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Fishtoft is one of eighteen civil parishes which, together with Boston, form the Borough of Boston in the county of Lincolnshire, England. Local government has been arranged in this way since the reorganization of 1 April 1974, which resulted from the Local Government Act 1972. This parish forms an electoral ward in itself. Hitherto, the parish had formed part of Boston Rural District, in the Parts of Holland. Holland was one of the three divisions (formally known as parts) of the traditional county of Lincolnshire. Since the Local Government Act of 1888, Holland had been in most respects, a county in itself. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 6,835.The origin of the place-name is from the Old Norse word toft meaning a building site or a curtilage. The addition of Fish in the 15th century may be a family name or may indicate a connection with fishing. The place-name appears as Toft in the Domesday Book of 1086 and as Fishtoft in 1416.The parish lies along the north-east side of The Haven and accommodates the Pilgrim Fathers Memorial at Scotia Creek. Fishtoft comprises three aspects – open countryside, the village of Fishtoft, and suburban overspill from Boston. The fields along Burton Croft Road are bounded by dykes which are a home to water voles (an endangered species in the United Kingdom – Fishtoft is one of only 181 sites where voles can still be found). Fishtoft has a school, an Anglican church, a shop (at Hawthorn Tree Corner), and football and cricket clubs. The parish church is dedicated to the Saxon saint St Guthlac. The stonework contains traces of Norman work. There is a reference to the church in the Domesday Book. The 18th-century Reading Room, a red brick building just off Rectory Close, is now a private house – it was for many decades used as a centre of learning and education. The historic centre of the village was formerly an island in the tidal marshes – one of a series of islands around the coast of The Wash (each one marked by a medieval church). The parishes along the coast of the Wash had no eastern boundaries, and were continually expanding as new land was reclaimed from the tidal marshes. The marshes produced methane gas which spontaneously ignited to produce flares, giving rise to the belief that they were haunted by spirits and that the new land needed cleansing before it was safe to use. This may account for the veneration of St Guthlac at Fishtoft, the saint being renowned for driving out devils; a medieval statue of St Guthlac can be seen high up on the tower of the Fishtoft parish church, and formerly held the whip with which he cleansed the land of evil spirits. The statue of St Guthlac set into the west tower is of considerable interest. Nikolaus Pevsner, in his volume on Lincolnshire (Buildings of England series) says that it is older than the fabric of the tower. It is possible that this is the original statue of the Guthlac cult, and would have been located inside the chancel. As well as the parish church of St Guthlac there was a priory "cell" (or small religious house) on the site of what is now Stoke Priory house on the corner of Gaysfield Road; some remains of the priory cell could be seen in the garden of the house until recently. There was also a small medieval wayside chapel on the western side of Church Green Road, the site indicated by a significant elevation of ground just north of the bungalow opposite The Grange. In addition, the ground at the corner of Clampgate Road and Burton Croft Road, in what is now an open field, formerly held a substantial medieval building, possibly a manor house, called Panels (or Panals) which included a chapel. The arrangement of religious buildings in medieval Fishtoft has given rise to speculation that the village may have been the centre of a cult of St Guthlac based on what is now the parish church, the monks of the priory cell helping to minister to the cult, and the wayside chapel in Church Green Road acting as a "slipper chapel" for pilgrims approaching the village along the permanent road from Boston. The feast of St Guthlac is held on 11 April. Some evidence of a Roman settlement has been found in the area. There was also an important Anglo-Saxon settlement in the area, confirmed by an excavation on what is now Saxon Gardens. There was a separate hamlet in the parish called Fenne, dating back to the 13th century, in the area that later contained the Ball House Inn, Rochford Tower and Hawthorn Tree Corner. This area formed almost a separate community in the 1950s with its own community hall. An important feature of the parish is the Hobhole Drain, constructed in the 19th century for land drainage purposes, which enters the River Witham near the Pilgrim Fathers Memorial. The water tower that formerly stood at the end of Cut End Road has recently been demolished – it was an exact copy of the water tower that still stands in Sutterton.

Freiston is a village and civil parish in Lincolnshire, England. The population of the civil parish (including Freiston Shore) at the 2011 census was 1,306. It is situated approximately 2 miles (3 km) east from Boston. The Greenwich Prime Zero meridian line passes between the village and Hobhole Drain.

Boston and Skegness is a county constituency, represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. It is located in Lincolnshire, England. Like all British constituencies, Boston and Skegness elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first-past-the-post system of election. The seat has been represented by the Conservative MP Matt Warman since the 2015 general election, and is usually considered a safe seat for the party. The constituency was created in 1997, from parts of the former constituencies of Holland with Boston and East Lindsey. The constituency has always elected a Conservative MP. In the 1997 and 2001 general elections, the seat was very marginal, with majorities of less than 1,000 votes for the Conservative candidate over the Labour candidate. The next two general elections, in 2005 and 2010, saw large swings towards the Conservatives. In the 2015 general election, the Eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) overtook Labour to take second place in the constituency; the party won 33.8% of the vote in the seat, which was UKIP's second-highest vote share in any constituency in that election (after Clacton). The seat had been one of UKIP's top target seats in that election, as they had also performed strongly in the constituency at the two previous general elections. The constituency is estimated to have had the highest vote share in favour of leaving the European Union (EU) in the 2016 EU membership referendum, at 75.6%. For this reason, the leader of UKIP, Paul Nuttall, stood as the party's candidate in the seat in the 2017 general election. UKIP's vote share fell nationally that election, and they dropped to third place (behind Labour) with 7.7% of the vote, the party's third largest percentage drop in vote share. In the 2019 general election, the Conservatives increased their majority further, winning 76.7% of the vote. This was their second-highest vote share in the election (after Castle Point). The seat was also the second-safest Conservative seat in that election (measured by swing needed for the second-place party to gain the seat), after the neighbouring seat of South Holland and the Deepings.

Freiston Priory was a Benedictine cell of Crowland Abbey founded in 1114, and became a priory soon afterwards. It was Dissolved in 1539 and was located in Freiston, Lincolnshire, England.The priory was probably founded soon after the year 1114, as it was in that year that Alan de Creoun presented to Crowland Abbey the church of Freiston, and later on, according to Peter of Blois, placed there a prior and monks. A few years after the monastery was built he increased the endowment by further gifts.

Kitwood Boys School was a secondary modern school for boys in Boston, Lincolnshire, England, which began life in the early 1950s as part of the new Attlee Labour government's education programme (as did the nearby Kitwood Girls School). Initially the school provided an education to those not attaining higher Grammar School standards. Despite a brief period in the late 1970s and early 1980s which gave the school a bad name, the school was merged with the girls' school in September 1992 and lost many of its staff. The merged school is called Haven High and located on the site of the old girls' school. The boys' school became the De Montfort campus of Boston College.The school took several annual trips, including camping to Leam Farm in Derbyshire, Brienz in Switzerland, and the Jorvik Viking Centre in York.

Pilgrim Hospital is a hospital in the east of Lincolnshire on the A16, north of the town of Boston near the mini-roundabout with the A52. It is situated virtually on the Greenwich Meridian and adjacent to Boston High School. The fenland area of Lincolnshire is covered by this hospital, being the county's second largest hospital after Lincoln County Hospital. It is managed by United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust.

Butterwick is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Boston, Lincolnshire, England, It is situated approximately 3 miles (5 km) east from the market town of Boston. Butterwick is one of eighteen civil parishes which, together with Boston, form the Borough of Boston local government arrangement, in place since a reorganisation of 1 April 1974, which resulted from the Local Government Act 1972. The parish forms part of the Coastal electoral ward. Hitherto, the parish had formed part of Boston Rural District in the Parts of Holland. Holland was one of the three divisions (formally known as parts) of the traditional county of Lincolnshire. Since the 1888 Local Government Act Holland had been, in most respects, a county in itself. On the nearby coast, Freiston Shore, is a wildlife reserve covering approximately 1,400 acres (570 ha) of brackish lagoon, and a natural and reconstituted salt marsh.The name comes from the Old English "butere" and "wic" meaning a meeting place, or a butter specialised farm.Butterwick Grade I listed Anglican church is dedicated to St Andrew. It contains Early English style arcades and font. In 1916 Cox reported that an ancient sycamore, planted in 1653, stood in the churchyard.Ordnance survey maps from the 1920s show an agricultural tramway network running west from the village in a u-shape to Butterwick Grange. Such tramways often used WW1 narrow gauge trench railway equipment to allow year around access to soft fenland fields. Butterwick Mill, a Grade II listed tower mill built in 1871, has been partially restored by Lincolnshire County Council.The village also has a public house (The Five Bells), a Church of England primary school, fish and chip shop, park, and small businesses.

Boston High School, also known as Boston High School for Girls, is a selective grammar school and sixth form college for girls aged 11 to 18 in Boston, Lincolnshire, England. The school's sixth form has been coeducational since 1992. A 2014 Ofsted report assessed both the school and the sixth form provision as "good", with "outstanding" leadership and management and "outstanding" behaviour and safety. A short inspection carried out in March 2018 found that the school continues to be good.

Skirbeck is a suburb and former civil parish in the Borough of Boston in the county of Lincolnshire, England. Skirbeck is a long v-shaped formation wrapped around the south and east side of Boston parish. It has been incorporated into the Borough of Boston since 1932. It is in the Skirbeck ward of the Boston Borough Council. Skirbeck includes the hamlet and former civil parish of Skirbeck Quarter which was on the west side of the River Witham and was a separate parish from 1866 to 1932.

The Pilgrim Fathers Memorial is located on the north bank of The Haven at the site of the former Scotia Creek, Fishtoft, seaward of Boston in Lincolnshire, England, and consists of a small granite obelisk mounted on a granite block. It commemorates the attempt at finding religious freedom in September, 1607 by the Scrooby Congregation, a group of English Separatist Protestants who left for Holland. They were precursors of the Pilgrims who later crossed the Atlantic to New England.

Hilldyke is a hamlet, lying partly in East Lindsey, and partly in the Borough of Boston, in Lincolnshire, England. It is situated approximately 2 miles (3 km) north from the town of Boston, and on the A16 road. Hilldyke is within an area of arable farmland, and contains a few small businesses. Population figures have reduced over the past 30 years, and now numbers about 12.Hilldyke's public house, the Pied Bull, closed in the 1960s, although the site of the pub is still named as a local landmark for directions.

The River Witham is a river almost entirely in the county of Lincolnshire in the east of England. It rises south of Grantham close to South Witham at SK8818, passes through the centre of Grantham (where it may be closely followed using the Riverside Walk through Wyndham Park and Queen Elizabeth Park), passes Lincoln at SK9771 and at Boston, TF3244, flows into The Haven, a tidal arm of The Wash, near RSPB Frampton Marsh. The name "Witham" seems to be extremely old and of unknown origin. Archaeological and documentary evidence shows the importance of the Witham as a navigable river from the Iron Age onwards. From Roman times it was navigable to Lincoln, from where the Fossdyke was constructed to link it to the River Trent. The mouth of the river moved in 1014 following severe flooding, and Boston became important as a port. From 1142 onwards, sluices were constructed to prevent flooding by the sea, and this culminated in the Great Sluice, which was constructed in 1766. It maintained river levels above Boston, and helped to scour the channel below it. The land through which the lower river runs has been the subject of much land drainage, and many drains are connected to the Witham by flood doors, which block them off if river levels rise rapidly. The river is navigable from Brayford Pool in Lincoln to Boston. Its locks are at Lincoln, Bardney and the Grand/Great Sluice. Passage through the latter is restricted typically to 4-hour intervals during daylight when the tidal levels are suitable. The river provides access for boaters to the Witham Navigable Drains, to the north of Boston, and to the South Forty-Foot Drain to the south, which was reopened as part of the Fens Waterways Link, a project to link the river to the Nene flowing through the city of Peterborough. From Brayford Pool the Fossdyke Navigation links to the Trent.