Situated in the north-west corner of the county, Lingen parish includes the hamlets of Deerfold, Limebrook, Birtley and Willey.

[5] Occupied since at least the Middle Ages; there is evidence of medieval strip lynchets on a hillside near the village.

Located just south of the village centre a nunnery was founded before the reign of Richard I, either by Ralph de Lingen or one of the Mortimers.

There is some confusion as to the order to which it belonged, but in the time of Bishop Booth, 1516–35, it was tenanted by Augustinian nuns and subsisted until the dissolution of the monasteries.

It is a small village, situated on a branch of the river Lug, and on the road leading from Leintwardine to Presteign.

The current building was substantially repaired in the 19th century and the bell tower turret has attractive wooden shingles.

[15] Presumably there was a charabanc trip on the night of the 1901 census but the population decline probably reflects the agrarian recession of the time when agricultural workers left the land for better paid jobs in the boom industries of the time – coal mining, quarrying and iron in Shropshire or further afield to South Wales.