In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Alford like this:
ALFORD, a small town, a parish, and a subdistrict in the district of Spilsby, Lincoln. The town stands on a rivulet, adjacent to the East Lincoln railway, 10½ miles SSE of Louth, and 23¼ NNE of Boston; took its name from an old ford on the rivulet; gives the title of Viscount to Earl Brownlow; comprises three main streets and a market-place; is a seat of petty sessions, and a polling place; carries on brewing, tanning, dyeing, rope-making, and other employments; and has a r. ...
station with telegraph, a head post office,‡ two banking offices, three chief inns, a police station, a handsome recent corn exchange, a neat mechanics' institute of 1854, with lecture-hall and library, an early English church, five dissenting chapels, a grammar school with £354 a year from endowment, and with a fellowship and three scholarships at Cambridge, an endowed school for girls, a mixed national school, six alms-houses, some other charities, a weekly market on Tuesday, and stock fairs on Whit-Tuesday and 8 Nov.—The parish comprises 1,410 acres. Real property, £7,893. Pop., 2,658. Houses, 592. The property is subdivided. There are a mineral spring and barrows. The living is a vicarage, united to the curacy of Rigsby, in the diocese of Lincoln. Value, £163. Patron, the Bishop of Lincoln.-The subdistrict comprises nineteen parishes. Acres, 32,570. Pop., 7,804. Houses, 1,633.
Alford through time
Alford is now part of East Lindsey district. Click here for graphs and data of how East Lindsey has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Alford itself, go to Units and Statistics.
GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Alford, in East Lindsey and Lincolnshire | Map and description, A Vision of Britain through Time.
URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/232
Date accessed: 28th April 2024
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