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The Search for ‘A Great Castle at Killingholme’ in North Lincolnshire.

Making History listener Sue McLaren contacted the programme after discovering that the great antiquarian William Stukely made reference to a village in North Lincolnshire where her ancestors had a substantial home which she has never found.

She told us that her ancestor Admiral Henry Booth built the older part of the Manor at North Killingholme, near the south bank of the river Humber, in about 1482 and the house belonged to the family until it was sold in 1898.

The house is now derelict, despite its grade2* listing. In Stukeley’s grand tour of Great Britain, "Itinerarium Curiosum" published in 1724 he writes: "A mile east of Thornton are the ruins of another great castle called Kelingholme". When Sue visited the derelict house that stands on the site of her ancestor’s home in 2006 she found that in a wooded area adjacent to it and surrounded by a moat, the ground is very uneven and full of bumps and depressions. Is this Stukeley’s castle?

Making History consulted Dr Kevin Leahy, formerly Archaeologist at the North Lincolnshire Museum in Scunthorpe and now the co-ordinator of the Portable Antiquities Scheme there.