In the early years of this 19th century there lived a certain John Parkinson, Esquire, a scion of a family of position and wealth in the county, who owned, with other property, the estate of Woodhall. {5} Being of a speculative and enterprising bent of mind, it is said that he became enamoured of three ideas or projects, which he thought he had the means and opportunity of carrying out. One of these was to sink a coal mine, a second was to plant a forest, and a third was to build a city. For the last purpose he purchased from the Crown a tract of fenland, situated between Revesby and Boston, being an outlying allotment of the original ancient parish of Bolingbroke. Here be built (about 1816) a street of houses, which he named New Bolingbroke. The speculation, however, proved a failure, probably owing to the loneliness of the position; and it was not till several years later, when the property had passed into the possession of J. Banks Stanhope, Esq., of Revesby Abbey, who spent much money on needed improvements, that the new “city” became a fairly populous village, as it is at the present time. Mr. Parkinson’s second project was the planting of a forest. For this purpose he secured a large tract of waste moorland, in the parishes of Roughton and Kirkby, lying to the south of the present road to Horncastle, and within some two miles eastward of Woodhall Spa. This land he planted extensively with fir and oak, and in course of time they became a dense wood. This growth has since then been largely destroyed by fire, or has yielded to the woodman’s axe, and at the present time there are left not more than forty acres of the original “forest,” the rest being chiefly open moor, the whole going by the name of “Ostler’s Plantations,” Mr. Ostler being the agent employed in the work and becoming himself (as will be seen) eventually the proprietor. Thus of two eggs which Mr. Parkinson brooded over, and desired to hatch, one may be said to have been addled, and the other did not prove useful to himself:— The best laid plans of mice and men Gang aft agley.