Lincolnshire

Coordinates: 53°4′N 0°11′W / 53.067°N 0.183°W / 53.067; -0.183

Lincolnshire (/ˈlɪŋkənʃər/ or /ˈlɪŋkənʃɪər/; abbreviated Lincs) is a historical county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the northwest, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders Northamptonshire in the south for just 20 yards (18 m), England's shortest county boundary. The county town is Lincoln, where the county council has its headquarters.

The ceremonial county of Lincolnshire is composed of the non-metropolitan county of Lincolnshire and the area covered by the unitary authorities of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. Therefore, part of the ceremonial county is in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England, and part is in the East Midlands region. The county is the second-largest of the English ceremonial counties and one that is predominantly agricultural in land use. The county is fifth-largest of the two-tier counties, as the unitary authorities of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire are not included. The county can be broken down into a number of geographical sub-regions including: the Lincolnshire Fens (south-east Lincolnshire), the Carrs (similar to the Fens but in north Lincolnshire), the rolling Chalk hills of the Lincolnshire Wolds, the industrial Humber Estuary and North Sea coast around Grimsby and Scunthorpe, and in the south-west of the county, the Kesteven Uplands, comprising limestone hills in the district of South Kesteven.

Lindsey, Lincolnshire

The Parts of Lindsey was a unit of local government until 1974 in Lincolnshire, England, covering the northern part of the county. The Isle of Axholme, which is on the west side of the River Trent, has normally formed part of it. The district's name originated from the Kingdom of Lindsey of Anglo-Saxon times, whose territories were merged with that of Stamford to form Lincolnshire.

Local government

When the English shires were established, Lindsey became part of Lincolnshire. It and each of Kesteven and Holland, acquired the formal designation of Parts of Lincolnshire. Thus it became the Parts of Lindsey.

Lindsey was itself divided into three ridings, the North, West and South Ridings and then into wapentakes. The West Riding covered the western part, including Gainsborough, Scunthorpe and Spital. The North Riding covered the north-east, including Barton upon Humber, Caistor, Cleethorpes, Brigg, Grimsby, and Market Rasen. The South Riding covered the rest, in the south-east, including Louth, Mablethorpe and Skegness. The point at which the Ridings touched was somewhere near Lissington.

Lincolnshire (UK Parliament constituency)

Lincolnshire was a county constituency of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which returned two Members of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons from 1290 until 1832.

History

The constituency consisted of the historic county of Lincolnshire, excluding the city of Lincoln which had the status of a county in itself after 1409. (Although Lincolnshire contained four other boroughs, Boston, Grantham, Great Grimsby and Stamford, each of which elected two MPs in its own right for part of the period when Lincolnshire was a constituency, these were not excluded from the county constituency, and owning property within the borough could confer a vote at the county election. This was not the case, though, for Lincoln.)

As in other county constituencies the franchise between 1430 and 1832 was defined by the Forty Shilling Freeholder Act, which gave the right to vote to every man who possessed freehold property within the county valued at £2 or more per year for the purposes of land tax; it was not necessary for the freeholder to occupy his land, nor even in later years to be resident in the county at all.