St Andrew

About

St Andrew's is the Grade I listed Anglican parish church of Horbling, a village on the edge of the Fens in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, just north of Billingborough. The church is of cruciform construction, built up over the centuries in Norman, Early English and Perpendicular styles, and seats around 300 people. Its stained glass includes 14th-century work, and gatepiers and gates at the churchyard entrance, added in the early 19th century, are separately listed.

Horbling has been settled since at least the late 5th or early 6th century, among the earliest Anglo-Saxon communities in the area. By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, the entry for "Horbelinge" recorded a church here — notably, a whole one, where neighbouring Billingborough had only a half-share in theirs — along with two mills shared with the community at Harrowby.

History

The oldest surviving portions of the present building date from the early Norman period, in the 12th century, with the church's distinctive cruciform plan developing through the late Norman and Early English periods into the Perpendicular era. The tower was remodelled in 1330.

Horbling has a notable connection to early colonial America: Symon Bradstreete served as rector here from 1596 to 1621, and his son, also named Simon, was born and baptised in the parish in 1603. That younger Simon Bradstreet emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a Puritan in 1630, later becoming Governor of the colony in 1679 and President of the Dominion of New England in 1689. His wife, Anne Bradstreet, became the first notable American poet and the first woman published in Colonial America.

The church was restored in 1852 and again in 1877. Horbling Hall, the residence of solicitor Benjamin Smith around 1900, served as a District VAD Hospital during the First World War, and St Andrew's itself holds tablet memorials to the parish's dead of both World Wars; the WWI memorial was designed by the prominent York architect Walter Brierley and carved by the sculptor George Milburn. The churchyard also contains Commonwealth war graves from both conflicts.

St Andrew's was designated a Grade I listed building on 30 October 1968. Its surviving Anglican parish registers date from 1653, with Bishop's transcripts extending back to 1561.