LINCOLNSHIRE, an eastern county of England, bounded north, by the Humber, east by the North sea and the Wash, south east for 3 m. by Norfolk, south by Cambridge and Northampton shire, south-west by Rutland, west by Leicestershire and Notting hamshire, and north-west by Yorkshire. The area is 2,646 sq. miles. It is the second largest county in England. The main structural features lie across the county from north to south, the two chief being the limestone escarpment of Oolitic rocks in the west (with the Inferior Oolite, extending from the boundary of Rutland, due north past Lincoln to the Humber, and forming the sharp westward-facing scarp of the Lincoln Edge) and the chalk escarpment of the Wolds in the east. Between these two, in order from west to east, run the parallel belts of Middle and Upper Oolite, consisting of Oxford clay, Corallian and Kim meridge clay, and a narrow fringe of lower greensand. Beyond the limestone to the west, stretches of plain consisting of (I) Triassic Keuper with gypsum in the Isle of Axholme and the val ley of the Trent, with red clay, often worked for bricks and with Rhaetic beds at the junction of the Trias and Lias; (2) a broad stretch of Lias rocks, with valuable ironstone deposits in the Lower Lias. The Middle Lias, which enters the county at Wools thorpe, has iron ores at Dinton and Caythorpe, and the Upper Lias entering at Stainby, passes by Grantham and Lincoln, where it is worked for bricks. Building stone also is quarried at Lincoln and freestone at Ancaster. The remaining belt is a coastal marsh land extending from the Humber and passing into the Fens (formed of silt and peat) in the Isle of Axholme on the north west, the vale of Ancholme on the north, and most of the country south-east of Lincoln. Whiting is made from the chalk near the Humber and lime is made on the Wolds. Sandy shores on the North sea have given rise to the health resorts of Cleethorpes, Skegness, Mablethorpe and Sutton-on-Sea. Boulder clay is plenti ful on the chalk, especially in the north of the county, where there is also much glacial sand. The drainage pattern of the county
is simple on the whole, being mostly longitudinal (the Trent— only partly in Lincolnshire—the Ancholme, the Witham— except in its middle section—and the Langworth—a tributary of the Witham). Some streams draining from the chalk are consequent in their lower courses. A striking feature is the gap at Lincoln, through which the Trent waters formerly flowed out, until cap tured at Newark (Notts.) by a subsequent stream working back from the Humber.
History.—Lincolnshire is not rich in pre-historic finds. There are very few traces of Palaeolithic man in the county, though flint implements of Palaeolithic type have been found at Lincoln.
At the dawn of the Metal age, Beaker folk, using the Humber entry penetrated south along the Jurassic belt and built round barrows. In the pre-Roman or Romano-British Iron age, Lincoln was evidently a military site, since bronze clasps often associated with such settlements have been found there. Of the details of the English conquest of the district little is known, but at some time in the 6th century Engle and Frisian invaders appear to have settled in the country north of the Witham, where they became known as the Lindiswaras. In the 7th century the suprem acy over Lindsey alternated between Mercia and Northumbria, but few historical references to the district are extant until the time of Alfred. At this period the Danish inroads upon the coast of Lindsey had already begun, and in 873 Healfdene wintered at Torksey, while in 878 Lincoln and Stamford were included among the five Danish boroughs.
The origin of the three main divisions of Lincolnshire is anterior to that of the county itself, and the outcome of purely natural conditions, Lindsey being in Roman times practically an island bounded by the swamps of the Trent and the Witham on the west and south, and on the east by the North sea, while Kesteven and Holland were respectively the regions of forest and of fen.