Greatford Cut

Another fine spring day tempted me out to do more recording, even though I was feeling very tired. After some deliberation, I headed out to Greatford, a rather sleepy Lincolnshire village of about 100 houses, with the rather imposing Greatford Hall at its heart. This was originally a manor house built by Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century. It was the home and private asylum for Francis Willis, the physician who treated and 'cured' King George III of his 'madness' here in 1788. In 1922 the hall burned down and was subsequently rebuilt in a similar style to the original.


This is the view south of the hall, showing an extensive area of ridge-and-furrow pasture which stretches to the next village of Barholm. This would once have been part of the open field system, fossilised as grassland in Medieval times, and possibly used for grazing sheep ever since. Some ridge-and-furrow meadows retain flower-rich grassland, but this area has had some agricultural improvement, with fertiliser and herbicide use producing a species-poor sward. Trees have been planted to create a parkland view.


The watercourse is the Greatford Cut, built in 1954 to connect the West Glen River, to the north at Greatford, with the River Welland west of Market Deeping, and to stop the River Glen from flooding. Although it is a recent channel, heavily engineered, this stretch of watercourse is gradually becoming more natural, with in-channel meanders developing. The recent floods have created huge gravel shoals, and further downstream I found a large quantity of Stream Water-crowfoot, which is a very rare species in south Lincolnshire.