Stourton, called Stourton Magna, or Great Stourton, to distinguish it from Stourton Parva, the hamlet included in Baumber, is rather more than a mile, northward, beyond Baumber, and five miles from Horncastle. This was formerly the property, a sheep-walk, of the Premonstratensian Abbey of St. Mary, of Tupholme, founded by Robert de Nova Villa or Nevill, in the twentieth year of Henry III. (“Liber Regis,” Bacon’s ed. 1786, p. 424). Dugdale states that he held the lands of the king _in capite_, from the time of the Conquest, with which he endowed that monastery. (“Monasticon,” vol. ii., 596.) Land in this parish was also granted by the Conqueror, to Eudo, son of Spirewick, the founder of the Tattershall family. He held five carucates, or about six hundred acres, beside a mill, and 190 acres of meadow. The powerful Bishop of Durham, William de Karilepho, who was Lord Chief Justice under the Conqueror, had also a grant of land in this parish, as also had Odo, Bishop of Baieaux, and his vassal, Ilbert, occupied one carucate, or 120 acres, with villeins, bordars, and socmen under him, occupying 480 more acres. The Saxon thane Grinchel also had here 360 acres, valued in King Edward’s time at 40_s._ In the reign of Henry VIII. the family of Dighton, though of mercantile origin at Lincoln, ancestors having been mayors and sheriffs of that city, were landed proprietors in this neighbourhood, one of them, Thomas, residing at Waddingworth; but the head of the family was Robert Dighton, of Stourton Magna, he married Joyce, daughter and heiress of William St. Paul, of Snarford, which family became extinct on the death of Sir George St. Paul, Bart., in 1613. Robert of Stourton, along with members of the Heneage, Dymoke, Monson, Hussey, and very many other leading county families, took part in the Lincolnshire rising, to protest against the dissolution of the monasteries. A daughter of Thomas Dighton, of Stourton, married Edward Clinton, of Baumber, who subsequently became Earl of Lincoln. {209} The residence of the Dightons, traces of which still remain in the moats and mounds, was situated on land now belonging to W. H. Trafford, Esq., in what is now a grass field, about a mile to the west of the present Stourton Hall park and plantations, lying between the road, on the north, from Stourton Magna to Minting and Bardney, and, on the south, the main Baumber, or Horncastle and Lincoln, old Roman highway. It must have been a building of some considerable size; the moat, which enclosed nearly a square, the sides, just under 100 yards long, is distinctly traceable, the whole of the surface of the inclosure is covered with mounds or depressions; there is an apparent opening in the middle of the south-western side, and outside, to the south, are traces of a large stew-pond, E-shaped, in length thirty-six yards, by thirty broad, with a small pond, or reservoir behind it. A modern drain