The historical development of the village.

Greetham is a village in Lincolnshire, United Kingdom at 53º 13.2' North, 0º 1.8' West. (OS ref. TF 307 707) at a height of 122 metres above sea level.

If the origins of 'Greetham' as a place name dates back to the Viking invasions of AD 800, it is possible that people were living at the same location before that time. J. Conway Walter in 1904 recalls that the neck of a Roman urn was found near the road at Greetham. Nearby Horncastle was certainly a Roman town. However the earliest record I have found is the usual Domesday Book record
Domesday Book entry - AD 1089. In Granham (Greetham) by Horncastle, Earl Harold had two carucates of land not rateable to gelt: the land is six carucates, two bovates of which are in the Soke. Earl Hugh has now four carucates in demesne there, and forty-six villeins, and eight bordars, and one sokeman, who have eight carucates. There is a church, and a priest, and a mill worth 8s. yearly, and three hundred acres of meadow. [The Manor is] one mile and one furlong in length, and one mile in breadth. The annual value in King Edward's time was 40l. and half a mark of gold; it is now worth 60l, and is tallaged at 70l -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- A 'carucate' is the amount of land 8 oxen could plough in one year A 'bovate' is the amount of land 1 ox could plough in one year. A 'villien' is a peasant/occupier subject to a lord. A 'bordar' is a villien of lowest rank. A cottage is let for menial service. A 'soke' is a minor local district. A 'sokeman' is a tenant holding land in a socage. 'Gelt' is ready money. 'In demense' means private property belonging to a lord.
Earl Hugh (known as 'the Wolf'), was given this area along with other sections of Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and most of Cheshire by King William after the Conquest in 1066, displacing an unknown owner probably of Danish origin. For a couple of centuries at least it appears that Greetham was an important little town with a market and a Manor house, with a population of several hundred people. It was considered the regional town to an area up to15Km to the north and 25 km to the east of the town. The Domesday book says that altogether the area consisted of 131 carucates with land sufficient to employ 144 ploughs, 376 sokemen, 148 villeins and 168 bordars. It held its position as the seat of the ruling classes in the area for several centuries but as a centre of trade and commerce it quickly lost it's importance. The people who lived there migrated north, south and west to find other work. They would take the name 'of Greetham' with them and that became the origin of the surname. See HERE for distribution maps.
The way the name is spelt has varied over the years. It must also be remembered that standardised spelling is a relatively modern inovation. In 1233 a document spelt it 'Greteham'. John Speede's map of 1610 spelt it 'Gretham'. This is also the spelling on the Elizabethan chalice in the church.
In 1805 a map spells it "Greatham'; another in 1808 spells it 'Greteham'. Yet as early as 1712 a map spells it as it is now, 'Greetham".
	It can be seen that the village has not changed it's size from the 1891 and 2002 maps shown here. Image produced from the www.old-maps.co.uk service with permission of Landmark Information Group Ltd. and Ordnance Survey
Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a- map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.
The Census records show an increase in population until the mid-nineteenth century, but then a decline ever since. (NOTE. not all information was collated at every census.) See here for more details from the 1881 census

Year	Houses	Families	Population	Pop/house
1801	20	25	111	5.55
1811	21	26	130	6.19
1821	22	28	148	6.73
1831	29	30	152	5.24
1841	36	-	177	4.91
1851	36	-	179	4.97
1861	34	-	152	4.47
1871	36	36	180	5.00
1881	39	38	147	3.87
1891	28	-	131	4.68
1901	31	29	129	4.16
1911	-	32	154	-
1921	-	-	132	-
1931	-	-	118	-
1941	No Census collected
1951	27	27	95	3.52
1961	25	25	85	3.40
1971	20	20	65	3.52
1981	-	-	56	-

In 1991 the census information was collated with the village of Somersby. The current population is around 39.

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http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/p_greetham/village/lincolnshire/development.html Copyright © 2002 - Phil Greetham. Maps reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data by permission of Ordnance Survey, ©Crown copyright.