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town on the River Welland in Lincolnshire, England. It is situated in a protrusion of Lincolnshire, between Rutland to the north and west, and Cambridgeshire to the south. It borders Northamptonshire to the south-west at the only point in England where four counties meet.
The town originally grew as a Danish base, which by the Middle Ages had became famous for its production of wool and cloth (known as Stamford cloth. Later still, Stamford became an inland port on the Great North Road. Notable buildings in the town include the mediaeval Browne's Hospital and the Elizabethan Burghley House. Because of the large number of surviving listed buildings, the town has been used as a set for television "period" dramatisations.
Stamford was the only one of the five Danelaw boroughs not to become a county town.
Lying as it does on the main north-south route (Ermine Streetthe A1) from London, several Parliaments were held in Stamford in the middle ages.
The growth in church congregations in the early twenty-first century pointed up the Chuch of England's short sightedness in tearing down St Margaret's Church in 1582 as surplus to requirements.