BARDNEY, a parish in the western division of the
wapentake of WRAGGOE, parts of LINDSEY, county of
LINCOLN, 10 miles (W.) from Horncastle, containing
954 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage, in
the archdeaconry and diocese of Lincoln, rated in the
king's books at £7, endowed with £320 private benefaction,
£200 royal bounty, and £600 parliamentary
grant, and in the patronage of the Bishop of Lincoln.
The church is dedicated to St. Lawrence. There
is a place of worship for Wesleyan Methodists. A free
grammar school was founded, in 1711, by Thomas
Kitchen, who endowed it, for the benefit of the children
of Bardney, Bucknall, and Tupholme, with a salary of
£35 per annum for the master, together with a house
and garden. There is also an almshouse for fourteen
poor widowers and widows. A monastery founded here,
in which Ethelred, King of Mercia, became a monk in
704, was destroyed by the Danes in 870; and, about
the period of the Conquest, it was restored for a society
of Benedictine monks, by Gilbert de Gaunt, Earl of
Lincoln: the revenue, at the dissolution, amounted to
£429.7.