A TRIP TO SLEAFORD A love letter

Culture, Craft & Community in SLEAFORD

This month we’re enjoying a tour around the town which industrial heritage made, and a sense of community has maintained...

St Denys’ Church.

Cogglesford Mill. “This month we’re enjoying a tour around Sleaford with its arts and crafts, industrial heritage and a thriving town centre for its 18,600 residents...”

>> LINCOLNSHIRE has many fine market towns, in addition to its modern, thriving city and by my reckoning about 1,000 villages – given that there are 1,049 civil parishes, minus 30 or so market towns – but there’s one particular market town which I have a soft spot.

Having spent much of my life in Boston, Sleaford has been my home town for just under 15 years and I can’t help it; I love the place to bits… far too much, in fact, to write an unbiased article on the town. Why?

For a start, I‘ve always felt like the place is a sort of Goldilocks town; large enough to have all of the shops, restaurants and other infrastructure you need, but still in such a relatively small area as to allow you to walk around the town and to quite often bump into people you know. That creates a real sense of community, and I’ve always felt Sleaford is a very friendly place to live, even by Lincolnshire’s standards.

It’s a town on the grow too, with new housing being constructed on the south side of the town, a new village established at Greylees to the west of the town from 2004, and the tantalising prospect of the town’s Bass Maltings one day being developed too.

Unlike many market towns across Britain, there’s a sense that Sleaford’s town centre is still thriving in spite of the internet’s intrusion into our shopping habits. Fancy a meal out? There’s a super pub in the form of the Barge & Bottle adjacent to The Hub, a smart café bar and brasserie in the form of Millers plus two Italian restaurants (Italian Connection and Tiamo), the Turkish café and restaurant Tablez, plus a rather good Thai (Thai Sabai) and what must be the best Indian restaurant in Lincolnshire in the form of The Agra. Just recently the town also gained a bar and grill restaurant, CeCe’s Kitchen… and all of the above are within walking distance of the town centre. >>

Handley Monument.

The Hub.

The newest place to enjoy a coffee with friends, though is a freshly-extended Hub. With the closure of Heckington’s Pearoom craft centre, The Hub established itself as the new home of arts and crafts in Lincolnshire, changing its name to The National Centre for Craft & Design in 2011, then back to The Hub last year.

A £1.2m investment in 2021 saw a new performing arts studio and a ground-floor gallery/café created. In early 2023, Bypass, Ceramics with Narrative, Glass and Shifts & Allusions are all set to champion varied crafts from textiles to ceramics to sculpture.

Another attraction in the town is the small – but perfectly formed – Sleaford Museum, which opened in 2015 adjacent to the town’s Handley Monument. Its changing exhibits are brilliantly curated by volunteers, and always relevant to the history of the town, with previous themes including the history of the Bass Maltings and Sharpes Seeds.

Which brings us neatly onto the subject of the town’s industrial heritage. The Bass Maltings today are in a sorry state. Built from 1901 until 1907 and spread over 13 acres, the site consists of eight malthouses with a central water tower and engine shed.

The place was ideally situated, with a natural spring on the site and good railway links plus an abundant supply of barley from local farmers. However, when the site opened, Britain was just ten years away from a World War which would see demand for beer drop and fewer men available to work in the place. The Maltings continued to operate for just over 40 years, but by that time pneumatic malting mechanisms had been introduced at Bass’s Burton on Trent brewery, and road transport was beginning to supersede the railways. The site was abandoned for malting purposes in the 1950s and altogether in 1973, following which fires in 1976 and 2014 resulted in the buildings’ continuing decline. A £50m regeneration is a tempting prospect, but many locals doubt whether owners Gladedale will ever manage to break ground. One local business that had a much longer history is Sharpes Seeds. At one time it was among the most important seed companies in the world, publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange and with 300 employees. Taken over by Avanta and later Booker in 1985, Sharpes Seeds moved out of the town

Another attraction in the town is the small –but perfectly formed –Sleaford Museum, with changing exhibits brilliantly curated by volunteers, and always relevant to the history of the town...

Left: The Bass Maltings. Below: An aerial view of Sleaford with (left to right) the town’s cricket club, town centre, Carre Street, The Hub and NKDC offices. Just out of shot is the town’s Renewable Energy Plant.

A little further out of town, Cogglesford Mill is another example of Sleaford’s industrial heritage. It was restored in March last year, following a £51,000 refurbishment which saw its water wheel once again turn the millstones...

but the brand still exists today with Sharpes Express Seed Potatoes still one of the best known heritage potato varieties.

The town was also home to George Lee and Charles Green who together founded a very successful bottled water company in the town. After outbreaks of cholera and smallpox, locals recognised the merits of clean, safe water and Sleaford Waterworks was founded in 1879. Lee & Green founded their aerated water company, with further factories in Bourne, Spalding, Skegness and in the US, too. The firm later produced flavoured drinks – like ginger beer – in stoneware bottles until the company ceased trading in 1938.

Speaking of water, 2019 saw the town’s Bristol Water Fountain, Grade II listed and built in 1874, restored by the Sleaford & District Civic Trust. Located in the Market Place, it enjoys pride of place next to the town’s War Memorial, commemorated in June 1922, and also next to St Denys’ Church, the earliest parts of which date back to the 12th century. A little further out of town, Cogglesford Mill is another example of Sleaford’s industrial heritage. It was restored in March last year, following a £51,000 refurbishment which saw its water wheel once again turn the millstones. Cogglesford Mill is adjacent to the Sleaford Navigation which is now navigable by boat up to that point. Beyond the mill are Bone Mill, Cornmill and Haverholme locks, and with ongoing fundraising and work to restore these – and a lift bridge already installed in 2008 by Sleaford’s Navigation Trust – it’s hoped that one day Sleaford’s waterway will join up with the rest of Lincolnshire’s waterways offering county-wide navigation. Should that happen, it’ll be a new era for a town rich in history, offering a great lifestyle for residents and with a real sense of community too. n