorate the sinking of HMS Vanguard. In 1993 the public house's name was changed for the third time and is now called The Coach House although the actual coach house building was sold separately and converted as a family home. A Victorian style conservatory was added to the pub for use as a restaurant. Keal Cotes Post Office and village stores opened in 1795 on the same site as the village well and a 16th-century farmhouse, the oldest standing building in the village. The shop and post office was run by several generations of the local Shaw family for most of its existence. In 1923 the village telephone box was erected on a new layby outside the post office at a time when only the post office and the village blacksmith had a private telephone. The post office's telephone number was originally Spilsby 20 and later became Keal Cotes 200. The original shop and post office closed in 1995 after being downgraded to an unprofitable part-time community office, with the previous shop premises being absorbed by its adjoining house now known as 'Orchard View'. The principal factor causing the traditional levels of trade to drop was the building of the M18 motorway and the M180 motorway in the 1970s, diverting the previously busy A16 traffic. The post office franchise moved to a small house annex at the other end of the village for several years before moving yet again to the Coach House public house where it remained until it was eventually closed by Post Office Counters Ltd as a cost-saving exercise in 2005.
A Wesleyan Chapel and Sunday school was built in the village in 1891. Closed in the 1950s the building still stands and is now used as general storage facility by a local farmer. The village windmill, built in the 18th century, fell into decay and disuse before being demolished in 1949 and is only remembered by the naming of Mill Lane.
West Keal Primary School closed in the 1960s after the school roll fell below a sustainable level. After a fund raising campaign half of the school building was bought by the combined villages of Keal Cotes and West Keal and established as a community village hall, renamed as the "Craecroft Hall", with the other half of the building used as a private residence.
Between 1845 and 1930 the most commonly used route between Keal Cotes and Boston was by the daily Steam Packet passenger vessel that travelled between Spilsby and Boston several times a day, also carrying the mail. The Keal Cotes wharf on the East Fen Catchwater Drain was alongside the Vanguard Bridge, with further stops in Stickford and Sibsey the route joined up with the River Trader, past Boston Golf Course to a wharf near the windmill on the Maud Foster waterway through the centre of Boston. After a final stop near the Old Blue Anchor waterside public house on Windsor Bank the steam packet turned round and headed back to Spilsby.
There was a historic footpath through the fields connecting West Keal and Keal Cotes formalised by the Enclosure Act of 1750, much used by villagers heading for the West Keal Parish Church. The footpath was annexed for its entire length by the Air Ministry in 1941, as it passed across the perimeter track of RAF East Kirkby, with a firm undertaking that the footpath's right of way would be reinstated as and when the airfield ever closed. However, an administrative error by a junior Air Ministry clerk in 1965 resulted in the footpath being sold as several parcels of land by tender to a number of local farmers and subsequently ploughed up for agriculture. Several campaigns to reopen the original footpath for public leisure use over the last 40 years, but opposed by the influential landowners, have so far failed as no local residents were still alive to attest they had regularly walked the path before 1941. Law changes regarding countryside access encompassed by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 mean that unless the path can be included on the definitive map by 1 January 2026 it will cease to be a right of way in perpetuity.
Mains sewerage provision finally arrived in the village during 1994 although a mains gas supply has never been available, despite the high-pressure Boston to Spilsby gas main pipeline passing within 50 metres of the village centre. In 2005 a speed limit of 50 miles per hour was imposed on the A16 main road through the village after 40 years of campaigning by the villagers and the parish council.
In 1919 a village general meeting agreed to sell the two cottages into private ownership, as annual maintenance costs were making them uneconomic. During the Second World War several of the land plots, including the verges enclosing the West Keal to Keal Cotes footpath, were compulsorily annexed by the Air Ministry to form part of RAF East Kirkby which adjoined the village. Over the next twenty years all of the remaining plots, with the sole exception of the triangle field, were also sold. The combined sales produced a unified cash fund that is currently invested, with the annual interest income still distributed by the commissioners of West Keal Parish Charity Fund to deserving parishioners each Christmas.
Any Keal Cotes homeless poor were housed in the Workhouse at nearby Hundleby. The workhouse was recorded in 1870 as having 280 residents. Gazetteer entry 1870 Inmates were free to enter and leave as they liked and would receive free food and accommodation. However, the concern was that too liberal a regime would lead to many people who could easily work taking it easy in the workhouse. This would lead not only to an excessive charge on charitable funds but a dilution of the work ethic. To counter this the principle of less eligibility was developed. Workhouse life was deliberately made as harsh and degrading as possible so that only the truly destitute would apply. Attempts were also made to provide moral guidance, training and education to the poor but it would be fair to say that the principle of less eligibility combined with the ever-present desire to save money scuppered any real chance of success in this area. The workhouse was later converted into Spilsby's Gables Hospital that was demolished in 2004 to provide land for the building of new private housing.
The Wolds comprise a series of low hills and steep valleys underlain by calcareous chalk, limestone and sandstone rock, laid down in the Cretaceous period under a shallow warm sea. The characteristic open valleys of the Wolds were created during the last ice age through the action of Glacier.
Geographically, the Lincolnshire Wolds are a continuation of the Yorkshire Wolds which run up through the East Riding of Yorkshire, the Wolds as a whole having been bisected by the tremendous erosive power of the waters of the Humber. The Fenlands that stretch down as far as Norfolk are former wetlands consisted both of peat bogs and Tidal marsh which were virtually all drained by the end of the 19th century when Keal Cotes had its longest period of Victorian expansion. The former peat fens and silt marshes provided a rich loamy soil that was ideal for the growing of cereal and vegetable crops and gave Lincolnshire its reputation as being the 'bread basket' of England. The resulting flatlands also made an ideal environment for the later mechanisation of farming in the mid 20th century. The soil in the village is a rich brown loamy earth over a heavy clay subsoil.
The drainage of the wetlands was organised into a combination of river and man-made drainage, aiding the passing of upland water through the region with internal drainage of the land between existing rivers. The internal drainage was designed to be organized by levels or districts each of which includes the fen parts of one or several parishes. The details of the organisation varies with the history of their development, but Keal Cotes falls within the Witham Fourth District: (East, West and Wildmore Fens and the Townland from Boston to Wainfleet). The manmade East Fen Catchwater Drain passes close to Keal Cotes ensuring that, although low lying, the possibility of flooding is almost non-existent. Minor problems have occurred in recent years through farmers and householders failing to properly complete the expected annual clearing of minor feeder drains around their properties. Additionally, many householders have chosen to pipe the drains through and around their gardens, greatly reducing their ability to handle higher levels of land drainage in heavy rain.
Total Population: 333 of which 49.8% were male and 50.2% were female
Average age: 43
Married or remarried: 66.2%, Single and never married 16.2% with the remainder divided between divorced, separated and widowed.
With regard to ethnicity 99.1% of the combined population is white European and 0.9% Chinese.
Christians account for 75.1%, 0.9% are Buddhist and the remainder have no stated religion.
Secondary age children attend Grammar schools, Comprehensive Schools or Secondary modern schools that are in Spilsby, Boston, Skegness, Horncastle and Stickney. School bus transport is available from the layby outside The Coach House.
Part of the church was rebuilt in 1866 due to the porous nature of the green sandstone that had deteriorated over two hundred years. The church tower fell down on 18 Sep 1881, but was quickly rebuilt and completed in 1884. The church clock stopped working in the 1980s and several early attempts to repair it proved to be failures. The clock was finally returned to working order just after 2001.
The former Wesleyan Chapel in the village is deconsecrated and closed.
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