Qualla: Battle of Winceby

Battle of Winceby: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. It lasted about thirty minutes. The two cavalry forces met on a Lincolnshire field on 11 October 1643, in a place where the land falls away into sharp gullies on one side and rises away into open country on the other. Oliver Cromwell — not yet famous, not yet Lord Protector, still a colonel of horse in his second year of war — had his mount shot from under him and went down in the press. He climbed onto another horse and rode back into the fight. By dusk, three hundred Royalist soldiers were dead and the Parliamentary cavalry was hunting stragglers across the Wolds. In the village of Horncastle, at a place still called Slash Hollow, panicking Royalists jammed a parish boundary gate that only opened one way and could not get through it. The Battle of Winceby was one of the early proofs that the Earl of Manchester's new Eastern Association cavalry — Cromwell's Ironsides — could do something the king's horse no longer reliably could.

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Battle of Winceby: A war coming north

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. The summer of 1643 had gone badly for Parliament. The Royalists held most of the north and west of England. The Earl of Newcastle was besieging Hull from the north, and if Hull fell, the Royalist march on London became a real possibility. The Eastern Association — the Parliamenta...

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Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Winceby: The half-hour battle

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. The two forces met at Winceby, between Bolingbroke and Horncastle, on the morning of 11 October. Approximately equal in size and composition — all cavalry — they faced each other across the awkward, gullied ground. Cromwell, in tactical command of the Parliamentary horse, opened ...

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Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Winceby: Slash Hollow

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. What happened next gave the place its dark local name. The pursuing Parliamentary cavalry rode the broken Royalists back toward Horncastle. At a parish boundary gate — a one-way gate that opened against the fleeing direction — the press of men piled up against it and jammed it sh...

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Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Winceby: Cromwell's reputation, Lincolnshire's recovery

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. Bolingbroke Castle's garrison surrendered on 14 November, with all hope of relief gone. Lincolnshire — which had been almost entirely in Royalist hands a month earlier — was now Parliamentary territory. The recovery set up the events of the following spring: Manchester would stor...

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Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0