been straightened, widened, and its course altered. Well dressing ceremonies The beck has long been the site of traditional well dressing ceremonies. This was a tradition that involved decorating a local spring to act as a "thanksgiving to Almighty God for the blessing of a bountiful supply of pure water to Welton". The last known ceremony on a Lincolnshire beck was in 1924. The custom was an annual event which took place on Ascension Day. Five wells in the village were dressed, including one in the churchyard, one in the grounds of the vicarage, two in West Carr, and one in spring cottage on Sudbeck Lane. The dressing of the wells took a different format to that of neighbouring counties, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire; in Welton, each area surrounding the well was marked with an arch formed from a tree branch and decorated with lilac and laburnum. White calico cloth on which a text taken from the bible was depicted was put into each arch by the men in the village early on Ascension Day morning. The ceremony began with a service in Saint Mary's Church, followed by a parade to the decorated beck in the churchyard. Each well was then dressed in turn and a prayer said and a hymn sung. The local Sunday school children took part in the ceremony by placing wild flowers at each well. There is believed to have been an ancient belief of healing powers of the beck water. For example, during a whooping cough epidemic in the village in the early 1900s, mothers took their prams containing the infants and stood them in the beck, believing that the germs would be carried away with the flow of the fresh water. Government Welton civil parish The civil parish of Welton covers about , hemmed in by Hackthorn parish to the north, and Dunholme parish to the south, also including a few scattered hamlets, most notably the former hamlet of Ryland in its east. The parish stretches from the ancient Ermine Street (A15) in the west, following a north-easterly shape to the Barlings Eau at its eastern end, of which the Welton Beck is a tributary, and is an example of a strip parish. Due to the low, flat topography of Lincolnshire, land had to be drained for agriculture to be successful. The larger drainage channels, many of which are parallel to each other, became boundaries