Coddington is situated 2-3 miles East of Newark on Trent, close to the Nottinghamshire-Lincolnshire border, on the East Nottinghamshire Sandlands (close to the Trent Washlands). It is about equidistant from the River Trent and the River Witham. The surrounding parishes are Balderton, Newark, Winthorpe, Langford and Barnby-in-the-Willows.
The village is bordered to the east by former moorland (Langford and Coddington Moors) and the conifer and birch plantation, Stapleford Woods. Winthorpe, Danethorpe Hill, Barnby and Newark-Balderton are all physically close. A little further off are Brough, Langford, Beckingham and Sutton (with South and North Muskham, Holme, Collingham, Stapleford, Norton Disney, and Fenton a little further still).
From place name evidence we believe the village was a later Anglo-Saxon foundation, which was listed in the Domesday Book as Cotintone, as a village with two manors, but no church. The village came under the manorial court of Newark, an ancient Manor of Earl Leofric of Mercia and the dominant market town of the area, with great pre-industrial strategic importance sited at the crossing point of the Fosse Way, Great North Road and the River Trent. For most of the last millennium, Coddington has also been associated with East Stoke (on the Fosse Way, south of Newark and Farndon) as the ecclesiastical parish of Coddington was attached to it until 1860.
The stone parish church of All Saints Coddington was renovated and largely rebuilt in 1863-5, under the architect GF Bodley, although the tower and other features including arcades, door and some windows were incorporated within the current structure. Coddington also has a Church of England Junior school, a Scout Hall, a Village Hall, a Community Centre, and two pubs.
Coddington sits above Newark, behind Beacon Hill (which was lowered in 1850) on a gentle slope on the road to Sleaford. Local high points on the western side of the village are the Windmill on Balderton Lane (36m above sea-level), the former site of Coddington Hall (35m above sea-level, off Newark Road) and Brownlow’s Hill. The church sits at about 25m and the village slopes down to about 20m above sea-level towards the NE, in the direction of Stapleford Woods.
Trade directories of the 19thC described the land of 1800-1890 acres, as clayey to the west and gravely to the east, the subsoil being blue lias stone, marl and gravel. This lias limestone has been quarried for building stone with a local lime-burning industry which lasted until the early 20thC. The four open fields in Coddington were called Berkley’s Field, Green Field, Stonepit Field and Pelmore Hill Field. The Common may have been on the Great Moor or the marshy ground of Old and New Carr. The parish was enclosed in 1760 by Act of Parliament, when a small old enclosure by marshland was mentioned.
There is a medieval moated site off Balderton Lane, connected to a fishpond, lying just north of the 1930s stretch of Beckingham Road. Coddington was part of the villages defences encircling Newark in the second siege of the town in 1645-6, during the English Civil War. The once-extensive earthworks along Balderton Lane were surveyed in 1964, when they were no more than 18in high. Apart from the All Saints Church, the earliest surviving buildings in the village are Manor Farm and its dovecote, which both date to the first two decades of the 18thC. A small number of domestic and farm-buildings have residues of early structures, often part-stone walls or foundations, or interior timber-framing. (A number of stone, part-stone and early brick cottages were cleared in the 1960s and 1970s.)
Newark Road to Main Street (the southern portion, as far as the Plough) was incorporated into the Leadenham turnpike, built in 1758. In the 1930s Brownlow’s Hill was bypassed by a new road which converted the Plough T-junction (where the turnpike road left Main Street, and veered east) into a crossroads. The turnpike’s dog-legs to the west were also smoothed out in the 1930s, then completely destroyed in the 1960s when the A1 was built, and a new through-route bypassing Newark Road was created.
For much of the 19th and early 20thC there were only about 120 households and a population of 340 – 580 people. Much of the population was involved in agriculture, particularly malting, but also lime-burning, with the Beaconfield Estate (Coddington Hall, owned from 1840 by the Thorpe family) dominant. Housing increased after the 1918 sale of the Thorpe estate freed up land – with ribbon development and infilling along Beckingham, Newark and Balderton Roads from the 1920s onwards, followed by the creation of the Morgan’s Close and Valley View estates. During WWII, Coddington Hall was incorporated into RAF Winthorpe as its Officers quarters. RAF housing was built in its grounds, which after the hall was demolished in the 1960s became a council housing estate.
After WWII the village increasingly took on a dormitory, rather than agricultural character. In the period 1980 – 2005 former farm-building were converted and the Beaconsfield and Thorpe Oaks developments were also completed. The Beaconsfield and Thorpe Oaks estates were housing developments on the residual Coddington Hall estate sites and redevelopment of the ex-RAF housing estate (which was demolished).