Harmston is a village and civil parish in the North Kesteven

North Kesteven

North Kesteven is a local government district in the East Midlands. Just over north of London, it is east of Nottingham and south of Lincoln. North Kesteven is one of seven districts in Lincolnshire, England and is in the centre of the County...

 district of Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

, England. It lies just east off the A607. 5 miles (8 km) south of Lincoln. It sits on the Lincoln Cliff

Lincoln Cliff

The Lincoln Cliff is the portion of a major escarpment that runs north-south through Lindsey and Kesteven, in central Lincolnshire and is a prominent landscape feature in a generally flat portion of the county...

 overlooking the River Witham

River Witham

The River Witham is a river, almost entirely in the county of Lincolnshire, in the east of England. It rises south of Grantham close to South Witham, at SK8818, passes Lincoln at SK9771 and at Boston, TF3244, flows into The Haven, a tidal arm of The Wash, near RSPB Frampton Marsh...

 valley.

History

The village is a documented settlement in the Domesday Book

Domesday Book

Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

, and according to local historians originated as a toft village, a settlement of small and relatively closely packed farms. It is possible to see the site of a toft in the village towards the western end of Chapel Lane.

Harmston Hall was built as a manor house in 1710 for Sir Charles Thorold, and in 1719 was the home of Sir George Thorold, Lord Mayor of London

Lord Mayor of London

The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of London is the legal title for the Mayor of the City of London Corporation. The Lord Mayor of London is to be distinguished from the Mayor of London; the former is an officer only of the City of London, while the Mayor of London is the Mayor of Greater London and...

. In 1930 it became part of a mental health hospital complex, and functioned as the headquarters for the Lincolnshire Joint Board for Mental Defectives. The hospital closed in 1990, the site being redeveloped as a private residence.

Harmston remained a small village until the mid-1990s when the new owner of Harmston Hall, a local property developer, made plans for a housing development at the northern perimeter of the village on the former hospital site. The new housing estate, completed in 2006, brought in new people and has transformed Harmston from an agricultural to a mainly commuter village for workers in nearby Lincoln.

Other information

Harmston Anglican parish church is dedicated to All Saints, and was thought to have been built in the Norman period.

The village public house

Public house

A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...

, The Thorold Arms, is situated close to the church.