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  SCOTHERN HISTORY

The village of Scothern, or Scothorne as it was known for many centuries, has been inhabited for at least a thousand years. It was situated in the small Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey that came into being in about 500AD and was in the Wappentake (to take a weapon to vote ) district of Lawress. There is written evidence of the village as a small settlement as in the Scoltorne (Scothern) hundred. This was an Anglo Saxon area of administration that could support one hundred families which included Scothern, Sudbrooke and Holme. Scoltorne was the main administration centre, Sutbroc (South Beck, the stream that is south of Scothern, now Sudbrooke Beck) was a Berwick, a subsidiary small farm settlement (Berwick originally meant barn for storing barley). Holme, another Anglo Saxon word for a small settlement often with a Manor, is Sudbrooke Park where the new housing development is being built. This joint administrative district remained until the Scothorne Closure Act of 1766.

 Before the Angles built their Lindsey Kingdom the district was administered from a large Roman Villa at Sudbrooke. Indeed it may have been the main administrative centre of the whole of Lindsey. The villa was a satellite for a much larger Roman Villa and administrative centre which was situated, and now completely destroyed, at Greetwell Quarry.  It is possible the Greetwell Villa controlled the whole of northern England for a period as the Roman Legions pushed further and further north. There are few Celtic finds in the Scothern area but it is most probable that the Celtic Corieltauvi tribe either lived in the area making use of Scothern Beck and its fertile land or at least hunted here. It would certainly have been cultivated by the Roman Sudbrooke Villa, indeed a Roman beehive was found in Scothern in the 1960's

Lincolnshire was eventually conquered by the Vikings along with much of the north and east of Angleland and became part of the Norseman's Danelaw.  The Angle lords who owned Scothern were deposed by Vikings from their Great Army, who gave up the sword to take up the plough, but who also after a while also took up the cross when England again became a united Christian Kingdom. Even before the Norman conquest in 1066 the east part of the village had already been given to Peterborough Abbey and this would be followed by the western part to Barlings Abbey. This was a result of 'The Anarchy civil war' that culminated in the end of King Stephen's Norman rule and the beginning of Plantagenet, Henry II's, rule in 1154. Peterborough Abbey (later Peterborough Cathedral) would keep hold of its Scothern lands until the 20th century but Barlings Abbey would lose its Scothern and Sudbrooke Lands due to the 1536 Lincolnshire Rising against Henry VIII. Henry would give these lands to his best mate Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and the lands would then pass down the centuries to the owners of Sudbrooke Holme and Scothern Manor. This included the Ellison Family. Richard Ellison built Scothern School in 1838 (it had been held in a private house previously). Richard went on to become one of the founders of the West Minster Bank. He is interred in the Ellison Vault within Scothern Church.

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