The Highways Agency constructed in 2011/12 a new seventeen miles long two-lane dual carriageway from the A606 two level junction at Widmerpool to an improved roundabout at Farndon.

[3][4][5] The Domesday survey indicates that the Syerston of 1086 was owned by four parties:[6] Ten freemen (sochemanni), four villagers (villani) and five smallholders (bordarii) are mentioned.

Some sixty years later in 1775 Lord George Sutton, a son of the third Duke of Rutland, sold Syerston to Lewis Disney Ffytche of Flintham Hall.

[10] The fees for acting as Commissioner, usually two guineas (£2 and 2 shillings) per day, together with profits from other ventures, such as a number of canal companies and urban property in Newark, enabled him in July 1791 to purchase for £12,375, without a mortgage, the manor of Syerston from Lewis Disney Ffytche and to begin construction of a small mansion.

[12] Because William Fillingham had himself surveyed the estate as early as 1775 and had arranged to have estimates made of the improved value of Syerston if enclosed, with costs of enclosure, it is not difficult to guess his next move.

[13] He seems immediately to have begun the process of petitioning Parliament for permission to enclose those parts of the parish, about 500 acres (200 hectares), which remained unimproved: An Act For Dividing and Inclosing the Open Arable Fields, Meadows, Commons, and Waste Grounds, within the Township of Syerston, in the County of Nottingham, the Syerston Inclosure Act 1792 (32 Geo.

[citation needed] Bearing in mind Fillingham's expertise in these matters, it is surprising that while the enclosure map (by William Attenburrow of East Stoke, covering 769 acres or about 300 hectares), is dated 1792, the Award itself was not signed until as late as 27 June 1795.

[18] William Fillingham could perhaps be seen as an example of the 18th-century social phenomenon of newly wealthy men seeking admission to the landed élite by enclosure and "emparkment".

Fillingham bought an open manorial estate, which had belonged to his former employers, enclosed the land, built a house and rearranged the property.

At this point William died and the land together with, the almost complete mansion, Syerston Hall, were inherited by his son George Fillingham (1774–1850).

One of his first tasks was to arrange for the Award of the parliamentary commissioners to be put into effect and for the new fields to be hedged or fenced and new thoroughfares laid out.

[22] A hint of what the Syerston landscape looked like in 1517 is contained in the findings of enclosure commissioners who were appointed to discover the extent to which arable land in England had been converted to pasture for sheep.

The Hearth Tax was introduced after the Civil War in 1662 to provide a regular source of income for the newly restored monarch, King Charles II.

[27] Village surnames which span the Civil War period include Townerow, Browne, Hammond, Barnes, Ward and Leeson.

By 1676 it was of urgent interest to discover the religious opinions of the people, since the Catholic James was likely to succeed his brother King Charles II.

[31] Assuming a family size in 1724 of 4.75, the village would have had only about 57 inhabitants, perhaps an indicator of a local morbidity crisis or simply a lack of available housing.

In 1743 a new Archbishop of York, Thomas Herring, was appointed[32] Soon after taking up his post he wrote to all the clergy of the diocese to ask about the parishes they served.

[33] Syerston's curate, Francis Bainbridge, replied to the archiepiscopal enquiry, and his answers indicate what a small backwater the place was in the middle of the 18th century:

[35] The table (at right) shows the population during the whole of the nineteenth century, although the anomalous figures for 1841 and 1851 indicate the possibility of confusion with East Stoke and its other chapelry of Coddington.

Although the Reform Act 1832 had extended the franchise, only nine male land-, or lease-holders out of Syerston's supposed population of 241, were eligible to vote in the South Nottinghamshire by-election of 1851 and three of them were not even residents of the parish.

While Syerston voters preferred Sydney Pierrepont (the future Earl Manvers) to the tenant farmers' candidate William Barrow of Southwell by six votes to two, it was actually the latter who was narrowly elected for the constituency.

From Sibthorpe, Longhedge Lane is easily traced, coterminous with parish boundaries, as it passes Shelton, Flawborough and Alverton on its way to Bottesford, Leicestershire.

At some stage, perhaps the turnpiking of the Great North Road in the 1730s and 40s, that more easterly route became preferred and Longhedge Lane sank into disuse and obscurity.