Stainforth is a township in the parishes of Hatfield and Barnby-upon-Don, 2 miles north on the navigable river Don. The Stainforth and Keadby canal connects the Don with the Trent at Keadby, Lincolnshire, where the Hull and Gainsborough steamers call. The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire and North Eastern railways have a station here a mile south of the village. There was a chapel here in the fourteenth century, connected with the church at Hatfield; but all traces of the old building have been swept away. A very plain chapel of brick was erected in 1815, but no provision has ever been made for service to be regularly conducted in it: the building has never been consecrated, and is in a dilapidated state. J, Bladworth esq. has collected an endowment of £10 a year, as a stipend for the occasional performance of divine service. The Wesleyans and Primitive Methodists have each a chapel here, and there is a disused Unitarian chapel. A small amount of barge building and repairing in still carried on here. The Hon. Mrs. Meynell Ingram is lady of the manor. The chief landowners are William Marsdin and B. P. Broomhead esqrs. and Killham’s and Matthewman’s trustees. The soil is sand and clay. The chief crops are turnips, barley, seeds, red clover and wheat. The area is 3,483 acres, of which 2,989 are in Hatfield parish, the rest in Barnby Don and Kirk Bramwith with: rateable value, £7,603; and the population in 1871 was 748.