This parish is situated about 6 miles westward of Horncastle; the village being less than a mile from the Stixwould station, on the loop line of the Great Northern Railway, between Boston and Lincoln. The parish is bounded on the west by the river Witham, on the north by Horsington, and on the east and south by Woodhall and Edlington. In Domesday book the name takes the form of Stigeswald, or Stigeswalt. The origin of this name can only be a matter of conjecture, but the following, as not being without interest, is suggested. The ancient arrangement for crossing a river, especially a sluggish, oozy one, such as the Witham, was commonly by a stockaded ford. {185} This stockade would be constructed of stakes or sticks, a kind of structure which is also implied in the names Stickford, (_i.e._, staked ford), and Stickney (staked water, or island), both of which places lie in what was formerly a marshy district in this county. {186a} Hence, we may suppose, the first syllable of the name Stix (or Sticks) wold; as to the next syllable, “Wold,” or wald, is the Saxon for wood. At some places certain woods were anciently assigned by law or custom, for the supply of these stakes. {186b}; and such a wood might naturally acquire the name of the Stakes wood, or Sticks wold. In the case of this parish, as the embankment, now confining the Witham to its narrow channel, did not anciently exist, that river would then have a much greater width, and the ford would probably be a long “causeway” through a morass, raised by sods and strengthened by stakes. {186c} Mr. C. Gowen-Smith, the translator of Domesday Book, for Lincolnshire, says (Introduction, p. xl.) that “wad,” or “wode,” means “a causeway.” We thus, on either of these suppositions, get Stixwould meaning a staked ford, or causeway. {186d} In the days of ancient savage warfare, fords were important positions of defence; and especially on the Witham would a ford be important, that river being the boundary between the barbarous “Girvii,” who inhabited the wild Fen tracts, {186e} and the less warlike Saxons, who dwelt east of it. A ford also, or ferry, was a source of considerable revenue; for instance, at Stow, the lord of the manor, in 1234, let the ferry on the Trent (now of Littleborough), with the fishery, for £3 6_s._ 8_d._ yearly, a large sum in those days. Thus the staked ford, and the wood supplying the stakes, may well have been local features of sufficient importance to originate the name of Stickswold.