Coleby, North Kesteven

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Coleby All Saints church

Coleby (population approx. 600) is a small rural village in Lincolnshire, England, in the district of North Kesteven on the A607 road approximately 10 km (16 miles) south of Lincoln.

This attractive stone village (a documented settlement in the Domesday Book of 1086) enjoys a dramatic setting high on the Lincoln Cliff escarpment with commanding views over the valley of the River Witham from its western side.

The most prominent building in the village is the parish church dedicated to "All Saints". The original church was built by the Anglo-Saxons, extended by the Normans and had a new spire built on top of the Saxon tower in the Middle Ages. There is a quirky lack of symmetry to the chancel, the arches on the north and south walls do not match and half of an arch has been stopped off. The pews inside the church are not original, they come from a former church at Hackthorn, a village about 23 km (14 miles) to the north, as do two of the windows in the north aisle. The church was also extensively restored in 1900, since then more modern concerns have affected "All Saint's", it is one of the very few churches in the country to have landing lights (for the nearby RAF Waddington airbase) on its steeple!

Close by the Church in a park of around 20ha stands Coleby Hall, a gabled house built for Sir William Lester and dating back to 1628. The gateway to the Hall is an imitation ruined Roman arch based upon Newport Arch in Lincoln. Standing in the grounds is a less well-known folly of a Temple to Romulus and Remus which was built in 1792.

Coleby also has two excellent village pubs, The Bell, situated close to the church and the Tempest Arms which stands in a commanding position at the top of the road that leads up the hill from the valley below. These pubs provide popular refreshment stops for walkers on the Viking Way, the 235 km (147 mile) long-distance footpath from the Humber Bridge to Oakham which passes through the village.

[edit] RAF Coleby Grange

During the Second World War, the Ministry of Defence constructed an airfield at Coleby Grange to the east of the village on open heathland, immediately west of the A15 road. It opened in 1939 with a single grass runway as a relief landing ground for RAF Cranwell. In May 1941 it was transferred to 12 Group, Fighter Command and became a satellite station for RAF Digby.

Once German daylight raids stopped in 1943, RAF Digby took on a non-operational role involving radar calibration and other duties. This left Coleby Grange standing alone to combat the threat of night raids in Lincolnshire. The station closed just before the end of the war in May 1945.

1959 saw the station re-opened as a Thor ICBM launching base, it closed again in 1963. The disused silos for these missiles remain on site, beneath ground level. Today the airfield is in private hands and used for agriculture with only the Control Tower, which still stands although in a ruined state, as a visible sign of the station's existence.

During the time the station was operational it housed the following squadrons: