A crooked place by the sea
Wrangle's name is usually traced back to Old English for a "crooked place" — most likely a winding creek. A large tidal creek once ran within half a mile of the church, and that's the best guess for where the name came from.
The village sits on the western edge of The Wash, on a broad bank of silt laid down by the great tidal creeks of the Bronze Age, around 2,500 years ago. Over the centuries, sea bank after sea bank has pushed the coastline further out, which is why Wrangle now lies about a mile from the shore and is surrounded by some of the most fertile vegetable-growing land in the country.
Domesday and the medieval port
Wrangle appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, spelt Weranghe, as a small settlement of seven households. By the 1400s the name was being written Wranghill.
In the Middle Ages Wrangle was a place of real importance: a local port and market centre. Boats came up a creek from The Wash to a sheltered haven just west of the church, and the outline of the old banks can still be traced in the field beside the churchyard. Local tradition says a beacon was kept burning to guide boats into Wrangle harbour, and that an earlier inn stood on the creek bank where the Angel stands today.
- 1282 — Henry de Lacy obtained a charter for a Saturday market in the village.
- 1342 — St Peter's Chapel at Wrangle Hall is first recorded.
- 1359 — When Edward III raised a fleet to invade France, Wrangle supplied a ship and eight men — a real contribution for a fenland village.
The haven did not last. As the land built up and the tide stopped flushing the creek twice a day, it silted up, and Wrangle's days as a port came to an end.
The church of St Mary and St Nicolas
The parish church is the oldest building in the village and one of the finest in this corner of Lincolnshire. There was probably a Saxon church on the site before it. The oldest surviving work — the richly carved arch between the tower and the nave, and the south doorway — dates from around the 1190s.
In the reign of Henry II the church and much of its land were given to Waltham Abbey in Essex, which supplied its priests. Most of what you see today was built in the 1300s and 1400s, when Wrangle was at its most prosperous. Things to look out for:
- Medieval stained glass in the north aisle, including glass given by Thomas de Wyversty, Abbot of Waltham from 1345 to 1371, alongside figures of prophets, saints and angels.
- Brasses to John Reed, a merchant of the Staple of Calais, and his wife Margaret, who both died in 1503.
- An Elizabethan pulpit, a tower with six bells, and a fine collection of carved heads and gargoyles on the outside walls.
The church was restored between 1875 and 1878 at a cost of £2,487 — a large sum at the time.
Hall, mill and inn
Wrangle Hall was a substantial house with its own chapel in the Middle Ages. The old building was pulled down around 1935, and the present hall is a modern house on the same site.
Wrangle tower windmill, built of red brick around 1825, is a Grade II listed building and a landmark on the flat fen skyline.
The Angel Inn, close by the church, was built in the first half of the 1800s. Its name reflects the old link between churches and travellers' inns. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries it was the headquarters of the Wrangle and East Lincolnshire Agricultural Society.
A growing village
- 1801 — 732 people
- 1870 — 1,198 people in 247 houses, with two Methodist chapels and a free school
- 2001 — 1,265 people
- 2011 — 1,397 people
Wrangle's parish registers survive from 1652 (with earlier Bishop's Transcripts from 1561), so families researching their roots here have plenty to go on.
Share your history
Do you have old photos, stories or memories of Wrangle — the Show, the school, the chapels, the farms? We'd love to add them here. Email hello@wranglevillage.uk.