Epworth, Lincolnshire

Description
Epworth, a small market-town and a parish in Lincolnshire. The town stands in the Isle of Axhoime, near the Idle drain, the boundary with Yorkshire, and the river Trent, 5 1/4 miles S from Crowie station on the M.S. & L.E., 4 1/4N from Haxey station on the G.N. and G.E.F., and 10 NW by N from Gainsborough. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Doncaster; a neat market-place, a police station, a mechanics' institute, and is a seat of petty sessions and a polling-place. The church comprises nave, N and S aisles, chancel, and S and N porches; has a W late Perpendicular tower, was repaired and altered in 1868, and-is associated with the names of John and Charles Wesley,. who were natives, and whose father was rector. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Lincoln; gross value, £545 with residence. Patron, the Crown. There are a mission church erected in 1887, a Baptist chapel, a Wesleyan chapel erected. as a memorial to theWesleys in 1890, a Methodist New Connexion chapel erected in 1860 as a memorial of the Eev. Alexander Kilham, founder of the Connexion, who was a native, and a Primitive Methodist chapel erected in 1883. The market day is Thursday, but the market now is almost disused. Annual fairs are held on the Thursdays after 1 May and 29 Sept. A Carthusian priory was founded here about 1395 by the Mowbrays of Melwood. The parish comprises 6151 acres; population of the civil parish, 1903; of the ecclesiastical, 1890. The surface is flat. Quantities of ancient wood, some of it charred, have been found beneath the soil.