Early Scattered
Palaeolithic and
Bronze Age materials have been discovered in and around Quarrington but while nearby Old Sleaford is known to have been settled in the
Iron Age and occupied by the
Romans, there is little evidence for sustained pre-Saxon settlement at Quarrington.
Medieval Between 1992 and 1995, archaeologists evaluating 34 trenches across 13 hectares of land around the village uncovered 56 ditches or gullies, a number of
postholes, a large collection of pottery
sherds and "extremely rare" evidence of metalworking from the 6th–7th centuries. The site has been dated to the 5th–9th centuries, representing an early and middle
Anglo-Saxon settlement. Although noted for its metalworking and its size, the archaeologists concluded that it "displayed all the signs of a typical rural community", reflecting how "the vast majority" of the Anglo-Saxon population lived. Analysis of animal bones revealed that sheep-farming increasingly replaced pig-rearing at the site during this period. The pottery found at the site suggests that Quarrington had a strong, southern trade network; in the early Anglo-Saxon period this network encompassed Lincolnshire and Leicestershire, while pottery from Northamptonshire was prevalent in the middle Saxon period. A small early Anglo-Saxon cemetery containing
inhumations was uncovered in the parish in 2000. Quarrington's medieval name was recorded in the
Domesday Book (1086) as
Corninctune or
Cornunctone, from the
Old English cweorn ("mill") and
tun ("homestead"), meaning "miller's homestead", The archaeologists and historians Christine Mahany and David Roffe suggest that Quarrington was a specialised part of Bardi's compact estate, geared in particular to milling. The historian
John Blair has speculated that this specialised function may have been associated with an earlier
monastic estate centred on Sleaford, also suggested by the grid-aligned 7th- and 8th-century ditches uncovered at Quarrington during the 1990s excavations and by evidence of later grain-processing at Sleaford.
Ramsey Abbey was granted a manor in Quarrington by
Jol of Lincoln, a monk, in
c. 1051. The
Domesday Book of 1086 recorded the abbey's manor consisted of one
carucate and six
bovates and had two churches. Mahany and Roffe concluded that one of the churches was probably at Old Sleaford, where the abbey held a manor as
sokeland of Quarrington. Bardi's manor in Quarrington had been granted to the
Bishop of Lincoln by 1086 and consisted of nine carucates and two and a half bovates plus 60 acres of meadow and two mills. Amongst the bishop's tenants was Hugh de St Vedasto or Vedeto, who held a
knight's fee in c. 1200–10. His family were prominent tenants in the village; Amicia, wife of Hugh de St Vedasto, died in possession of lands and tenements there in 1253, and Alexander and William de St Vedasto are named in connection in other documents. Henry Selvein, a knight, held Quarrington of the abbey and in
c. 1166 granted the lands to
Haverholme Priory. In the Lay Subsidy of 1334, Quarrington and Millthorpe were valued at £4 10s. 4d., slightly below average for its
wapentake. A 1563 diocesan return shows that 17 families lived in the village and 120 people took
Holy Communion; by the early 18th century, the diocesan visitations by
Edmund Gibson show the number of families had risen to 35. and the coursed rubble Manor House, which one "widow Timberland" occupied in 1691. The town's fields were
enclosed in 1796 and a map of the village was drawn up at the same time, showing the settlement along Town Road and Townside Road with Rector Field and Earl Field to the north and north-east respectively. At the time, more than 210 acres of land were allotted to the rectory by Lord Bristol in place of the
tithes it had previously been entitled to. During the mid and late-19th century, the population of the old village of Quarrington declined (from 98 in 1851 to 72 in 1871). Aside from the rectory and church, the village included two large farms and a cluster of labourers cottages around Town Road. By 1872, the parish spanned 1,620 acres and the village contained 63 houses. The same year, Trollope wrote that "the appearance of this small village, lying around its well cared for church, is very pleasing". Most of the land remained in possession of the Marquesses of Bristol throughout the 20th century, but from the 1970s the indebted
6th Marquess and his son, the
7th Marquess, sold much of their farmland around Sleaford and Quarrington. In 1989, the Bristol Estates office in Sleaford closed. The result was a boom in housebuilding, especially in the fields around Quarrington. In the 1980s, hundreds of houses were constructed in Southfields, and developments on Quarrington Hill followed in the late 1990s. Low house prices and crime rates, and good educational facilities in Sleaford made the new homes attractive. As the local historian Simon Pawley wrote, "Quarrington ... began to look more like a suburb of Sleaford than a village in its own right". In July 2015, planning permission for a further 200 homes between Northfield Road and the A15 was granted by
North Kesteven District Council. ==Geography==