On the Dissolution of the Monasteries, by Hen. VIII., that sovereign in 1541, gave the lands of Stixwould Priory in this parish, to Robert Dighton. The Dightons had amassed considerable wealth, as merchants in Lincoln. A Robert Dighton was Mayor in 1494, and again in 1506, and William Dighton was Sheriff in 1533. The Robert Dighton, who thus became a landowner in Stixwould, resided at the old hall of Stourton Parva, in the parish of Baumber, dividing the ownership of that parish with the Earls of Lincoln, afterwards Dukes of Newcastle. He married Joyce, daughter and heiress of William St. Paul; the St. Pauls being a good family, later represented by Sir George St. Paul, Bart., who died in 1613. Robert Dighton’s daughter, married first, Judge Dalison, and secondly, Sir F. Ayscough, Bart. (“Archit. Journ.,” 1891, p. 16). Members of both these families took part in the Lincolnshire Rising of 1536, along with John Heneage, Edwd. Dymoke (Sheriff), William Willoughby, Thimblebies, Massingberds, and many others. (“State Papers,” Henry VIII., vol. ii. p. 971, “Architect. S. Journal,” 1894. pp. 174, &c). A daughter of Thomas Dighton married Edwd. Clinton, second son of the first Earl of Lincoln, of that line (temp. Elizabeth.) Another family, here comes on the scene, viz., the Thimblebys, who resided at Poolham, a hamlet of the adjoining parish of Edlington; and for some generations owned land in Stixwould. Their chief residence was at Irnham, near Bourn, where Richard Thimbleby Esq., in 1510, built the hall, a fine mansion, standing in a well-wooded deer park; having acquired the property by marriage with an heiress of the Hiltons, whose ancestor, Sir Geoffrey Hilton, again, had obtained it by marriage with an heiress of the Luterels; that family having also succeeded to it in the person of Sir Andrew Luterel, who married an heiress of the Paganels, on whose ancestor, the Norman, Ralph Paganel, it had been bestowed by the Conqueror. The pedigree of the Thimblebys is given in the Herald’s Visitation of 1562. They owned property in Claxby, Normanby, Tetford (manor with advowson), Haltham, High Toynton, Horsington (with moiety of advowson), and many other parishes. They doubtless took their name from the proximate parish of Thimbleby, as we find them first designated as John, Thomas, &c., “de Thimbleby.”