Hatcliffe

Hatcliffe is a small village and civil parish in rural North East Lincolnshire, England. It is situated 6 miles (10 km) south-west from Grimsby and 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west from the A18. Less than 1 mile (1.6 km) to the north is the neighbouring village of Beelsby.

Hatcliffe
Hatcliffe village
Hatcliffe Location within Lincolnshire
Population	118 (2011)[1]
OS grid reference	TA213006
• London	135 mi (217 km) S
District	North East Lincolnshire
Shire county	Lincolnshire
Region	Yorkshire and the Humber
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Grimsby
Postcode district	DN37
Police	Humberside
Fire	Humberside
Ambulance	East Midlands
UK Parliament	Cleethorpes

Hatcliffe sits in the Lincolnshire Wolds, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

History

In A Dictionary of British Place-Names, A.D. Mills suggests the etymology of Hatcliffe to reflect a personal name and a geographic feature to mean 'the cliff or bank of a man called Hadda'.[2]

In the 11th century Domesday Book Hatcliffe's population of 9 smallholders and 9 freemen, in 18 households, was considered a 'medium' sized village.[3] The lord of the manor in 1066 was Ralph the Staller (or 'Ralp the Constable') and, in 1086, the lord and tenant-in-chief was Alan Rufus.[3]

The manor was long held by the family who bore the Hatcliffe name, including William Hatcliffe who served Henry VI of England and Edward IV of England, as court physician in the 15th century.[4] In the late 1500s, Thomas Hatcliffe, was a Member of Parliament for Grimsby.[5] He was rumoured to be cursed for rebuilding his new manor house in the village from the stones of a demolished church.[6] In the 1960s, American academic John Leslie Hotson, then at Yale University, published his theory that Thomas's son, William Hatcliffe, was the 'Mr W.H.' to whom William Shakespeare dedicated his sonnets in 1609.[5][7][8]

St. Mary's Church

St.Mary's Church, Hatcliffe

The parish church of St Mary's dates from the 13th century,[9] and contains memorials dedicated to the Hatcliffe family dating to 1525. The former post office in the centre of the village has been converted to a house, and stands by a small stream with stone bridge crossings.

References

1. "Parish population 2011". Retrieved 17 August 2015.
2. David Mills (20 October 2011). A Dictionary of British Place-Names. Oxford University Press. p. 229. ISBN 978-0-19-960908-6.
3. Hatcliffe in the Domesday Book
4. The House of Commons, 1509-1558. Boydell & Brewer. 1982. p. 318. ISBN 978-0-436-04282-9.
5. "HATCLIFFE, Thomas (c.1550-1610), of Hatcliffe, near Grimsby, Lincs". History of Parliament. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
6. Nick Bunker (1 April 2011). Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World - A New History. Random House. p. 194. ISBN 978-1-84595-118-4.
7. "New Issue Raised on Shakespeare". The New York Times. 24 April 1964. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
8. Alan Palmer; Veronica Palmer (1 May 1999). Who's Who in Shakespeare's England: Over 700 Concise Biographies of Shakespeare's Contemporaries. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-312-22086-0.
9. Nikolaus Pevsner; John Harris; Nicholas Antram (January 1989). Lincolnshire. Yale University Press. pp. 370–371. ISBN 978-0-300-09620-0.

External links

• Media related to Hatcliffe at Wikimedia Commons