SHOUT HOTELS · BOSTON
Hand-Picked Hotels & Apartments in Boston, Lincolnshire
This is the original Boston: a working market town and inland port in the Lincolnshire Fens, about 30 miles south-east of Lincoln, and the place that gave its name to the far larger American city in 1630. If you are looking for the Freedom Trail or Fenway Park, you want the other one.
You steer by the church. St Botolph's, known to everybody as the Stump, carries a 272-foot tower built in stages between 1425 and 1510, and in country this flat it is visible for miles. Ships coming in off The Wash once used it as a seamark. Below it sits a Georgian market square where open-air markets have traded every Wednesday and Saturday since 1545, and a few streets away the Guildhall still holds the cells where five of the Pilgrim Fathers were locked up in 1607 after trying to sail for Holland.
Come for the Stump, the Pilgrim history and some of the best wader watching in England out on The Wash. Do not come for nightlife or a beach. Boston is an honest working town with a live cargo port, big Fenland skies and a walkable historic core, and it is a cheaper, quieter base than the Lincolnshire coast an hour east.
When to visit Boston
Late spring and early autumn are the easy answer: mild weather, long light and the town at its busiest without the coast-season crowds. May is the liveliest month in the calendar, thanks to the fair. Midweek stays and the stretch from January to March are the quietest and the best value.
Winter is the specialist's season. From October to February the marshes on The Wash fill with dark-bellied brent and pink-footed geese, wigeon, knot, dunlin and golden plover, and the reserves at Frampton Marsh and Freiston Shore are as good as wetland birding gets in England. Spring and autumn passage bring avocets, ringed plovers, redshank, black-tailed godwit, spoonbill and little egret instead. Check the tide before you go, because a high tide pushes the birds onto the lagoons where you can actually see them.
Two practical warnings. The Fens are flat, open and exposed, so wind off The Wash makes it feel colder than the thermometer says and there is no shelter on the sea banks. And winter days here are genuinely short, so plan reserve walks and coast-path stretches for the middle of the day.
The year in Boston
Boston May Fair — one of the oldest street fairs in England, filling the Market Place with gallopers, dodgems and waltzers for a week at the start of May. In 2026 it ran from Saturday 2 May to Saturday 9 May, with road closures on Church Street, Wide Bargate, Pen Street and around the Cattle Market. The 2027 dates have not been announced yet.
Boston Bike Night — a summer motorcycle evening that closes Wide Bargate, the Market Place and Pen Street from early afternoon. The 2027 date has not been announced.
Boston Christmas Festival and light switch-on — a three-day event in the Market Place with ice sculptures, the Illuminate parade and a Santa fun run. The 2025 edition ran Friday 28 to Sunday 30 November; expect late November again, and check with the council before booking.
Boston Marathon and Running Festival — a flat, officially measured road race starting at the Market Place and finishing at Boston College, held in April. The 2026 race was on Sunday 12 April. A 2027 date of Sunday 11 April appears on running calendars but is worth confirming with the organiser.
Lincolnshire Show — the county's two-day agricultural show at the Lincolnshire Showground near Lincoln, reliably a Wednesday and Thursday in June. The 2026 show was 17 and 18 June.
Boston United — National League football at the Jakemans Community Stadium runs from August to April or May, on Saturdays plus some Tuesday evenings. Rooms tighten on home-match weekends.
Where to stay in Boston
Boston is small enough that the real decision is simply whether you want to be able to walk to dinner or whether you would rather have space, quiet and free parking. Here is the honest split.
Town centre and the Market Place
The historic core, with the Stump, the Guildhall, Fydell House and the Wednesday and Saturday markets all within a few minutes on foot, plus most of the town's restaurants and pubs.
Best for: car-free visitors, anyone here for the Pilgrim history, and short stays where walking to dinner matters.
Skip if: you want quiet, or you are arriving late on a market day when the centre is at its busiest.
Getting around: everything is walkable. All town-centre parking is pay-and-display and the central car parks fill on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Wide Bargate and the station side
A few minutes north of the Market Place, close to Boston railway station and several of the larger council car parks, with the town centre still an easy walk.
Best for: rail arrivals, and drivers who want to park once and leave the car.
Skip if: you want to be right on the historic square.
Getting around: walk into the centre in five to ten minutes. The station has no car park of its own, so use the council ones nearby.
West towards Hubberts Bridge and Swineshead
Open Fenland three to five miles out along the A1121, where the hotels have room for grounds and the parking is free. This is where Boston West Hotel sits, on a golf complex with a driving range, an adventure playground and a summer splash zone inside the same gate.
Best for: drivers, golf breaks, families, and anyone breaking the journey to the Lincolnshire coast who wants space rather than a postcode.
Skip if: you have no car, or you want to walk somewhere for an evening meal.
Getting around: you need a car. No bus passes the entrance, and although Hubberts Bridge has a railway station it is a request stop with roughly three trains a day.
The villages and the coast
Kirton, Swineshead and the scattered Fen villages are genuinely rural, with a handful of pubs and very sparse evening buses. An hour east, Skegness and the Lincolnshire coast are the traditional-resort alternative, with beaches, arcades and Gibraltar Point.
Best for: a proper seaside holiday, if that is what you actually want.
Skip if: you came for the history and the birds, which are all on this side.
Getting around: a car for the villages; the Poacher Line train or the A52 for the coast.
Boston on foot
A walk through the town centre, taking in the Stump, the Market Place and the old port on The Haven, which is the quickest way to see whether Boston is your kind of stop.
Getting to Boston and getting around
By train. Boston station sits on the Poacher Line between Nottingham, Grantham, Sleaford, Boston and Skegness, operated by East Midlands Railway, with trains roughly hourly and a thinner Sunday service. From London King's Cross the usual route is a fast train to Grantham and a change there, around two hours in total; Peterborough is the alternative interchange. Grantham to Boston takes about 49 minutes and Nottingham to Boston about an hour and a quarter. The station is staffed and has two platforms, and it has no car park of its own.
By road. The main approaches are the A16 running north to south, the A52 towards Grantham, Nottingham and Skegness, and the A1121 out west towards Hubberts Bridge and Swineshead. The A16 and A17 corridor carries heavy lorry and agricultural traffic and congests around the edges of town, so coming up from the south the A16 then A52 keeps you clear of the centre.
By bus. Local services are run mainly by Brylaine Travel, a Boston family firm, alongside Stagecoach East Midlands. The B5 group links Boston to Coningsby and Lincoln roughly hourly Monday to Saturday and serves Pilgrim Hospital, and the B1A to B1D routes cover the town itself. A single-fare cap of one pound fifty applies on Brylaine services until 2027. Out in the villages, Hubberts Bridge and Swineshead have only a handful of scheduled journeys plus the CallConnect demand-responsive bus, and evening and Sunday services are very thin or absent.
By air. Humberside is the nearest airport at roughly an hour and a quarter by road, with East Midlands about an hour and a half and Stansted over two hours. Doncaster Sheffield closed to commercial flights in November 2022, so ignore any guide that still lists it.
Parking. Boston Borough Council runs 21 car parks with about 1,330 spaces, all pay-and-display by card, contactless or the MiPermit app, and the machines give no change. Cattle Market (PE21 6RX) and Bargate Green (PE21 6RU) are the handiest for the centre, and there is electric-vehicle charging at Staniland (PE21 8SS). There is also on-street pay-and-display at the Market Place, Station Approach, South Street, Wide Bargate and Pump Square, where the app is not accepted. Central car parks fill on market days and during events.
Do you need a car? In the town centre, no: you can walk to everything and reach Lincoln or Skegness by train. Staying out at Hubberts Bridge or Swineshead, or visiting the RSPB reserves, a car is effectively essential.
Eating and drinking in Boston
The markets are the first thing to plan around. Open-air trading fills the Market Place every Wednesday and Saturday, on a site that has held a market since 1545, and this is a serious fresh-produce corner of England, so the stalls are the real draw rather than an afterthought.
The most interesting recent opening is not a restaurant group but a college. The Mayflower, Boston College's building on Rowley Road, opened on 10 November 2025 and houses two places open to the public: Eden, a student-run restaurant, and 1620, its café. Both are staffed by catering and hospitality students, both are open to anyone, and between them they are the most distinctive thing to have happened to eating out in Boston in years.
Out west towards Hubberts Bridge the options thin quickly. The Wheatsheaf Inn at Hubberts Bridge is the nearest village pub to Boston West Hotel, about half a mile from it and roughly a ten-minute walk, and Six West Restaurant and Bar is the hotel's own clubhouse restaurant a couple of minutes across the grass. Opening days and food service vary with the season out here, so ring ahead rather than turning up hungry.
In the town centre itself, the pub and restaurant scene changes hands often enough that we would rather you checked what is currently trading than trust a list that has gone stale. Ask at the Guildhall, which also houses the tourist information centre.
