Coleby, a documented settlement in Domesday, is set on the Lincoln Cliff escarpment with views over the River Witham valley from its western side. The Viking Way, the long-distance footpath from the Humber Bridge to Oakham, passes through the village. Coleby's population is approximately 600, falling to 410 at the 2011 census. Coleby has two village public houses, The Bell situated close to the church, and the Tempest Arms which stands at the top of the road that leads up the hill from the valley. The village has small school typically consisting of below 100 pupils.
Coleby Grade I listedAnglican parish church is dedicated to All Saints. The original church was built by the Anglo-Saxons, extended by the Normans and had a new spire built on top of the Saxon tower in the Middle Ages. There is a lack of symmetry to the chancel, the arches on the north and south walls do not match and half of an arch has been stopped off. The pews inside the church are not original, they come from a former church at Hackthorn, a village about to the north, as do two of the windows in the north aisle. The church was extensively restored in 1900. On the church steeple are landing lights for the nearby RAF Waddington airbase.
Coleby Hall
Coleby Hall is a Grade II* listed country house which stands near the church in a park of around. It is a gabled house constructed in coursed rubble and ashlar with a red-tiled ridge roof, built in 1628 for Sir William Lister of Rippingale, the father of Thomas Lister. The hall descended via Thomas Lister, MP, who extended the hall and then to his great niece Frances Lister in 1734, who had married Thomas Scrope. Thomas altered and further extended the hall and in 1762 built in the grounds a folly of a Temple to Romulus and Remus and a gateway to the Hall as an imitation ruined Roman arch based on Newport Arch in Lincoln. Ownership passed to the Tempest family in 1856 who made major alterations to the hall and estate before selling it on. It was later bought by the Fowkes family, and apart from being requisitioned by the military during the Second World War, remained in their possession until 1981, when it was sold to property developers.
During the Second World War, the Ministry of Defence constructed an airfield at RAF Coleby Grange to the east of the village on open heathland, immediately west of the A15 road. It opened in 1939 with grass runways as a relief landing ground for RAF Cranwell. In May 1941 it was transferred to 12 Group, RAF Fighter Command and became a satellite station for RAF Digby. The station re-opened in 1959 as a Thor IRBM launching base, it closed again in 1963. Today the airfield is in private hands and used for agriculture with only the Control Tower, which still stands although in a ruined state, as a visible sign of the station's existence.
