A Short History Of Toynton All Saints School And Village

The village is an ancient settlement on the edge of the Fenlands, with homes along either side of a road that runs for nearly a mile.

The name Toynton translates literally as “The Hamlet (Ton) of the Teoda people”, with “Teoda” being an early personal name.

The village is first recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book, the spelling being variously “Todintune” and “Totiuntuna”; whilst later in the 1234 Rolls it appears as Thoynton Omnium Sanctus, or ‘Thoynton of All the Saints’.

The Church

The Church, which was built in the 13^th century and dedicated to ‘All Saints’ stands on the high point, and dominates the village.  The Teoda families from those long-ago times that put up their ‘mud and stud’ homes around the church became known as the ‘Teoda people of All Saints’.

There has been a school in Toynton All Saints village since early in Queen Victoria’s reign.  When the Victorian school was opened in 1845 it was paid for by the Church of England and was governed by the incumbent Vicar and others associated with church life (such as the Church Wardens), who were responsible for appointing a suitable Head Teacher to instil discipline and the ‘3Rs’ – Reading, (W)‘Riting and (A)‘Rithmetic!

Toynton Chapel

The Victorian school building has gone, but not far from the modern school in Chapel Lane, the Methodist Chapel still exists.  This Chapel had a school room added in 1939, especially built for children of families of the ‘Free Church’ (those in the village who were Anglicans, but not members of the Church of England).  This is an interesting piece of Lincolnshire’s social history, surviving from the time when the county established itself as highly important in respect of the growth of Methodism in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Oliver Cromwell

The Lincolnshire Methodists were following on from the historic tradition of the northern Protestant Dissentors (the Puritans) of the 1600 and 1700s.  The Pilgrim Fathers, who sailed to New England in America in 1620, drew some of their number from this fenland area, and it is from Lincolnshire and other parts of East Anglia that Oliver Cromwell raised his personal bodyguard and cavalry, the feared and fearsome Ironside Roundheads.  There were Civil War sieges at nearby Horncastle and Bolingbroke, and a major (short – lasting around thirty minutes! – but decisive!) battle at Winceby in 1643.  The main road from Winceby to Horncastle travels a stretch that is still today known as ‘Slash Hollow’, where King Charles I’s fleeing Royalists were cut to pieces by Cromwell’s Ironsides cavalry.