Kirton was the seat of Lincolnshire's first Saxon kings, later becoming a market town. In the Domesday account the village is written as “Cherchetune”. It consisted of 52 households, with 30 freemen and 16 smallholders, 12 ploughlands, 10 plough teams, a meadow of, a church and two salt houses. In 1066 lordship of the manor was held by Earl Ralph, being transferred to Count Alan of Brittany in 1086. Before the local-government changes of the late 20th century, the parish had formed part of Boston Rural District, in the Parts of Holland. Holland was one of the three divisions of the historic county of Lincolnshire. After the Local Government Act of 1888, Holland was in most respects a county in itself. In 1885 Kelly's Directory recorded Kirton as having a railway station on the Great Northern Railway. This closed in 1961. There existed Congregational and Wesleyan chapels and almshouses for four poor women. The village market was then disused. The Gas Consumers' Company Ltd was formed here in 1865. Principal landowners were The Mercers' Company, Sir Thomas Whichcote DL, E. R. C. Cust DL, the Very Rev. Arthur Percival Purey-CustDD, and Samuel Smeeton, whose residence was the "modern white building" of D'Eyncourt Hall. Agricultural production within the parish consisted of wheat, beans and potatoes, and there was a "large quantity of pasture land" and of marsh land. The 1881 the ecclesiastical parish population was 2,011, the civil parish, 2,580.
Church
The parish church is dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. The transepts had double aisles like those of Algarkirk and Spalding, but in 1804 the central tower and transepts were pulled down and the chancel shortened, the architect using gunpowder to remove the tower. Rebuilding was completed by 1809. In 1900 a restoration of the church was undertaken by the architect Hodgson Fowler.
Grammar school
In 1624 Thomas Middlecott was empowered by a Private Act of Parliament to found a Free Grammar School for the instruction of the Latin and Greek languages, and English commercial and agricultural education, to children from the parishes of Kirton, Sutterton, Algarkirk and Fosdyke. By 1835 the school had 40 pupils, partly free and partly fee-paying. The Master appointed in 1773, Rev. Charles Wildbore, and later his son by the same name, were alleged to have diverted surplus income from the school's endowments for their own use, and failed to maintain educational standards. This culminated in a parliamentary report, and the management of the school was ultimately restructured in 1851. By 1885, William Cochran was Master, and a new school house had been erected adjacent to his residence. Under a scheme of the Endowed School Act, amended in 1898, the school was ranked as a "second-grade" Grammar School. In the 1830s a girls' school for 14 day and boarding pupils, and a Sunday School for 32 males and 16 females existed in the village. The village now has a secondary modern school: Thomas Middlecott Academy.
''The Old King's Head''
The Old King's Head is a former public house listed as a Grade II historic building. The earlier part of it was built at the end of the 16th century. It underwent major alterations in 1661 in Artisan Mannerist Style. It is red brick in English bond, with recent tiles on a former thatched roof. It became a domestic residence in the 1960s, but had fallen into disrepair and was purchased in 2016 by Heritage Lincolnshire, which has assigned over £2 million for its restoration.
The parish contained the ancient manor of Kirton Meres, the seat of Roger de Kirton , a Justice of the Common Pleas. The manor house was demolished in 1818 but the arched gatehouse survived until 1925 on the south side of the Willington Road, one mile west of the village of Kirton. Another of this family resident at Kirton Meres was the churchman Francis Meres.
Harold Jackson VC,, a sergeant in The East Yorkshire Regiment who received the Victoria Cross in 1917 and was killed a year later, came from Allandale, Kirton.
Oliver Ryan, footballer, attended Kirton Primary School.
