St Boltoph-by-Bargate, Lincoln

The original church of St Botolph-by-Bargate, which still has part of it foundations surviving in the present churchyard, was built in the early 12th century. This cruciform-plan church was second in status only to Lincoln Cathedral.
It was located on the southern edge of the city as St Botolph is the patron saint of travellers and his churches are usually on the edge of a town or city.
St Botolph was an English abbot who dies around 680. Little is known of him, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded in 654, "Botolph founded an abbey at Icanhoe". Some claim the abbey was in Essex, other in Lincolnshire, where Boston is a contraction of 'Botolph's town'.
During the English Civil Was this location made it very vulnerable to the Roundhead forces who stripped the lead off the church roof in 1644 to make their musket balls! This left the church open to the elements, and in 1646, the church began to fall down!
The current church (built in 1721) is a more-modest structure than the original which spread across what is now the High Street and originally only consisted of a Tower, Nave, and a Chancel.