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Title: Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire
Author: Rawnsley, W. F. (Willingham Franklin)
Language: English
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LINCOLNSHIRE ***
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN LINCOLNSHIRE
[Illustration]
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: _Boston._]
_Highways and Byways_
IN
_Lincolnshire_
BY
WILLINGHAM FRANKLIN RAWNSLEY
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
FREDERICK L. GRIGGS
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1914
_COPYRIGHT_
PREFACE
All writers make use of the labours of their predecessors. This is
inevitable, and a custom as old as time. As Mr. Rudyard Kipling sings:—
“When ’Omer smote ’is bloomin’ lyre
’E’d ’eard men sing by land and sea,
And what ’e thought ’e might require
’E went and took, the same as me.”
In writing this book I have made use of all the sources that I could lay
under contribution, and especially I have relied for help on “Murray’s
Handbook,” edited by the Rev. G. E. Jeans, and the Journals of the
associated Architectural Societies. I have recorded in the course of
the volume my thanks to a few kind helpers, and to these I must add the
name of Mr. A. R. Corns of the Lincoln Library, for his kindness in
allowing me the use of many books on various subjects, and on several
occasions, which have been of the utmost service to me. My best thanks,
also, are due to my cousin, Mr. Preston Rawnsley, for his chapter on the
Foxhounds of Lincolnshire. That the book owes much to the pencil of Mr.
Griggs is obvious; his illustrations need no praise of mine but speak for
themselves. The drawing given on p. 254 is by Mrs. Rawnsley.
I have perhaps taken the title “Highways and Byways” more literally
than has usually been done by writers in this interesting series, and
in endeavouring to describe the county and its ways I have followed the
course of all the main roads radiating from each large town, noticing
most of the places through or near which they pass, and also pointing
out some of the more picturesque byways, and describing the lie of the
country. But I have all along supposed the tourist to be travelling by
motor, and have accordingly said very little about Footpaths. This in
a mountainous country would be entirely wrong, but Lincolnshire as a
whole is not a pedestrian’s county. It is, however, a land of constantly
occurring magnificent views, a land of hill as well as plain, and, as I
hope the book will show, beyond all others a county teeming with splendid
churches. I may add that, thanks to that modern devourer of time and
space—the ubiquitous motor car—I have been able personally to visit
almost everything I have described, a thing which in so large a county
would, without such mercurial aid, have involved a much longer time for
the doing. Even so, no one can be more conscious than I am that the book
falls far short of what, with such a theme, was possible.
W. F. R.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY 1
CHAPTER II
STAMFORD 7
CHAPTER III
STAMFORD TO BOURNE 18
CHAPTER IV
ROADS FROM BOURNE 28
CHAPTER V
SOUTH-WEST LINCOLNSHIRE 39
CHAPTER VI
GRANTHAM 52
CHAPTER VII
ROADS FROM GRANTHAM 64
CHAPTER VIII
SLEAFORD 76
CHAPTER IX
LINCOLN CATHEDRAL 91
CHAPTER X
PAULINUS AND HUGH OF LINCOLN 112
CHAPTER XI
LINCOLN CITY 120
CHAPTER XII
ROADS FROM LINCOLN, WEST AND EAST 137
CHAPTER XIII
ROADS SOUTH FROM LINCOLN 148
CHAPTER XIV
PLACES OF NOTE NEAR LINCOLN 165
CHAPTER XV
HERMITAGES AND HOSPITALS 178
CHAPTER XVI
ROADS NORTH FROM LINCOLN 182
CHAPTER XVII
GAINSBOROUGH AND THE NORTH-WEST 195
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ISLE OF AXHOLME 208
CHAPTER XIX
GRIMSBY AND THE NORTH-EAST 215
CHAPTER XX
CAISTOR 228
CHAPTER XXI
LOUTH 239
CHAPTER XXII
ANGLO-SAXON, NORMAN AND MEDIÆVAL ART 251
CHAPTER XXIII
ROADS FROM LOUTH, NORTH AND WEST 262
CHAPTER XXIV
LINCOLNSHIRE BYWAYS 278
CHAPTER XXV
THE BOLLES FAMILY 285
CHAPTER XXVI
THE MARSH CHURCHES OF EAST LINDSEY 290
CHAPTER XXVII
LINCOLNSHIRE FOLKSONG 296
CHAPTER XXVIII
MARSH CHURCHES OF SOUTH LINDSEY 305
CHAPTER XXIX
WAINFLEET TO SPILSBY 323
CHAPTER XXX
SPILSBY AND NEIGHBOURHOOD 333
CHAPTER XXXI
SOMERSBY AND THE TENNYSONS 343
CHAPTER XXXII
ROADS FROM SPILSBY 358
CHAPTER XXXIII
SCRIVELSBY AND TATTERSHALL 372
CHAPTER XXXIV
BARDNEY ABBEY 390
CHAPTER XXXV
HOLLAND FEN 400
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE FEN CHURCHES—NORTHERN DIVISION 409
CHAPTER XXXVII
ST. BOTOLPH’S TOWN (BOSTON) 425
CHAPTER XXXVIII
SPALDING AND THE CHURCHES NORTH OF IT 441
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHURCHES OF HOLLAND 463
CHAPTER XL
THE BLACK DEATH 480
CHAPTER XLI
CROYLAND 483
CHAPTER XLII
LINCOLNSHIRE FOXHOUNDS 493
APPENDIX I
SAMUEL WESLEY’S EPITAPH 499
APPENDIX II
DR. WM. STUKELEY 500
APPENDIX III
A LOWLAND PEASANT POET 501
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
BOSTON _Frontispiece_
ST. LEONARD’S PRIORY, STAMFORD 8
ST. GEORGE’S SQUARE, STAMFORD 10
ST. MARY’S STREET, STAMFORD 11
ST. PAUL’S STREET, STAMFORD 13
ST. PETER’S HILL, STAMFORD 15
STAMFORD FROM FREEMAN’S CLOSE 17
BOURNE ABBEY CHURCH 24
THE STATION HOUSE, BOURNE 26
SEMPRINGHAM 36
THE WITHAM, BOSTON 45
THE ANGEL INN, GRANTHAM 56
GRANTHAM CHURCH 61
WITHAM-SIDE, BOSTON 66
HOUGH-ON-THE-HILL 72
NORTH TRANSEPT, ST. DENIS’S CHURCH, SLEAFORD 78
HECKINGTON CHURCH 81
GREAT HALE 84
HELPRINGHAM 86
SOUTH KYME 88
SOUTH KYME CHURCH 89
NEWPORT ARCH, LINCOLN 92
GATEWAY OF LINCOLN CASTLE 94
THE ROOD TOWER AND SOUTH TRANSEPT, LINCOLN 100
POTTERGATE, LINCOLN 110
ST. MARY’S GUILD, LINCOLN 118
THE POTTERGATE ARCH, LINCOLN 121
THE JEW’S HOUSE, LINCOLN 123
REMAINS OF THE WHITEFRIARS’ PRIORY, LINCOLN 124
ST. MARY’S GUILD AND ST. PETER’S AT GOWTS, LINCOLN 125
ST. BENEDICT’S CHURCH, LINCOLN 127
ST. MARY-LE-WIGFORD, LINCOLN 128
THE STONEBOW, LINCOLN 130
OLD INLAND REVENUE OFFICE, LINCOLN 132
JAMES STREET, LINCOLN 133
THORNGATE, LINCOLN 135
LINCOLN FROM THE WITHAM 138
STOW CHURCH 142
BRANT BROUGHTON 152
THE ERMINE STREET AT TEMPLE BRUER 154
TEMPLE BRUER TOWER 158
NAVENBY 163
WYKEHAM CHAPEL, NEAR SPALDING 180
THE AVON AT BARTON-ON-HUMBER 189
ST. PETER’S, BARTON-ON-HUMBER 190
ST. MARY’S, BARTON-ON-HUMBER 192
NORTH SIDE, OLD HALL, GAINSBOROUGH 202
SOUTH SIDE, OLD HALL, GAINSBOROUGH 203
GAINSBOROUGH CHURCH 205
GREAT GOXHILL PRIORY 218
THORNTON ABBEY GATEWAY 220
REMAINS OF CHAPTER HOUSE, THORNTON ABBEY 221
THE WELLAND, NEAR FULNEY, SPALDING 237
THORNTON ABBEY GATEWAY 238
BRIDGE STREET, LOUTH 241
HUBBARD’S MILL, LOUTH 243
THE LUD AT LOUTH 246
ANCIENT SAXON ORNAMENT FOUND IN 1826 IN CLEANING OUT
THE WITHAM, NEAR THE VILLAGE OF FISKERTON, FOUR
MILES EAST OF LINCOLN. DRAWN BY MRS. RAWNSLEY 254
CLEE CHURCH 266
WESTGATE, LOUTH 275
MANBY 279
MABLETHORPE CHURCH 292
SOUTHEND, BOSTON 297
MARKBY CHURCH 306
ADDLETHORPE AND INGOLDMELLS 308
THE ROMAN BANK AT WINTHORPE 311
BRIDGE OVER THE HOLLOW-GATE 330
HALTON CHURCH 331
SOMERSBY CHURCH 341
TENNYSON’S HOME, SOMERSBY 351
LITTLE STEEPING 357
SIBSEY 362
CONINGSBY 369
TATTERSHALL AND CONINGSBY 370
TATTERSHALL CHURCH 371
THE LION GATE AT SCRIVELSBY 373
TATTERSHALL CHURCH AND THE BAIN 381
TATTERSHALL CHURCH AND CASTLE 386
TATTERSHALL CHURCH WINDOWS 388
SCRIVELSBY STOCKS 389
KIRKSTEAD CHAPEL 391
REMAINS OF KIRKSTEAD ABBEY CHURCH 396
KIRKSTEAD CHAPEL, WEST END 398
DARLOW’S YARD, SLEAFORD 403
LEAKE CHURCH 415
LEVERTON WINDMILL 417
FRIESTON PRIORY CHURCH 418
BOSTON CHURCH FROM THE N.E. 421
BOSTON STUMP 424
CUSTOM HOUSE QUAY, BOSTON 427
SOUTH SQUARE, BOSTON 429
SPAIN LANE, BOSTON 431
THE HAVEN, BOSTON 436
THE GUILDHALL, BOSTON 437
HUSSEY’S TOWER, BOSTON 439
THE WELLAND AT COWBIT ROAD, SPALDING 442
THE WELLAND AT HIGH STREET, SPALDING 443
AYSCOUGH FEE HALL GARDENS, SPALDING 445
SPALDING CHURCH FROM THE S.E. 447
N. SIDE, SPALDING CHURCH 449
PINCHBECK 450
SURFLEET 453
SURFLEET WINDMILL 454
THE WELLAND AT MARSH ROAD, SPALDING 458
ALGARKIRK 460
AT FULNEY 462
WHAPLODE CHURCH 467
FLEET CHURCH 469
GEDNEY CHURCH 471
LONG SUTTON CHURCH 473
GEDNEY, FROM FLEET 482
COWBIT CHURCH 484
CROYLAND ABBEY 488
CROYLAND BRIDGE 490
MAP _At end Volume_
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN LINCOLNSHIRE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
In dealing with a county which measures seventy-five miles by forty-five,
it will be best to assume that the tourist has either some form of
“cycle” or, better still, a motor car. The railway helps one less in this
than in most counties, as it naturally runs on the flat and unpicturesque
portions, and also skirts the boundaries, and seldom attempts to pierce
into the heart of the Wolds. Probably it would not be much good to the
tourist if it did, as he would have to spend much of his time in tunnels
which always come where there should be most to see, as on the Louth and
Lincoln line between Withcal and South Willingham. As it is, the only bit
of railway by which a person could gather that Lincolnshire was anything
but an ugly county is that between Lincoln and Grantham.
But that it is a county with a great deal of beauty will be, I am sure,
admitted by those who follow up the routes described in the following
pages. They will find that it is a county famous for wide views, for
wonderful sunsets, for hills and picturesque hollows; and full, too, of
the human interest which clings round old buildings, and the uplifting
pleasure which its many splendid specimens of architecture have power to
bestow.
[Sidenote: MARSH AND FEN]
At the outset the reader must identify himself so far with the people
of Lincolnshire as to make himself at home in the universally accepted
meanings of certain words and expressions which he will hear constantly
recurring. He will soon come to know that ‘siver’ means however, that
‘slaäpe’ means slippery, that ‘unheppen,’ a fine old word (—unhelpen),
means awkward, that ‘owry’ or ‘howry’ means dirty; but, having learnt
this, he must not conclude that the word ‘strange’ in ‘straänge an’ owry
weather’ means anything unfamiliar. ‘Straänge’—perhaps the commonest
adverbial epithet in general use in Lincolnshire—_e.g._ “you’ve bin
a straänge long while coming” only means very. But besides common
conversational expressions he will have to note that the well-known
substantives ‘Marsh’ and ‘Fen’ bear in Lincolnshire a special meaning,
neither of them now denoting bog or wet impassable places. The _Fens_ are
the rich flat corn lands, once perpetually flooded, but now drained and
tilled; the divisions between field and field being mostly ditches, small
or big, and all full of water; the soil is deep vegetable mould, fine,
and free from stones, hardly to be excelled for both corn and roots;
while the _Marsh_ is nearly all pasture land, stiffer in nature, and
producing such rich grass that the beasts can grow fat upon it without
other food. Here, too, the fields are divided by ditches or “dykes” and
the sea wind blows over them with untiring energy, for the Marsh is all
next the coast, being a belt averaging seven or eight miles in width, and
reaching from the Wash to the Humber.
[Sidenote: THE WOLDS]
From this belt the Romans, by means of a long embankment, excluded the
waters of the sea; and Nature’s sand-dunes, aided by the works of man
in places, keep up the Roman tradition. Even before the Roman bank was
made, the _Marsh_ differed from the _Fen_, in that the waters which used
to cover the _fens_ were fed by the river floods and the waters from
the hills, and it was not, except occasionally and along the course of
a tidal river, liable to inundation from the sea; whereas the _Marsh_
was its natural prey. Of course both Marsh and Fen are all level. But
the third portion of the county is of quite a different character, and
immediately you get into it all the usual ideas about Lincolnshire being
a flat, ugly county vanish, and as this upland country extends over most
of the northern half of the county, viz., from Spilsby to the Humber on
the eastern side and from Grantham to the Humber on the western, it is
obvious that no one can claim to know Lincolnshire who does not know the
long lines of the Wolds, which are two long spines of upland running
north and south, with flat land on either side of them.
These, back-bones of the county, though seldom reaching 500 feet, come to
their highest point of 530 between Walesby and Stainton-le-Vale, a valley
set upon a hill over which a line would pass drawn from Grimsby to Market
Rasen. The hilly Wold region is about the same width as the level Marsh
belt, averaging eight miles, but north of Caistor this narrows. There are
no great streams from these Wolds, the most notable being the long brook
whose parent branches run from Stainton-in-the-Vale and “Roman hole” near
Thoresway, and uniting at Hatcliffe go out to the sea with the Louth
River “Lud,” the two streams joining at Tetney lock.
North of Caistor the Wolds not only narrow, but drop by Barnetby-le-Wold
to 150 feet, and allow the railway lines from Barton-on-Humber, New
Holland and Grimsby to pass through to Brigg. This, however, is only a
‘pass,’ as the chalk ridge rises again near Elsham, and at Saxby attains
a height of 330 feet, whence it maintains itself at never less than 200
feet, right up to Ferriby-on-the-Humber. These Elsham and Saxby Wolds are
but two miles across.
Naturally this Wold region with the villages situated in its folds or on
its fringes is the pretty part of the county, though the Marsh with its
extended views, its magnificent sunsets and cloud effects,
“The wide-winged sunsets of the misty Marsh,”
its splendid cattle and its interesting flora, its long sand-dunes
covered with stout-growing grasses, sea holly and orange-berried
buckthorn, and finally its magnificent sands, is full of a peculiar
charm; and then there are its splendid churches; not so grand as the fen
churches it is true, but so nobly planned and so unexpectedly full of
beautiful old carved woodwork.
West of these Wolds is a belt of Fen-land lying between them and the
ridge or ‘cliff’ on which the great Roman Ermine Street runs north
from Lincoln in a bee line for over thirty miles to the Humber near
Winteringham, only four miles west of the end of the Wolds already
mentioned at South Ferriby.
[Sidenote: PARALLEL RIDGES]
The high ridge of the Lincoln Wold is very narrow, a regular ‘Hogs
back’ and broken down into a lower altitude between Blyborough and
Kirton-in-Lindsey, and lower again a little further north near Scawby and
still more a few miles further on where the railway goes through the pass
between Appleby Station and Scunthorpe.
From here a second ridge is developed parallel with the Lincoln Wold,
and between the Wold and the Trent, the ground rising from Bottesford to
Scunthorpe, reaching a height of 220 feet on the east bank of the Trent
near Burton-on-Stather and thence descending by Alkborough to the Humber
at Whitton. The Trent which, roughly speaking, from Newark, and actually
from North Clifton to the Humber, bounds the county on the west, runs
through a low country of but little interest, overlooked for miles from
the height which is crowned by Lincoln Minster. Only the Isle of Axholme
lies outside of the river westwards.
The towns of Gainsborough towards the north, and Stamford at the extreme
south guard this western boundary. Beyond the Minster the Lincoln Wold
continues south through the Sleaford division of Kesteven to Grantham,
but in a modified form, rising into stiff hills only to the north-east
and south-west of Grantham, and thence passing out of the county into
Leicestershire. A glance at a good map will show that the ridge along
which the Ermine Street and the highway from Lincoln to Grantham run
for seventeen miles, as far, that is, as Ancaster, is not a wide one;
but drops to the flats more gently east of the Ermine Street than it
does to the west of the Grantham road. From Sleaford, where five railway
lines converge, that which goes west passes through a natural break in
the ridge by Ancaster, the place from which, next after the “Barnack
rag,” all the best stone of the churches of Lincolnshire has always
been quarried. South of Ancaster the area of high ground is much wider,
extending east and west from the western boundary of the county to the
road which runs from Sleaford to Bourne and Stamford.
Such being the main features of the county, it will be as well to lay
down a sort of itinerary showing the direction in which we will proceed
and the towns which we propose to visit as we go.
[Sidenote: ITINERARY]
Entering the county from the south, at _Stamford_, we will make for
_Sleaford_. These are the two towns which give their names to the
divisions of South and North Kesteven. _Grantham_ lies off to the west,
about midway between the two. As this is the most important town in
the division of Kesteven, after taking some of the various roads which
radiate from Sleaford we will make Grantham our centre, then leave South
Kesteven for Sleaford again, and thence going on north we shall reach
_Lincoln_ just over the North Kesteven boundary, and so continue to
_Gainsborough_ and _Brigg_, from which the west and north divisions of
Lindsey are named. From each of the towns we have mentioned we shall
trace the roads which lead from them in all directions; and then, after
entering the Isle of Axholme and touching the Humber at _Barton_ and
the North Sea at Cleethorpes and Grimsby, we shall turn south to the
_Louth_ and _Horncastle_ (in other words the east and south) divisions
of Lindsey, and, so going down the east coast, we shall, after visiting
_Alford_ and _Spilsby_, both in South Lindsey, arrive at _Boston_ and
then at _Spalding_, both in the “parts of Holland,” and finally pass out
of the county near the ancient abbey of _Croyland_.
By this itinerary we shall journey all round the huge county, going
up, roughly speaking, on the west and returning by the east; and shall
see, not only how it is divided into the political “parts” of Kesteven,
Lindsey and Holland, but also note as we go the characteristics of the
land and its three component elements of Fen, Wold and Marsh.
We have seen that the Wolds, starting from the Humber, run in two
parallel ridges; that on the west side of the county reaching the whole
way from north to south, but that on the east only going half the way and
ending abruptly at West Keal, near Spilsby.
All that lies east of the road running from Lincoln by Sleaford and
Bourne to Stamford, and south of a line drawn from Lincoln to Wainfleet
is “Fen,” and includes the southern portion of South Lindsey, the eastern
half of Kesteven, and the whole of Holland.
In this Fen country great houses are scarce. But the great monasteries
clung to the Fens and they were mainly responsible for the creation of
the truly magnificent Fen churches which are most notably grouped in
the neighbourhood of Boston, Sleaford and Spalding. In writing of the
Fens, therefore, the churches are the chief things to be noticed, and
this is largely, though not so entirely, the case in the Marsh district
also. Hence I have ventured to describe these Lincolnshire churches
of the Marsh and Fen at greater length than might at first sight seem
warrantable.
[Sidenote: PERIODS OF ARCHITECTURE]
It would make it easier to follow these descriptions if the reader were
first to master the dates and main characteristics of the different
periods of architecture and their order of sequence. Thus, roughly
speaking, we may assign each style to one century, though of course the
style and the century were not in any case exactly coterminous.
11th Century Norman ⎫ With round arches.
12th ” Transition ⎭
13th ” Early English (E.E.) ⎫
14th ” Decorated (Dec.) ⎬ With pointed arches.
15th ” Perpendicular (Perp.) ⎭
CHAPTER II
STAMFORD
The North Road—Churches—Browne’s Hospital—Brasenose
College—Daniel Lambert—Burghley House and “The Peasant
Countess.”
The Great Northern line, after leaving Peterborough, enters the county
at Tallington, five miles east of Stamford. Stamford is eighty-nine
miles north of London, and forty miles south of Lincoln. Few towns in
England are more interesting, none more picturesque. The Romans with
their important station of Durobrivæ at Castor, and another still nearer
at Great Casterton, had no need to occupy Stamford in force, though they
doubtless guarded the ford where the Ermine Street crossed the Welland,
and possibly paved the water-way, whence arose the name Stane-ford.
The river here divides the counties of Lincoln and Northamptonshire,
and on the north-west of the town a little bit of Rutland runs up, but
over three-quarters of the town is in our county. The Saxons always
considered it an important town, and as early as 664 mention is made
in a charter of Wulfhere, King of Mercia, of “that part of Staunforde
beyond the bridge,” so the town was already on both sides of the river.
Later again, in Domesday Book, the King’s borough of Stamford is noticed
as paying tax for the army, navy and Danegelt, also it is described as
“having six wards, five in Lincolnshire and one in Hamptonshire, but all
pay customs and dues alike, except the last in which the Abbot of Burgh
(Peterborough) had and hath Gabell and toll.”
This early bridge was no doubt a pack-horse bridge, and an arch on the
west side of St. Mary’s Hill still bears the name of Packhorse Arch.
[Illustration: _St. Leonard’s Priory, Stamford._]
[Sidenote: ST. LEONARD’S PRIORY]
St. Leonard’s Priory is the oldest building in the neighbourhood. After
Oswy, King of Northumbria, had defeated Penda, the pagan King of Mercia,
he gave the government of this part of the conquered province to Penda’s
son Pæda, and gave land in Stamford to his son’s tutor, Wilfrid, and
here, in 658, Wilfrid built the priory of St. Leonard which he bestowed
on his monastery at Lindisfarne, and when the monks removed thence to
Durham it became a cell of the priory of Durham. Doubtless the building
was destroyed by the Danes, but it was refounded in 1082 by the
Conqueror and William of Carilef, the then Bishop of Durham.
The Danish marauders ravaged the country, but were met at Stamford by a
stout resistance from Saxons and Britons combined; but in the end they
beat the Saxons and nearly destroyed Stamford in 870. A few years later,
when, after the peace of Wedmore, Alfred the Great gave terms to Guthrum
on condition that he kept away to the north of the Watling Street, the
five towns of Stamford, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Lincoln were
left to the Danes for strongholds; of these Lincoln then, as now, was the
chief.
[Sidenote: PARLIAMENT AT STAMFORD]
The early importance of Stamford may be gauged by the facts that
Parliament was convened there more than once in the fourteenth century,
and several Councils of War and of State held there. One of these was
called by Pope Boniface IX. to suppress the doctrines of Wyclif. There,
too, a large number of nobles met to devise some check on King John,
who was often in the neighbourhood either at Kingscliffe, in Rockingham
Forest, or at Stamford itself—and from thence they marched to Runnymede.
[Sidenote: STAMFORD TOWN]
The town was on the Great North Road, so that kings, when moving up and
down their realm, naturally stopped there. A good road also went east and
west, hence, just outside the town gate on the road leading west towards
Geddington and Northampton, a cross (the third) was set up in memory of
the halting of Queen Eleanor’s funeral procession in 1293 on its way from
Harby near Lincoln to Westminster.
[Illustration: _St. George’s Square, Stamford._]
[Sidenote: CITY ARMS]
There was a castle near the ford in the tenth century, and Danes and
Saxons alternately held it until the Norman Conquest. The city, like
the ancient Thebes, had a wall with seven gates besides posterns, one
of which still exists in the garden of 9, Barn Hill, the house in which
Alderman Wolph hid Charles I. on his last visit to Stamford in 1646.
Most of the buildings which once made Stamford so very remarkable were
the work of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and as they comprised
fifteen churches, six priories, with hospitals, schools and almshouses
in corresponding numbers, the town must have presented a beautiful
appearance, more especially so because the stone used in all these
buildings, public and private, is of such exceptionally good character,
being from the neighbouring quarries of Barnack, Ketton and Clipsham.
But much of this glory of stone building and Gothic architecture was
destroyed in the year 1461; and for this reason. It happened that, just
as Henry III. had given it to his son Edward I. on his marriage with
Eleanor of Castile in 1254, so, in 1363, Edward III. gave the castle and
manor of Stamford to his son Edmund of Langley, Duke of York; this, by
attaching the town to the Yorkist cause, when Lincolnshire was mostly
Lancastrian, brought about its destruction, for after the battle of St.
Alban’s in 1461, the Lancastrians under Sir Andrew Trollope utterly
devastated the town, destroying everything, and, though some of the
churches were rebuilt, the town never recovered its former magnificence.
It still looks beautiful with its six churches, its many fragments
of arch or wall and several fine old almshouses which were built
subsequently, but it lost either then or at the dissolution more than
double of what it has managed to retain. Ten years later the courage
shown by the men of Stamford at the battle of Empingham or “Bloody Oaks”
close by, on the North Road, where the Lancastrians were defeated, caused
Edward IV. to grant permission for the royal lions to be placed on the
civic shield of Stamford, side by side with the arms of Earl Warren. He
had had the manorial rights of Stamford given to him by King John in
1206, and he is said to have given the butchers a field in which to keep
a bull to be baited annually on November 13, and the barbarous practice
of “bull running” in the streets was actually kept up till 1839, and then
only abolished with difficulty.
[Illustration: _St. Mary’s Street, Stamford._]
[Illustration: _St. Paul’s Street, Stamford._]
[Sidenote: THE SIX CHURCHES]
[Sidenote: THE CALLISES]
[Sidenote: STAMFORD UNIVERSITY]
Of the six churches, St. Mary’s and All Saints have spires. St. Mary’s,
on a hill which slopes to the river, is a fine arcaded Early English
tower with a broach spire of later date, but full of beautiful work in
statue and canopy, very much resembling that at Ketton in Rutland. There
are three curious round panels with interlaced work over the porch, and
a rich altar tomb with very lofty canopy that commemorates Sir David
Phillips and his wife. They had served Margaret Countess of Richmond,
the mother of Henry VII., who resided at Collyweston close by. The body
of the church is rather crowded together and not easy to view. In this
respect All Saints, with its turrets, pinnacles and graceful spire, and
its double belfry lights under one hood moulding as at Grantham, has
the advantage. Moreover the North Road goes up past it, and the market
place gives plenty of space all round it. Inside, the arcade columns are
cylindrical and plain on the north, but clustered on the south side,
with foliated capitals. This church is rich in brasses, chiefly of the
great wool-merchant family of Browne, one of whom, William, founded a
magnificent hospital and enlarged the church, and in all probability
built the handsome spire; he was buried in 1489. The other churches all
have square towers, that of St. John’s Church is over the last bay of
the north aisle, and at the last bay of the south aisle is a porch. The
whole construction is excellent, pillars tall, roof rich and windows
graceful, and it once was filled with exceptionally fine stained glass.
St. George’s Church, being rebuilt with fragments of other destroyed
churches, shows a curious mixture of octagonal and cylindrical work in
the same pillars. St. Michael’s and St. Martin’s are the other two, of
which the latter is across the water in what is called _Stamford Baron_,
it is the burial place of the Cecils and it is not far from the imposing
gateway into Burghley Park. This church and park, with the splendid house
designed by John Thorpe for the great William Cecil in 1565, are all in
the diocese of Peterborough, and the county of Northampton. We shall have
to recall the church when we speak of the beautiful windows which Lord
Exeter was allowed by the Fortescue family to take from the Collegiate
Church of Tattershall, and which are now in St. Martin’s, where they are
extremely badly set with bands of modern glass interrupting the old.
Another remnant of a church stands on the north-west of the town, St.
Paul’s. This ruin was made over as early as the sixteenth century for
use as a schoolroom for Radcliffe’s Grammar School. Schools, hospitals or
almshouses once abounded in Stamford, where the latter are often called
_Callises_, being the benefactions of the great wool merchants of the
Staple of Calais. The chief of all these, and one which is still in use,
is Browne’s Hospital, founded in 1480 by a Stamford merchant who had been
six times Mayor, for a Warden, a Confrater, ten poor men, and two poor
women. It had a long dormitory hall, with central passage from which the
brethren’s rooms opened on either side, and, at one end, beyond a carved
screen, is the chapel with tall windows, stalls and carved bench-ends,
and a granite alms box. An audit room is above the hall or dormitory,
with good glass, and Browne’s own house, with large gateway to admit
the wool-wagons, adjoined the chapel. It was partly rebuilt with new
accommodation in 1870; the cloister and hall and chapel remain as they
were. One more thing must be noted. In the north-west and near the old
St. Paul’s Church schoolroom is a beautiful Early English gateway, which
is all that remains of _Brasenose College_. The history is a curious
one. Violent town and gown quarrels resulting even in murders, at Oxford
in 1260, had caused several students to migrate to Northampton, where
Henry III. directed the mayor to give them every accommodation; but in
1266, probably for reasons connected with civil strife, the license
was revoked, and, whilst many returned to Oxford, many preferred to go
further, and so came to Stamford, a place known to be well supplied with
halls and requisites for learning. Here they were joined in 1333 by a
further body of Oxford men who were involved in a dispute between the
northern and southern scholars, the former complaining that they were
unjustly excluded from Merton College Fellowships. The Durham Monastery
took their side and doubtless offered them shelter at their priory of
St. Leonard’s, Stamford. Then, as other bodies of University seceders
kept joining them, they thought seriously of setting up a University, and
petitioned King Edward III. to be allowed to remain under his protection
at Stamford. But the Universities petitioned against them, and the King
ordered the Sheriff of Lincolnshire to turn them out, promising them
redress when they were back in Oxford. Those who refused were punished
by confiscation of goods and fines, and the two Universities passed
Statutes imposing an oath on all freshmen that they would not read or
attend lectures at Stamford. In 1292 Robert Luttrell of Irnham gave a
manor and the parish church of St. Peter, near Stamford, to the priory
at Sempringham, being “desirous to increase the numbers of the convent
and that it might ever have scholars at Stamford studying divinity
and philosophy.” This refers to Sempringham Hall, one of the earliest
buildings of Stamford University.
[Illustration: _St. Peter’s Hill, Stamford._]
[Sidenote: A MAZE OF STREETS]
[Sidenote: STAMFORD’S GREAT MEN]
A glance at a plan of the town would show that it is exactly like
a maze, no street runs on right through it in any direction, and,
for a stranger, it is incredibly difficult to find a way out. To the
south-west, and all along the eastern edge on the river-meadows outside
the walls, were large enclosures belonging to the different Friaries, on
either side of the road to St. Leonard’s Priory. No town has lost more
by the constant depredations of successive attacking forces; first the
Danes, then the Wars of the Roses, then the dissolution of the religious
houses, then the Civil War, ending with a visit from Cromwell in his
most truculent mood, fresh from the mischief done by his soldiers in
and around Croyland and Peterborough. But, even now, its grey stone
buildings, its well-chosen site, its river, its neighbouring hills
and wooded park, make it a town more than ordinarily attractive. Of
distinguished natives, we need only mention the great Lord Burleigh, who
served with distinction through four reigns, and Archdeacon Johnson, the
founder of the Oakham and Uppingham Schools and hospitals in 1584, though
Uppingham as it now is, was the creation of a far greater man, the famous
Edward Thring, a pioneer of modern educational methods, in the last
half of the nineteenth century. Archbishop Laud, who is so persistently
mentioned as having been once Vicar of St. Martin’s, Stamford, was never
there; his vicarage was Stanford-on-Avon. But undoubtedly Stamford’s
greatest man in one sense was Daniel Lambert, whose monument, in St.
Martin’s churchyard, date 1809, speaks of his “personal greatness” and
tells us that he weighed 52 stone 11 lbs., adding “N.B. the stone of 14
lb.” The writer once, when a schoolboy, went with another to see his
clothes, which were shown at the Daniel Lambert Inn; and, when the two
stood back to back, the armhole of his spacious waistcoat was slipped
over their heads and fell loosely round them to the ground.
This enormous personage must not be confounded with another Daniel
Lambert, who was Lord Mayor and Member for the City of London in
Walpole’s time, about 1740.
[Sidenote: THE PEASANT COUNTESS]
It is quite a matter of regret that “Burleigh House near Stamford town”
is outside the county boundary. Of all the great houses in England,
it always strikes me as being the most satisfying and altogether the
finest, and a fitting memorial of the great Lincolnshire man William
Cecil, who, after serving in the two previous reigns, was Elizabeth’s
chief Minister for forty years. “The Lord of Burleigh” of Tennyson’s poem
lived two centuries later, but he, too, with “the peasant Countess” lived
eventually in the great house. Lady Dorothy Nevill, in _My Own Times_
published in 1912, gives a clear account of the facts commemorated in
the poem. She tells us that Henry Cecil, tenth Earl of Exeter, before
he came into the title was divorced from his wife in 1791, owing to
her misconduct; being almost broken-hearted he retired to a village in
Shropshire, called Bolas Magna, where he worked as a farm servant to
one Hoggins who had a mill. Tennyson makes him more picturesquely “a
landscape painter.” He often looked in at the vicarage and had a mug of
ale with the servants, who called him “Gentleman Harry.” The clergyman,
Mr. Dickenson, became interested in him, and often talked with him,
and used to invite him to smoke an evening pipe with him in the study.
Mr. Hoggins had a daughter Sarah, the beauty of Bolas, and they became
lovers. With the clergyman’s aid Cecil, not without difficulty, persuaded
Hoggins to allow the marriage, which took place at St. Mildred’s, Bread
Street, October 30th, 1791, his broken heart having mended fairly
quickly. He was now forty years of age, and before the marriage he had
told Dickenson who he was. For two years they lived in a small farm,
when, from a Shrewsbury paper, “Mr. Cecil” learnt that he had succeeded
his uncle in the title and the possession of Burleigh House and estate.
Thither in due course he took his bride. Her picture is on the wall, but
she did not live long.
“For a trouble weighed upon her,
And perplexed her night and morn,
With the burthen of an honour
Unto which she was not born.
Faint she grew and even fainter,
And she murmured ‘Oh that he
Were once more that landscape painter
That did win my heart from me’!
So she drooped and drooped before him,
Fading slowly from his side:
Three fair children first she bore him,
Then before her time she died.”
[Illustration: _Stamford from Freeman’s Close._]
CHAPTER III
STAMFORD TO BOURNE
Tickencote—“Bloody
Oaks”—Holywell—Tallington—Barholm—Greatford—Witham-on-the-Hill—Dr.
Willis—West Deeping—Market Deeping—Deeping-St.-James—Richard de
Rulos—Braceborough—Bourne.
Of the eight roads which run to Stamford, the Great North Road which here
coincides with the Roman Ermine Street is the chief; and this enters
from the south through Northamptonshire and goes out by the street
called “Scotgate” in a north-westerly direction through Rutland. It
leaves Lincolnshire at Great or Bridge Casterton on the river Gwash; one
mile further it passes the celebrated church of Tickencote nestling in
a hollow to the left, where the wonderful Norman chancel arch of five
orders outdoes even the work at Iffley near Oxford, and the wooden effigy
of a knight reminds one of that of Robert Duke of Normandy at Gloucester.
_Tickencote_ is the home of the Wingfields, and the villagers in 1471
were near enough to hear “the Shouts of war” when the Lincolnshire
Lancastrians fled from the fight on Loosecoat Field after a slaughter
which is commemorated on the map by the name “Bloody Oaks.” Further on,
the road passes Stretton, ‘the village on the street,’ whence a lane to
the right takes you to the famed Clipsham quarries just on the Rutland
side of the boundary, and over it to the beautiful residence of Colonel
Birch Reynardson at _Holywell_. Very soon now the Ermine Street, after
doing its ten miles in Rutland, passes by “Morkery Wood” back into
Lincolnshire.
The only Stamford Road which is all the time in our county is the eastern
road through Market Deeping to Spalding, this soon after leaving
Stamford passes near Uffington Hall, built in 1688 by Robert Bertie, son
of Montague, second Earl of Lindsey, he whose father fell at Edgehill. On
the northern outskirt of the parish Lord Kesteven has a fine Elizabethan
house called Casewick Hall. Round each house is a well-timbered park,
and at Uffington Hall the approach is by a fine avenue of limes. At
_Tallington_, where the road crosses the Great Northern line, the church,
like several in the neighbourhood, has some Saxon as well as Norman work,
and the original Sanctus bell still hangs in a cot surmounting the east
end of the nave. It is dedicated to St. Lawrence.
South Lincolnshire seems to have been rather rich in Saxon churches, and
two of the best existing towers of that period at Barnack and Wittering
in Northamptonshire are within three miles of Stamford, one on either
side of the Great North Road.
_Barholm_ Church, near Tallington, has some extremely massive Norman
arches and a fine door with diapered tympanum. The tower was restored in
the last year of Charles I., and no one seems to have been more surprised
than the churchwarden or parson or mason of the time, for we find carved
on it these lines:—
“Was ever such a thing
Sence the creation?
A new steeple built
In the time of vexation.
I. H. 1643.”
[Sidenote: FORDS OF THE WELLAND]
An old Hall adds to the interest of the place, and another charming
old building is Mr. Peacock’s Elizabethan house in the next parish of
_Greatford_, or, as it should be spelt, Gretford or Gritford, the grit
or gravel ford of the river Glen, just as Stamford should be Stanford
or Staneford, the stone-paved ford of the Welland. Gretford Church is
remarkable if only for the unusual position of the tower as a south
transept, a similar thing being seen at _Witham-on-the-Hill_, four miles
off, in Rutland. Five of the bells there are re-casts of some which once
hung in Peterborough Cathedral, and the fifth has the date 1831 and a
curious inscription. General Johnson I used to see when I was a boy at
Uppingham; he was the patron of the school, and the one man among the
governors of the school who was always a friend to her famous headmaster,
Edward Thring. But why he wrote the last line of this inscription I can’t
conceive:—
“’Twas not to prosper pride and hate
William Augustus Johnson gave me,
But peace and joy to celebrate;
And call to prayer to heaven to save ye.
Then keep the terms, and e’er remember,
May 29 ye must not ring
Nor yet the 5th of each November
Nor on the crowning of a king.”
[Sidenote: THE DEEPINGS]
[Sidenote: DEEPING FEN]
To return to Gretford. In the north transept is a square opening, in the
sill of which is a curious hollow all carved with foliage, resembling
one in the chancel at East Kirkby, near Spilsby, where it is supposed
to have been a sort of alms dish for votive offerings. Here, too, is a
bust by Nollekens of a man who had a considerable reputation in his time,
and who occupied more than one house in this neighbourhood and built a
private asylum at Shillingthorpe near Braceborough for his patients, a
distinguished _clientèle_ who used to drive their teams all about the
neighbourhood; this was Dr. F. Willis, the mad-doctor who attended George
III. But these are all ‘side shows,’ and we must get back to Tallington.
The road from here goes through _West Deeping_, which, like the manor
of Market Deeping, belonged to the Wakes. Here we find a good font with
eight shields of arms, that of the Wakes being one, and an almost unique
old low chancel screen of stone, the surmounting woodwork has gone and
the west face is filled in with poor modern mosaic. Within three miles
the Bourne-and-Peterborough road crosses the Stamford-and-Spalding road
at _Market Deeping_, where there is a large church, once attached to
Croyland, and a most interesting old house used as the rectory. This was
the refectory of a priory, and has fine roof timbers. The manor passed
through Joan, daughter of Margaret Wake, to the Black Prince. Two miles
further, the grand old priory church of _Deeping-St.-James_ lies a mile
to the left. This was attached as a cell to Thorney Abbey in 1139, by the
same Baldwin FitzGilbert who had founded Bourne Abbey. A diversion of a
couple of miles northwards would bring us to a fine tower and spire at
_Langtoft_, once a dependency of Medehamstead[1] Abbey at Peterborough,
together with which it was ruthlessly destroyed by Swegen in 1013. On the
roof timbers are some beautifully carved figures of angels, and carved
heads project from the nave pillars. The south chantry is a large one,
with three arches opening into the chancel, and has several interesting
features. Amongst these is a handsome aumbry, which may have been used as
an Easter sepulchre. The south chantry opens from the chancel with three
arches, and has some good carving and a piscina with a finely constructed
canopy. There is a monument to Elizabeth Moulesworth, 1648, and a brass
plate on the tomb of Sarah, wife of Bernard Walcot, has this pretty
inscription:—
Thou bedd of rest, reserve for him a roome
Who lives a man divorced from his deare wife,
That as they were one hart so this one tombe
May hold them near in death as linckt in life,
She’s gone before, and after comes her head
To sleepe with her among the blessed dead.
At Scamblesby, between Louth and Horncastle, is another pathetic
inscription on a wife’s tomb:—
To Margaret Coppinger wife of Francis Thorndike 1629.
Dilectissimæ conjugi Mæstissimus maritorum Franciscus
Thorndike.
L.(apidem) M.(armoreum) P.(osuit)
The old manor house of the Hyde family is at the north end of
the village. The road for the next ten miles over Deeping Fen is
uninteresting as a road can be. But this will be amply made up for in
another chapter when we shape our eastward course from Spalding to
Holbeach and Gedney.
[Sidenote: THE FATHER OF FEN FARMERS]
In Deeping Fen between Bourne, Spalding, Crowland and Market Deeping
there is about fifty square miles of fine fat land, and Marrat tells
us that as early as the reign of Edward the Confessor, Egelric, the
Bishop of Durham, who, having been once a monk at Peterborough, knew
the value of the land, in order to develop the district, made a cord
road of timber and gravel all the way from Deeping to Spalding. The
province then belonged to the Lords of Brunne or Bourne. In Norman times
Richard De Rulos, Chamberlain of the Conqueror, married the daughter of
Hugh de Evermue, Lord of Deeping. Their only daughter married Baldwin
FitzGilbert, and his daughter and heiress married Hugh de Wake, who
managed the forest of Kesteven for Henry III., which forest reached to
the bridge at Market Deeping. Richard De Rulos, who was the father of
all Lincolnshire farmers, aided by Ingulphus, Abbot of Croyland, set
himself to enclose and drain the fen land, to till the soil or convert it
into pasture and to breed cattle. He banked out the Welland which used
to flood the fen every year, whence it got its name of Deeping or the
deep meadows, and on the bank he set up tenements with gardens attached,
which were the beginnings of Market Deeping. He further enlarged St.
Guthlac’s chapel into a church, and then planted another little colony at
Deeping-St.-James, where his son-in-law, who carried on his activities,
built the priory. De Rulos was in fact a model landlord, and the result
was that the men of Deeping, like Jeshuron, “waxed fat and kicked,” and
the abbots of Croyland had endless contests with them for the next 300
years for constant trespass and damage. Probably this was the reason why
the Wakes set up a castle close by Deeping, but on the Northampton side
of the Welland at Maxey, which was inhabited later by Lady Margaret,
Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII., who, in addition to all
her educational benefactions, was also a capital farmer and an active
member of the Commissioners of Sewers.
[Sidenote: THE LIMESTONE SPRINGS]
We must now get back to Stamford. Even the road which goes due north to
Bourne soon finds itself outside the county; for Stamford is placed on a
mere tongue or long pointed nose of land belonging to Lincolnshire, in
what is aptly termed the Wapentake of ‘Ness.’ However, after four miles
in Rutland, it passes the four cross railroads at _Essendine_ Junction,
and soon after re-crosses the boundary near _Carlby_. Essendine Church
consists simply of a Norman nave and chancel. Here, a little to the
right lies _Braceborough Spa_, where water gushes from the limestone
at the rate of a million and a half gallons daily. This is a great
district for curative springs. There is one five miles to the west at
_Holywell_ which, with its stream and lake and finely timbered grounds,
is one of the beauty spots of Lincolnshire, and at the same distance
to the north are the strong springs of Bourne. We hear of a chalybeate
spring “continually boiling” or gushing up, for it was not hot, near
the church at Billingborough, and another at Stoke Rochford, each place
a good ten miles from Bourne and in opposite directions. Great Ponton
too, near Stoke Rochford, is said to “abound in Springs of pure water
rising out of the rock and running into the river Witham.” The church at
_Braceborough_ had a fine brass once to Thomas De Wasteneys, who died of
the Black Death in 1349. After Carlby there is little of interest on
the road itself till it tops the hill beyond _Toft_ whence, on an autumn
day, a grand view opens out across the fens to the Wash and to Boston on
the north-east, and the panorama sweeps southward past Spalding to the
time-honoured abbey of Croyland, and on again to the long grey pile of
Peterborough Minster, once islands in a trackless fen (the impenetrable
refuge of the warlike and unconquered Gervii or fenmen), but now a level
plain of cornland covered, as far as eye can see, with the richest crops
imaginable. A little further north we reach the Colsterworth road, and
turning east, enter the old town of _Bourne_, now only notable as the
junction of the Great Northern and Midland Railways. Since 1893 the
inhabitants have used an “e” at the end of the name to distinguish it
from Bourn in Cambridgeshire. Near the castle hill is a strong spring
called “Peter’s Pool,” or Bournwell-head, the water of which runs through
the town and is copious enough to furnish a water supply for Spalding.
This castle, mentioned by Ingulphus in his history of Croyland Abbey,
existed in the eleventh century; possibly the Romans had a fort here to
guard both the ‘Carr Dyke’ which passes by the east side of the town,
and also the King’s Street, a Roman road which, splitting off from the
Ermine Street at Castor, runs through Bourne due north to Sleaford. There
was an outer moat enclosing eight acres, and an inner moat of one acre,
inside which “on a mount of earth cast up with mene’s hands” stood the
castle, once the stronghold of the Wakes. To-day a maze of grassy mounds
alone attests the site, amongst which the “Bourn or Brunne gushes out in
a strong clear stream.” Marrat in his “History of Lincolnshire” tells us
that as early as 870 Morchar, Lord of Brun, fell fighting at the battle
of Threekingham. Two hundred years later we have “Hereward the Wake”
living at Bourn, and in the twelfth century “Hugh De Wac” married Emma,
daughter and heir of Baldwin FitzGilbert, who led some of King Stephen’s
forces in the battle of Lincoln and refused to desert his king. Hugh
founded the abbey of Bourn in 1138 on the site of an older building of
the eighth or ninth century.
[Illustration: _Bourne Abbey Church._]
[Sidenote: BOURNE]
[Sidenote: FAMOUS NATIVES]
Six generations later, Margaret de Wake married Edmund Plantagenet of
Woodstock, Earl of Kent, the sixth son of Edward I., and their daughter,
born 1328, was Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, who was finally married to
Edward the Black Prince. Their son was the unfortunate Richard II., and
through them the manor of Bourn, which is said to have been bestowed on
Baldwin, Count of Brienne, by William Rufus, passed back to the Crown.
Hereward is supposed to have been buried in the abbey in which only a
little of the early building remains. Certainly he was one of Bourn’s
famous natives, Cecil Lord Burleigh, the great Lord Treasurer, being
another, of whom it was said that “his very enemies sorrowed for his
death.” Job Hartop, born 1550, who sailed with Sir John Hawkins and spent
ten years in the galleys, and thirteen more in a Spanish prison, but came
at last safe home to Bourn, deserves honourable mention, and Worth, the
Parisian costumier, was also a native who has made himself a name; but
one of the most noteworthy of all Bourn’s residents was Robert Manning,
born at Malton, and canon of the Gilbertine Priory of Six Hills. He is
best known as Robert de Brunne, from his long residence in Bourn, where
he wrote his “Chronicle of the History of England.” This is a Saxon or
English metrical version of Wace’s Norman-French translation of the
“Chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth,” and of Peter Langtoft’s “History
of England,” which was also written in French. This work he finished in
1338, on the 200th anniversary of the founding of the abbey; and in 1303,
when he was appointed “Magister” in Bourn Abbey, he wrote his “Handlynge
of Sin,” also a translation from the French, in the preface to which he
has the following lines:—
For men unlearned I undertook
In English speech to write this book,
For many be of such mannere
That tales and rhymes will gladly hear.
On games and feasts and at the ale
Men love to hear a gossip’s tale
That leads perhaps to villainy
Or deadly sin, or dull folly.
For such men have I made this rhyme
That they may better spend their time.
To all true Christians under sun,
To good and loyal men of Brunn,
And specially all by name
O’ the Brotherhood of Sempringhame,
Robert of Brunn now greeteth ye,
And prays for your prosperity.
[Sidenote: ROBERT DE BRUNNE]
Robert was a translator and no original composer, but he was the first
after Layamon, the Worcestershire monk who lived just before him, to
write English in its present form. Chaucer followed him, then Spenser,
after which all was easy. But he was, according to Freeman, the pioneer
who created standard English by giving the language of the natives a
literary expression.
[Illustration: _The Station House, Bourne._]
[Sidenote: BLACKSMITH’S EPITAPH]
It is difficult to see the abbey church, it is so hemmed in by buildings,
and it never seems to have been completed. At the west end is some very
massive work. In the churchyard there is a curious epitaph on Thomas Tye,
a blacksmith, the first six lines of which are also found on a gravestone
in Haltham churchyard near Horncastle:—
My sledge and hammer lie reclined,
My bellows too have lost their wind,
My fire’s extinct, my forge decayed,
And in the dust my vice is laid,
My coal is spent, my iron’s gone,
My nails are drawn, my work is done.
My fire-dryed corpse lies here at rest,
My soul like smoke is soaring to the bles’t.
There is a charming old grey stone grammar school, possibly the very
building in which Robert De Brunne taught when “Magister” at the abbey
at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The station-master’s house,
called “Red Hall,” is a picturesque Elizabethan brick building once the
home of the Roman Catholic leader, Sir John Thimbleby, and afterwards of
the Digbys. Sir Everard Digby, whose fine monument is in Stoke Dry Church
near Uppingham, was born here. Another house is called “Cavalry House”
because Thomas Rawnsley, great grandfather of the writer, was living
there when he raised at his own expense and drilled a troop of “Light
Horse Rangers” at the time when Buonaparte threatened to invade England.
Lady Heathcote, whose husband commanded them, gave him a handsome silver
goblet in 1808, in recognition of his services. He died in 1826, and in
the spandrils of the north arcade in Bourne Abbey Church are memorial
tablets to him and to his wife Deborah (Hardwicke) “and six of their
children who died infants.”
CHAPTER IV
ROADS FROM BOURNE
The Carr Dyke—Thurlby—Edenham—Grimsthorpe Castle—King’s
Street—Swinstead—Stow Green—Folkingham—Haydor—Silk
Willoughby—Rippingale—Billingborough—Horbling—Sempringham and
the Gilbertines.
Bourne itself is in the fen, just off the Lincolnshire limestone. From it
the railways run to all the four points of the compass, but it is only
on the west, towards Nottingham, that any cutting was needed. Due north
and south runs the old Roman road, keeping just along the eastern edge
of the Wold; parallel with it, and never far off, the railway line keeps
on the level fen by Billingborough and Sleaford to Lincoln, a distance
of five-and-thirty miles, and all the way the whole of the land to the
east right up to the coast is one huge tract of flat fenland scored with
dykes, with only few roads, but with railways fairly frequent, running in
absolute straight lines for miles, and with constant level crossings.
One road which goes south from Bourne is interesting because it goes
along by the ‘Carr Dyke,’ that great engineering work of the Romans,
which served to catch the water from the hills and drain it off so as
to prevent the flooding of the fens. Rennie greatly admired it, and
adopted the same principle in laying out his great “Catchwater” drain,
affectionately spoken of by the men in the fens as ‘the owd Catch.’ The
Carr Dyke was a canal fifty-six miles long and fifty feet wide, with
broad, flat banks, and connected the Nene at Peterborough with the Witham
at Washingborough near Lincoln. From Washingborough southwards to Martin
it is difficult to trace, but it is visible at Walcot, thence it passed
by Billinghay and north Kyme through Heckington Fen, east of Horbling
and Billingborough and the Great Northern Railway line to Bourne. Two
miles south of this we come to the best preserved bit of it in the parish
of _Thurlby_, or Thoroldby, once a Northman now a Lincolnshire name. The
“Bourne Eau” now crosses it and empties into the River Glen, which itself
joins the Welland at Stamford.
[Sidenote: THURLBY]
_Thurlby_ Church stands only a few yards from the ‘Carr Dyke,’ it is full
of interesting work, and is curiously dedicated to St. Firmin, a bishop
of Amiens, of Spanish birth. He was sent as a missionary to Gaul, where
he converted the Roman prefect, Faustinian. He was martyred, when bishop,
in 303, by order of Diocletian. The son of Faustinian was his godson,
and was baptized with his name of Firmin, and he, too, eventually became
Bishop of Amiens. Part of the church is pre-Norman and even exhibits
“long and short” work. The Norman arcades have massive piers and cushion
capitals. In the transepts are Early English arcades and squints, and
there is a canopied piscina and a font of very unusual design. There
is also an old ladder with handrail as in some of the Marsh churches,
leading to the belfry. Three miles south is _Baston_, where there is a
Saxon churchyard in a field. Hence the road continues to _Market Deeping_
on the Welland, which is here the southern boundary of the county, and
thence to Deeping-St.-James and Peterborough. _Deeping-St.-James_ has a
grand priory church, which was founded by Baldwin Fitz-Gilbert as a cell
to Thorney Abbey in 1136, the year after he had founded Bourne Abbey. It
contains effigies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Shameful
to say a fountain near the church was erected in 1819 by mutilating and
using the material of a fine village cross. Peakirk, with its little
chapel of St. Pega, and Northborough and Woodcroft, both with remarkable
houses built of the good gray stone of the neighbourhood, Woodcroft being
a perfect specimen of a fortified dwelling-house, though near, are in the
county of Northants.
[Sidenote: EDENHAM CHURCH]
The Corby-Colsterworth-and-Grantham Road leaves Bourne on the west and,
passing through Bourne Wood at about four miles’ distance, reaches
_Edenham_. On the west front of the church tower, at a height of forty
feet, is the brass of an archbishop. Inside the church are two stones,
one being the figure of a lady and the other being part of an ancient
cross, both carved with very early interlaced work. The chancel is
a museum of monuments of the Bertie family, the Dukes of Ancaster,
continued from the earliest series at Spilsby of the Willoughby
D’Eresbys, and beginning with Robert Bertie,[2] eleventh Lord Willoughby
and first Earl of Lindsey, who fell at Edgehill while leading the
Lincolnshire regiment, 1642. The present Earls of Lindsey and Uffington
are descended from Lord Albemarle Bertie, fifth son of Robert, third Earl
of Lindsey, who has a huge monument here, dated 1738, adorned with no
less than seven marble busts.
Two fine altar tombs of the fourteenth century, with effigies of knight
and lady, seem to be treated somewhat negligently, being thrust away
together at the entrance. The nave pillars are very lofty, but the whole
church has a bare and disappointing appearance from the plainness of
the architecture, and the ugly coat of yellow wash, both on walls and
pillars, and the badness of the stained glass.
On the north wall of the chancel and reaching to the roof there is a very
lofty monument, with life-size effigy to the first Duke of Ancaster,
1723. East of this, one to the second duke with a marble cupid holding
a big medallion of his duchess, Jane Brownlow, 1741, and on the south
wall are equally huge memorials. In the family pew we hailed with relief
a very good alabaster tablet with white marble medallion of the late
Lady Willoughby “Clementina Elizabeth wife of the first Baron Aveland,
Baroness Willoughby d’Eresby in her own right, joint hereditary Lord
Chamberlain of England,” 1888.
The font is transition Norman, the cylindrical bowl surrounded by eight
columns not detached, and a circle of arcading consisting of two Norman
arches between each column springing from the capitals of the pillars.
The magnificent set of gold Communion plate was presented by the
Willoughby family. It is of French, Spanish, and Italian workmanship.
_Humby_ church has also a fine gold service, presented by Lady Brownlow
in 1682. It gives one pleasure to find good cedar trees and yews growing
in the churchyard.
[Sidenote: GRIMSTHORPE]
_Grimsthorpe Castle_ is a mile beyond Edenham. The park, the finest
in the county, in which are herds of both fallow and red deer, is very
large, and full of old oaks and hawthorns; the latter in winter are
quite green with the amount of mistletoe which grows on them. The lake
covers one hundred acres. The house is a vast building and contains a
magnificent hall 110 feet long, with a double staircase at either end,
and rising to the full height of the roof. In the state dining-room is
the Gobelin tapestry which came to the Duke of Suffolk by his marriage
with Mary, the widow of Louis XII. of France. Here, too, are several
Coronation chairs, the perquisites of the Hereditary Grand Chamberlain.
The Willoughby d’Eresby family have discharged this office ever since
1630 in virtue of descent from Alberic De Vere, Earl of Oxford, Grand
Chamberlain to Henry I., but in 1779, on the death of the fourth Duke of
Ancaster, the office was adjudged to be the right of both his sisters,
from which time the Willoughby family have held it conjointly with the
Earl of Carrington and the Marquis of Cholmondeley. Among the pictures
are several Holbeins. The manor of Grimsthorpe was granted to William,
the ninth Lord Willoughby, by Henry VIII. on his marriage with Mary de
Salinas, a Spanish lady in attendance on Katharine of Aragon, and it was
their daughter Katherine who became Duchess of Suffolk and afterwards
married Richard Bertie.
Just outside Grimsthorpe Park is the village of _Swinstead_, in whose
church is a large monument to the last Duke of Ancaster, 1809, and an
effigy of one of the numerous thirteenth century crusaders. Somehow one
never looks on the four crusades of that century as at all up to the
mark in interest and importance of the first and third under Godfrey de
Bouillon and Cœur de Lion in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; as for
the second (St. Bernard’s) that was nothing but a wretched muddle all
through.
Two miles further on is _Corby_, where the market cross remains, but not
the market. The station on the Great Northern main line is about five
miles east of Woolsthorpe, Sir Isaac Newton’s birthplace and early home.
I think the most remarkable of the Bourne roads is the Roman “Kings
Street,” which starts for the north and, after passing on the right
the fine cruciform church of _Morton_ and then the graceful spire of
_Hacconby_, a name of unmistakable Danish origin, sends first an offshoot
to the right to pass through the fens to Heckington, and three or four
miles further on another to the left to run on the higher ground to
Folkingham, whilst it keeps on its own rigidly straight course to the
Roman station on the ford of the river Slea, passing through no villages
all the way, and only one other Roman station which guarded a smaller
ford at _Threckingham_.
[Sidenote: STOW GREEN, ALGAR AND MORCAR]
This place is popularly supposed to be named from the three Danish
kings who fell in the battle at Stow Green, between Threckingham and
Billingborough, in 870; but the fine recumbent figures of Judge Lambert
de Treckingham, 1300, and a lady of the same family, and the fact that
the Threckingham family lived here in the fourteenth century points
to a less romantic origin of the name. The names of the Victors, Earl
Algar and Morcar, or Morkere, Lord of Bourne, survive in ‘Algarkirk’ and
‘Morkery Wood’ in South Wytham.
_Stow Green_ had one of the earliest chartered fairs in the kingdom.
It was held in the open, away from any habitation. Like Tan Hill
near Avebury, and St. Anne de Palue in Brittany, and Stonehenge, all
originally were probably assembling-places for fire-worship, for tan =
fire.
But as we go to-day from Bourne to Sleaford, we shall not use the Roman
road for more than the first six miles, but take then the off-shoot to
the left, and passing _Aslackby_, where, in the twelfth century, as at
Temple-Bruer, the Templars had one of their round churches, afterwards
given to the Hospitallers, come to the little town of _Folkingham_, which
had been granted by the Conqueror to Gilbert de Gaunt or Ghent, Earl of
Lincoln.
He was the nephew of Queen Matilda, and on none of his followers, except
Odo Bishop of Bayeux, did the Conqueror bestow his favours with a more
liberal hand; for we read that he gave him 172 Lordships of which 113
were in Lincolnshire. He made his seat at Folkingham, but, having lands
in Yorkshire, he was a benefactor to St. Mary’s Abbey, York, at the same
time that he restored and endowed Bardney Abbey after its destruction by
the Danes under Inguar and Hubba.
The wide street seems to have been laid out for more people than now
frequent it. The church is spacious and lofty, with a fine roof and
singularly rich oak screen and pulpit, into which the rood screen doorway
opens. It was well restored about eighty years ago, by the rector, the
Rev. T. H. Rawnsley, who was far ahead of his time in the reverend
spirit with which he handled old architecture. The neighbouring church
of _Walcot_ has a fine fourteenth century oak chest, similar to one at
Hacconby. Three and a half miles further on we come to _Osbournby_, with
a quite remarkable number of old carved bench-ends and some beautiful
canopied Sedilia. Another Danish village, _Aswardby_—originally, I
suppose, Asgarby, one can fancy a hero called ‘Asgard the Dane’ but
hardly Asward—has a fine house and park, sold by one of the Sleaford Carr
family to Sir Francis Whichcote in 1723.
Four miles west of Aswardby is the village of _Haydor_ (Norse, heide =
heath). Here, in the north aisle of the church, which has a tall tower
and spire, is some very good stained glass. It was given by Geoffrey le
Scrope, who was Prebend of Haydor 1325 to 1380, and much resembles the
fine glass in York Minster, which was put in in 1338. In this parish is
the old manor of Culverthorpe, belonging to the Houblon family. It has a
very fine drawing-room and staircase and a painted ceiling.
[Sidenote: SILK-WILLOUGHBY]
We must now come back to the Sleaford road which, a couple of miles
beyond Aswardby Park, turns sharp to the right for _Silk-Willoughby_,
or Silkby cum Willoughby. Here we have a really beautiful church, with
finely proportioned tower and spire of the Decorated period. The Norman
font is interesting and the old carved bench-ends, and so is the large
base of a wayside cross in the village, with bold representations of
the four Evangelists, each occupying the whole of one side. Three miles
further we reach Sleaford.
One of the features of the county is the number of roads it has running
north and south in the same direction as the Wolds. The Roman road
generally goes straightest, though at times the railway line, as for
instance between Bourne and Spalding, or between Boston and Burgh, takes
an absolute bee line which outdoes even the Romans.
We saw that the two roads going north from Bourne sloped off right
and left of the “Kings Street.” That on the left or western side
keeps a parallel course to Sleaford, but that on the right, after
reaching _Horbling_, diverges still further to the east and makes for
_Heckington_. These two places are situated about six miles apart, and it
is through the Horbling and Heckington fens that the only two roads which
run east and west in all South Lincolnshire make their way. They both
start from the Grantham and Lincoln Road at Grantham and at Honington,
the former crossing the “Kings Street” at Threckingham, and thence to
Horbling fen, the latter passing by Sleaford and Heckington. Both of
these roads curve towards one another when they have passed the fens,
and, uniting near Swineshead, make for Boston and the Wash. The whole of
the land in South Lincolnshire slopes from west to east, falling between
Grantham and Boston about 440 feet, but really this fall takes place
almost entirely in the first third of the way on the western side of “The
Roman Street” which was cleverly laid out on the Fen-side fringe of the
higher ground. The road from Bourne to Heckington East of the “Street” is
absolutely on the fen level and the railway goes parallel to it, between
the road and the Roman ‘Carr Dyke.’ Thus we have a Roman road, a Roman
canal, two modern roads and a railway, all running side by side to the
north.
[Sidenote: RIPPINGALE]
The Heckington road, after leaving the “Street,” passes through _Dunsby_
and _Dowsby_, where there is an old Elizabethan house once inhabited by
the Burrell family. _Rippingale_ lies off to the left between the two and
has in its church a rood screen canopy but no screen, which is very rare,
and a large number of old monuments from the thirteenth century onwards,
the oldest being two thirteenth century knights in chain mail of the
family of Gobaud, who lived at the Hall, now the merest ruin, where they
were succeeded by the Bowet, Marmion, Haslewood and Brownlow families.
An effigy of a deacon with the open book of the Gospels has this unusual
inscription, “Ici git Hwe Geboed le palmer le fils Jhoan Geboed. Millᵒ
446 Prees pur le alme.” It is interesting to find here a fifteenth
century monument to a Roger de Quincey. Was he, I wonder, an ancestor
of the famous opium eater? There is in the pavement a Marmion slab of
1505. The register records the death in July, 1815, of “the Lincolnshire
Giantess” Anne Hardy, aged 16, height 7 ft. 2 in. The Brownlow family
emigrated hence to Belton near Grantham. They had another Manor House at
_Great Humby_, which is just half-way between Rippingale and Belton, of
which the little brick-built domestic chapel now serves as a church. As
we go on we notice that the whole of the land eastwards is a desolate and
dreary fen, which extends from the Welland in the south to the Witham
near Lincoln. Of this Fenland, the Witham, when it turns southwards,
forms the eastern boundary, and alongside of it goes the Lincoln and
Boston railway, while the line from Bourne viâ Sleaford and on to Lincoln
forms the western boundary. I use the term ‘fen’ in the Lincolnshire
sense for an endless flat stretch of black corn-land without tree or
hedge, and intersected by straight-cut dykes or drains in long parallels.
This is the winter aspect; in autumn, when the wind blows over the miles
of ripened corn, the picture is a very different one.
It is curious that on the Roman road line all the way from the Welland to
the Humber so few villages are found, whilst on the roads which skirt the
very edge of the fen from Bourne to Heckington and then north again from
Sleaford to Lincoln, villages abound.
[Illustration: _Sempringham._]
[Sidenote: A LONG TRUDGE]
[Sidenote: SEMPRINGHAM]
[Sidenote: MONK AND NUN]
[Sidenote: ST. GILBERT]
I once walked with an Undergraduate friend on a winter’s day from
Uppingham to Boston, about 57 miles, the road led pleasantly at first
through Normanton, Exton and Grimsthorpe Parks, in the last of which
the mistletoe was at its best; but when we got off the high ground and
came to Dunsby and Dowsby the only pleasure was the walking, and as we
reached Billingborough and Horbling, about 30 miles on our way, and
had still more than twenty to trudge and in a very uninviting country,
snow began to fall, and then the pleasure went out of the walking. By
the time we reached Boston it was four inches deep. It had been very
heavy going for the last fourteen miles, and never were people more
glad to come to the end of their journey. Neither of us ever felt any
great desire to visit that bit of Lincolnshire again; and yet, under
less untoward circumstances, there would have been something to stop
for at _Billingborough_ with its lofty spire, its fine gable-crosses,
and great west window, and at the still older small cruciform church
at _Horbling_, exhibiting work of every period but Saxon, but most of
which, owing to bad foundations, has had to be at different times taken
down and rebuilt. It contains a fine fourteenth century monument to the
De la Maine family. Even more interesting would it have been to see
the remains of the famous priory church at _Sempringham_, a mile and a
half south of Billingborough, for Sempringham was the birthplace of a
remarkable Englishman. Gilbert, eldest son of a Norman knight and heir
to a large estate, was born in 1083; he was deformed, but possessing
both wit and courage he travelled on the Continent. Later in life he
was Chaplain to Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, who built Sleaford Castle
in 1137, and Rector of Sempringham, and Torrington, near Wragby. Being
both wealthy and devoted to the church, he, with the Bishop’s approval,
applied in the year 1148 to Pope Eugenius III. for a licence to found
a religious house to receive both men and women; this was granted him,
and so he became the founder of the only pure English order of monks
and nuns, called after him, _the Gilbertines_. Eugenius III. suffered
a good deal at the hands of the Italians, who at that time were led by
Arnold of Brescia, the patriotic disciple of Abelard, insomuch that he
was constrained to live at Viterbo, Rome not being a safe place for him;
but he seems to have thought rather well of the English, for he it was
who picked out the monk, Nicolas Breakspeare, from St. Alban’s Abbey
and promoted him to be Papal legate at the Court of Denmark, which led
eventually to his becoming Pope Adrian IV., the only Englishman who ever
reached that dignity. The elevation does not seem to have improved his
character, as his abominable cruelty to the above-mentioned Arnold of
Brescia indicates. Eugenius, however, is not responsible for this, and
at Gilbert’s request he instituted a new order in which monks following
the rules of St. Augustine were to live under the same roof with nuns
following the rules of St. Benedict. Their distinctive dress was a black
cassock with a white hood, and the canons wore beards. What possible
good Gilbert thought could come of this new departure it is difficult
to guess. Nowadays we have some duplicate public schools where boys
and girls are taught together and eat and play together, and it is not
unlikely that the girls gain something of stability from this, and that
their presence has a useful and far-reaching effect upon the boys,
besides that obvious one which is conveyed in the old line
“Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros;”
but these monks and nuns never saw one another except at some very
occasional service in chapel; even at Mass, though they might hear
each other’s voices in the canticles, they were parted by a wall and
invisible to each other, and as they thus had no communication with one
another they might, one would think, have just as well been in separate
buildings. Gilbert thought otherwise. He was a great educator, and
especially had given much thought to the education of women, at all
events he believed that the plan worked well, for he increased his houses
to the number of thirteen, which held 1,500 nuns and 700 canons. Most of
these were in Lincolnshire, and all were dissolved by Henry VIII. Gilbert
was certainly both pious and wise, and being a clever man, when Bishop
Alexander moved his Cistercians from Haverholme Priory to Louth Park
Abbey, because they suffered so much at Haverholme from rheumatism, and
handed over the priory, a chilly gift, to the Gilbertines, their founder
managed to keep his Order there in excellent health. He harboured, as we
know, Thomas à Becket there in 1164, and got into trouble with Henry II.
for doing so. He was over 80 then, but he survived it and lived on for
another five and twenty years, visiting occasionally his other homes at
Lincoln, Alvingham, Bolington, Sixhills, North Ormsby, Catley, Tunstal
and Newstead, and died in 1189 at the age of 106. Thirteen years later
he was canonised by Pope Innocent III., and his remains transferred to
Lincoln Minster, where he became known as St. Gilbert of Sempringham.
Part of the nave of his priory at Sempringham is now the Parish Church;
it stands on a hill three-quarters of a mile from _Pointon_, where is
the vicarage and the few houses which form the village. Much of the old
Norman work was unhappily pulled down in 1788, but a doorway richly
carved and an old door with good iron scroll-work is still there. At
the time of the dissolution the priory, which was a valuable one, being
worth £359 12_s._ 6_d._, equal to £3,000 nowadays, was given to Lord
Clinton. Campden, 300 years ago, spoke of “Sempringham now famous for
the beautiful house built by Edward Baron Clinton, afterwards Earl of
Lincoln,” the same man to whom Edward VI. granted Tattershall. Of this
nothing is left but the garden wall, and Marrat, writing in 1815, says:
“At this time the church stands alone, and there are but five houses in
the parish, which are two miles from the church and in the fen.”
CHAPTER V
SOUTH-WEST LINCOLNSHIRE AND ITS RIVERS
The Glen—Burton Coggles—Wilsthorpe—The Eden—Verdant
Green—Irnham Manor and Church—The Luttrell
Tomb—Walcot—Somerby—Ropsley—Castle Bytham—The
Witham—Colsterworth—The Newton Chapel—Sir Isaac Newton—Stoke
Rochford—Great Ponton—Boothby Bagnell—A Norman House.
I have said that the whole of the county south of Lincoln slopes from
west to east, the slope for the first few miles being pretty sharp. The
only exception to the rule is in the tract on the west of the county,
which lies north of the Grantham and Nottingham road, between the
Grantham to Lincoln ridge and the western boundary of the county. This
tract is simply the flat wide-spread valley of the Rivers Brant and
Witham, which all slopes gently to the north. North Lincolnshire rivers
run to the Humber; these are the Ancholme and the Trent; but there is
a peculiarity about the rivers in South Lincolnshire; for though the
Welland runs a consistent course eastward to the Wash, and is joined not
far from its mouth by the River Glen, that river and the Witham each run
very devious courses before they find the Eastern Sea. The Glen flowing
first to the south then to the north and north-east, the Witham flowing
first to the north and then to the south with an easterly trend to Boston
Haven.
[Sidenote: THE GLEN AND THE EDEN]
Both these streams are of considerable length, the course of the Glen
measured without its windings being five and thirty miles, and that of
the Witham as much again.
All the other streams which go from the ridge drain eastwards into the
fens, and they effectually kept the fens under water until the Romans
cut the Carr Dyke, intercepting the water from the hills and taking it
into the river.
[Sidenote: IRNHAM]
To follow the “Glen” from its source in the high ground between Somerby
and Boothby Pagnell to its most southerly point two miles below
Braceborough, will take us through a very pleasant country. A tributary,
the first of many, runs in from _Bassingthorpe_, whose church, like that
of _Burton Coggles_, three miles to the south, is dedicated to St. Thomas
of Canterbury. A beautiful little house, built here by the Grantham
wool merchant, Thomas Coney, in 1568, has a counterpart at Ponton in
the immediate neighbourhood, where Antony Ellys, also a merchant of the
staple at Calais, built himself a charming little Tudor house about the
same time. Augmented by the Bassingthorpe brook, the Glen goes on past
_Bitchfield_, _Burton-Coggles_ and _Corby_, and on between _Swayfield_
and _Swinstead_ to _Creeton_, where are to be seen many stone coffins,
probably of the monks of Vaudey Abbey in Grimsthorpe Park, a corruption
of Valdei (Vallis dei or God’s Vale). It then winds along by _Little
Bytham_, and, passing _Careby_ and _Carlby_, gets into a plain country,
and turns north near Shillingthorpe Hall. The last place it sees before
entering the region of the Bedford Levels is _Gretford_. But near the
church of _Wilsthorpe_—in which is the effigy of a thirteenth century
knight with the arms of the Wake family, who claim descent from the
famous Hereward the Wake—we find another stream joining the Glen to
help it on its straight-cut course through Deeping fen. We may well
spend an afternoon in tracing this stream from its source some sixteen
miles away. It flows all the way through a valley of no great width,
and, with the exception of _Edenham_, undistinguished by any villages.
A purely rustic stream, it is known as the Eden, though it has no name
on the maps, and its only distinction since it left its source near
Humby is that it divides the villages of _Lenton_ or _Lavington_, where
the author of “Verdant Green,” Rev. E. Bradley, best known as “Cuthbert
Bede,” was once rector, and _Ingoldsby_, the village of Ingold or
Ingulph, the Dane, which, however, has nothing to do with the well-known
“Ingoldsby Legends.” A little to the south of Ingoldsby are the prettily
named villages _Irnham_, _Kirkby-Underwood_, and _Rippingale_; of these
_Irnham_ has a picturesque Tudor hall in a fine park. This was built in
1510 by Richard Thimelby in the form of the letter L; the north wing was
mostly destroyed by fire in 1887, but the great hall remains, and there
is a priest’s hiding-place entered by a hinged step in the stairs in
which was found a straw pallet and a book of hours.
The manor was granted by the Conqueror to Ralph Paganel along with
others, _e.g._, Boothby Bagnell and Newport Pagnell, and there was
even then, in the eleventh century, a church here. This manor passed
by marriage in 1220 to Sir Andrew Luttrell, Baron of Irnham, whence,
through an heiress, it passed to the Thimelbys. In the church is a fine
brass to “Andrew Luttrell Miles Dominus de Irnham,” 1390. He is in plate
armour with helmet, and has his feet on a lion. In the north aisle,
which is sometimes called the Luttrell Chapel, is a beautifully carved
Easter sepulchre, the design and work being much like that of the rood
screen in Southwell Cathedral. This was really a founder’s tomb of the
Luttrell family, and stood east and west under the easternmost arch on
the north side of the nave, whence it was most improperly moved in 1858
and should certainly be put back again. Doubtless it was used as an
Easter sepulchre, and it is of about the same date, 1370, as those at
Heckington, Navenby, and Lincoln. In the pavement of the north aisle is
an altar slab, with the five consecration crosses well preserved.
Since the Thimelbys, who followed the Hiltons, the house has been in
possession of the Conquest, Arundel, and Clifford families. Not more
than two miles to the east is a fine avenue leading to an Elizabethan
house in the form of an E, called Bulby Hall. Later the stream goes
through its one village of Edenham, passes near Bowthorpe Park with its
great oak, fifty feet in girth, and so joins the river Glen at Kotes
Bridge, near _Wilsthorpe_. Though the stream, Edenham excepted, has
nothing particular on its banks, near its source are several interesting
churches. _Sapperton_, which still exhibits the pulpit hour-glass-stand
for the use of the preacher to insure that the congregation got their
full hour; _Pickworth_, with chantry chapels at each end of the south
aisle, a rood screen and a fine old south door; and _Walcot_, with its
curious double “squint” from the south chantry and its beautiful little
priest’s door, evidently once a low-side window, for its sill is two feet
from the ground and is grooved for glazing. Here the economy of the Early
English builders is shown by their use of the caps of an earlier Norman
arcade to form the bases of their new pillars. Hard by is _Newton_ with
its lofty tower, _Haceby_, where once the Romans had a small settlement,
and _Braceby_, which, with _Ropsley_ and _Somerby_, complete an octave of
Early English churches all near together.
[Sidenote: SOMERBY]
_Somerby_ is within four miles of Grantham. The church contains a
singular effigy, date 1300, of a knight with a saddled horse at his feet,
and a groom wearing the hooded short cloak of the period, holding the
horse’s head. Among the Brownlow monuments is the following inscription
to Jane Brownlow, daughter of Sir Richard Brownlow of Humby, 1670,
She was of a solid serious temper, of a competent
Stature and a fayre compleaciton, whoes soul
now is perfectly butyfyed with the friution of
God in glory and whose body in her dew time
he will rais to the enjoyment of the same.
It is curious to find notes on stature and complexion in an epitaph,
but it was only lately that I saw a tomb slab in the church of
Dorchester-on-Thames, where, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, some of
our Lindsey bishops had their Bishop-stool (_see_ Cap. XII.), on which it
was thought worth while to record, _inter alia_, that Rebekah Granger who
died in 1753 was “respectful to her friends, and chearful and innocent in
her deportment”; whilst close by is a somewhat minute description of the
nervous idiosyncrasy of Mrs. S. Fletcher, who died in 1799 at the age of
29, ending with “She sank and died a martyr to excessive sensibility.”
The feature of the church is the Norman chancel arch with double
moulding. It is especially interesting as showing that the carving of the
stones which form the arch was done not by plan but by eye; though the
same pattern goes throughout, no two stones are exactly similar, and the
pattern is larger or smaller as the mason cut it by guess, and has two
zigzags or two and a half accordingly, and therefore the pattern in some
places does not properly meet, but the whole effect is all right. The
manor was held by the Threckingham family in the fourteenth century, and
their arms are in one of the windows. In the feet of fines, Lincoln file
86, we have an agreement between Lambert de Trikingham and Robert, son of
Walter le Clerk, of Trikingham, and Hawysia his wife, made at Westminster
in the second year of Edward II. (1319). The lady with this charming name
seeming to have afterwards married Sir Henry de Wellington, for in the
thirty-second year of Edward III. (1359) another settlement is recorded
of a dispute about Somerby Manor between Enericus de Welyngton Miles and
Hawysia his wife on one side, and John Bluet and Alan Rynsley (one of
the sixteen various spellings of Rawnsley) and his wife Margaret on the
other, by which Alan and Margaret, for conceding their claims, receive
100 marks of silver. This and much other interesting information is to
be found in a paper on The Manor of Somerby, by Gilbert George Walker,
rector of the parish.
In the fifteenth century John Bluet held the living, one of whose
ancestors was probably the civilian with his feet on a fleece, whose fine
recumbent effigy is in Harlaxton church. His daughter married Robert
Bawde, whose brass is in the church, and their family were in possession
till 1720. A large monument on the north wall commemorates Elizabeth Lady
Brownlow, _née_ Freke, whose son John built Belton House. She died in
1684. There is also a brass to Peregrine Bradshaw and his wife, who died
in 1669 and 1673.
Dr. William Stukeley, the famous antiquary, who was a Lincolnshire man,
born at Holbeach in 1687, was, at one time, rector of Somerby.
_Ropsley_, two and a half miles to the east, shows some ‘Long and Short’
Saxon work at the north-east angle of the nave. The tower has a Decorated
broach spire. At the south porch is the couplet,
“Hac non vade via
Nisi dices Ave Maria.”
[Sidenote: BISHOP FOX]
The church has also a very notable little stained glass window with
an armed figure of Johannes de Welby. In the church a curious broad
projection from the east window of the north aisle forms a bridge to
the rood loft. In the eyes of a Corpus man, like the writer, Ropsley is
sacred as being the birthplace of Bishop Fox, who held successively the
sees of Exeter, Bath and Wells, Durham and Winchester, and founded, or
helped to found, the Grantham Grammar School near his old home in 1528,
and also, in 1516, the College of Corpus Christi, Oxford.
The Eden, whose course we have been tracing, having joined the Glen,
crosses the Carr Dyke a mile beyond Wilsthorpe, after which the Glen
becomes for a time simply a fen drain. The “Bourne Eau” goes into it and
they proceed together with many duck decoys marked in the 1828 map on
each side of them till they come to the beginning of the great “Forty
foot drain.” The Glen then turning east resumes more or less its river
character, joins the Welland and goes seawards to the Wash, while the
Forty foot going northwards parallel to and with the same purpose as the
“Carr Dyke” but a few miles to the east of that famous work, receives the
water from the many “Droves” which are all cut east and west and conveys
them to the outfall in Boston Haven.
[Sidenote: PRIZE-FIGHTING]
We will now, without having to go outside the parallelogram of pleasant
upland country which lies between the four towns of Stamford, Bourne,
Sleaford and Grantham, find the sources of the river Witham and follow
them through Grantham as far as Barkston and Marston, and thence through
a totally different country to Lincoln. To begin at the beginning of
things. Just at the junction of the three counties of Lincoln, Leicester,
and Rutland, is a place near ‘Crown point’ called Cribbs Lodge. This
commemorates the great boxing match between Molyneux, the black, and Tom
Cribb, when, as the _Stamford Mercury_ has it, “after a severe fight
Molyneux was beat, and a reel was danced by Gully and Cribb amidst shouts
of applause. There were 15,000 people present.” Gully afterwards became
an M.P.
Close to this spot, but in the county of Leicestershire, is the source of
our river Witham, which takes its name from the little village of _South
Witham_ close by.
The infant stream skirts the western side of Witham Common, which is
something like 400 feet above sea level; nearly all its feeders come from
still higher ground just outside the western edge of the county. A glance
at the map will show with what remarkable unanimity all the streams which
feed the South Lincolnshire rivers flow eastwards. Thus from Witham
Common a brook goes through _Castle Bytham_ to join the Glen at _Little
Bytham_. The castle, of which only huge mounds now remain, was perched on
a hill and divided by the brook from the village which covers the slope
of the valley and is crowned by its very early Norman church, making
altogether a very pretty picture. The church contains a fine canopied
tomb of the Colville family, who owned the castle in the thirteenth
century, and also in the tower is a ladder eloquent of the Restoration,
with the inscription “This ware the May Poul, 1660.” Middleton, first
Bishop of Calcutta, once held this living.
[Illustration: _The Witham, Boston._]
[Sidenote: CASTLE BYTHAM]
The castle is of considerable interest. At the time of the Conquest the
land belonged to Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, whose name survives in
“Mockery or Morkery Wood” near South Witham, and was given by William the
First to his brother-in-law Drogo, who began the castle, and afterwards
to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, William’s half-brother, the same who gave his
name to “Bayons Manor.” When Odo began to show signs of contumacy Henry
III. in person fought against and took the castle, and when dismantled
gave it to the Colvilles, but it was not completely destroyed until the
Wars of the Roses.
[Sidenote: “PRAY AND PLOUGH”]
_Little Bytham_, two miles to the east, is the station for Grimsthorpe,
which is approached by a drive of three miles through the park. The
church is dedicated to St. Medard, Bishop of Noyon, A.D. 531, a name
familiar to us from the “Ingoldsby Legends.” It shows some Saxon “Long
and Short” work and a good deal of Norman, notably a doorway with a
curious tympanum ornamented with birds in circles. There is a small
lowside window of two lights on the west and a little Norman window high
up on the east of this doorway, which is at the south-east angle of the
nave. The Norman tower is surmounted by a transition upper story and
spire. The south porch and chancel arch are Early English and all round
the chancel runs a most interesting stone seat, broken only by a fine
canopied recess for a tomb. A good agricultural motto is cut on the stone
base of the pulpit, “Orate et arate,” “pray and plough.” The motto is not
inapt, for the land about here is mostly plough land, and one wonders it
should be as good as it is, for the limestone is very near the surface,
indeed the Great Northern line has stone _in situ_ on each side of it
about five feet high, which seems to have very few inches of soil above
it, and this runs the whole way from Little Bytham to Corby, and again at
Ponton the lines pass through it in a deeper cutting.
But to return to our Witham river. This keeps due north by
_North-Witham_, _Colsterworth_, _Easton_, _Stoke Rockford_, _Great and
Little Ponton_ to _Grantham_, a distance of ten miles. The church at
_North Wytham_ has a long nave, a narrow massive Norman chancel arch, and
the floor descending to the east. In the 1887 restoration by Withers, a
choir was formed out of the east end of the nave, and the chancel has
been left as a monumental chapel for the Sherard family monuments of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a decidedly clever arrangement.
Robert Sherard seems to have been a scholar, for he occupied his thoughts
when on his deathbed in writing twenty-six Latin elegiacs now on his
brass and dated 1592.
[Sidenote: WOOLSTHORPE. THE NEWTON CHAPEL]
[Sidenote: SIR ISAAC NEWTON]
From _Colsterworth_ a road runs east past Twyford Forest, twelve
miles to Bourne. In the church, which is both Norman, Decorated, and
Perpendicular, there is the Newton chapel, with tombs of Sir Isaac’s
parents and grandparents. This is modern, but is on the site of the old
Woolsthorpe Manor chapel. It contains a sundial with an inscription,
which says that it was cut by Newton when a boy of nine. His baptism
appears in the Register thus:—“Isaac son of Isaac and Hanna Newton Janʳʸ
1, 1643.” She was an Ayscough, and married for her second husband the
Rev. Barnabas Smith of North Wytham. On the left bank of the Witham, at
a distance of half a mile, is the hamlet of _Woolsthorpe_, which must
not be confused with the Woolsthorpe near Belvoir. The name was probably
Wolph’s or Ulfsthorpe, and nothing to do with Wool. In Domesday Book it
is Ulstanthorp. In Woolsthorpe Manor House Newton was born on Christmas
Day, 1641. The window is shown from which he saw the apple fall and the
Newton Arms—two cross-bones—are sculptured over the door. In the days of
the Commonwealth he was at Bishop Fox’s school at Grantham, 1651-1656.
His mother thought to make a farmer of him, but kindly fate took him to
Cambridge when he was eighteen, and he spent more than four years there,
taking his degree in 1665. The incident of the apple dates from 1666,
the year of the great Plague and the Fire of London. Starting from this
he deduced the reasons for the movement of the planets which Galileo in
1610 and Copernicus in 1540 had noted. He had by this time accumulated
much of the material for his great work the “Principia,” and for the next
thirty years he worked and wrote unceasingly. He was appointed Master of
the Mint in 1695, and President of the Royal Society in 1703, and was
knighted in 1705. He died in March, 1727. His own view of his life’s
work may be given in his own words: “I do not know what I may appear to
the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on
the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother or
prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all
undiscovered before me.” After lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber
he was buried in Westminster Abbey, the Lord Chancellor, two dukes, and
three earls being pall-bearers; his monument, near the entrance to the
choir on the north side, shows a recumbent figure with the right arm on
four folios named Divinity, Chronology, Optics, and Phil. Prin. Math.
Above is a large globe showing the planets, etc., projecting from a
pyramid, and on the globe the figure of Astronomy with a closed book, in
a very pensive mood. Below is a bas-relief representing Newton’s various
labours and discoveries.
The inscription, written by Pope, is as follows:—
“Isaacus Newtonius
Quem Immortalem
Testantur Tempus, Natura, Coelum:
Mortalem
Hoc Marmor fatetur.
Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night;
God said let Newton be! and all was light.”
His statue is also in the ante-chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, so
eloquently described by Wordsworth as
“The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.”
Newton is represented standing, and faces to the east, and of the other
seated figures in the ante-chapel, which all face north or south, the
latest addition and the finest work is Thornicroft’s statue of another
Lincolnshire celebrity Alfred Lord Tennyson. This is an admirable
likeness; the best view of it is from the east side.
West of Woolsthorpe is _Buckminster_, just over the border, but
remarkable for having once had a beacon on the tower. The circular
chimney of the Watcher’s shelter still stands in the north-west angle. At
Weldon near Kettering is a lantern fifteen feet high with a cupola put up
200 years ago to guide folk through Rockingham Forest. It is lit now on
New Year’s Eve.
From Colsterworth and Woolsthorpe we follow the river to _Stoke
Rockford_, which is wedged in between the parks of _Stoke_ and _Easton_.
Both these manors were once held by the Rochfords and each had a separate
church. Now one church serves for both and has a chapel for each manor,
one on either side and extending the full length of the chancel. The
Stoke Chapel has monuments of John de Neville 1320 and of the family of
the present owners, the Turners. The Easton Chapel has a very fine one to
the Cholmeleys, 1641, whose descendants still live in the old Elizabethan
“Hall” with its triple avenue of limes which reach to the Great North
Road. On the other side of the road the house at Stoke Park is also
Elizabethan in style, but not in date, being by Salvin. It belongs to
Christopher Turner, who also owns Panton Hall, near East Barkwith. The
park has many fine trees and some very old thorns. In the chancel of
Stoke Rochford is a brass to Henry Rochford, 1470, and on a brass plate
this inscription to Oliver St. John and his wife Elizabeth Bygod, 1503:—
“Pray for the soil of Master Olyr-Sentjehn Squier, sonne unto ye right
excellent hye and mightty pryncess of Som~sete g~ndame unto ou~ sovey~n
Lord Kynge Herre the VII. and for the soll of Dame Elizabeth Bygod his
wiff, whoo dep~ted from this t~nsitore liffe ye XII daye of June, i~ ye
year of ou~ Lord MCCCCC and III.”
[Sidenote: THE LADY MARGARET]
Thus Oliver was brother to Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, the
mother of the King. She made a great mark on the history of her time,
which was the fifteenth century. Daughter of the first Duke of Somerset
and wife successively of the Earl of Richmond, who was half-brother to
Henry VI., and of Henry Stafford, son to the Duke of Buckingham, and
of Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby, and mother, by her first marriage, of
Henry VII., she was a magnificent patron of learning, for she endowed
Christ’s College and St. John’s College, Cambridge, and founded the “Lady
Margaret” professorships of Divinity both at Cambridge and at Oxford.
Oliver’s mother had been the wife of Sir John Bigod, who with his father
was killed on Towton field, near Leeds, in 1461, when, after a very
bloody fight, the throne was secured to Edward IV., 28,000 Lancastrians,
it is said, though this is hardly credible, having been left on the
field of battle. Oliver, whom Leland describes as a big black fellow,
died at Fontarabia, in Spain, but was buried at Stoke Rochford. It shows
of how little account the spelling even of proper names was in the
fifteenth century when we find here the brass plate on his daughter’s
tomb inscribed, “Hic jacet Sibella Seyntjohn quondam filia Oliveri
Sentjohn.” Perhaps there is something after all in the remark I heard a
farmer make in the train at Boston: “Well, I reckon it is a clear gift,
is spelling. My boy John, he’s nobbut eleven, and he can spell owt, but
I’m noä hand at it mysen, and I reckon theer’s a stränge many is makes
but a poor job on it.” In the museum at Peterborough there is a notebook
of The Lord Chief Justice, Oliver St. John, Chancellor of the University
of Cambridge, dated 1649, who earned for himself the undying gratitude of
his own and all future generations by saving Peterborough Cathedral.
[Sidenote: OLIVER ST. JOHN]
Henry VIII., when urged to erect a suitable monument to Queen Katherine
of Aragon in the cathedral, had said he would leave her one of the
goodliest monuments in Christendom, meaning that he would spare the
cathedral for her sake, but at the time of the civil war nearly all in
the nature of ornamentation was destroyed, including the organ, the
windows, the reredos, and the tombs and escutcheons of Queen Katherine
herself, and of Mary Queen of Scots. After a time Oliver St. John,
who had married twice over into the Cromwell family, as a reward for
political services in Holland obtained a grant of the ruined minster,
which was actually “propounded to be sold and demolished,” and gave
it to the town for use as a parish church. It still remained in a sad
state, but was being gradually put into order all through the nineteenth
century, and at last the tower, which rested on four piers, all of which
were found to be simply pipes of Ashlar masonry filled with sand, was
taken down in 1883 and solidly rebuilt, and the whole fabric put in
order, the white-washed walls scraped, new stalls excellently carved by
Thompson of Peterborough and a beautiful inlaid marble floor, the gift of
Dean Argles, placed in the choir, which was prolonged westwards two bays
into the nave, on the old Benedictine lines, till now the interior is
fully worthy of the uniquely magnificent west front.
At _Easton_ there was a Roman station, halfway between _Casterton_ and
_Ancaster_. It was important as being the last roadside watering place,
the Ermine Street passing through a waterless tract for the next twelve
miles.
[Sidenote: A NORMAN HOUSE]
A mile and a half to the east, the Great Northern line tunnels under
Bassingthorpe hill at 370 feet above sea level, and, with the exception
of one spot in Berwickshire, this is the highest point the line attains
between London and Edinburgh. Immediately after this the line crosses the
“Ermine Street,” which from Stamford to Colsterworth is identical with
“the Great North Road,” but it splits off to the right a mile south of
Easton Park, and keeping always to the right bank of the Witham, takes a
straight course to Ancaster, leaving Grantham three miles to the left.
After this parting, the North Road crosses to the left bank of the river
and runs up to _Great Ponton_. The tall tower of the late Perpendicular
church, built in 1519 by Anthony Ellys, merchant of the staple, of
Calais, who lived in a manor house in the middle of the village, has
Chaucer’s phrase, “Thynke and thanke God of all,” carved on three sides
of it.
Inside is a very early font, possibly Saxon; a large square bowl
chamfered on the under side resting on a square stone. The tower is
unlike anything in the county, but has counterparts among the churches of
Somersetshire. The base moulding is enriched with carving, and the double
buttresses have canopied niches excellently worked. The belfry has large
double two-light windows under a carved hood-mould, as at Grantham and
All Saints, Stamford. The gargoyles are remarkably fine, one shows a face
wearing spectacles, and the whole is finished by a fine parapet and eight
pinnacles.
_Little Ponton_ is dedicated to St. Guthlac, which implies a connection
with Croyland. Four miles east of Great Ponton is the village of _Boothby
Pagnell_, where the Glen rises. Here is a twelfth century manor house,
supremely interesting as being one of the very few surviving examples of
Norman Domestic architecture. It is in the grounds of the modern hall.
The lower story is carried on vaulted arches and the upper rooms were
reached by an outside staircase. These are a hall and a chamber with a
thick partition wall; each had a two-light window in the east wall, with
window seats on either side. On the opposite side is a fine fireplace
with a flat arch formed by joggled stones and a projecting hood, and a
round chimney-shaft. The lower groined story had also two rooms, possibly
the larger was a kitchen, and the other a cellar. The barrel roof of this
has its axis at right angles to the larger room, the heavy vault-ribs of
which are in two bays, with low buttresses outside to take the thrust
of the roof. The building at St. Mary’s Guild, Lincoln, the hall at
Oakham, and a somewhat similar building at the north-eastern boundary
of Windsor Castle are of corresponding date to this. Robert Sanderson,
who was expelled as a Royalist, but on the restoration was made Bishop
of Lincoln, and whose saintly life is dwelt on in “Walton’s Lives,” was
incumbent here from 1619 to 1660. The whole building has been beautifully
restored by Pearson, thanks to the munificence of Mrs. Thorold of the
Hall.
The course of the river between Grantham and Lincoln is through a totally
different country and may well claim another chapter.
CHAPTER VI
GRANTHAM
Cromwell’s Letter—The George and the Angel—The Elections—Fox’s
Grammar School—The Church of St. Wolfram—The Market Place.
The usual way of reaching Grantham is by the Great Northern main line—all
expresses stop here. It is 105 miles from London, and often the only stop
between that and York. After the levels of Huntingdonshire and the brief
sight of Peterborough Cathedral, across the river Nene, the line enters
Lincolnshire near Tallington, after which it follows up the valley of the
river Glen, then climbs the wold and, just beyond Bassingthorpe tunnel,
crosses the Ermine Street and runs down the Witham Valley into Grantham.
Viewed from the train the town looks a mass of ugly red brick houses with
slate roofs, but the magnificent tower and spire soon come into sight,
and one feels that this must be indeed a church worth visiting.
Coming, as we prefer to do, by road, the view is better; for there is
a background of hill and woodland with the fine park of Belton and the
commanding height of Syston Hall beyond to the north-east; and to the
left you see the Great North Road climbing up Gonerby Hill to a height of
200 feet above the town.
[Sidenote: THE MANOR AND THE GEORGE]
Grantham has no Roman associations, nor did it grow up round a feudal
castle or a great abbey; for, though a castle of some kind must once have
stood on the west side near the junction of the Mowbeck and the Witham,
the only proof of it is the name Castlegate and a reference in an old
deed to “Castle Dyke.” That the town was once walled, the streets called
Watergate, Castlegate, Swinegate, Spittalgate sufficiently attest, but no
trace of wall now exists. The name Spittalgate points to the existence
of a leper hospital, and I see from Miss Rotha Clay’s interesting and
exhaustive book, “The Mediæval Hospitals of England,” that there have
been two at Grantham—St. Margaret’s, founded in 1328, and St. Leonard’s
in 1428.
The flat pastoral valley watered by the Wytham, then called in that
neighbourhood the Granta, as the Cam was at Cambridge, seems to have
been its own recommendation to an agricultural people; and the fact that
the manor was from the time of Edward the Confessor an appanage of the
queen, and remained all through the times of the Norman kings and their
successors down to William III. a Crown property, used as a dower for
the queen consort of the time, was no doubt some benefit to it. Even
when the town was bestowed, as, for instance, by King John on the Earl
of Warren who also owned Stamford, or by Edward I., who knew Grantham
well, on Aylmer Valence Earl of Pembroke, it was looked on as inalienable
from the Crown to which it always reverted. In the reign of Edward III.,
on August 3, 1359, King John of France, captured at Poictiers, slept at
Grantham on his way from Hereford to Somerton Castle in custody of Lord
d’Eyncourt and a company of forty-four knights and men-at-arms. In 1420
Henry V. allotted it as a dower to Katherine of France. In 1460 Edward
IV. headed the procession which brought from Pontefract to Fotheringay
for burial the body of his father Richard Duke of York, who was killed at
the battle of Wakefield. In 1461 he granted the lordship and the manor to
his mother Cicely Duchess of York, and the grant, it is interesting to
know, included the inn called “le George.”
In 1503 Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII., passed with her
attendant cavalcade through Grantham on her way to meet her affianced
bridegroom,[3] James IV., King of Scotland. She arrived in state, and was
met by a fine civic and ecclesiastical procession which conducted her the
last few miles into and out of the town, and she lay all “Sounday the 9ᵗʰ
day of the monneth of Jully in the sayde towne of Grauntham.”
[Sidenote: OLIVER CROMWELL]
In 1642 the town was taken by Colonel Charles Cavendish for Charles I.,
but his success was wiped out next year by Cromwell. Defoe in his “Memoir
of a Cavalier,” writing of this, says “About this time it was that we
began to hear of the name of Oliver Cromwell, who, like a little cloud,
rose out of the East and spread first into the North, till it shed down
a flood that overwhelmed the three Kingdoms.... The first action in
which we heard of his exploits and which emblazoned his character was at
Grantham.” Cromwell was with the Earl of Manchester, but was in command
of his own regiment of horse. Where the battle actually took place is
uncertain, but probably on Gonerby Moor. We happen to have Cromwell’s own
account of the skirmish—see vol. I., p. 177, of ‘Cromwell’s Letters and
Speeches,’ by Carlyle. It was written to some official, and is the first
letter of Cromwell’s ever published in the newspapers:—
“_Grantham, 13ᵗʰ May, 1643._
“SIR,
“God hath given us, this evening, a glorious victory over our
enemies. They were, as we are informed, one and twenty colours
of horse troops, and three or four of dragoons.
“It was late in the evening when we drew out; they came and
faced us within two miles of the town. So soon as we had the
alarm we drew out our forces, consisting of about twelve troops
whereof some of them so poor and broken, that you shall seldom
see worse: with this handful it pleased God to cast the scale.
For after we had stood a little, above musket shot the one body
from the other; and the dragooners had fired on both sides,
for the space of half an hour or more; they were not advancing
towards us, we agreed to charge them; and, advancing the body
after many shots on both sides, we came on with our troops a
pretty round trot; they standing firm to receive us; and our
men charging fiercely upon them, by God’s providence they were
immediately routed, and ran all away, and we had the execution
of them two or three miles.
“I believe some of our soldiers did kill two or three men
apiece in the pursuit; but what the number of dead is we are
not certain. We took forty-five prisoners, besides divers of
their horse and arms and rescued many Prisoners whom they had
lately taken of ours, and we took four or five of their colours.
“I rest ...
“OLIVER CROMWELL.”
A fortnight later he writes from Lincolnshire to the Mayor and
Corporation of Colchester announcing the victory of Fairfax at
Wakefield, and asking for immediate supplies both of men and money. He
tells them how greatly Lord Newcastle outnumbers Fairfax, infantry two to
one, horse more than six to one. And he ends with:—
“Our motion and yours must be exceeding speedye or else it
will do you no good at all. If you send, let your men come to
Boston. I beseech you to hasten the supply to us:—forget not
money! I press not hard; though I do so need, that I assure you
the foot and dragooners are ready to mutiny. Lay not too much
upon the back of a poor gentleman, who desires, without much
noise, to lay down his life, and bleed the last drop to serve
the Cause and you. I ask not your money for myself; if that
were my end and hope,—viz. the pay of my place,—I would not
open my mouth at this time. I desire to deny myself; but others
will not be satisfied. I beseech you to hasten supplies. Forget
not your prayers
“Gentlemen, I am,
“Yours
“OLIVER CROMWELL.”
It was six years after this that Isaac Newton went to school in Grantham.
Since the Restoration, but for the pulling down of the market cross by
Mr. John Manners in 1779, which he was compelled to put up again the
following year, nothing of note happened at Grantham till the Great
Northern Railway came and subsequently Hornsby’s great agricultural
implement works arose.
[Sidenote: PRICE OF VOTES]
Grantham had been incorporated in 1463, and received the elective
franchise four years later, in the reign of Edward IV., who more than
once visited the town. The two families at Belvoir and Belton usually
influenced the elections. But in 1802 their united interests were opposed
by Sir William Manners, who had bought most of the houses in the borough.
But the Duke of Rutland and Lord Brownlow won. There were then two
members, and the historian makes the naïve statement, “previous to this
election it had been customary for the voters to receive two guineas from
each candidate; at this election the price rose to ten guineas.”
[Illustration: _The Angel Inn, Grantham._]
[Sidenote: THE ANGEL]
The mention of “le George” inn in the grant of 1461 brings to mind the
other ancient hostel opposite to it. The Angel stands on the site of an
earlier inn which goes back to the twelfth century. King John is said
to have held his court in it in 1203. On October 19, 1483, Richard III.,
having sent to London for the Great Seal, signed the warrant for the
execution of Buckingham “in a chamber called the King’s Chamber in the
present Angel Inn.” This was a fine room extending the whole length of
the front, and now cut up into three rooms. There are two oriel windows
in this, and two more in the rooms beneath, which have all curved and
vaulted alcoves of stone. The present front dates from 1450, the gateway
from about 1350, and shows the heads of Edward III. and Queen Philippa on
the hood-mould. Next to it is a very pretty half-timbered house, figured
in Allan’s “History of the County of Lincoln,” 1830. This and the Angel
stand on land once the property of the Knights Templars of Temple-Bruer.
Among the misdeeds of the eighteenth century are the pulling down of the
George Inn and a beautiful stone oratory or guild chapel which stood near
it. The Free Grammar school, founded by Bishop Fox 1528, still stands on
the north side of the churchyard; but new buildings having been lately
erected, the fine old schoolroom has been fitted up as a school chapel.
Fox endowed his school with the revenue of two chantries, which before
the dissolution belonged to the church of St. Peter. This church is
gone, but doubtless it stood on St. Peter’s Hill on lands which had been
granted by Æslwith, before the Conquest, to the abbey of Peterborough.
Close by now is a good bronze statue of Sir Isaac Newton, and once there
was an Eleanor cross, which, with those at Lincoln and Stamford, were
destroyed by the fanatical soldiery in 1645.
[Sidenote: ST. WULFRAM’S]
We now come to the great feature of the town, its magnificent church
dedicated to St. Wulfram, Archbishop of Sens, 680. We might almost call
this the third church, for the first has entirely disappeared though its
foundations remain beneath the floor of the eastern part of the nave, and
the second has been so enlarged and added to, that it is now practically
a different building; the tower, built at the end of the thirteenth
century, belongs entirely to number three.
The ground plan is singularly simple, one long parallelogram nearly 200
feet long and eighty feet wide, with no transepts, its only projections
being the north and south porches and the “Hall” chapel used as a vestry.
[Sidenote: THE INTERIOR]
The second, or Norman, church, ended two bays east of the present tower,
as is plain to see from the second pillar from the tower being, as is the
case in Peterborough Cathedral, composed of a broad mass of wall with a
respond on either side, the western respond being of much later character
than the eastern. If the chancel was originally as it is now, it must
have been as long as the nave, but the nave then perhaps included two of
the chancel bays. At present the lengthening of the nave westward and the
adding of the tower has made the nave twice the length of the chancel.
At first the church had just a nave and a chancel, but, about 1180,
aisles were added to the nave; to do this the nave walls were taken down
and the eastern responds made, which we have just spoken of, and the
beautiful clustered columns of the arcades, three on each side, set up.
The aisles were narrow and probably covered by a lean-to roof. The arches
springing from these columns would be round-headed, the pointed arches
we see now being the work of a century later, when much wider north and
south aisles were built; that on the north being on a particularly grand
and massive scale. The westernmost bay on either side was made nearly
twice the width of the others so as to correspond with the breadth of the
tower, because one of the features of the church is that the two aisles
run out westwards and align with the tower, and as the chapels on either
side run out in the same way eastwards, as far as the chancel, we get
the parallelogram above mentioned. As you enter the west door you are
at once struck by the great size of the tower piers, and next you will
notice the beauty of the tower arch, with its mouldings five deep. There
is no chancel arch, and the church has one long roof from end to end.
The aisles are very wide, and the pillars tall and slender, so that you
are able to see over the whole body of the church as if it were one big
hall. Curiously, the west window of the south aisle is not in the centre
of the wall, and looks very awkward. Below it is a bookcase lined with
old books. There are two arched recesses for tombs in the south wall,
and there is a monument between two of the south arcade pillars, where
a black marble top to an altar tomb is inscribed to Francis Malham de
Elslacke, 1660. The east end of the north aisle is used as a morning
chapel. A tall gilt reredos much blocks the chancel east window. When
I last visited the church the north and south doorways being wide open
gave the church plenty of wholesome fresh air, so different from the
well-known Sabbath “frowst” which, in the days of high pews, and when a
church was only opened on Sunday, never departed from the building.
[Sidenote: THE TOWER]
The north porch is very large, and has a passage-way east and west right
through; it was built with the north aisle about 1280, and was extended
and a room built over it about 1325, when the head of the north doorway
was much mutilated to let the floor in, at the same time a Lady chapel
was constructed on the south side of the chancel, and with a double
vaulted crypt, entered from outside, and also from the chancel, by a
beautiful staircase with richly carved doorway. The rood screen was also
built now, on which was an altar served by the chaplain daily at 5 a.m.
“after the first stroke of the bell which is called Daybelle.” It is
said that this bell is still rung daily from Lady Day to Michaelmas, but
whether at 5 o’clock deponent sayeth not. The Lincoln daybell rang at 6.
To reach this rood loft there is an octagon turret with a staircase on
the south side at the junction of the nave and chancel. The south porch
has also a staircase to the upper chamber, and the north porch has two
turreted staircases, probably for the ingress and egress of pilgrims
to the sacred relics kept there. Besides this there were at least five
chantries attached to the church; the latest of these were the fifteenth
century Corpus Christi chapel along the north side of the chancel, and
the contiguous “Hall” chapel which dates from the fifteenth century.
There is a good corbel table all along the aisles outside, and the west
front is very fine and striking.
But the great glory of the building is the steeple. We have seen that
the nave runs up to the large eastern piers of the tower, and the aisles
run on past each side of it as far as the western piers, and so with the
tower form a magnificent western façade, examples of which might even
then have been seen at Newark, which was begun before Grantham, and at
Tickhill near Doncaster.
[Sidenote: LINCOLNSHIRE SPIRES]
The tower, one of the finest bits of fourteenth century work in the
kingdom, has four stages: first, the west door and window, both richly
adorned with ballflower, reminiscent of the then recent work at
Salisbury, to which North and South Grantham were attached as prebends.
Then comes a stage of two bands of arcading on the western face only,
and a band of quatrefoil diaper work all round. In the third stage are
twin deep-set double-light windows and then come two very lofty double
lights under one crocketed hood mould. Both this stage and the last
show a very strong central mullion and the fourth, or belfry stage, has
statued niches reaching to the parapet and filling the spandrils on
either side of the window head. Inside the parapet at the south-west
corner is a curious old stone arch like a sentry-box or bell turret. The
magnificent angle buttresses are crowned by pinnacles, from within which
rises the spire with three rows of lights and lines of crockets at each
angle running up 140 feet above a tower of equal height. It seems at that
distance to come to a slender point; but we are told that when it was
struck by lightning in 1797 a mill-stone was set on the apex into which
the weathercock was mortised. There are ten bells, a larger ring than is
possessed by any church in the county but one, viz., Ewerby near Sleaford.
The date 1280 is assigned to the tower and north aisle because the
windows of that aisle reproduce in the cusped circles of their
head-lights the patterns of windows which had just a few years before
been inserted in Salisbury chapter-house, and the west window of the
aisle is a reduction to six lights of the great eight-light east window
at Lincoln; but neither Lincoln great tower nor Salisbury spire had yet
been built, and as they are the only buildings which are admitted to
surpass Grantham steeple—the former in richness of detail, the latter in
its soaring spire—and as Boston was not built till a hundred years later,
nor Louth till 200 years after Boston, it is clear that in 1300 Grantham
for height and beauty stood without a rival. Now-a-days, of course, we
have both Boston and Louth, and have them in the same county, and though
Sir Gilbert Scott puts Grantham as second only to Salisbury among English
steeples, and though in the grandeur and interest of its interior as well
as in the profuse ornamentation of its exterior Louth cannot compete with
it at all, yet there is in the delicate tapering lines of Louth spire
and the beautiful way in which it rises from its lofty tower-pinnacles
connected with their four pairs of light flying buttresses a satisfying
grace and a beauty of proportion which no other church seems to possess;
and when we look closely at the somewhat aimless bands of diaper work
and arcading in the second stage of Grantham tower and then turn to
the harmonious simplicity of the three stages in the Louth tower and
the incomparable beauty of the belfry lights with their crocketed
hood-mouldings which are carried up in lines ascending like a canopy to
the pinnacled parapet, it seems to satisfy the eye and the desire for
beauty and symmetry in the fullest possible measure.
The church has not a great number of monuments; that to Richard de
Salteby, 1362, is the earliest, and there is, besides the Malham tomb,
one of the Harrington family, and a huge erection to Chief Justice Ryder,
whose descendants derive their title of Harrowby from a hamlet close by.
There are two libraries in the church, one with no less than seventy-four
chained books. But a church forms a bad library, and many are gone and
some of the best are mutilated, for as Tennyson says in “The Village
Wife”:—
“The lasses ’ed teäred out leäves i’ the middle to kindle the fire.”
Only here it was not the lasses but the mediæval verger.
[Illustration: _Grantham Church._]
The bowl of the font has most interesting carved panels of the
Annunciation, the Magi, the Nativity, Circumcision, Baptism, Blessing of
Children, the Sacrifice of Isaac, and one other. The oak chancel screen
and the parcloses by Scott, the reredos by Bodley, and the rest of the
oak fittings by Blomfield, are all very good. The screen takes the place
of the old stone screen which is quite gone. There is some excellent
modern glass, and for those who understand heraldry, I might mention that
in the east window were once many coats of arms of which Marrat gives a
list with notes by Gervase Holles, from which I gather that the armorial
glass was very fine, and that the arms of “La Warre” are “G. crusily,
botony, fitchy, a lion rampant or.” It is pleasant to know this, even if
one does not quite understand it.
[Sidenote: THE MARKET CROSS]
The extending of the church westwards encroached upon the open space in
which stood the reinstated “Applecross,” at one time replaced by a quite
uncalled-for stone obelisk in the market-place, opposite the Angel, with
an inscription to say that the Eleanor Cross once stood there, which was
not true, as that was set up in the broad street or square called “St.
Peter’s Hill,” where now the bronze statue of Newton stands. In Finkin
Street the town, until ten years ago, preserved a splendid chestnut tree,
and other fine trees near the church add a beauty which towns now-a-days
rarely possess.
As at Lincoln, the Grey Friars first brought good drinking water to the
town, and their conduit is still a picturesque object in the market
square. It is on the south side, close to the Blue Sheep. Blue seems to
have been the Grantham colour, for there are at least twelve inns whose
sign is some blue thing—Bell, Sheep, Pig, Lion, Dragon, Boy, etc. Blue
pill is almost the only thing of that colour not represented.
The connection of Grantham with Salisbury is a very old one, as far
back as 1091 the lands and endowments of the church were granted to St.
Osmund, and by him given to his new cathedral at Old Sarum, the site of
which is now being cleared in much the same manner as has been adopted
at Bardney Abbey. The Empress Maud added the gift of the living and the
right of presentation, so the prebendaries of North and South Grantham
became the rectors; North Grantham comprising Londonthorpe and North
Gonerby, and South Grantham South Gonerby and Braceby. Later, about 1225,
vicars were appointed, but there was no vicarage, and the work was mainly
done by the chaplain and the chantry priests. In 1713 the dual vicars
were merged in one, and since 1870 the presentation has been in the hands
of the Bishop of Lincoln.
[Sidenote: THE CHANTRIES]
We have spoken often of chantries. A chantry was a chapel endowed with
revenues for priests to perform Mass therein for the souls of the donors
or others. Hence we have in Shakespeare—
“Five hundred poor I have, in yearly pay,
Who twice a day their wither’d hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Three Chantries where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard’s soul.”
_Henry V._ iv. i.
CHAPTER VII
ROADS FROM GRANTHAM
Syston Hall—Belton—Harlaxton—Denton—Belvoir
Castle—Allington—Sedgebrook—Barrowby—Gonerby-hill—Stubton
—Hough-on-the-Hill—Gelston—Claypole.
The main South Lincolnshire roads run up from Stamford to Boston, to
Sleaford and to Grantham; here of the six spokes of the wheel of which
Grantham is the hub, three going westwards soon leave the county. That
which goes east runs a very uneventful course for twelve miles till,
having crossed the Bourne and Sleaford road, it comes to Threckingham,
and in another six or seven miles to Donington where it divides and,
after passing many most remarkable churches, reaches Boston either by
Swineshead or by Gosberton, Algarkirk and Kirton, which will be described
in the route from Spalding. The Great Road north and south from Grantham
is full of interest, and passes through village after village, and on
both the northern and western sides the neighbourhood of Grantham is
extremely hilly and well wooded, and contains several fine country seats.
Belvoir Castle (Duke of Rutland), Denton (Sir C. G. Welby), Harlaxton (T.
S. Pearson Gregory, Esq.), Belton (Earl Brownlow), and Syston (Sir John
Thorold).
[Sidenote: BELTON AND BARKSTON]
_Syston Hall_, Sir John Thorold’s place, looks down upon Barkstone. It is
grandly placed, and the house, which was built in the eighteenth century,
contains a fine library. The greatest treasure of this, however, the
famed Mazarin Bible, was sold in 1884 for £3,200. A mile to the south
lies _Belton_. Here the church is filled with monuments of the Cust
and Brownlow families, and the font has eight carved panels with very
unusual subjects—a man pulling two bells, a monk reading, a priest with
both hands up, a deacon robed, a monster rampant with a double tail,
a man with a drawn sword, a naked babe and a rope, a man with a large
bird above him, and a tree; also among the monuments is one of Sir John
Brownlow, 1754, and one dated 1768 of Sir John Cust, the “Speaker.” In
this a singularly graceful female figure is holding the “Journals of the
House of Commons.” The monument of his son, the first Baron Brownlow,
1807, is by Westmacott. The family have added a north transept for
use as a mortuary chapel. Here, amongst others, are monuments of the
first Earl Brownlow, 1853, by Marochetti, and of his two wives with a
figure emblematic of Religion, by Canova. The village is always kept
in beautiful order; adjoining it is the large park with fine avenues
and three lakes in it. The house, built in the shape of the letter H,
was finished from Sir Christopher Wren’s designs in 1689, and the park
enclosed and planted in the following year by Sir John, the third Baronet
Brownlow, who entertained William III. there in 1695. His nephew, Sir
John, who was created Viscount Tyrconnel in 1718, formed the library
and laid out the gardens. In 1778 James Wyatt was employed to make
improvements. He removed Wren’s cupola, made a new entrance on the south
side, and raised the height of the drawing-room to twenty-two feet. All
the rooms in the house are remarkably high, and the big dining-room is
adorned with enormous pictures by Hondekoeter.
Wonderful carvings by Grinling Gibbons are in several rooms, and also in
the chapel, which is panelled with cedar wood.
[Sidenote: ON THE WITHAM]
_Barkston_ is near the stream of the Witham, and is thence called
_Barkston-in-the-Willows_; and ten miles off, on the county boundary near
Newark, is _Barnby-in-the-Willows_, also on the Witham, which has arrived
there from Barkston by a somewhat circuitous route.
Barkston Church is worth seeing by anyone who wishes to see how a
complete rood-loft staircase was arranged, the steep twelve-inch risers
showing how the builders got the maximum of utility out of the minimum
of space. The last three steps below appear to have been cut off to let
the pulpit steps in. There is a similar arrangement at Somerby, where
the steps also are very high. A very good modern rood screen and canopy,
somewhat on the pattern of the Sleaford one, has been put up by the
rector, the Rev. E. Clements. There are two squints, on either side of
the chancel arch, one through the rood staircase. The church has a nave
and a south aisle, and the plain round transition Norman pillars are
exactly like those at Great Hale, but are only about one-half the height.
The arches are round ones, with nail head ornament, and from the bases of
these pillars it is clear that the floor once sloped upwards continuously
from west to east, as at Colsterworth and Horkstow. The chancel arch
is made lofty by being set on the stone basement of the rood screen.
The transitional tower has a beautiful Early English window in the west
front, and the Decorated south aisle has a richly panelled parapet; but
the Perpendicular porch is not so well executed, and cuts rudely into two
pretty little aisle windows, and a niche over the door. It has over it
this rhyming inscription carved in stone.
[Illustration: _Withamside Boston._]
Me Thomam Pacy post mundi flebile funus
Jungas veraci vite tu trinus et unus
Dñe Deus vere Thome Pacy miserere.
And under the capital of one of the doorway pillars is the line, rather
difficult to construe, but in beautiful lettering:—
Lex et natura XRS simul omnia cura.
The severe three-light east window has good glass by Kempe. The spire,
a very good one, is later than the tower, and built of squared stones,
different in colour from the small stones of the tower. Two half figures
incised in bold relief on fourteenth century slabs, are built into the
north wall, opposite the south door.
[Sidenote: HONINGTON AND CAYTHORPE]
Keeping along the Lincoln road the next place we reach is _Honington_.
The Early English tower of the church is entered by a very early pointed
arch, the nave being of massive Norman work with an unusually large
corbel table. There are the remains of a stone screen, and a canopied
aumbry in the chancel was perhaps used as an Easter sepulchre. The
chantry chapel has monuments of the Hussey family, and one of W. Smith,
1550, in gown and doublet. An early slab, with part of the effigy of a
priest on it, has been used over again to commemorate John Hussey and his
wife, he being described on it as “A professor of the Ghospell,” 1587.
To the south-east of the village is what was once an important British
fort with a triple ditch, used later by the Romans whose camp at Causennæ
on the “High Dyke” was but four miles to the east. Less than two miles
brings us to _Carlton Scroop_, with a late Norman tower and Early English
arcade, also some good old glass and a Jacobean pulpit. The remains of a
rood screen and the rood loft steps are still there.
A mile further on is one of the many _Normantons_, with Early English
nave, decorated tower, fine west window, and Perpendicular clerestory.
[Sidenote: FULBECK AND LEADENHAM]
Two miles on we come to _Caythorpe_, which is built on a very singular
plan, for it has a double nave with a buttress between the two west
windows to take the thrust of the arches which are in a line with the
ridge of the roof. This forms the remarkable feature of the church
interior. There are short transepts, and the tower rises above the four
open arches. Over one of these there is a painting of the Last Judgment.
There are fine buttresses outside with figures of the Annunciation
and the Coronation of the Virgin, and one of our Lord on the porch.
The windows are large. The spire is lofty but unpleasing, as it has a
marked “entasis” or set in, such as is seen in many Lincolnshire and
Northamptonshire spires, which hence are often termed sugar-loafed.
Before its re-building, in 1859, after it had been struck by lightning,
the entasis was still more marked than it is now. The singularly thin,
ugly needle-like spire of Glinton, just over the southern border of the
county near Deeping, has a slight set in which does not improve its
appearance. A mile to the north the road passes through the very pretty
village of _Fulbeck_. The dip of the road, the charming old houses, grey
and red, the handsome church tower with its picturesque pinnacles, and
the ancestral beauty of the fine trees, make a really lovely picture.
Fine iron gates lead to the Hall, the home of the Fanes, an honoured
name in Lincolnshire. Many of the name rest in the churchyard, and
their monuments fill the dark church, which has a good Norman font.
The tampering with old walls and old buildings is always productive of
mischief, and, as at Bath Abbey, when, to add to its appearance, flying
buttresses were put up all along the nave, the weight began to crush in
the nave walls, and the only remedy was to put on, at great expense,
a stone groined roof, which is the real _raison d’être_ of flying
buttresses, so here at Fulbeck, when they pulled down the chancel and
built it up again with the walls further out, the consequence was that
the east wall of the nave, missing its accustomed support, began to lean
out eastwards.
Another mile and a half brings us to _Leadenham_, where the east and
west road from Sleaford to Newark crosses the Great North road. The fine
tall spire is seen from all the country round, for it stands half way up
the cliff. But this and the rest of the road to Lincoln is described in
Chapter XIII.
[Sidenote: HARLAXTON AND DENTON]
If you go out of Grantham by the south-west, you should stop at a very
pretty little village to the south of the Grantham and Melton road, from
which a loop descends to an old gateway, all that is left of the old
_Harlaxton_ Manor, a pretty Tudor building now pulled down, the stone
balustrades in front of it having been removed by Mr. Pearson Gregory to
his large house a mile off, built on the ridge of the park by Salvin in
1845. The Flemish family of De Ligne lived in the old Hall in Jacobean
times, and their predecessors are probably represented by the fine but
mutilated alabaster recumbent effigies now in the northern, or Trinity,
chapel of the church. In the north-east angle of this chapel is a very
graceful canopied recess on a bracket, much like those at _Sedgebrook_,
about five miles off on the border of the county.
The north aisle and nave are older than the tower and south aisle; and a
curious staircase ascends at the east of the south aisle wall, from which
a gangway crossed to the rood loft.
There are many aumbries in various parts of the church, and a tall,
Decorated font, with grotesque faces in some panels, and in others sacred
subjects oddly treated, such as our Lord crowned and holding a Chalice.
In the south aisle is an old oak post alms-box resembling one at Halton
Holgate.
A doorway leads out from the south side of the east end, an entrance
probably to an eastern chapel. The two doorways, one on each side of the
altar, at Spalding may have led to the same, or possibly to a vestry, as
in Magdalen Chapel, Oxford.
The spire has a staircase, passing curiously from one of the pinnacles.
A very massive broken stone coffin, removed from a garden, lies in the
south chapel. The fine row of limes, and the ivy-grown walls of old
Harlaxton Manor, add to the beauty of this quiet little village, and a
group of half-timbered brick buildings, said to be sixteenth century,
though looking more modern, which are near the church, are a picturesque
feature.
[Sidenote: BELVOIR CASTLE]
_Denton Manor_, the seat of Sir C. G. E. Welby, Bart., is just beyond
Harlaxton, and there one might once have seen a fine old manor house,
now replaced by a large modern hall of fine proportions; the work is by
Sir A. W. Blomfield, good in design and detail, and containing a notable
collection both of furniture and pictures. St. Christopher’s Well, a
chalybeate spring, is in the park, and in the restored church are a good
recumbent effigy of John Blyth, 1602, and a figure of Richard Welby,
1713, with angels carefully planting a crown on his wig. After this the
road passes into Leicestershire, so we turn to the right and in less than
four miles, halfway between the Melton road and the Nottingham road,
and more in Leicestershire than in Lincolnshire, we come to _Belvoir
Castle_. The mound on which it stands is over the border and is not a
natural height, but was thrown up on a spur of the wold as early as
the eleventh century by Robert de Todeni, who thence became known as
Robert de Belvedeir. Certainly the pile is grandly placed, and has a
sort of Windsor Castle appearance from all the country round. It has
been in possession of the Manners family now for four hundred years. The
celebrated Marquis of Granby, a name well known in all the neighbourhood
as a public-house sign, was son of the third Duke. He was “Col. of the
Leicester Blues” in 1745, and General and Commander-in-Chief of the
British contingent at Minden, where the English and German forces, under
the Duke of Brunswick, defeated the French in 1759, and he distinguished
himself in battle in each of the three following years. The castle,
destroyed by order of Parliament in the civil wars, was rebuilt in 1668,
and again in 1801, but a fire having destroyed part of it in 1816 it was
restored at the worst of all architectural periods, so that at a near
view it does not fulfil the expectation raised by its grand appearance
when seen from a distance. As at Windsor there is a very fine “Guard
Room,” and many large rooms hung with tapestry or pictures, and a picture
gallery of unusual excellence. The Duchess’s garden in spring is one of
the finest horticultural sights in the kingdom. The greater part of the
castle is most liberally thrown open daily to the public.
Returning from Belvoir we can pass by Barrowby to join the Nottingham and
Grantham road, which leaves the county at Sedgebrook, on either side of
which are seen the churches of _Muston_ and _East_ and _West Allington_,
where Crabbe, the poet, was rector 1789-1814. West Allington church
stands in Mr. Welby’s park, and close by, a salt well is marked on the
map. At _Sedgebrook_ is a farm house which was built as a manor-house
by Sir John Markham in the sixteenth century, when he was Lord Chief
Justice of the King’s Bench. He it was who received the soubriquet of
“The upright Judge,” on the occasion of his being turned out of office by
Edward IV., because of his scrupulous fairness at the trial of Sir Thomas
Coke, Lord Mayor of London.
From Sedgebrook to _Barrowby_ is three miles of level ground, and then
the road rises 150 feet to the village, which commands a splendid view
over the vale of Belvoir. Leaving this you descend a couple of miles to
Grantham.
[Sidenote: GONERBY HILL]
At the outskirts of the town the road meets two others, one the northern
or Lincoln road, and the other the north-western or Newark road. This
is the Great North Road, and it starts by climbing the famous _Gonerby
Hill_, the terror and effectual trial ground of motors in their earliest
days, and described by “mine host” in _The Heart of Midlothian_ as
“a murder to post-horses.” The hill once gained affords a fine view
eastwards, _Foston_ and _Long Bennington_ (which has a large church with
a handsome porch, a good churchyard cross, and a mutilated market cross),
are the only villages, till the road crosses the county boundary near
_Claypole_, and runs on about four miles to Newark, distant fifteen miles
from Grantham. Long Bennington is a mile north-east of Normanton Lodge,
where Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire touch.
_Stubton_, a couple of miles to the east, has a fine group of yew trees
growing round the tomb of Sir George Heron, one of the family from
Cressy Hall, Gosberton, I suppose, who built the hall now occupied by G.
Neville, Esq.
Between Stubton and the Grantham-and-Lincoln road are many winding lanes,
by a judicious use of which you may escape the fate that overtook us of
landing after a steep and rather rough climb from Barkstone at two farms
one after the other, beyond which the road did not even try to go. If
you have better luck you will reach the out-of-the-way parish church of
_Hough-on-the-Hill_.
[Sidenote: HOUGH-ON-THE-HILL]
This, the last resting-place of King John, when on his journey to Newark
where he died, has a church whose tower is singularly interesting, being
akin to St. Peter’s at Barton-on Humber, and the two very old churches in
Lincoln, and one at Broughton, near Brigg, and we may add, perhaps, the
tower at Great Hale.
The work of all these towers is pre-Norman, and it is not unlikely that
the church, when first built, consisted of only a tower and two apses. At
Hough, as at Broughton, we have attached to the west face of the tower a
Saxon circular turret staircase, built in the rudest way and coped with a
sloping top of squared masonry, of apparently Norman work. The tower has
several very small lights, 12 to 15 inches high, and of various shapes,
while the west side of the south porch is pierced with a light which
only measures 8 inches by 4, but is framed with dressed stone on both
the wall-surfaces. The two lower stages of the square tower, to whose
west face the round staircase-tower clings, are all of the same rough
stone-work, with wide mortar joints, but with two square edged thick
string-courses of dressed stone, projecting 6 inches or more. The upper
stage is of much later date. The Early English nave, chancel, and aisles
are very high, and are no less than 20 feet wide, mercifully (for it was
proposed to abolish them and substitute a pine roof) they still retain
their old Perpendicular roofs with the chancel and nave timbers enriched
with carving. The sedilia are of the rudest possible construction.
[Illustration: _Hough-on-the-Hill._]
[Sidenote: A SAXON TOWER]
The staircase turret has two oblong Saxon windows, like those at Barnack,
about four feet by one, in the west face, three small round lights on
the north, and four on the south, one square and one diamond-shaped and
two circular. The turret is of the same date as the tower, but appears to
have been built on after the tower was finished; and it almost obscures
the two little west windows of the tower, one on each side of it, and
near the top. A round-headed doorway leads from the tower to the turret,
inside which the good stone steps lead up to a triangular-headed door
into the tower, where now is the belfry floor, from which another similar
doorway leads into the nave. Close to the top of the old Saxon tower
walls are very massive stone corbels for supporting the roof. The Newel
post of the old tower is a magnificent one, being eighteen inches thick.
This, where the upper stage was added, is continued, but with only half
that thickness.
There was once a porch with a higher pitched roof, as shown by the
gable roof-mould against the aisle. On the stone benches are three of
the solitaire-board devices, with eight hollows connected by lines all
set in an oblong, the same that you see often in cloisters and on the
stone benches at Windsor, where monks or chorister boys passed the time
playing with marbles. It is a truly primitive and world-wide amusement.
The natives of Madagascar have precisely the same pattern marked out
on boards, seated round which, and with pebbles which they move like
chessmen, they delight themselves, both young and old, in gambling.
The church used to go with the Head-Mastership of Grantham Grammar
School, seven miles off, and some of the Headmasters were buried
here; one, Rev. Joseph Hall, is described as “Vicar of Ancaster and
Hough-on-the-Hill, Headmaster of Grantham Grammar School, and Rector of
Snelland, and Domestic Chaplain to Lord Fitzwilliam”—he died in 1814.
[Sidenote: THE WAPENTAKE]
It stands on a high knoll, whence the churchyard, which is set round with
yew-trees, slopes steeply to the south. The Wapentake of Loveden takes
its name from a neighbouring round-topped hill, and the old tower of
Hough-on-the-Hill may well have been the original meeting-place; just as
Barnack was, where the triangular-headed seat for the chief man is built
into the tower wall. The term “Wapentake” means the taking hold of the
chief’s weapon by the assembled warriors, or of the warriors’ weapons by
the chief, as a sign that they swear fealty to him, and then the name was
applied to the district over which a particular chief held rule. The
native chiefs of India, when they come to a Durbar, present their swords
to the King or his representative in a similar manner, for him to touch.
Just south of Hough is the hamlet of _Gelston_, where, on a triangular
green, is all that is left of a wayside cross, a rare thing in this
county. Only about two feet of the old shaft is left and the massive base
block standing on a thick slab with chamfered corners. This is mounted on
three steps and is a very picturesque object.
There are some two dozen Wapentakes within the county, some with odd
names, _e.g._, Longoboby; of these, eight end like Elloe in _oe_, which,
I take it, means water.
[Sidenote: CLAYPOLE]
From Hough-on-the-Hill the byway to the Grantham and Newark road, with
villages at every second milestone, runs through _Brandon_, where a
small chapel contains a Norman door with a tympanum and a rather unusual
moulding, very like one we shall see in the old church at Stow, and then
through _Stubton_, to _Claypole_, close to the county boundary. The
beautiful crocketed spire of this fine church is a landmark seen for
miles; as usual, it is Perpendicular, and on an Early English tower,
which is plastered over with cement outside and engaged between the
aisles inside. It is a cruciform building, and in the Early English
south transept are three beautiful sedilia, not at all common in such a
position. The flat coloured ceiling of the nave is old, though, since
the restoration by C. Hodgson Fowler in 1892, the high pitch of the roof
over it has been reverted to, both on chancel and nave. The nave is large
with four wide bays, supported on clustered pillars, the capitals being
all different and all ornamented with singularly bold foliated carving
of great beauty. The chancel arch exhibits brackets for the rood beam.
The large clerestory windows were probably in the nave before the aisles
were added. Another set of sedilia in the chancel are of the Decorated
period, and most of the windows have flowing tracery. On the north side
of the chancel is a Sacristy, containing an altar slab in situ with its
five dedication crosses. The porch has a very deep niche over it, for a
statue, and there is another niche at the east end of the nave; the fine
Perpendicular parapet leading to it being, like the rest of the church,
embattled. The screen is a good Perpendicular one, and the desk of the
well-carved pulpit was once part of it, this now is oddly supported by
the long stem of a processional cross. The font, which is hexagonal, is
of the Decorated period.
One of the most unusual features in the church is to be found in the
stone seats which surround the bases of the pillars in the south arcade.
This is to be seen also at Bottesford and at Caistor.
A short distance to the south-west of the church there was, until quite
recently, a charming old stone bridge, over a small stream, but this
has now, I regret to say, been superseded by one of those iron girder
structures, so dear to the heart of the highway surveyor.
In the church the hook for the “Lenten Veil” still remains at the end of
the sedilia, and a staple over the vestry-door opposite.
In pre-reformation days there was a regular “office” or service for the
Easter sepulchre, in which the priests acted the parts of the three
kings, the angel, and the risen Lord, at which time a line was stretched
across the chancel to support the “Lenten Veil” which served as a
stage-curtain.
CHAPTER VIII
SLEAFORD
Ewerby—Howell—Use of a Stone Coffin—Heckington—Great Hale—Outer
Staircase to Tower—Helpringham—Billinghay—North and South
Kyme—Kyme Castle—Ancaster—Honington—Cranwell.
[Sidenote: SLEAFORD CHURCH]
Six roads go out of Sleaford, and five railways. Lincoln, Boston, Bourne
and Grantham have both a road and a railway to Sleaford, Spalding has
only a railway direct, and Horncastle and Newark only a road. At no
towns but Louth and Lincoln do so many routes converge, though Caistor,
Grantham and Boston come very near. The southern or Bourne road we have
traced from Bourne, so we will now take the eastern roads to Boston and
Horncastle. But first to say something of Sleaford itself. The Conqueror
bestowed the manor on Remigius, first Bishop of Lincoln. About 1130
Bishop Alexander built the castle, together with that at Newark, which
alone in part survives. These castles were seized by Stephen, and here
King John, having left Swineshead Abbey, stayed a night before his last
journey by Hough-on-the-hill to Newark, where he died 1216. Henry VIII.,
with Katherine Howard, held a council here on his way from Grimsthorpe to
Lincoln, 1541, dining next day at Temple-Bruer, which he gave in the same
year to the Duke of Suffolk. He had here in 1538 ordered the execution
of Lord Hussey. Murray’s guide-book tells us that Richard de Haldingham,
1314, who made the famous and curious “Mappa Mundi,” now kept in Hereford
Cathedral, was born at Holdingham close by. The church is one of four in
this neighbourhood dedicated to St. Denis. The lower stage of the tower
dates from 1180. The spire, a very early one, built about 1220, being
struck by lightning, was taken down and put up again by C. Kirk in 1884.
It is only 144 feet in height. As at Grantham and Ewerby the tower is
engaged in the aisles; its lower stage dates from 1180. The nave has
eight three-light clerestory windows, with tall pinnacles rising from the
parapet. The aisles have a richly carved parapet, without pinnacles; but
the beauty and extreme richness of the western ends of the aisles, where
they engage with the massive tower, surmounted as they are by turrets,
bellcots and pinnacles, and niches, some still containing their statues,
is not surpassed in any church in England.
The doorway, which is in the west end of the north aisle, cuts into the
fine window above, and opens upon the baptistery.
[Sidenote: THE NORTH TRANSEPT]
The nave and aisles are all very lofty; and the grand proportions of the
church give one the feeling of being in a cathedral. There is an outer
north aisle, now screened off by a good modern oak screen, and fitted
with an organ and an altar with modern painted reredos depicting the
Crucifixion. The tracery of the big window is good, but that in the north
transept (there is no south transept) is one of the finest six-light
windows to be seen, and is filled with first-rate modern glass by Ward
and Hughes. The supporting arch at the west of the north aisle has an
inverted arch, as at Wells, to support the tower. At the end of the south
aisle, a tall half-arch acts as a buttress to the other side of the
tower arch. The chancel was once a magnificent one, but was rebuilt and
curtailed at a bad period.
The fine monuments on each side of the chancel arch—one having two
alabaster recumbent figures, much blocked by the pulpit, are all of the
Carre family; and a curious carved and inscribed coffin lid, showing just
the face, and then, lower down, the praying hands of a man, apparently
a layman, with long hair, is set up in the transept against the chancel
pier. At Hartington in Derbyshire is one showing the bust and praying
hands together, and then, lower down, the feet. An old iron chest is in
the south aisle, and the church has a very perfect set of consecration
crosses both inside and out.
The rood screen is especially fine, in fact, the finest in the country,
having still its ancient canopy projecting about six feet, with very
graceful carving on the heads of the panels below it. Two staircases in
the chancel piers still remain, opening on to the rood loft on either
side.
The west end of the church overlooks the market, where there is always a
gay scene on Mondays—stalls and cheap-jacks and crowds of market folk
making it almost Oriental in life and colour.
The street runs along the south side of the church, across which is seen
the excellent but not beautiful Sleaford almshouse.
[Illustration: _North Transept, St. Denis’s Church, Sleaford._]
[Sidenote: EWERBY]
Eastwards on the Swineshead road, and within half-a-dozen miles of
Sleaford, is a cluster of especially good churches—Ewerby, Asgarby,
Heckington, Howell, Great Hale and Helpringham. Four of these six have
fine spires, and are seen from a long distance in this flat country.
_Ewerby_ is just on the edge of Haverholme Priory Park, and the building
rooks who have chosen the trees at the village end of the park for their
colony, gave, when we visited it, pleasant notification of the coming
spring.
The tower is at the west end, engaged in the two aisles, and, adjoining
the churchyard, a little green with remains of the old village cross
leaves room for the fine pile of building to be seen and admired. The
roof line of nave and chancel is continuous, and the broach spire, a
singularly fine one, perhaps the best in England, is 174 feet high. It
is probably the work of the same master builder who planned and built
Heckington and Sleaford. The tower has a splendid ring of ten bells
(Grantham alone has as many) for the completion of which, as for much
else, Ewerby is indebted to the Earls of Winchelsea.
Internally, the walls are mostly built of very small stones, like those
in a roadside wall. In the tower are good Decorated windows, in the lower
of which, on the western face, is a stained glass window. This was struck
by lightning in 1909, and all the faces of the figures were cut right
out, the rest of the glass being intact. A lightning-conductor is now
installed, but the faces are not yet filled in.
There is a most beautiful little window at the west end of the north
aisle. Under the tower are three finely proportioned arches, and a stone
groined roof. The ten bells are rung from the ground. The nave pillars
are clustered, each erected on an earlier transition-Norman base; and
the base of the font is also Norman. The porch is unusual in having a
triangular string-course outside the hood-moulding. Besides the Market
Cross, there are parts of two others, in the church and churchyard.
There is a grand old recumbent warrior, probably Sir Richard Anses,
with fourteenth century chain mail and helmet, and gorget, but the most
interesting thing of all is a pre-Norman tomb-cover on the floor of the
north aisle, with a rude cross on it, and a pattern of knot-work all over
the rest of the slab. This is covered by a mat, but it certainly ought to
have a rail round it for permanent protection, for it is one of the most
remarkable stones in the county. An old oak chest with carved front is
in the vestry. The whole church is well-cared-for, but at present only
seated with chairs.
[Sidenote: HOWELL PORCH]
From Ewerby, two miles bring us to _Howell_, a small church with neither
spire nor tower, but a double bell-gable at the west end of the nave;
the porch is Norman, and a large pre-Norman stone coffin slab has been
placed in it. The transition pillars have huge mill-stone shaped bases;
and there is only a nave and north aisle. On the floor of the aisle is
a half figure of a mother with a small figure of her daughter, both
deeply cut on a fourteenth century stone slab. It is curious to come on
a monument to “Sir Charles Dymok of Howell, 2nd son to Sir Edward Dymok
of Scrielsby”—whose daughter married Sir John Langton. The tomb, with
coloured figures of the knight and his lady kneeling at an altar, was put
up about 1610 by his nephew, another Sir Edward Dymok.
There is a broken churchyard cross, the base inscribed to John Spencer,
rector, 1448. The church is dedicated to St. Oswald. Ivy is growing
inside the nave, having forced its way right through the wall—a good
illustration of the mischief that ivy can do.
The mention of the stone coffin in Howell church porch calls to mind a
similar case in a Cumberland church, where the sexton, pointing it out to
a visitor, said: “Ah think thet a varra good thing; minds ’em o’ their
latter end, ye knaw; an’ its varra useful for umberellas.”
_Heckington_ is a town-like village on the main road, and its splendid
church, which faces you at the end of the street, as at Louth, is one of
the wonders of Lincolnshire. It is entirely in the Decorated style, with
lofty spire and four very high pinnacles. It owes its magnificence to the
fact that the great abbey at Bardney, which had a chantry here, obtained
a royal licence in 1345 to appropriate the church. Certainly it is the
most perfect example of a Decorated church in the kingdom.
The nave is remarkably high and wide, and the building of it, as in the
case of Wilfrid’s great church at Hexham, apparently took thirty-five
years. The dimensions are 150 feet by eighty-five, and the masonry, owing
probably to the leisurely way in which it was built, is remarkably good
throughout. The statue niches have a few of their figures still. The
porch, with its waved parapet richly carved, with a figure of our Lord
above, still has its original roof. On either side are double buttresses,
each with its canopied niche; and the nave ends with handsome turrets.
The transept windows are very fine, and the seven-light east window,
a most superb one, is only surpassed in its dimensions and beautiful
tracery by those at Selby and Carlisle. It is filled with good glass by
Ward and Hughes, put up in memory of Mr. Little, by his wife, 1897.
[Illustration: _Heckington Church_]
[Sidenote: HECKINGTON]
A massive timber gallery crosses the west end, above the tower arch,
giving access to the belfry above the groined roof of the tower. The
clock struck while we were in the church, and gave evidence of at least
one of the peal being of unusual magnificence of tone.
[Sidenote: THE EASTER SEPULCHRE]
On the south side of the chancel is one window beneath which is a
canopied credence table; and west of this, three tall and richly carved
sedilia with figures of our Lord and the Virgin Mary and Saints Barbara,
Katherine and Margaret; but the gem of the building is the Easter
sepulchre on the north side, where there are no windows. This is only
surpassed by one at Hawton, near Newark. Below are the Roman guards
asleep, in fourteenth century armour. On each side of the recess for the
sacred elements, which once had a door to it, are two figures of women
and a guardian angel, and above them, the risen Christ between two flying
angels. This is a truly beautiful thing, enshrined in a worthy building.
Outside is a broken churchyard cross, and the slender chancel buttresses
are seen to have each a niche for a figure. The magnificent great
“Dos-D’Âne” coping-stones on the churchyard wall, both here and at Great
Hale, are a pleasure to see.
There was a church at Heckington before the Conquest, and a second was
built about 1100. The income of this, as well as of that of Hale Magna,
was given in 1208 by Simon de Gant and his wife Alice to support the
church of St. Lazarus outside the walls of Jerusalem, and this endowment
was confirmed by King John. The rector of Hale Magna in his parish
magazine points out that the enormous amount of land which was constantly
passing to the churches and monasteries in the Middle Ages became a
distinct danger, and that an Act was passed to prevent it, called the
Statute of Mortmain, under which licence had to be obtained from the
Crown.
Consequently we find that in the fourth year of Edward II. (1310)
inquisition was taken on a certain Sunday before Ranulph de Ry, Sheriff
of Lincoln, at Ancaster “to inquire whether or not it be to the damage
of the King or others if the King permit Wm. son of Wm. le Clerk of St.
Botolph (Boston) to grant a messuage and 50 acres of land in Hekyngton
and Hale to a certain chaplain and his successors to celebrate Divine
service every day in the parish church of Hekyngton for the health of
the souls of the said Wm. his father, mother and heirs, &c., for ever,”
etc. The jury found that it would not be to the damage or prejudice of
the king to allow the grant. They also reported that Henry de Beaumont
was the “Mesne,” or middle, tenant between the king and William Clerk of
Boston for twenty-eight acres, and between the king and Ralph de Howell
for the other twenty-two acres, he holding from the king “by the service
of a third part of a pound of pepper,” and subletting to the others, for
so many marks a year. The land apparently being valued at about 1_s._
8_d._ an acre. From other sources we find that land thereabouts varied in
value from 4_d._ to 8_s._ an acre yearly rent.
In 1345 when the abbot and abbey of Bardney by royal licence received
the churches and endowments of Hale and Heckington for their own use,
the abbot became rector and appointed a vicar to administer each parish.
The name of the abbot was Roger De Barrowe, whose tomb was found by the
excavators at Bardney in 1909.
The building of the present beautiful church was completed by Richard de
Potesgrave, the vicar, in 1380. He doubtless received help from Edward
III., to whom he acted as chaplain. That he was an important person in
the reigns of both Edward II. and III. is shown by the former king making
over to him the confiscated property of the Colepeppers who had refused
to deliver Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, to Queen Isabella, wife of
Edward II., in 1321; while he was selected by Edward III. to superintend
the removal of the body of Edward II. from Berkeley Castle to Gloucester.
His mutilated effigy is under the north window of the chancel, and in a
little box above it with a glass front is now preserved the small chalice
which he used in his lifetime.
[Sidenote: CHURCHWARDENS’ BOOKS]
The churchwardens’ account book at Heckington begins in 1567, and in 1580
and 1583 and 1590 “VIˢ VIIIᵈ” is entered as the burial fee of members of
the Cawdron family, whose later monuments are at Hale.
[Sidenote: WHIPPING FOR TRAMPS]
Another entry which constantly occurs in the sixteenth century is “for
Whypping dogges out of Church,” and in the seventeenth century not
“dogges” only but vagrants are treated to the lash, _e.g._:—
“April 21, 1685. John Coulson then whipped for a vagrant rogue
and sent to Redford.
“Antho. Berridge (Vicar).”
And in 1686:—
“Memorand. that John Herrin and Katherine Herrin and one child,
and Jonas Hay and wife and two children, and Barbary Peay and
Eliz. Nutall were openly whipped, at Heckington, the 28th day
of May, 1686—and had a passe then made to convey them from
Constable to Constable to Newark, in Nottinghamshire, and
Will Stagg was at the same time whipped and sent to Conton in
Nottinghamshire.”
A good, sound method of dealing with “Vagrom men,” but for the women and
children one wonders the parson or churchwardens were not ashamed to make
the entry.
[Illustration: _Great Hale._]
The book also shows the accounts of the “Dike-reeve” (an important
officer) for what in another place is called “the farre fenne.”
[Sidenote: HALE MAGNA]
We have already spoken of _Great Hale_ or _Hale Magna_. It is very near
Heckington, and was once a large church. Long before the abbey of Bardney
appropriated it, in 1345, it had both a rector and a vicar, the two being
consolidated in 1296. In 1346 the vicarage was endowed, and on the
dissolution the rectorial tithes were granted, in 1543, to Westminster
Abbey; but within four years they reverted to the Crown by exchange, and
in 1607 were sold by James I., and eventually bought by Robert Cawdron,
whose family were for many years lay rectors. Robert probably found the
chancel in a bad state, and rather than go to the expense of restoring
it, pulled it down and built up the chancel arch, and so it remains. But
the great interest of the building lies at the west end. Here the tower
arch is a round one, but the tower into which the Normans inserted it
is Saxon, probably dating from about 950. It is built of small stones,
and the line of the roof gable is still traceable against it outside.
It has also a curious and complete staircase of the tenth century in a
remarkably perfect condition, though the steps are much worn. The outer
walls of this are built of the same small thin stones as are used in the
tower, in the upper stage of which are deeply splayed windows with a
baluster division of the usual Saxon type.
The nave pillars are Early English and slender for their height, for they
are unusually tall, recalling the lofty pillars in some of the churches
in Rome. The arches are pointed. Among the monuments are those of Robert
Cawdron, and his three wives, 1605, and of another Robert, 1652, father
of twenty children, while a large slab with the indent of a brass to some
priest has been appropriated to commemorate a third of the same name.
The Cawdron arms are on a seventeenth century chalice. The old registers,
which are now well cared for, are on paper, and have suffered sadly from
damp and rough handling. The first volume begins in 1568, the second
in 1658, and the list of vicars is complete from 1561. To antiquarians
I consider that this is one of the most interesting of Lincolnshire
churches. Two miles west is _Burton Pedwardine_, with fine Pedwardine and
Horsman tombs, and a pretty little square grille for exhibiting relics.
The central tower fell in 1862.
[Sidenote: HELPRINGHAM]
The road which runs south from Heckington to Billingborough and so on
by Rippingale to Bourne, passes by Hale Magna to _Helpringham_. Here is
another very fine church, with a lofty crocketed spire, starting from
four bold pinnacles with flying buttresses. The tower is engaged in the
aisles, as at Ewerby and Sleaford, and as at Ewerby it opens into nave
and aisles by three grand arches. The great height of the tower arch into
the nave here and at Boston and Sleaford was in order to let in light
to the church from the great west window. The main body of the building
is Decorated and has fine windows; the chancel with triplet window is
Early English. The font, Early English transition, the rood screen is of
good Perpendicular design, and the effect of the whole building is very
satisfying, especially from the exterior. It is curious that the lord
of the manors of Helpringham and Scredington, who since the sixteenth
century has been the Lord Willoughby De Broke, was in the fourteenth
century the Lord Willoughby D’Eresby.
[Illustration: _Helpringham._]
[Sidenote: SWATON]
South of Helpringham, and situated half-way between that and Horbling,
and just to the north of the Sleaford-and-Boston road is _Swaton_ with
a beautiful cruciform church in the earliest Decorated style; indeed,
looking at the lancet windows in the chancel, one might fairly call it
transitional Early English. The simple two-light geometrical window at
the east end with the mullions delicately enriched outside and in, form
a marked contrast to the rich but heavy Decorated work of the four-light
west window. At the east end the window is subordinated to the whole
design. At the west end the windows are the predominant feature of the
building, and nowhere can this period of architecture be better studied.
The roof spans both nave and aisles, as at Great Cotes, near Grimsby, so
though the nave is big and high it has no clerestory. The tower arches
are very low. The font is a very good one of the period, with diaper work
and ball-flower.
We have dwelt at some length on Sleaford and its immediate neighbourhood,
and not without cause, for there are few places in England or elsewhere
in which so many quite first-rate churches are gathered within less than
a six-mile square. They are all near the road from Sleaford to Boston, on
which, after leaving Heckington, nothing noticeable is met with for seven
miles, till Swineshead is reached, and nothing after that till Boston.
The north-eastern road from Sleaford to Horncastle passes over a flat and
dull country to Billinghay and Tattershall, and thence by the interesting
little churches of Haltham and Roughton (pronounced Rooton) to
Horncastle. The road near _Billinghay_ runs by the side of the Old Carr
Dyke, which is a picturesque feature in a very Dutch-looking landscape.
[Sidenote: KYME TOWER AND PRIORY]
[Sidenote: SOUTH KYME]
This road crosses the Dyke near _North Kyme_, where there is a small
Roman camp. The Normans have left their mark in the name of “Vacherie
House” and Bœuferie Bridge, close to which is “Decoy House,” and two
miles to the south is the isolated village of _South Kyme_. Here is the
keep of a thirteenth century castle, which is nearly eighty feet high,
a square tower with small loophole windows. The lower room vaulted and
showing the arms of the Umfraville family, to whom the property passed
in the fifteenth century from the Kymes by marriage, and soon afterwards
to the Talboys family, and, in 1530, to Sir Edward Dymoke of Scrivelsby,
whose descendants resided there till 1700. The castle was pulled down
about 1725, after which the Duke of Newcastle bought the estate and
sold it twenty years later to Mr. Abraham Hume. The existing tower
communicated from the first floor with the rest of the castle. The upper
floors are now gone.
Close by was a priory for Austin canons, founded by Philip de Kyme in
the reign of Henry II., but all that now remains of it is in the south
aisle of the church, which, once a splendid cruciform building, has been
cut down to one aisle and a fine porch; over this is represented the
Coronation of the Virgin. A bit of very early carved stonework has been
let into the wall, and a brass inscription from the tomb of Lord Talboys
1530.
[Illustration: _South Kyme._]
The western road from Sleaford has no interesting features, till at about
the fifth milestone it comes to _Ancaster_, the old Roman ‘Causennæ’;
here it crosses the Ermine Street, which is a fine wide road, but fallen
in many parts into disuse. The Ancaster stone quarries lie two miles to
the south of the village in Wilsford heath on high ground; the Romans
preferred a high ridge for their great “Streets,” but at Ancaster the
Ermine Street descends 100 feet, and from thence, after crossing it, our
route takes us by a very pretty and wooded route to _Honington_, on the
Great North Road.
[Illustration: _South Kyme Church._]
We will now go back to Sleaford and trace out the course of its other
western road to Newark, leaving the north or Lincoln Road to be described
from Lincoln.
[Sidenote: HOUR-GLASS STANDS]
This road starts in a northerly direction, but splits off at _Holdingham_
before reaching _Leasingham_, of which Bishop Trollope of Nottingham, who
did so much for archæology in our county, was rector for fifty years.
The church has a fine transition tower with curiously constructed
belfry windows and a broach spire. Two finely carved angels adorn the
porch, and the font, of which the bowl seems to have been copied from an
earlier one, though only the stem and base remain, exhibits very varied
subjects, among them The Resurrection, Last Judgment, The Temptation,
The Entry into Jerusalem, Herodias and Salome, and the Marriage of the
Virgin. Fixed to one of the pillars is the old hourglass stand, of which
other specimens, but usually fixed to the pulpit, are at Bracebridge near
Lincoln, Sapperton near Folkingham, Hameringham near Horncastle, and
Belton in the Isle of Axholme.
But the Newark road holds westwards, and, leaving the tower of Cranwell,
with its interesting “Long and Short” work, to the right, climbs to
the high ground and crosses the Ermine Street by Caythorpe Heath to
_Leadenham_, eight miles. Here it drops from “the Cliff” to the great
plain, drained by the Wytham and Brant rivers, and at _Beckingham_ on the
Witham reaches the county boundary. The Witham only acts as the boundary
for two miles and then turns to the right and makes for Lincoln. Half way
between this and the lofty spire of Leadenham the road passes between
_Stragglethorpe_ and _Brant-Broughton_ (pronounced Bruton), which is
described later.
CHAPTER IX
LINCOLN, THE CATHEDRAL AND MINSTER-YARD
The city of Lincoln was a place of some repute when Julius Cæsar landed
B.C. 55. The Witham was then called the Lindis, and the province
Lindisse. The Britons called the town Lindcoit, so the name the Romans
gave it, about A.D. 100, “Lindum Colonia,” was partly Roman and partly
British. The Roman walled town was on the top of the hill about a quarter
of a mile square, with a gate in the middle of each wall. Of their four
roads, the street which passed out north and south was the Via Herminia
or Ermine Street. The east road went to “Banovallum”—Horncastle (or the
Bain)—and “Vannona”—Wainfleet—and the west to “Segelocum”—Littleborough.
The Roman milestone marking XIV miles to Segelocum is now in the
cathedral cloisters.
[Sidenote: ROMAN ARCH]
This walled space included the sites of both cathedral and castle, and
was thickly covered with houses in Danish and Saxon times. We hear of
166 being cleared away by the Conqueror to make his castle. The Romans
themselves extended their wall southward as far as the stone-bow in order
to accommodate their growing colony. Their northern gate yet exists. It
is known as “Newport Gate,” and is of surpassing interest, as, with the
exception of one at Colchester, there is not another Roman gateway in the
kingdom. Only last October the foundations of an extremely fine gateway
were uncovered at _Colchester_, the Roman “Camelodunum”; apparently
indicating the fact that there were two chariot gates as well as two side
entrances for foot passengers. The Newport Gate is sixteen feet wide, and
twenty-two feet high, with a rude round arch of large stones without a
key, the masonry on either side having stones some of which are six feet
long. On each side of the main gate was a doorway seven feet wide for
foot passengers. A fifth Roman road is the “Foss Way,” which came from
Newark and joined the Ermine Street at the bottom of Canwick Hill, a mile
south of Lincoln.
[Illustration: _Newport Arch, Lincoln._]
From the junction of these two roads a raised causeway, following the
line of the present High Street, ran over the marshy ground to the gate
of the walled town. This causeway, bearing in places the tracks of Roman
wheels, is several feet below the present level, and even on the top of
the hill several feet of debris have accumulated over the Roman pavements
which were found in the last century where the castle now stands.
Doubtless, as years went on, many villas would be planted outside the
walls of the Roman city, but we know little of the history of the colony,
except that it was always a place of considerable importance.
[Sidenote: BISHOP REMIGIUS]
To come to post-Roman times, Bede, who died in 785, tells us that
_Paulinus_, who had been consecrated Bishop of York in 625, and had
baptised King Ædwin and a large number of people at York in the church
which stood on the site afterwards occupied by the Minster, came to
Lincoln, and, after baptising numbers of people in the Trent, as he had
previously done in the Swale near Richmond in Yorkshire, built a stone
church in Lincoln, or caused his convert Blaeca, the Reeve of the city,
to build it, in which he consecrated Honorius Archbishop of Canterbury.
Bede saw the walls of this church which may well have stood where the
present church of St. Paul does. William the Conqueror in 1066 built the
Norman castle on the hill to keep the town, which had spread along the
banks of the Witham, in order. It was about this time that Remigius, a
monk of Fécamp, in Normandy, who had been made by William, Bishop of
Dorchester-on-Thames in 1067, as a reward for his active help with a
ship and a body of armed fighting men, got leave, after much opposition
from the Archbishop of York, to build a cathedral at Lincoln on the hill
near the castle. So, next after the Romans (and perhaps the Britons
were there before them), it is to him that we owe the choice of this
magnificent site for the cathedral. Remigius began his great work in
1075, of which the central portion of the west front, with its plain rude
masonry and its round-headed tall recesses on either side of the middle
door, and its interrupted band of bas-reliefs over the low Norman arches
to right and left of the tall recesses, is still _in situ_. The sixteen
stone bas-reliefs are subjects partly monkish, but mostly Scriptural,
concerning Adam, Noah, Samuel, and Jesus Christ. They are genuine Norman
sculptures, and they are at the same level as Welbourn’s twelve English
kings under the big central window, but these are of the fourteenth
century.
The church of Remigius ended in an apse, of which the foundations are
now under the stalls about the middle of the choir. It probably had two
towers at the west end, and possibly a central tower as well. The church
of St. Mary Magdalene was swept away to clear the site, and a chapel at
the north west end of the new building allotted to the parishioners in
compensation. Like the Taj at Agra it was seventeen years in building,
and its great founder died, May 4, 1092, a few months before its
completion. This was in the reign of Rufus, a reign notable for the
building of the great Westminster Hall.
[Illustration: _Gateway of Lincoln Castle._]
[Sidenote: LINCOLN CASTLE]
[Sidenote: BISHOP ALEXANDER]
The wide joints of the masonry, and the square shape of the stones, and
the rude capitals of the pilasters are distinctive of Remigius’ work.
_Bloet_ succeeded Remigius, and during his thirty years he did much for
the cathedral staff, but not very much to the fabric. His successor,
_Bishop Alexander_, 1123, was a famous builder, and besides the castles
of Sleaford, Newark and Banbury, the first two of which Stephen forced
him to give to the Crown, he built the later Norman part of the west
front, raising its gables and putting in three doors and the interlaced
arcading above the arches of Remigius. He also vaulted the whole nave
with stone, after a disastrous fire in 1141. There had been a previous
fire just before Alexander was consecrated Bishop in 1123, of which
Giraldus Cambrensis, writing about 1200, says that the roof falling on
it “broke the stone with which the body of Remigius was covered into two
equal parts.” This richly carved and thus fractured stone you may see
to-day, where it is placed close to the north-west arch of the nave and
north aisle. Bishop Alexander’s work is richer than that of Remigius,
and the shafts and capitals of his west doors are beautifully carved. In
these, according to Norman custom, hunters are aiming at the birds and
beasts in the foliage. This is best seen in the north-west doorway. King
Stephen came to Lincoln in 1141, the year of the fire, and it was there
that, after a fierce fight which raged round the castle and cathedral, he
was taken prisoner and sent to Bristol, but in the following year terms
were arranged between him and the Empress Maud, and he was crowned at
Christmas in Lincoln cathedral. After that date Bishop Alexander carried
forward his work on the cathedral without intermission till his death in
1047, putting in the central western gable and the two gables over the
arcading, vaulting the whole west front with stone, and adding the little
north and south gables against the towers and the Norman stages of the
towers, of which the northern tower was a little the highest, but looked
less high because the south tower had its angles carried up higher than
the walls of the square.
Bishop Alexander, like St. Hugh, died of a fever, which he caught at
Auxerre in France, where he had been to meet the Pope. Those French towns
seem to have been pretty pestilential at all times. _Bishop Chesney_
succeeded him, and either he or Bishop Bloet began the episcopal palace.
He assisted at the Coronation of Henry II. in Lincoln, and founded St.
Catharine’s Priory. He died in 1166, and, after the lapse of six years,
_Geoffrey Plantagenet_, son of Henry II. by Fair Rosamund, held the See
for nine years, but was never consecrated. In 1182 he resigned, and was
afterwards made Archbishop of York. He gave many gifts to the cathedral,
and notably two “great and sonorous bells,” the putative parents of
“Great Tom.” _Walter de Constantiis_ followed him, but was in the very
next year translated to Rouen, 1184, and again the See was vacant for the
space of two years.
[Sidenote: ST. HUGH]
In 1185 an earthquake did great damage, and in the following year _Hugh
of Avalon_, the famous St. Hugh of Lincoln, was appointed Bishop by Henry
II. He widened the west end by putting a wing to each side of the work
of Remigius, and put a gable over the central arch, and began his great
work of making a new and larger cathedral with double transepts and a
choir 100 feet longer and a nave ten feet wider than that of Remigius,
starting at the east and building the present ritual choir and both the
eastern and western transepts. In this his work was of a totally new
character, with pointed arches, and “is famous as being the earliest
existing work of pure English Gothic.” But Early English work, so says
Murray, was already being done at Wells in 1174, twelve years earlier,
and it was there that the Gothic vaulting and pointed arch was first seen
in England. From the great transept to the angel choir is all his design,
and it bears no trace of Norman French influence in any particular.
The name of Hugh’s architect is Geoffrey de Noiers, his work is more
remarkable for lightness than for strength, and in about fifty years
Hugh’s tower fell, setting thereby a bad example which has been followed
so frequently that Bishop Creighton’s first question on visiting a new
church used generally to be, “When did your tower fall?”
[Sidenote: BISHOP GROSTESTE]
Hugh of Avalon died in London in 1200, and _William de Blois_ (1201) and
_Hugh of Wells_ (1209) went on with the building. The latter particularly
kept to Hugh of Avalon’s plan of intercalating marble shafts with those
of stone. Other characteristics of St. Hugh’s work are the double
arcading in the transept and the little pigeon-hole recesses between
the arcade arches, a trefoil ornament on the pillar belts and on the
buttresses, and the deep-cut base mouldings. He put in the fine Early
English round window in the north transept called the “Dean’s eye,” which
has plate tracery. The five lancet lights, something after the “Five
Sisters” window at York, were a later addition. The end of his work is
easily distinguishable in the east wall of the great transept. He also
built the Galilee porch, which was both a porch and an ecclesiastical
court, and the Chapter house, with its ten pairs of lancet windows, its
arcading and clustered pillars and beautiful central pillar to support
the roof groining. He was succeeded, in 1235, by the famous _Robert
Grosteste_, a really great man and a fine scholar, who had studied both
at Oxford and Paris. He opposed the Pope, who wished to put his nephew
into a canonry, declaring him to be unfit for the post, and stoutly
championed the right of the English Church to be ruled by English and
not Italian prelates. In his time the central tower fell, and he it was
who built up in its place the first stage at least of the magnificent
tower we have now. He also added the richly arcaded upper portion of the
great west front, and its flanking turrets crowned by the figures of the
Swineherd of Stow with his horn, on the north, and Bishop Hugh on the
south. _Henry Lexington_, Dean of Lincoln, succeeded him as Bishop in
1254, and during his short episcopate of four years Henry III. issued a
royal letter for removing the Roman city wall further east to enable the
Dean and Chapter to lengthen the cathedral for the Shrine of St. Hugh
after his canonisation. Then began the building of the ‘Angel Choir,’
which “for the excellence of its sculpture, the richness of its mouldings
and the beauty of its windows, is not surpassed by anything in the
Kingdom” (Sir C. Anderson). Its height was limited by the pitch of the
vaulting of Hugh’s Ritual Choir, just as the height of Grosteste’s tower
arches had been. The Angel Choir was finished by Lexington’s successor
_Richard of Gravesend_, 1258-1279, and inaugurated in the following year
with magnificent ceremony under _Bishop Oliver Sutton_, Edward I. and
Queen Eleanor both being present with their children to see the removal
of St. Hugh’s body from its first resting-place before the altar of the
Chapel of St. John the Baptist in the north-east transept, where it had
been placed in 1200 when King John himself acted as one of the pall
bearers, to its new and beautiful gold shrine in the Angel Choir behind
the high altar.
[Sidenote: JOHN DE WELBOURN]
The whole cost of the consecration ceremony was borne by Thomas Bek, son
of Baron d’Eresby, who was on the same day himself consecrated Bishop of
St. David’s, his brother Antony being Bishop of Durham, and Patriarch
of Jerusalem. Bishop Sutton, in 1295, built the cloisters and began the
charming little “Vicar’s court.” He died in 1300, his successor was
_Bishop John of Dalderby_, the same who had a miracle-working shrine of
pure silver in the south transept, and whom the people chose to call
_St._ John of Dalderby, just as they did in the case of Bishop Grosteste,
though the Pope had refused canonisation in each case. He finished the
great tower, which, with its beautiful arcaded tower stage, its splendid
double lights and canopies above, and its delicate lace-like parapet,
seems to me to be quite the most satisfying piece of architecture that
this or any other county has to show. It is finished with tall pinnacles
of wood covered with lead. The exquisite stone rood-screen and the
beautiful arches in the aisles were put in at the same time, the work on
the screen being, as Sir C. Anderson remarks, very like the work on the
Eleanor’s Cross at Geddington. He died in 1320, and the lovely tracery of
the circular window in the south transept, called “The Bishop’s eye,” was
inserted about 1350 above his tomb.
_John de Welbourn_, the munificent treasurer, who died in 1380, gave the
eleven statues of kings beneath the window at the west end, which begin
with William the Conqueror and end with Edward III., in whose reign they
were set up. Among other benefactions Welbourn gave the beautifully
carved choir stalls, and he also vaulted the towers. These were all, at
one time, finished by leaded spires. Those of the western tower being 100
feet high, and that on the great central or rood tower soaring up to a
height of 525 feet. This was blown down in 1547, and the western spires
were removed in 1807-08, a mob of excited citizens having prevented their
removal in 1727, but eighty years later the matter made no great stir,
and though their removal may by some be regretted, I think it is a matter
of pure congratulation that the splendid central tower, whose pinnacles
attain an altitude of 265 feet, should have remained as it is. The
delicate lace-like parapet was added in 1775. It is not very likely that
anyone should propose to raise those spires again, but dreadful things do
happen; and quite lately one of our most eminent architects prepared a
design for putting a spire on the central tower at Peterborough. Think of
that! and ask yourself, is there any stability in things human?
Apart from its commanding situation, the whole pile is very magnificent,
and, viewed as a whole, outside, it has nothing to touch it, though
the west front is not to compare in beauty with that of Peterborough.
Inside, York is larger and grander, and Ely surpasses both in effect. But
if we take both the situation and the outside view and the inside effect
together, Lincoln stands first and Durham second.
[Sidenote: GREAT TOM]
[Sidenote: THE CENTRAL TOWER]
I was once at an Archæological society’s meeting in Durham when Dean Lake
addressed us from the pulpit, and he began by saying: “We are now met
in what by universal consent is considered the finest church in England
but one; need I say that that one is Lincoln?” The chuckle of delight
which this remark elicited from my neighbour, Precentor Venables, was
a thing I shall never forget. We will now take a look at the building,
and begin first with the outside, and, starting at the west, walk slowly
along the south side of the close. If we begin near the Exchequer Gate
we see the west front with its fine combination of the massive work of
Remigius, the fine Norman doors of Alexander (with the English kings over
the central door), the rich arcading of Grosteste along the top and at
the two sides, and the flanking turrets with spirelets surmounted by the
statues of St. Hugh and the Stow Swineherd. We look up to the gable over
the centre flanked by the two great towers on either side of it. Norman
below, Gothic above, with their very long Perpendicular double lights,
octagonal angle buttresses and lofty pinnacles. The northern tower once
held the big bell “Great Tom,” and the southern (“St. Hugh’s”) has still
its peal of eight. Lincoln had a big bell in Elizabeth’s reign, which
was re-cast in that of James I., and christened “Great Tom of Lincoln,”
1610. This second great bell being cracked in 1828, was re-cast in 1855,
and the Dean and chapter of the time actually took down the beautiful
peal of six, called the “Lady Bells,” which had been hung in Bishop
Dalderby’s great central tower about 1311 and gave that tower its name of
the “Lady Bell Steeple,” and had them melted down to add to the weight of
“Great Tom,” thus depriving the minster, by this act of vandalism, of its
second ring of bells. The third, or new, “Great Tom,” now hangs alone in
the central tower. It weighs five tons eight hundredweight, and is only
surpassed in size in England by those at St. Paul’s, at Exeter Cathedral,
and Christ Church, Oxford. It is six feet high, six feet ten inches in
diameter, and twenty-one and a half feet round the rim, and the hammer,
which strikes the hours, weighs two hundredweight.
[Illustration: _The Rood Tower and South Transept, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: THE SOUTH SIDE]
From the west front we should walk along the south side, passing first
the consistory court with its three lancet windows, and high pitched
gable, where is the little figure of “the devil looking over Lincoln.”
This forms a small western transept, and has a corresponding transept
on the north side, containing the ringers’ chapel and that of St. Mary
Magdalene.
[Sidenote: THE EAST END]
Going on we get a view of the clerestory windows in the nave, above which
is the parapet relieved by canopied niches, once filled with figures.
The flying nave buttresses now come into view, and next we reach, at
the south-western corner of the great transept, the beautifully built
and highly ornamented “Galilee Porch,” which was meant for the bishop’s
entrance from his palace into the cathedral. The room over it is now the
muniment room. From this point we get a striking view of the western
towers with the southern turret of the west front. The buttresses of the
transept run up to the top of the clerestory, and end in tall pinnacles
with statue-niches and crockets. The transept gable has a delicately
pierced parapet and lofty pinnacles. Above is a five-light Decorated
window, and below this a broad stone frieze, and then the large round
window, “The Bishop’s Eye,” with its unspeakably lovely tracery, a marvel
of lace-work in stone; below this comes a row of pointed arcading. The
eastern transept is the next feature, with another fine high-pitched
gable. Here the work of St. Hugh ends. The apsidal chapels of St. Paul
and St. Peter are at the east side of this transept, and then, along
the south side of the Angel Choir, the chapels of Bishops Longland and
Russell, with the splendid south-east porch between them. This, from
its position, is unique in English churches, and was probably designed
for the state entrance of the bishop after the presbytery had been
added, in place of the Galilee porch entrance. It has a deeply recessed
arch, with four canopied niches holding fine figures. The doorway has
two trefoil headed arches, divided by a central shaft with a canopied
niche above it, once containing the figures of the Virgin and Child.
Above this, and in the tympanum, is represented the Last Judgment. The
buttresses of the Angel Choir are beautifully and harmoniously enriched
with canopy and crocket, and the upper windows are perfect in design and
execution. Apart from its splendid position, it is this exquisite finish
to the beautifully designed building that makes Lincoln Cathedral so
“facile princeps” among English cathedrals. At the south-east buttress
are finely conceived figures of Edward I. trampling on a Saracen, and
his Queen Eleanor; and another figure possibly represents his second
queen, Margaret. Coming round to the east we look with delighted eyes
on what has been called “the finest example of Geometrical Decorated
Architecture to be found in the kingdom.” The window is not so fine as
that at Carlisle, and no east end competes with that at York, but York
is Perpendicular, and Lincoln is Geometrical. Here we have not only a
grand window, fifty-seven feet high, but another great five-light window
above it, and over that a beautiful figure of the Virgin and Child, and
all finished by a much enriched gable surmounted by a cross. The two
windows, one above the other, seem not to be quite harmonious, in fact,
one does not want the upper window, nor perhaps the windows in the aisle
gables, but the buttresses and their finials are so extraordinarily good
that they make the east end an extremely beautiful whole. Close to the
north-east angle is a little stone well cover, and the chapter-house,
with its off-standing buttress-piers and conical roof, comes into view
at the north. The north side is like the south, but has near it the
cloisters, which are reached by a short passage from the north-east
transept. From the north-east corner of these cloisters you get an
extremely good view of the cathedral and all its three towers. Steps
from this corner lead up to the cathedral library. The north side of
the cloisters of Bishop Oliver Sutton, unable to bear the thrust of the
timber-vaulted ceiling, fell, and was replaced in 1674 by the present
inharmonious pillars and ugly arches designed by Sir Christopher Wren.
We must now look inside the cathedral, and if we enter the north-east
transept from the cloisters we shall pass over a large stone inscribed
“Elizabeth Penrose, 1837.” This is the resting-place of “Mrs. Markham,”
once _the_ authority on English history in every schoolroom, and
deservedly so. She took her _nom de plume_ from the little village of
East Markham, Notts., in which she lived for many years.
[Sidenote: THE INTERIOR]
Passing through the north-east transept, with its stained glass windows
by Canon Sutton, and its curious “Dean’s Chapel,” once the minster
dispensary, and turning eastwards, we enter the north aisle of the Angel
Choir and find the chapel of Bishop Fleming, the founder of Lincoln
College, Oxford. In this the effigy of the bishop is on the south side,
and there is a window to the memory of Sir Charles Anderson, of Lea, and
a reredos with a painting of the Annunciation, lately put up in memory
of Arthur Roland Maddison, minor canon and librarian, who died April
24, 1912, and is buried in his parish churchyard at Burton, by Lincoln.
He is a great loss, for he was a charming personality, and, having been
for many years a painstaking student of heraldry, he was always an
accurate writer on matters of genealogy, and on the relationships and
wills of the leading Lincolnshire families, subjects of which he had a
special and unique knowledge. Bishop Fleming was not the only Bishop
of Lincoln who founded a college at Oxford, as William Smith, founder
of Brasenose, Cardinal Wolsey, founder of Christchurch, and William of
Wykeham, founder of New College, were all once bishops here. Opposite to
the Fleming chapel is the Russell chapel, just east of the south porch
and between these lies the Retro Choir, which contained once the rich
shrine of St. Hugh, its site now marked, next to Bishop Fuller’s tomb, by
a black marble memorial. Here is the beautiful monument to the reverend
Bishop Christopher Wordsworth. This is a very perfect piece of work,
with a rich, but not heavy, canopy, designed by Bodley and executed by
M. Guillemin, who carved the figures in the reredos of St. Paul’s. This
rises over a recumbent figure of the bishop in robes and mitre. The face
is undoubtedly an excellent likeness.
[Sidenote: THE CHOIR]
The view from here of the perfect Geometrical Gothic east window, with
its eight lights, is very striking; beneath it are the three chapels
of St. Catherine, St. Mary, and St. Nicholas, and on either side of it
are two monuments, those on the south side to Wymbish, prior of Nocton,
and Sir Nicolas de Cantelupe; and on the north side to Bishop Henry
Burghersh, Chancellor of Edward III., 1340, and his father, Robert. On
each tomb are canopied niches, each holding two figures, among which are
Edward III. and his four sons—the Black Prince, Lionel Duke of Clarence,
John of Gaunt, and Edmund of Langley. Adjoining the chapel of St.
Catherine, which was founded by the Burghersh family, is a fine effigy
of Bartholomew Lord Burghersh, who fought at Crécy, in full armour with
his head resting on a helmet. A fine monument of Queen Eleanor once stood
beneath the great window where her heart was buried before the great
procession to London began. The effigy was of copper gilt, but, having
been destroyed, it has been recently replaced by a generous Lincoln
citizen from drawings which were in existence and from a comparison with
her monument in Westminster Abbey. A stone at the west of St. Catherine’s
chapel shows a deep indentation worn by the scrape of the foot of each
person who bowed at the shrine. A similar one is to be seen at St.
Cuthbert’s shrine, Durham.
In the east windows of both the choir aisles is some good Early English
glass.
[Sidenote: THE PRESBYTERY]
We will now turn westwards, past the south porch, and come to the
south-east transept; here the line of the old Roman wall and ditch runs
right through the cathedral, the apsidal chapels of the eastern transepts
and the whole of the presbytery, as well as the chapter-house, lying
all outside it. Two apsidal chapels in this transept are dedicated to
St. Peter and St. Paul. It was in St. Peter’s that sub-dean Bramfield
was murdered by a sub-deacon, September 25, 1205, who paid the penalty
immediately at the hands of the sub-dean’s servants. The exquisite white
marble tomb and recumbent figure of John Kaye, bishop 1827 to 1853, by
Westmacott, is in this chapel. Opposite to these apsidal chapels are
the canons’ and choristers’ vestries; under the former is a crypt; the
latter has the monks’ lavatory, and a fireplace for the baking of the
sacramental wafers by the sacristan. Passing along the south choir-aisle
we reach the shrine of little St. Hugh, and here the work all around
us, in choir, aisles, and transepts, is that of the great St. Hugh. The
whole of the centre of the cathedral, with its double transept and the
choir between them, being his; and we must notice in two of the transept
chapels his peculiar work in the double capitals above slender pillars of
alternate stone and marble, and projecting figures of saints and angels
low down in each spandrel. We now enter the choir, and pause to admire
the magnificent work and all its beauty. On either side are the sixty-two
beautiful and richly carved canopied stalls. They are only excelled,
perhaps, by those at Winchester. The carving of the _Miserere_ seats
is much like that at Boston, where humorous scenes are introduced. The
fox in a monk’s cowl, the goose, and the monkey being the chief animals
represented. Here, on a poppy-head in the precentor’s seat, a baboon is
seen stealing the butter churned by two monkeys; he is caught and hanged,
and on the _Miserere_ he is being carried forth for burial. A finely
carved oak pulpit, designed by Gilbert Scott, is at the north-east end of
the stalls. The brass eagle is a seventeenth century copy of an earlier
one. We notice overhead the stone vaulting, springing from Purbeck
shafts; notice, too, the beauty of the mouldings and carved capitals, and
the groups of arches forming the triforium with clerestory window above,
which, however, only show between the ribs of the vaulting; and, then,
the length of it! For now, by taking in two from the Angel Choir, the
chancel has seven bays. It is a very striking view as you look eastwards,
but it has the defect of a rather plain, low vaulting, and west of it the
nave, which is a generation later, is more splendidly arranged, while
east of it the Angel Choir, which is nearly half a century later than the
nave, admittedly surpasses all the rest in delicacy and beauty. The choir
vaulting being low, caused both nave and presbytery to be lower than they
would otherwise have been, so that it has been said that when the tower
fell it was a pity the chancel did not fall with it, all would then have
been built with loftier roofs and with more perfect symmetry.
If we pass down the Ritual Choir eastwards, we enter the presbytery, and
at once see the origin of the name “Angel Choir” in the thirty figures of
angels in the spandrels. It was built to accommodate the enormous number
of pilgrims who flocked to St. Hugh’s shrine, and is, according to G. A.
Freeman, “one of the loveliest of human works; the proportion of the side
elevation and the beauty of the details being simply perfect,” and it
would seem to be uncontested that all throughout, whether in its piers,
its triforium, its aisles, or its carved detail, it shows a delicacy and
finish never surpassed in the whole history of Gothic architecture. One
of its large clerestory windows was filled, in 1900, with excellent glass
by H. Holiday, to mark the seven-hundredth anniversary of St. Hugh’s
death.
The angels sculptured in stone, and mostly carrying scrolls, fill the
triforium spandrels in groups of three, five groups on either side. They
are probably not all by the master’s hand. The Virgin and Child in the
south-west bay and the angel with drawn sword in the north-west seem
finer than the rest. The stone inscribed in Lombardic letters “Cantate
Hic,” marks the place for chanting the Litany; this is chanted by two
lay clerks. There are nine of these, one being vestry clerk; also four
choristers in black gowns with white facings (a reminiscence of the
earliest dress for the Lincoln choir, and a unique costume in England),
eight Burghersh choristers or “Chanters” (lineal descendants of the
Burghersh chantry of St. Catherine with its separate band of choristers),
and some supernumerary boys and men. There are four canons residentiary,
viz., the sub-dean, chancellor, precentor, and Archdeacon of Lincoln, and
fifty-three prebendaries.
In the first bay of the north side of the Angel Choir is a remarkable
monument, part of which once served for an Easter sepulchre. This, like
those of Navenby and Heckington of the same date, is richly carved with
oak and vine and fig-tree foliage, and shows the Roman soldiers sleeping.
Opposite, on the south side, are the tombs of Katharine Swynford of
Ketilthorpe, Duchess of Lancaster, Chaucer’s sister-in-law, whose
marriage to John of Gaunt took place in the minster in 1396. Like so many
of the monuments, these are sadly mutilated, and are not now quite in
their original position.
It is on one of the pillars of the east bay, the second from the east
end, that the curious grotesque, familiar to all as the “Lincoln Imp,” is
perched.
[Sidenote: THE NAVE]
If we now turn westwards we shall come to the fine stone organ screen,
and pass through to the tower, whose predecessor fell through faultiness
of construction, and was rebuilt by Grosteste as far as the nave roof,
and we shall look down the nave, which is forty-two feet wide, each
aisle being another twenty feet in width. The planning and execution
of the nave we owe to the two Bishops Hugh. Its great length (524 feet
with the choir and presbytery) makes the whole building, when viewed
from the west, look lower than it is, for it is really eighty-two feet
high. Looking west this is not felt so much, and there is a feeling of
great dignity which the best Early English work always gives. The piers
may seem lacking in massive strength, but they vary in pattern, those to
the east being the most elaborate, and so gain in interest. One curious
thing about the nave, though not discernible to the uninitiated, is that
the axis, which is continuous from the east end for the first five of
the seven bays, here diverges somewhat to the north, and so runs into
the centre of the Norman west front. The two western bays are five and
a quarter feet less in span than the others. Probably the architect, as
he brought the nave down westwards with that light-hearted disregard
of a previous style of architecture which characterised the medieval
builder and his predecessors of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
intended to sweep away all the old Norman work at the west end and carry
the line straight on with equal-sized arches, but funds failed and he had
to join up the new with the old as best he could; and we have cause to be
thankful for this, since it has preserved for us the original and most
interesting work of Remigius.
[Sidenote: THE TRANSEPTS]
Before we leave our place beneath the tower, we must look at the two
great transepts. These have piers, triforium and clerestory similar to
those in the choir, and each has three chapels along the eastern wall;
these, from north to south, are dedicated to St. Nicholas, St. Denis,
St. Thomas; and in the south transept to St. Edward, St. John and St.
Giles. Of these, St. Edward’s is called the chanters’ chapel, and it
has four little figures of singers carved in stone, two on each side of
the door. This was fitted up for use and opened in August, 1913, for
a choristers’ chapel, the tombstone of Precentor Smith, 1717, being
introduced for an altar. Everybody is attracted by the rose windows. That
to the north has beneath it five lancet windows, something like those at
York, filled with white silvery glass, but the rose above has still its
original Early English stained glass, and is a notable example of the
work of the period. A central quatrefoil has four trefoils outside it and
sixteen circles round, all filled with tall bold figures and strongly
coloured. It is best seen from the triforium. Below is the dean’s door,
with a lancet window on either side, and over it a clock with a canopy,
given in 1324 by Thomas of Louth. This canopy was carried off by the
robber archdeacon, Dr. Bailey, and used as a pulpit-top in his church at
Messingham, but was restored by the aid of Bishop Trollope.
The south transept, where Bishop John of Dalderby was buried, contains
what no one sees without a feeling of delight, and wonder that such
lovely work could ever have been executed in stone,—the great rose window
with its twin ovals and its leaf-like reticulations, which attract the
eye more than the medley of good old glass with which it is filled,
but which gives it a beautiful richness of effect. Below this are four
lancets with similar glass.
[Sidenote: THE FONT]
The aisles of the nave are vaulted, the groins springing from the nave
pillars on the inner, and from groups of five shafts on the outer side.
Behind these runs a beautiful wall arcade on detached shafts, continuous
in the north aisle, but only repeated in portions of the south aisle,
with bosses of foliage at the spring of the arches. In the aisle at the
second bay from the west is the grand old Norman font, resembling that
at Winchester. There is another at _Thornton Curtis_ in the north-east
of the county. Neither of the Lincolnshire specimens are so elaborately
carved as that at Winchester, which is filled with scenes from the life
of St. Nicholas, but all are of the same massive type, with dragons,
etc., carved on the sides of a great block of black basalt resting on a
round base of the same, with four detached corner pillars leading down
to a square black base. These early basalt fonts, of which Hampshire
has four, Lincolnshire two, the other being at Ipswich, Dean Kitchin
conclusively proved to have all come from Tournai, in Belgium, and to
date from the middle of the twelfth century, a time coinciding with the
episcopacy of Bishops Alexander and De Chesney at Lincoln, and Henry de
Blois at Winchester. The one at St. Mary Bourne is the biggest, and has
only clusters of grapes on it and doves. The other two are at East Meon
and at St. Michael’s, Southampton, and have monsters carved on them like
the Lincolnshire specimens.
Of brasses, in which the cathedral before the Reformation was specially
rich, having two hundred, only one now remains, that of Bishop Russell,
1494, which is now in the cathedral library; but in a record made in
1641 by Sir W. Dugdale and Robert Sanderson, afterwards Bishop, is the
following most charming little inscription to John Marshall, Canon of the
cathedral, 1446, beneath the figure of a rose:—
“Ut rosa pallescit ubi solem sentit abesse
Sic homo vanescit; nunc est, nunc desinit esse.”
which may be Englished
“As the rose loses colour not kissed by the sun,
So man fades and passes; now here, and now gone.”
The ascent of the towers gives magnificent views; from the central tower
one may see “Boston Stump” on one hand, and on the other Newark spire.
The big bell, too, has its attractions, but the greatest curiosity is the
elastic stone beam, a very flat arch connecting the two western towers,
made of twenty-three stones with coarse mortar joints, which only rises
sixteen inches, and vibrates when jumped on. Its purpose is not clear,
possibly to gauge the settlement of the towers. The north end now is
thirteen inches lower than the south. A gallery in the thickness of the
wall between the great west window and the Cinquefoil above it, allows
a wonderful view of the whole length of the cathedral. It is called Sir
Joseph Banks’ view.
[Sidenote: THE BISHOP’S PALACE]
[Sidenote: THE CHANCERY]
Within the Close, as we passed along looking at the cathedral, we had
our backs to the canons’ houses. First comes the precentory and the
sub-deanery near the Exchequer Gate, next the Cantilupe Chantry, with a
figure of the Saviour in a niche in the gable end, and a curious square
oriel window, and then the entrance to the Bishop’s palace opposite the
Galilee porch. The old palace, begun about 1150 or possibly earlier,
was a splendid building; the ruins of it are in the palace grounds.
Through a gateway or vaulted porch, where is now the secretary’s office,
you descend to the site of the magnificent hall, eighty-eight feet by
fifty-eight, built by St. Hugh, for, like Vicars Court, with its steep
flight of steps and its charming old houses, it is built on the slope of
the hill. Succeeding bishops added to the pile in which Henry VI. and
Henry VIII. were royally lodged and entertained, and the charges which
cost Queen Katharine Howard her life took their origin from her meetings
here and afterwards at Gainsborough with her relative Thomas Culpepper.
The palace was despoiled in the days of the Commonwealth, and little but
ruins now remain, but a part of it has been restored and utilised as a
chapel by the late Bishop King, perhaps the most universally beloved of
Lincoln’s many bishops. Buckden and Nettleham and Riseholme have supplied
a residence for successive bishops, and now the bishop is again lodged
close to his cathedral. But, in the grandiloquent language of a work
entitled ‘The Antiquarian and Topographical Cabinet, containing a series
of elegant views of the most interesting objects of curiosity in Great
Britain, 1809,’ “The place where once the costly banquet stood arrayed
in all the ostentatious luxury of Ecclesiastic greatness has now its
mouldering walls covered with trees.” The same authority, speaking of
Thornton Abbey, has this precious reflection, which is too good to lose:
“Here in sweet retirement the mind may indulge in meditating upon the
instability of sublunary greatness, and contemplate, with secret emotion,
the wrecks of ostentatious grandeur.” The Chancery, built by Antony Bek,
1316, faces the east end of the minster yard; it is distinguished outside
by an entrance arch and an oriel window. Inside, there are some very
interesting old doorways, and a charming little chapel, with a wooden
screen of c. 1490, the time of Bishop Russell, and two embattled towers
on the old minster yard wall in the garden, of the early fourteenth
century. The deanery is a modern building on the north side of the
minster.
[Illustration: _Pottergate, Lincoln._]
It was in the chapter house, probably, that Edward I. held his great
Parliament in 1301, which secured the Confirmation of Magna Charta.
Edward II. and Edward III. also each held a parliament here, and since
their time certainly seven kings of England have visited Lincoln.
[Sidenote: MINSTER OR CATHEDRAL?]
The cathedral precincts of Lincoln are called the “Minster Yard,” and the
church is called the Minster, though Lincoln was a cathedral from the
first; the term Minster being only properly applied to the church of a
monastery, such as York, Canterbury, Peterborough, Ripon, and Southwell;
of these, Canterbury is not often called a Minster, but York is always.
Lincoln was never attached to a monastery.
CHAPTER X
PAULINUS AND HUGH OF LINCOLN
Pope Gregory and St. Augustine—Calumnies against the Jews—The
Three “St. Hugh’s.”
Perhaps here it may be well to say something of the life of Paulinus, the
first Christian missionary in Lincoln. And in doing so I must acknowledge
the debt I owe to Sir Henry Howorth’s most interesting book, “The Birth
of the English Church.”
[Sidenote: PAULINUS BISHOP OF YORK]
When Pope Gregory, having been struck by the sight of some fair-haired
Anglian boys being sold as slaves in the Roman Forum, had determined to
send a Mission to preach the Gospel in their land, he chose the prior of
his own monastery of St. Andrew’s, which was on the site where now stands
the church of San Gregorio on the Cælian Hill in Rome. The name of the
prior was Augustine. With his companion monks, he set out, apparently
in the spring of 596. They went from Ostia by sea to Gaul, but lingered
in that country for above a year, and landed on the Isle of Thanet in
April 597. He was well received by Æthelbert King of Kent and his wife
Bertha, daughter of Charibert King of Paris. She was a Christian, and had
brought her Christian chaplain with her. This made Augustine’s mission
comparatively easy. Quarters were given him in Canterbury, and he began
to build a monastery and was allowed to make use of the little church
dedicated to St. Martin, where the Queen’s chaplain had officiated.
Having then sent to the Pope for more missionaries, he received
instructions from Gregory to establish a Metropolitan See in London
and other Bishoprics in York and elsewhere. At the same time several
recruits were sent to him among whom Bede particularises Mellitus,
Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus. The first three became respectively
Bishops of London, Rochester, and York, and Rufinianus Abbot of St.
Augustine’s monastery at Canterbury. By the Pope’s command all these
bishops were to be subject to Augustine during his life, and he was to
be the Archbishop of Canterbury. Augustine died in the same year as St.
Gregory, A.D. 604. A few years later, about 616, Mellitus and Justus
both withdrew for a year to Gaul, but were recalled by King Eadbald,
Justus to Rochester and Mellitus to become Archbishop of Canterbury after
Laurence, a priest whom Augustine himself had selected to succeed him in
604, and who died in 619. To this post Justus succeeded in 624, and, as
Archbishop, consecrated Romanus to the See of Rochester. Shortly after
this Paulinus was consecrated Bishop of York by Justus in 625, and he
accompanied Æthelbert’s daughter Æthelberga to the Court of Ædwin King
of Deira, who ruled from the Forth to the Thames and who had sought her
hand, promising that she should be free to worship as she liked and that
if on inquiry he found her religion better than his own he would also
become a Christian. He discussed the matter with Paulinus, and after many
months’ delay summoned a Witenagemote and asked each counsellor what he
thought of the new teaching, which at present had no hold except in Kent.
Coifi, the Chief Priest of the old religion, was the first to speak;
he said he had not got any good from his own religion though none had
served the gods more faithfully—so if the new doctrine held out better
hopes he would advise the king to adopt it without further delay. Coifi
was followed by another of the king’s Ealdormen. His speech was a very
remarkable one, and is accurately rendered by the poet Wordsworth in his
Sonnet called _Persuasion_, which runs thus:—
“Man’s life is like a sparrow, mighty King!
That—while at banquet with your Chiefs you sit
Housed near a blazing fire—is seen to flit
Safe from the wintry tempest. Fluttering,
Here did it enter; there, on hasty wing,
Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold;
But whence it came we know not, nor behold
Whither it goes. Even such that transient thing,
The human Soul; not utterly unknown
While in the Body lodged, her warm abode;
But from what world she came, what use or weal
On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown;
This mystery if the Stranger can reveal,
His be a welcome cordially bestowed!”
[Sidenote: THE FIRST ENGLISH BISHOP]
After this the king gave Paulinus permission to preach the Gospel
openly, and he himself renounced idolatry, and in April 627, with a
large number of his people, he was baptized at York in the little church
which was the first to be built on the site of York Minster. After this
Paulinus baptized in the river Swale, and later he came to the province
of “Lindissi,” and spent some time in Lincoln, converting Blaecca the
“Reeve” of the city, and baptizing in the presence of the king a great
number of people in the Trent either at Littleborough or Torksey.
He appears to have spent some time in Lincoln, and to have come back to
it after 633, for early in 635 he consecrated Honorius the successor to
Justus, and fifth Archbishop of Canterbury. The ceremony taking place
probably in the little “church of stone” that he had built, possibly
where St. Paul’s Church now stands. It was probably thatched with reeds,
for eighty years later Bede speaks of it as being unroofed. If St. Paul’s
church really was originally the church of Paulinus, it helps to remove
the stigma that though Paulinus preached and baptised with effect, unlike
Wilfrith, he founded nothing.
In 633 King Ædwin and both his sons were killed after a great battle
against Penda King of Mercia and Coedwalla King of the Britons, at
Haethfelth near Doncaster, and Christianity in Northumbria came to an
abrupt end; though, when Paulinus left, to escort the widowed queen back
to Kent, his faithful deacon James remained behind him, whose memorial we
probably have in the inscribed cross shaft with its unusual interlaced
pattern at Hawkswell near Catterick. To York Paulinus never returned;
but on the death of Romanus, who had been sent by Archbishop Justus on a
mission to the Pope but was drowned in the Bay of Genoa, he took charge
of the See of Rochester, and there he remained till his death on October
10, 644, after he had been Bishop at York for eight and at Rochester
for eleven years. Archbishop Honorius, who was consecrated just a year
before the death of a Pope of the same name, ordained Ithamar to succeed
Paulinus. He was a native of Kent and the first Englishman to be made
a bishop. After the death of Paulinus in 644, more than four centuries
passed before Remigius began to build the cathedral in 1075, which was
altered and amplified so remarkably about 100 years later by Hugh of
Lincoln.
HUGH OF LINCOLN
[Sidenote: BISHOP HUGH OF LINCOLN]
[Sidenote: CANONIZED]
“Hugh of Lincoln” is a title which, like Cerberus in Sheridan’s play,
indicates “three gentlemen at once,” and it will perhaps prevent
confusion if I briefly distinguish the three.
The first and greatest is the Burgundian, usually called from his
birthplace on the frontier of Savoy “Hugh of Avalon.” He went to a good
school in Grenoble, and, as a youth, joined the monastery of the Grande
Chartreuse, where he rose to be procurator or bursar. In 1175, at the
request of Henry II. who had, with difficulty, obtained the consent of
the Archbishop of Grenoble, he came to England to become the first prior
of the king’s new monastery at Witham in Somerset, the first Carthusian
house in England. In 1186, much against his will, he was, by the king’s
decree, elected Bishop of Lincoln, and took up his residence at Stow,
where he at once set to work to master the English tongue. His rule of
life was ascetic, and he made a practice of going every year in harvest
time to live as a simple monk at Witham. He was a strong man, with high
ideals, upright, unselfish and charitable, no believer in the miracles
of the day, and so free from prejudice that he always protected the
hated Jews, who wept sincere tears at his funeral. He was active in his
huge diocese, and was a maker of history, for, besides extending and
beautifying the cathedral of Remigius, he eventually became so powerful
that he joined the Archbishops in excommunicating their Sovereign, and in
1197 he successfully opposed King Richard I. and his “Justiciar,” who was
the great Archbishop _Hubert Walter_. Walter, when Bishop of Salisbury,
had accompanied Richard to the crusade, where he was the king’s chief
agent in negotiating with Saladin. He headed the first party of pilgrims
whom the Turks admitted to the Holy Sepulchre, led back the English host
from Palestine in the king’s absence to Sicily, whence he went to visit
Richard in captivity, and repaired to England to raise the £100,000
demanded for his ransom. He was made by the king’s command Archbishop of
Canterbury, crowned the king a second time in 1194 at Winchester, and as
“Justiciar” had the task of finding means to supply Richard’s ceaseless
demands for money for his wars. Hence it was that he had summoned a
meeting of bishops and barons at Oxford on December 7, 1197, at which he
proposed that they should agree to the king’s latest demand and should
themselves furnish him with three hundred knights to serve for twelve
months against Philip of France, or give him money which would suffice
to obtain them. This was strenuously and successfully opposed by Hugh,
seconded by Herbert Bishop of Salisbury, and this action is spoken of by
Stubbs as a landmark of constitutional history, being “the first clear
case of the refusal of a money grant demanded by the Crown.” Hugh was in
France when Henry II. died, but returned in time for the coronation of
Richard I. He several times attended both Richard and John to Normandy,
and when Richard died he buried him at Fontevrault in 1199, where Henry
II. and his wife, Eleanora of Guienne, and John’s wife, Isabella of
Angoulême, are also buried. He was back in England for John’s coronation
on May 27, but, going again to visit the haunts of his boyhood at
Grenoble, he caught a fever and, after a long illness, died next year
in the London house of the Bishops of Lincoln, at the “Old Temple.” He
was buried in his own cathedral, November 24, 1200, in the north-east
transept, King John, who happened to be then in Lincoln, to receive
the homage of the Scottish king, taking part as bearer in the funeral
procession. Worship of him began at once, and was greatly augmented when
the Pope canonized him in 1220. In 1230, when Richard of Gravesend had
completed the angel choir, St. Hugh’s body was translated to it in the
presence of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor and their children. This was
ten years before Eleanor’s death at Harby, near Lincoln. The only thing
recorded against Bishop Hugh is that he should have, upon Henry’s death,
ordered the taking up of Fair Rosamond’s bones from Godstow Priory.
The story of St. Hugh’s swan is curious but not incredible. Sir Charles
Anderson says: “It seems, from the minute description of the bill, to
have been a wild swan or whooper.” This swan was greatly attached to its
master, and constantly attended him when in residence at Stow Park, where
there was a good deal of water, and many wildfowl. It is said, also, that
on his last visit the bird showed signs of restlessness and distress. Sir
Charles sees no reason to withhold belief from the story, and instances
the case of a gander, within his own knowledge, which attached itself to
a farmer in the county, and used to accompany him daily for a mile and
a half, when he went to look after his cattle in the meadows, waddling
after him with the greatest diligence and satisfaction; and, whenever he
stopped, fondling his legs with neck and bill.
The “Magna Vita S. Hugonis” in the Bodleian, written by Adam, Abbot of
Evesham soon after his death, is the chief source of our information
about him; and a metrical life, also, in Latin, is both in the Bodleian
and in the British Museum.
[Sidenote: BISHOP HUGH OF WELLS]
Nine years after St. Hugh’s death, Hugh the Second, or “Hugh of Wells,”
was appointed bishop. He carried out the plans of his namesake, and
completed the aisles and transepts and added the nave-chapels at the west
end with their circular windows. He added to the episcopal palace begun
by St. Hugh, and built that at _Buckden_—a fine brick building which
later became the sole palace. The Bishops of Lincoln had a visitation
palace at Lyddington, near Rockingham, in which a singularly beautiful
carved wood frieze ran all round the large room. In the “Metrical Life of
St. Hugh” we read that what St. Hugh planned, but left unfinished, Hugh
of Wells completed.
“Perficietur opus primi sub Hugone secundo.”
[Sidenote: LITTLE ST. HUGH]
He died in 1235, and is buried in the north choir aisle. His extremely
harsh treatment of the Jews leads us to the curiously tragic events in
the life of the third Hugh, called the “Little St. Hugh.” He was born in
1246, and only lived nine years. That great man Grosteste, or Grostête,
had succeeded Hugh of Wells, and died after an active episcopate of
eighteen years, in 1254. His successor, Henry Lexington, had procured
leave to extend the cathedral close beyond the Roman city wall in order
to build the beautiful presbytery or angel choir for the shrine of Hugh
I. He was still engaged on this when the persecution which the Jews had
long endured produced such a bitter feeling that they were believed to
be capable of kidnapping and crucifying, or by less conspicuous methods,
putting to death a Christian boy when they had a chance. Hugh was said
to be a chorister who disappeared, and his mother, led by a dream,
discovered his body in a well outside the Newport Gate. A Jew called
Jopin, or Chopin, but in a French ballad Peitevin, was accused of his
murder, and is said to have confessed and to have been put to death with
others of his nation with no small barbarity. He has left his memory at
Lincoln in the name of “The Jews’ House,” which is given to the Norman
building on the steep hill. This story was not uncommon, and told with
much detail, as having really happened, in several places; nor is the
belief in it yet dead. The boy’s body was given to the canons of the
cathedral, who buried him with much solemnity in the south aisle of the
choir, and set a small shrine over him, to which folk came to worship,
and he received the title of “the Little St. Hugh.”
[Illustration: _St. Mary’s Guild, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: THE JEWS]
This story is referred to by Chaucer, who wrote a hundred years later in
“The Prioress’ Tale”:—
“O younge Hew of Lincoln sleyn also
With cursed Jewes, as it is notable,
For it nis but a litel whyle ago.”
His story makes the murdered boy reveal himself by singing “O alma
Redemptoris Mater” “loude and clere,” although, as he says—
“My throte is cut unto my nekke-bon.”
and he does not stop singing till a ‘greyn’ is taken from his tongue by
the abbot
“and he yaf up the goost ful softely.”
Marlowe has a similar story in his “Jew of Malta,” and ballads constantly
were made on this theme. Sir Charles Anderson quotes one beginning:—
“The bonny boys of merry Lincoln
Were playing at the ball,
And with them stood the sweet Sir Hugh,
The flower of them all.
Whom cursed Jews did crucify,” &c.
He was buried, in 1255, next to Bishop Grosteste, who had died two years
before.
The persistence of this medieval accusation against the Jews is
singularly illustrated by a case which is reported in the papers of
October 9, 1913, headed “Ritual Murder Trial.” The trial is at Kieff in
Russia, of a perfectly innocent man called Beiliss, who has been more
than two years in prison without knowing the reason, and is charged with
the murder of a Christian boy called Yushinsky “to obtain blood for
Jewish sacrificial rites.” _The Times_ says that ritual murder is not
now mentioned in the indictment. But that so monstrous a charge should
be even hinted at shows how deeply these old malignant calumnies sank
into the medieval mind, and how prone to superstition and how ready to
believe evil we are even in the twentieth century of the Christian era.
The whole idea is on a par with the abominable cruelties of the days
when defenceless old women were burnt as witches, and is a cruel and
absolutely baseless calumny on a long-suffering and law-abiding people,
and yet there are plenty of people to-day in Russia who firmly believe in
it.
CHAPTER XI
LINCOLN.—THE CITY
The City—The Corporation—The City Swords—Tennyson’s Centenary
and Statue—Queen Eleanor’s Cross—Brayford Pool—Afternoon Tea.
[Sidenote: THE MINSTER YARD]
The rate at which the soil of inhabited places rises from the various
layers of debris which accumulate on the surface is well shown at
Lincoln. In Egypt, where houses are built of mud, every few years an
old building falls and the material is trodden down and a new erection
made upon it. Hence the entrance to the temple at Esneh from the present
outside floor level, is up among the capitals of the tall pillars; and,
the temple being cleaned out, the floor of it and the bases of its
columns were found to be nearly thirty feet below ground. Stone-built
houses last much longer, but when a fire or demolition after a siege
has taken place three or four times, a good deal of rubbish is left
spread over the surface and it accumulates with the ages. Hence, in
Roman Lincoln or “Lindum Colonia” pavements may be found whenever the
soil is moved, at a depth of seven or eight feet at least, and often
more. Thus the Roman West Gate came to light in 1836, after centuries of
complete burial, but soon crumbled away; and the whole of the hill top
where Britons, Romans, Danes, and Normans successively dwelt, is full of
remains which can only on rare occasions ever have a chance of seeing the
light. Still there is much for us to see above ground, so we may as well
take a walk through the city, beginning at the top of the hill. Here, as
you leave the west end of the cathedral and pass through the “Exchequer
Gate” with its one large and two small arches, under the latter of which
may be seen entrances to the little shopstalls where relics, rosaries,
etc., were once sold, you pass along the flat south wall of St. Mary
Magdalen’s Church, beyond which the outer Exchequer Gate stood till
1800. The wall in which this and other gates of the cathedral close were
inserted was built in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, to
protect the close and the canons. The gateways were all double, except
the “Potter Gate,” which is the only other one now extant. It is said
that the Romans had a pottery near it; at present the road to the Minster
Yard goes both through it and round one side of it.
[Illustration: _The Pottergate, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: THE CASTLE]
Passing from the Exchequer Gate you see a very pretty sixteenth century
timbered house, with projecting story, at the corner of _Bailgate_, now
used as a bank. Hard by on your right is the White Hart inn, and on your
left you have a peep down _Steep Street_ to the _House of Aaron the Jew_,
a money lender of the reign of Henry II. Near this was once the South
Gate of the Roman city, and some of the stones are still visible in the
pavement. The gate was destroyed in 1775. Looking straight ahead from
the Exchequer Gate you see the east gateway of the castle, a Norman arch
with later semi-circular turrets corbelled out on either side of it.
Inside is a fine oriel window, brought from John of Gaunt’s house below
the hill. The enclosure is an irregular square of old British earthworks,
seven acres in extent. The west gate is walled up and the Assize Court
within the castle enclosure is near it. In the angles on either side of
the east gate are two towers in the curtain wall, one, “the observatory
tower,” crowns an ancient mound, and on the south side is a larger mound,
forty feet high, on which is the keep, a very good specimen of very early
work, in shape an irregular polygon. The castle was one of the eight
founded by the Conqueror himself, apparently never so massive a building
as his castle, which is now being excavated at _Old Sarum_, the walls of
which, built of the flints of the locality, are twelve feet thick and
faced with stone. At Lincoln the Roman walls were ten to twelve feet
thick and twenty feet high. Massive fragments of this wall still exist in
different places, the biggest being near the Newport Arch. Near here too
is “The Mint Wall,” seventy feet long by thirty feet high, and three and
a half feet thick, which probably formed the north wall of the Basilica.
Most of the fighting in Lincoln used to take place around this spot,
as Stephen felt to his cost. The old West Gate of the Roman city was
found just to the north of the castle west gate. The line which joined
the Roman East and West Gates ran straight then, and crossed the Ermine
Street, now called here the Bailgate, near the church of St. Paulinus,
but the result of some destructive assaults must have so filled the road
that the street now called ‘East Gate’ was deflected from its course
southwards and has to make a sharp bend to get back to its proper line.
[Illustration: _The Jew’s House, Lincoln._]
[Illustration: _Remains of the Whitefriars’ Priory, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: THE JEW’S HOUSE]
[Sidenote: THE FRIARS]
[Sidenote: ST. MARY’S GUILD]
Getting back to the ‘Bail,’ or open space between the castle gate and the
Exchequer Gate, we can go down that bit of the old Ermine Street called
“Steep Street” (and I don’t think any street can better deserve its name)
and come into the High Street of Lincoln. If we go right down this, we
shall see all that is of most interest in the town below the hill. First
is the “Jew’s House” where the murderer of Little St. Hugh is said to
have lived, a most interesting specimen of Norman domestic architecture,
and more ornate than that at Boothby-Pagnell of a similar date. The
house has a round-headed doorway, with a chimney-breast starting
from above the doorway arch, and showing that the upper floor had a
fireplace. On either side the door now are modern shop windows. Between
the stringcourses are two double light windows, with a plain tympanum
under a round arch. Belaset of Wallingford, a Jewess, lived here in the
reign of Edward I. She was hanged for clipping coin in 1290, the year of
the Jews’ Expulsion. At the bottom of the street, No. 333, is another
charming old structure called “White Friars’ House” with a projecting
timbered front, and a passage round one end like that at the old “God
begot” house at Winchester. All Friars, whether White (Carmelite), Black
(Dominican), Grey (Franciscan), or Black and White (Augustinian), were to
be found in Lincoln as well as at Stamford, and, with the exception of
the Dominicans, at Boston too. One more bit of old domestic building is
the hall of St. Mary’s Guild, commonly called John o’ Gaunt’s Stables.
Here you may see a combination of the round and the pointed arch, which
dates it as late Norman. The house is longer than the other two, and the
upper story mostly gone, but in Parker’s “Domestic Architecture” it is
spoken of as “probably the most valuable and extensive range of buildings
of the twelfth century that we have remaining in England.” The house
within has round-headed windows with a mid-wall shaft, and a fireplace.
The house just opposite was the palace built by John of Gaunt for
Katharine Swynford; from which the oriel window inside the castle gateway
was taken. These old Norman houses are all small. The really magnificent
building which was once the boast of Lincoln was a thousand years earlier
than these; this was the Roman Basilica, or Hall of Judgment, near
Bailgate, perhaps, the baths at the town of Bath alone excepted, the
finest Roman building in England. Figure to yourself a building 250 feet
long by seventy feet wide, with a triangular pediment rising from a row
of pillars thirty feet high, something like what we still see at Milan.
Alas! that only the pillar bases of this fine hall have been found. The
pillars ran along the west side of Bailgate facing east.
[Illustration: _St. Mary’s Guild and St. Peter’s at Gowts, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: SAXON TOWERS]
[Sidenote: ST. BENEDICT’S]
As we pass down the High Street we shall see on our left the Saxon towers
of St. Mary le Wigford and of “St. Peters at Gowts.” The “gowts” or
sluices were the two watercourses for taking the waters of the “Meres”
into the Witham, originally there were small bridges on either side over
each, with a ford between them for carts. These towers are tall and
without buttresses, having the Saxon long and short work and the upper
two-light window with the mid-wall jamb, and only small and irregularly
placed lights below. They are in style much what you see in Italy,
though the Italian are higher, but certainly none in England are so
uncompromisingly plain as the towers at Ravenna and Bologna. St. Andrews
in Scotland comes nearest, and bears a really extraordinary likeness to
that of St. John the Evangelist at Ravenna. Near St. Mary le Wigford is
the picturesque little remnant of a beautiful but disused church, called
St. Benedict’s; only the ivy-clad chancel, a side chapel and the recent
low tower are left, a very picturesque and peaceful object in the busy
town. Its original tower held a beautifully decorated bell, called “Old
Kate,” the gift of the Surgeon Barbers in 1585, it used to ring at 6 a.m.
and 7 p.m., to mark the beginning and end of the day’s labour. It now
hangs in the tower of St. Mark’s.
The name of ‘le Wigford,’ Wickford or Wickenford, indicates the suburb
south of the river. In the days when kings used to wear their crowns, an
uneasy belief in the old saying—
“The crownéd head that enters Lincoln walls,
His reign is stormy and his Kingdom falls,”
made the monarch take it off on passing from Wickford to the city,
and certainly of all the kings who were crowned in the cathedral none
wore the crown outside except Stephen, and he, as we have seen, soon
had cause to repent it. It has been supposed that both these early
Lincoln churches were built by a Danish citizen called “Coleswegen,”
who is mentioned in Domesday Book as having thirty-six houses and two
churches outside the city. But though Lincoln has not lost nearly so
many churches and religious houses as Winchester has, yet, where she now
has a dozen she once had fifty, so it must be extremely doubtful whether
these two old ones that remain were those of Coleswegen. St. Mary’s now
has a Perpendicular parapet, and, besides the curious tower arch, some
interesting Early English work, and both churches have some good modern
ironwork in pulpit, screen and rails from the Brant Broughton forge.
[Illustration: _St. Benedict’s Church, Lincoln._]
[Illustration: _St. Mary-le-Wigford, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: THE “CONDUIT”]
[Sidenote: THE BRIDGE AND THE STONEBOW]
The woodwork in St. Peter’s was done by the parish clerk, a pleasant
feature not nearly so common now as it used to be. At the road side,
and close to the churchyard rails of St. Mary’s, is a handsome carved
drinking fountain, here called a “conduit,” partly made of stones from
the demolished Whitefriars monastery founded 1269. Leland speaks of it
as new in 1540, and it was repaired in 1672. The Grey Friars conduit and
the High bridge conduit are supplied from the same chalybeate spring,
which once sufficed to turn the mill at the monks’ house, now standing in
ruins a mile to the east of the city. This was one of the good deeds of
the Franciscans, to bring good drinking water within reach of the poor.
A similar system of “conduits” also due to them, existed at Grantham.
A serious epidemic, traced to the drinking water, which broke out in
Lincoln a few years ago, caused the town to go to great expense in laying
on a new supply which comes twenty miles in iron pipes from Elkesley,
Notts, between Retford and Clumber, and crosses the Trent at Dunham on a
little bridge of its own.
The “High bridge” marks the spot where the Ermine Street forded the
Witham. It is the only bridge left in England out of many which still
carries houses on it. The ribbed arch is a very old one, twenty-two feet
wide. The houses are now only on one side, they are quaintly timbered,
and their backs, seen from below by the waterside, are very picturesque.
On the other side is an obelisk, set up 150 years ago, to mark the site
of a bridge chapel dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury. From here you
get the most magnificent view that any town can boast, as you look up the
steep street to the splendid pile which crowns the height, and see the
cathedral in all its beauty.
The length of the High Street is relieved by the “Stonebow.” There was
always a gate here from Roman times onward, for when the Roman town was
extended southward to a good deal more than twice its original size,
it was here that the new wall crossed the Ermine Street. The road had
crossed the swampy ground and forded the river, and was now about to
enter the city and climb the hill. The mediæval gate which succeeded the
Roman ‘porta’ was removed in the fourteenth century, and the present one
dates from the sixteenth, and was repaired in 1887, at Queen Victoria’s
Jubilee. It has one central and two side arches, with slender towers
between, carried up to a battlemented parapet. On the east tower is a
tall figure of the Archangel Gabriel, and in a niche on the other tower
the Virgin Mary. The patroness of the city and cathedral is represented
treading on a dragon. A long room above the arch with timbered roof is
used as a Guildhall; in it are portraits of Queen Anne and Thomas Sutton
of Knaith, founder of the Charterhouse. The corporation, to whom they
belong, has had a long and distinguished existence, for municipal life in
Lincoln began in Roman times; and when they left, and Saxons, Danes or
Normans ruled, and the counties and towns had to adopt new names under
each successive conqueror, Lincoln retained throughout her Roman name
and her right of self-government. The corporation, besides their fine
Restoration mace, have three civic swords, one apparently made up out of
two, but said to have been presented by Richard II. when he visited the
city in 1386, to be carried point uppermost, except in presence of the
sovereign.
[Illustration: _The Stonebow, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: THE CIVIC SWORDS]
[Sidenote: THE “FOX”]
The facts about the swords are these: the Charles I. sword, supposed to
have been presented to the city at the beginning of the Civil War, in
1642, has been mutilated to supply a new blade to the Richard II. sword.
This was done by order of the mayor in 1734. The blade has on it the orb
and cross mark and also the running wolf—a fourteenth century German
mark—but so common was it on the foreign blades used in England in the
sixteenth century that, the figure being taken for a fox—as wolves were
not then common in England—the term “Fox” was transformed to the sword;
hence in Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” act iv., scene 4, we have Pistol saying
to his French prisoner on the field of battle:—
“O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox.”
and in one of Webster’s plays we have—
“Of what a blade is’t?
A Toledo or an English fox?”
The two finest churches in Lincoln were at one time St. Swithun’s and
St. Botolph’s. The former was burnt down, but, after a century, was
rebuilt badly, but has now been restored by the munificence of Messrs.
Clayton and Shuttleworth to its former grandeur, and has a really fine
tower and spire, designed by Fowler, of Louth. St. Botolph’s, near the
south “Bargate,” had to endure a similar period of decay, but was at last
resuscitated, the south aisle being the last gift to the town of Bishop
Christopher Wordsworth.
Lincoln’s last new building, the Carnegie Library, designed by Mr.
Reginald Blomfield, stands in St. Swithun’s Square. It was opened on
February 24th, 1914.
[Illustration: _Old Inland Revenue Office, Lincoln._]
Two other houses are interesting because of their inmates in the
eighteenth century; one the old Jacobean mansion of the Bromheads of
Thurlby, whose descendant, Captain Gonville Bromhead, won with Lieutenant
Chard undying fame by the defence of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu War, 1879.
The other is a house called Deloraine House, in which once lived George
Tennyson, grandfather of the poet; and we cannot quit Lincoln without
going to see the fine bronze statue of the poet by G. F. Watts, which
stands in the close at the east end of the cathedral.
[Sidenote: THE TENNYSON STATUE]
[Sidenote: THE POET’S WOLFHOUND]
In the autumn of 1909 the centenary of the poet’s birth was celebrated at
Lincoln. Dean Wickham preached an eloquent sermon to a large congregation
in the cathedral nave, after which, the choir, leaving the cathedral,
grouped themselves round the statue and sang “Crossing the Bar,” and
Bishop King gave a short and memorable address. In the evening the
writer read a paper on Tennyson to an intently listening audience of
twelve hundred people, which is now published by Routledge & Co., in
a little book called “Introductions to the Poets, by W. F. Rawnsley.”
Lincoln that day showed how fully she appreciated the great Lincolnshire
poet. The statue, a colossal one, represents him looking at a flower,
as described in his poem, “Flower in the crannied wall,” and his grand
wolf-hound is looking up into his face. This hound was a Russian, whose
grandfather had belonged to the Czar Alexander II., he who freed the
serfs in 1861, and was so basely assassinated twenty years later. The
wolf-hound was a very handsome light brindle, with a curious black
patch near the collar. She had a litter of thirteen, and one of these
with the mother, “Lufra,” was given to the writer when living at Park
Hill, Lyndhurst, in the New Forest. The puppy, “Cossack,” was Mrs.
Rawnsley’s constant companion till he died of old age in his sleep; the
mother went to Farringford to replace an old favourite that Tennyson had
lately lost. Her new owner changed her name to Karenina, and she was his
constant companion to the end. Once again, if not twice, she had a litter
of thirteen, and the cares of her large family not unnaturally were at
times too much for her temper. She is now immortalised with her master
in bronze, executed with loving care by his own old friend and quondam
neighbour in the Isle of Wight. The inscription at the back of the
pedestal is: “Alfred Lord Tennyson, born 1809, died 1892”; and below it
is “George Frederick Watts, born 1817, died 1904.”
[Illustration: _James Street, Lincoln_]
Another monument which once adorned Lincoln was the first and one of the
very best in the list of Queen Eleanor’s crosses, designed by the famous
“Richard of Stowe,” who carved the figures in the angel choir. Only a
fragment of this survived what Precentor Venables calls “the fierce
religious storm of 1645.” Before starting on its long funeral procession
to Westminster, the Queen’s body was embalmed by the Gilbertine nuns of
St. Catherine’s Priory, close to which, at the junction of the Ermine
Street and Foss Way, the cross was set up, near the leper hospital of
Remigius, called the Malandery (Fr. Maladerie) hospital.
[Sidenote: THE “STUFF BALL”]
Two railway stations and the many large iron and agricultural implement
works, which have given Lincoln a name all over the world, occupy the
lower part of the town, with buildings more useful than beautiful; for
this industry has taken the place of the woollen factories which were
once the mainstay of Lincoln. But a tall building with small windows,
known as “The Old Factory,” still indicates the place in which the
“Lincoln Stuff” was made, from which the Lincoln “Stuff Ball” took its
name. In order to increase the production and popularise the wear of
woollen material for ladies’ dresses, it was arranged to have balls
at which no lady should be admitted who did not wear a dress of the
Lincolnshire stuff. The first of these was held at the Windmill Inn,
Alford, in 1785. The colour selected was orange; but, the room not being
large enough for the number of dancers, in 1789 it was moved to Lincoln,
where it has been held ever since, the lady patroness choosing the colour
each year. In 1803 the wearing of this hot material was commuted to an
obligation to take so many yards of the stuff. The manufacture has long
ago come to an end, but the “Stuff Ball” survives, and the colours are
still selected.
The swamps of the Wigford suburb have also disappeared, but _Brayford
Pool_, beloved of artists, where the Foss Dyke joins the Witham, still
makes a beautiful picture with the boats and barges and swans in front
below, and the Minster towers looking down into it from above. This Foss
Dyke was a Crown property, until James I., finding it to be nothing
but an expense, with economic liberality presented it to the mayor and
corporation.
[Illustration: _Thorngate, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: THE “GREY FRIARS”]
The river was always outside of the Roman town, for the south wall,
running east and west from the Stonebow, where are now Guildhall Street
and Saltergate, turned up by Broadgate Street, and here, just inside its
south-east angle, is now the interesting “Grey Friars,” a thirteenth
century building consisting of a vaulted undercroft and long upper room,
now used as a museum.
[Sidenote: AFTERNOON TEA]
I have no Lincoln notes of the eighteenth century of any special
interest, but from this little extract it looks as if the institution of
afternoon tea had been anticipated by a hundred years in Lincoln. The
extract is from “A Sketch wrote Aug. 4, 1762, at Lincoln,” and deals with
housekeeping expenses. The entries are:—
“Three guineas a year for tea £3 3 0
“Loave sugar 3 0 0
“Tea, a quarter of an ounce each morning.
“Sugar, half of a quarter of a pound each morning.
“Also an allowance for sometimes in the afternoon.”
CHAPTER XII
ROADS FROM LINCOLN, WEST AND EAST.—MARTON, STOW, COTES-BY-STOW, SNARFORD,
AND BUSLINGTHORPE
West—The Foss-Dyke—Marton—Stow—Cotes-by-Stow.
East—Fiskerton—Barlings Abbey—Gautby—Baumber—Snelland—Snarford
and the St. Poll Tombs—Buslingthorpe—Early Brass—Linwood.
[Sidenote: PASSAGES OF THE TRENT]
Of the eight roads from Lincoln one goes west, and, passing over the Foss
Dyke by a swing bridge at Saxilby, crosses the Trent between Newton and
Dunham into Nottinghamshire. The view of Lincoln Minster from Saxilby,
with the sails of the barges in the foreground as they slowly make their
way to the wharves at the foot of the hill, is most picturesque. Saxilby
preserves some interesting churchwarden’s accounts from 1551 to 1569,
and, after a gap of fifty-five years, from 1624 to 1790. The “Foss Dyke”
is a canal made by the Romans to connect the Witham with the Trent and
deepened by Henry I. The road runs alongside of it from Saxilby for two
miles. Consequently we get glimpses now and again of the low round-nosed
barges with widespread canvas sailing slowly past trees and hedgerows;
then we turn north and pass by Kettlethorpe Lodge and Fenton village,
through lanes lined with oak trees or edged with gorse, and amidst fields
brilliant with corn-marigold, and poppy, till we come, all at once, on
a little fleet of barges waiting with their picturesque unfurled sails
for a passage through the lock near Torksey, a place of some importance
in Saxon times, having two monastic houses. Two miles beyond Torksey is
_Marton_. This place is also approached by the old Roman road, now called
“Till bridge Lane,” which branched off from the Ermine Street ten miles
above Lincoln, and went to Doncaster and York, crossing both arms of
the river Till near _Thorpe-in-the-fallows_. One mile from Marton this
road passes out of the county at Littleborough ferry, the “Segelocum” of
the Romans. The ferry is the main means of crossing the Trent where it
touches Lincolnshire, as there are but two bridges in twenty miles, one
at Gainsborough, and one between Dunham and _Newton-on-Trent_, where the
view from the cliff with the bridge below is very picturesque.
[Illustration: _Lincoln from the Witham._]
There is a ferry at Laneham, between Newton and Torksey; and below
Gainsborough are half a dozen, at _Stockwith_, _Ouston_, _Althorpe_,
_Keadby_, where a bridge is now being built, _Flixborough_, and _Burton
Stather_, but the latter only takes foot passengers, and the others are
all, I believe, of the same calibre. It is just the same on the Ouse,
across which Yokefleet and Ousefleet look at each other about a mile
apart, but to drive from one to the other is a matter of more than thirty
miles.
[Sidenote: MARTON]
[Sidenote: HISTORY OF THE DIOCESE]
_Marton_ is a tiny place, but has a very interesting church, with
unbuttressed tower and heavily embattled parapet to both nave and
chancel. The tower up to the upper stringcourse is entirely built in
Norman “Herringbone” work, this is now plastered over outside, but you
can trace the herring-bone through the plaster, and inside the tower it
is plain to see, and shows courses of thin stone laid horizontally at
frequent intervals. Above the stringcourse is the usual two light window
with mid-wall jamb, which, like the Long-and-Short work at the angles
of the tower, we generally describe as Saxon. Several Saxon stones with
interlaced work, parts of a cross probably, are built into the west end
of the south aisle at about two feet from the ground outside. I always
want to see these very old stones inside, for their better preservation.
Above the present nave roof, but below the mark of the earlier and
high-pitched roof, is a door which once opened from the tower into the
church. The chancel arch is Norman, as are the two lofty bays of the
north arcade. The rest of the church is Early English. In the chancel
south wall is a large niche with a pedestal, evidently intended for a
figure, perhaps of St. Margaret, the patron saint, and there is also a
low-side window of one light with a two-light window above it. But the
most interesting thing in the chancel is a little stone, nine inches by
eleven, now in the north wall, which was lately found in part of the wall
where it had been used as building material; this has on it a very early
attenuated figure of the crucified Saviour, clothed in long drapery. It
might have been part of a cross-head; certainly it is a very remarkable
figure, and of very early date. There is a tall cross-shaft and pedestal,
now in the churchyard, but this is said to have been a market cross
originally. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings were
called in to do the work of repairing and, as usual, their work has been
done in an inexpensive manner and on conservative lines. They found that
the foundation of the old walls, only two feet below the surface, was
just a trench filled with loose pebbles and sand. Three miles to the east
of Marton stands the church which, next to the Minster, we may put at the
head of the list of all the churches in the county. This is what Murray
rightly speaks of as “The venerable church of St. Mary at Stow, the
mother church of the great Minster.”
[Sidenote: STOW]
_Stow_ is thought to be identical with the Roman _Sidnacester_, and the
first church was built there in 678 by the Saxon King Egfrith, husband
of Etheldred, the foundress of Ely, at the time when Wilfrid’s huge
Northumbrian diocese was divided. From 627, when Paulinus, Bishop of
York, preached at Lincoln, baptized in the Trent and built the first
stone church in Lincolnshire, to 656, the province of Lindisse, or
Lindsey, was under the Bishop of York. From 656 to 678 it was under the
Bishops of Mercia, whose “Bishop-stool” was at Repton, and after 669 at
Lichfield. In 678 King Egfrith of Northumbria established the diocese
of Lindsey, with Eadred as first bishop, with its “Bishop-stool,” and a
church of stone built for the See at Sidnacester or Stow. This lasted
for 192 years; then, in 870, the Danes overran Mercia and burnt Stow
church and murdered Bishop Berktred. Then from 876, when England was
divided between Edmund Ironside and Canute, Lincoln became an important
Danish borough. This period is marked by the number of streets in Lincoln
called ‘gates,’ and by the enormous number of villages in the county
ending in the Danish ‘by,’ which we find side by side with the Saxon
terminations ‘ton’ and ‘ham.’ The Danes held Lincoln certainly till 940,
during which time the province had no bishop. In 958 Lindsey was united
with Leicester, and the “Bishop-stool” was fixed at Dorchester-on-Thames
till, in 1072, it was transferred to Lincoln, and the province of Lindsey
became part of the diocese of Lincoln under Remigius, the first Bishop
of Lincoln. _Stow_ being burnt in 870, remained in ruins till about
1040, when Eadnoth, seventh Bishop of Dorchester, rebuilt it, using the
materials of the older church as far as they would go, as may be seen
in the lower part of the transept walls. He probably built the massive
round-headed tower arches. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife, Godiva,
helped liberally both with the building and the endowment. The Early
Norman nave, and the upper parts of the transepts are probably the
work of Bishop Remigius (1067-1093) who, we are told, “re-edified the
Minster at Stow.” The chancel is late Norman, of the best kind, and,
together with the rich doorways in the nave, may be assigned to Bishop
Alexander (1123-1147) whose great west doorway at Lincoln is of similar
workmanship. A few Early English windows, and the Perpendicular central
tower, are all that has been added later, so that the church is of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries. The tower rests on pointed arches, whose
piers come down inside the angles formed by the old Norman arches, which
remain, and are visible below and outside the pointed arches, and give
the very remarkable appearance of double arches supporting the central
tower.
[Sidenote: COTES BY STOW]
A curious loop-moulding goes round the western Norman arch, and is used
also on a window in the south transept, and a similar moulding is found
at _Coleby_. The chancel is surrounded by an arcade, and a stone seat
runs all round. In restoring the church in 1864 Mr. Pearson left part
of the north-west pier of the tower untouched, in order to show the red
traces of the fire of 870, and in the north transept a mass of burnt
stone is visible behind the organ. This is close to a fine and very
early doorway which opens into the north aisle from the west side of
the transept, while on the opposite side, in an altar recess, remains,
fast fading, are seen of a fresco depicting scenes from the life of
St. Thomas à Becket. The steep rood-loft steps start four feet above
the pavement from the angle of the north-east pier close by. The stone
groining of the chancel has been renewed on the old pattern obtained from
several of the old stones which were found built into the walls; and in
underpinning the walls in order to replace the groining, the bases of
pillars were discovered, showing that a previous chancel with aisles had
been either built or else begun and abandoned. The small windows and
lack of buttresses give the outside a plain appearance, but the three
Norman doorways are rich, and there is a great majesty about the Norman
work of the spacious and lofty interior. The font, a very early one, is
octagonal, and rests on eight circular shafts. It was late in the evening
when we left this wonderful church, but we had only two miles to go to
see the beautiful old rood screen at _Cotes-by-Stow_, which is half way
between _Stow_ and the Ermine Street. It is approached by a field road,
and stands at the entrance to a farm, but the little chapel, built of
small, rough stones, is so shut in by trees that the top of its double
bell-turret is the only part of it visible. Inside is a round tub font,
with a square base, some old oak benches, four on one side and three on
the other; and, what no one would expect in such a tiny remote chapel,
the most beautiful of old Perpendicular rood screens, with exquisite
carving, and with the overhang complete. Moreover, the gallery is still
approachable by the ancient rood loft staircase. The loft is about three
feet wide, and there is a tiny pair of keyhole windows, each about ten
inches by two, set close together, in the south wall to light it. Of
ordinary windows the whole south side has but two, though there are four
of different sizes with old leaded panes on the north side. The doorway
is Early English. The building was restored in an excellent manner in
1884 by Mr. J. L. Pearson, who put back the original altar slab with its
unusual number of six crosses.
[Illustration: _Stow Church._]
We recrossed the field, and passing between _Ingham_ and _Cammeringham_,
climbed the hill, and, getting on to the ridge, turned to the right for
Lincoln, distant about eight miles. As we went along we looked down on
_Brattleby_ and _Aisthorpe_, on _Scampton_ and the _Carltons_, and passed
through _Burton_ to the minster city.
The mists were rising in the flat country westwards, and the ripening
corn gave a colour to the fields below us, and, as the sun set at the
edge of the horizon, it seemed to us that it would be extremely difficult
to find any road in England more striking, or from which so fine a view
could be seen for so many miles on end.
[Sidenote: FISKERTON]
Of the three eastern roads one goes by _Greetwell_ and _Fiskerton_ to
_Gautby_ and _Baumber_. _Cherry Willingham_ lies just to the north where,
till 1820, the vicarage was a small thatched house at the end of the
village.
_Fiskerton_ was given by Edward the Confessor to Peterborough, and the
gift still holds. The charter was copied by Symon Gunton in his famous
history of Peterborough, of which he was prebendary from 1646 to 1676,
and at the same time rector of Fiskerton, where Dean Kipling was also
rector in 1806. Only a few years ago what is either the original charter
of the Confessor or an early copy was discovered in the cathedral
library. The unique chronicle of the abbey and monastery called
‘Swapham,’ and written in MS., was saved from Cromwell’s soldiers who
were burning all the books, etc., by Gunton’s son, who tucked it under
his arm, saying that it was exempt from destruction being a Bible, as any
fool could see. That, too, is now one of the treasures of the cathedral
library. The Fiskerton Register is one of the earliest, beginning in
1559. In that book is the following entry for 1826:—
“The driest summer known for the last 20 years. Conduit water taken from
Lincoln to Boston. No rain from April Fair 20th to the 26th of June.
The river was deepened this summer, packet went to Boston by the drain;
prayers for rain during Hay harvest.”
_Barlings Abbey_ lies three miles to the north-east, across Fiskerton
Moor. It was founded in 1054 for Premonstratensian canons by Ralph de
Hoya, and a grand tower, 180 feet high, was still standing in 1710.
Half-way to Gautby we reach _Stainfield_, founded by Henry Percy at about
the same time for Benedictine nuns.
At _Gautby_ was once a hall belonging to the Vyner family, and in the
church are monuments dated 1672 and 1673. Here, too, is a slab in memory
of F. G. Vyner, who was one of the party so infamously murdered by Greek
brigands in 1870.
From here _Baumber_ is quickly reached. This church, whose massive tower
base is Norman, is the burial place of the Duke of Newcastle’s family.
Here, too, an old hall once stood, close by, in Sturton Park, just below
a spur of the South Wold.
[Sidenote: THE SNELLAND SHREW]
From Baumber, going four miles south, we reach Horncastle. The
main eastern road from Lincoln to Wragby is described later in the
Louth-to-Lincoln route. It is the Roman road to Horncastle. At the
seventh milestone, shortly after passing Sudbrooke Holme, the house of
Mr. C. Sibthorpe, where the garden is one of the most beautifully kept
and tastefully planted of any garden in the county, the road divides to
the left for Market Rasen, by _Snelland_, _Wickenby_, _Lissington_, and
_Linwood_; and to the right for Wragby, where it again divides for Louth
on the left, and on the right for Baumber and Horncastle. The third of
the roads takes a north-easterly direction by Dunholme to Market Rasen.
All this route between Nettleham and Linwood lies in the flat strip of
country some eight miles wide, which runs up from the Fens to the Humber,
narrowing in width after reaching Brigg, from whence it is drained by
the river Ancholme and the Wear dyke, which discharge into the Humber
opposite Read’s Island, between South Ferriby and Winteringham. Half way
across this flat-land, on the way to Market Rasen, and two miles to the
left of the Wragby road, is _Snelland_. This place is called in Domesday
Book Esnelent, and also Sneleslunt; and we find that land was held here
by Thomas of Bayeux, Archbishop of York and chaplain to the Conqueror,
while another land-holder was William de Percy, founder of Whitby Abbey
and commander of the fleet which brought the Conqueror over. It is now
the property of the Cust family. The following rhymed marriage entry is
in the Snelland register for the year 1671, Mr. R. S. having presumably
married a well-known scold:—
“The first day of November
Robert Sherriffe may remember
That he was marryed for all the days of his life
If God be not merciful to him and take his wife.”
[Sidenote: THE ST. POLL TOMBS]
North of _Snelland_ is _Snarford_, which we should visit, not so much to
see the four inner arches of the church tower, which are Norman, as to
inspect the wonderful tombs of the St. Poll family. The earliest is in
the chancel, where Sir Thomas lies on an altar tomb in plate armour, with
helmet under his head, bearing as crest an elephant and castle; he wears
both sword and dagger, and holds in his hand a book. They seem to have
been a literary family, for his wife, in a long flowing robe with girdle
and a peculiar head-dress, also holds a book, and the side panels have a
projection on each face also supporting a book. A son and a daughter are
kneeling below; and a canopy supported on pillars and having a richly
moulded cornice bears, over each pillar and between the pillars, kneeling
figures—ten in all. Shields of arms enclosed in wreaths form further
decorations, but both this, which is dated 1582, and the other large
monument in the north chantry are much defaced, and the heavy canopies
look as if they might fall and destroy the figures beneath them at any
moment. It is no good shouting “police!” but where is the archdeacon?
This north chantry has been boarded off from the church, which has an
ugly effect. The monuments in it are first to Sir George St. Poll, 1613,
and his wife Frances, daughter of Chief Justice Sir Christopher Wray of
Glentworth, whom he married in 1583. This is very large, being eleven and
a half feet in height and width. Sir George reclines on his elbow; he,
also, is in armour, his wife is by his side; and below is their little
daughter Mattathia, with cherubs weeping and resting their inverted
torches on skulls. The wife, after putting up this monument, took for
a second husband Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick; and opposite to the
monument of herself and her first husband she re-appears as the Countess
of Warwick, on a round tablet, with medallions of herself and the earl,
her second husband, who died in 1618. His first wife was Lady Penelope
Devereux, by whom he had two sons, Robert and Henry, and two daughters,
Lettice and Essex. A brass on the south side of the chancel has a quaint
Latin inscription, by the Snarford parson, telling us that Frances Wray,
after marriage, was twelve years without issue, and then had a daughter
who died before reaching her second birthday, “cut off while on her way
to Bath.” This was a terrible loss of a most precious treasure, and he
mentions that he had christened her Mattathia, and goes on to tell us
that the “mother passes no day without tears of poignant anguish,” and
ends with “How I wished, alas in vain, that I the writer, instead of
thee, had been the subject of a funeral elegy. John Chadwick, Sept. 9th,
1597.”
“Hos tibi jam posui versus Mattathia Sct. Poll,
Qui primum in sacro nomina fonte dedi.
Quam vellem (at frustra), te nempe superstite, scriptor
Essem funerei carminis ipse mihi.”
[Sidenote: THE BUSLINGTHORPE BRASS]
Close to the St. Poll monument in the chantry is a stone in memory of
George Brownlow Doughty, 1743, who married a Tichborne heiress, and took
the name in addition to his own. From Snarford, less than four miles
brings us to _Buslingthorpe_, where is a Crusader’s effigy, which, like
the priest at Little Steeping, had been turned upside down and used as
a paving-stone, possibly for the sake of saving it from destruction.
This may be Sir John de Buslingthorpe, _c._ 1250. But the great treasure
of the church is a brass half-effigy on a coffin-lid, which also had
been buried, and was only recovered in 1707. This represents a knight
in armour, holding a heart and wearing remarkable scaled gauntlets. The
inscription in Norman French is without date, but reads: “Issy gyt Sire
Richard le fiz sire John de Boselyngthorp,” and is probably not later
than 1290. This is earlier than the somewhat similar brass in Croft
Church, which is assigned to 1300 or 1310, but is not so early as the
fine brass of Sir John d’Abernoun at Stoke d’Abernon in Surrey, which is
dated 1277. Anyhow, it is the earliest in Lincolnshire. From here, less
than four miles brings us back on to the Market Rasen road at Linwood,
only two miles from Rasen.
[Sidenote: LINWOOD]
Instead of going by _Snarford_ and _Buslingthorpe_ we might have reached
Rasen by a more direct route from _Snelland_ through _Wickenby_ to
_Lissington_. Here the road divides, the right hand going to _Legsby_
and _Sixhills_, and then turning left-handed to join the Louth and Rasen
road at _North Willingham_; or, if the day is clear, the traveller can
go straight on from _Sixhills_ and climb the Wold, which with a rise of
one hundred feet will give him a view and bring him to the crown of the
same road at _Ludford_. The left-hand road from _Lissington_ will bring
us to Rasen viâ _Linwood_. This is a pretty road just elevated above the
flat, whence the church spire is visible for a long way. This interesting
church, dedicated to St. Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, A.D. 251, is of the
Early English period with Perpendicular tower. The brasses, which are
good, have been removed from the south chantry to the north aisle and
placed at the west end. We have John Lyndewode, wool stapler, and his
wife, under a double canopy, date 1419. In his shield are three Linden
leaves, which shows the name of the village to mean ‘the Linden (or
Limetree) wood.’ There is also one to their son John, a wool stapler,
dated 1421, and a figure of a bishop in the south chancel window,
probably commemorates another son William, who became Bishop of St.
David’s. A cross-legged effigy of a knight has been torn from its matrix.
The old Lyndewode Manor once stood close to the church.
Continuing northwards for two miles we find ourselves at Market Rasen.
CHAPTER XIII
ROADS SOUTH FROM LINCOLN
The Foss Way—The Sleaford Road and Dunston Pillar on “The
Heath”—The Ermine Street and the Grantham Road on “The
Ridge”—Canwick—Blankney—Digby—Rowston—Brant-Broughton—Temple
Bruer and the Knights Templars and Hospitallers—Somerton Castle
and King John of France—Navenby—Coleby—Bracebridge.
Besides these three roads going east from Lincoln, there are three great
roads which run along “the ridged wold” northwards, and two going south;
but these two, as soon as they are clear of Lincoln, branch into a dozen,
which, augmented by five lines of railway, all radiating from one centre
and all linked by innumerable small roads which cross them, form, on the
map, an exact pattern of a gigantic spider’s web. Of this dozen the three
trunk roads southwards are the Foss Way to Newark in the flat country,
and the Sleaford road over “the heath,” both of which roads avoid all
villages (though the Sleaford road passes through Leasingham, described
in Chap. VIII., about two miles north of Sleaford, and has that curious
erection, _the Dunston pillar_, at the roadside about eight miles out
from Lincoln, described in the chapter on Nocton); and thirdly, the
Grantham road, on the ridge between the two, which has a village at every
mile. Others run, one to _Skellingthorpe_, one to _Doddington_ with its
interesting old Hall, which we will revert to shortly; one all down the
Witham valley to Beckingham on the border, going by _Basingham_ with
its ninth-century Saxon font, and _Norton Disney_ with its fine Disney
tombs and remarkable brass, also to be described later; and one to _Brant
Broughton_.
[Sidenote: CANWICK]
[Sidenote: ROWSTON]
A sign-post in Lincoln points to this village, because, though twelve
miles distant, there is nothing on the way; indeed you may follow up
the valley of the Brant River another six miles to its source near
_Hough-on-the-Hill_, and then go on another six as it curves round
into _Grantham_, and not pass through anything but _Marston_, and
there is nothing to see there but the old seat of the Thorold family,
Marston Hall, now a farmhouse. All these are on the low ground to the
west. Then on the ridge itself is “the Ermine Street,” and east of the
Sleaford highway is a desolate road over “Lincoln Heath” to _Scopwick_,
where a stream, crossed by several single planks, runs right through
the village. East of this, another somewhat important road goes across
the low and once swampy ground south of Lincoln, where the Witham gets
through the gap in the cliff ridge to _Canwick_. Here the church, which
has a rich Norman chancel arch and arcade, and an Early English arcaded
reredos in the vestry, once a chantry chapel, rises, without any other
footing, from a Roman pavement; here, too, from the grounds of Mr. Waldo
Sibthorp’s house, Canwick Hall, where the cliff begins again, you get
a most beautiful view of the minster about two miles distant; indeed,
those who live near Lincoln and can see the minster may boast of a view
which for grandeur has few equals in the land. This walk from Lincoln
is a favourite one, and passes a well-planted cemetery of twenty-five
acres, part of which was taken from the common, which rejoices in the
delightfully bucolic name of “the Cowpaddle.” The road is really the
continuation of the Wragby road, and, curving down Lindum road passes
into Broadgate, then crossing the Witham and the Sincel dyke and the
intersection of the Midland and Great Northern Railways, crosses yet
two more lines before it reaches the cemetery. After Canwick the road
goes through _Branston_ and passes, near _Nocton_, _Dunston_, and
_Metheringham_, to _Blankney_. The hall here, the home of Mr. Henry
Chaplin, than whom no Lincolnshire man is better known or more popular,
is now occupied by Lord Londesborough. The church has a curious tomb-slab
to John de Glori, with a bearded head looking out of a cusped opening,
and a beautiful sculpture by Boehm of Lady Florence Chaplin. This is
one of the few churches in which the ringing of the Curfew-bell still
obtains. After _Blankney_ the road passes Scopwick and curves round
through _Digby_, _Donnington_ and _Rushington_ to Sleaford. Of these
villages _Digby_ is worth seeing, and so is _Rowston_, lying one mile
north of it. At _Digby_ the village cross has been restored, but with a
very indifferent top, and at the other end of the village is a curious
stone lock-up, like a covered well-head, and hardly capable of holding
more than one man at a time. Lingfield in Surrey has a larger one called
‘Ye Village Cage’; it has two steps up inside, and is capable of holding
a dozen people. The tower has three stages, Early English, Decorated and
Perpendicular. The south door is transition Norman, the north arcade
aisle and chancel Early English, the south arcade and aisle Decorated,
and the font, screen and clerestory Perpendicular. In this the six tall
two-light windows are distributed in pairs. _Rowston_, which is dedicated
to St. Clement, has a spire rising from a tall tower, so little wider
than itself that it may safely be said to cover less ground than any
tower in England, for it measures only five and a-half feet inside; it
is blank except for a rather heavy window in the upper stage. The first
thing that strikes you on entering is the extraordinary loud ticking of
the clock. It has to be stopped during service, as no one can compete
with it. The next thing is that the thirteen windows are all filled
with painted glass and of the same type, striking in design, though not
of quite first-rate excellence. One window has figures of the three
Lincolnshire saints—St. Guthlac, St. Hugh, and St. Gilbert. The church
is in very good order, having been recently restored, and some Saxon
stones with interlaced work have been built into the outside wall of
the chancel. It would have been better to have put these inside. But
there is inside a very good head of a churchyard or village cross, and
the base and broken shaft of one, possibly the same, is just outside
the churchyard. This head is of the usual penthouse form, with a carved
figure on either side; it was found quite recently built into a cowshed.
In the nave the pillars are all different. The vestry was over the burial
chapel of the Foster family; later it was, as was so often the case, used
for a school. A beautiful bit of an old carved oak screen separates it
now from the north aisle. A heavy timber floor cuts across the top of the
tall tower arch, and below a very curious pillar stands against one side
of the arch. An Early English priest’s door, with a flat-arched lintel,
is in the south wall of the chancel. It is impossible to walk round the
slender tower, as a garden wall runs into it on both the north and south
sides, leaving part of the tower in a neighbouring garden, the owner of
which once claimed half the tower as his property, and considered that
he had a right to pierce a door through it for easier access to his pew.
[Sidenote: GRANTHAM ROAD]
We have now but one road south of Lincoln to describe—for what we have
to say about Norton Disney and Nocton can come afterwards; this is the
Grantham road, a road curiously full of villages mostly perched on the
western edge of the ridge, whilst the Ermine Street running so near it
on the east has no villages at all on it, and the Sleaford road over
“the Heath,” a little to the east of the Ermine Street, is, as we have
said, just as bare. The number of roads in Lincolnshire which have no
villages on them is very remarkable, though not hard to explain. We have
already, in treating of the roads from Grantham, through the villages
of _Manthorpe_, _Belton_, _Syston_, _Barkstone_, _Honington_, _Carlton
Scroop_, _Normanton_, _Caythorpe_ and _Fulbeck_, brought the account
of this road northwards as far as _Leadenham_. Here the Sleaford and
Newark main road crosses it, and _Leadenham_ spire is a fine landmark
for all the neighbourhood. It is to be noted that, common as the Danish
termination ‘by’ is in all parts of the county, the Saxon ‘ton’ just
about here and on the west side generally, is even more frequent.
This spire is crocketed, but has no flying buttresses. The nave and
arcades are lofty, with bold clustered columns, and the doorways, which
are quite different in style, are both very good. There is some good
Flemish glass, and a stone monument of the Beresford family has long been
in use as an altar. _Wellbourn_, on an Early English tower, has one of
those ugly, Perpendicular “sugar loaf” spires, with a sort of bulge in
the middle, and that to a worse degree than at Caythorpe. The nave and
aisles are the work of John of Wellbourn, the munificent treasurer of
Lincoln in the middle of the fourteenth century.
[Illustration: _Brant Broughton._]
[Sidenote: BRANT BROUGHTON]
[Sidenote: THE VILLAGE SMITH]
To the right and left of Wellbourn are two places which should not be
missed. _Brant Broughton_, with its beautiful spire, and _Temple Bruer_,
where are the remains of a preceptory of the Knights Templars. The church
of _Brant Broughton_ (pronounced Bruton) is a beautiful structure, and
all in perfect order, the magnificent lofty chancel having been built
to match the rest of the church by Bodley and Garner in 1876. To take
the woodwork first, the tall handsome screen and the chancel stalls
are in memory of the late rector, Canon E. H. Sutton, as is also the
lofty carved font cover, whose doors open and display three carved and
coloured figures, one being St. Nicholas, the patron saint, with the
three children in a pickling tub, whom he is said to have raised to life
after their murder by a butcher, as is so quaintly represented in the
famous black font in Winchester Cathedral. The roof, which in the first
instance was of a higher pitch, as seen by the string course, is an exact
reproduction, both in shape and colour, of the old Perpendicular one
which it replaced, and is in appearance upborne by figures of angels with
outspread wings. The three tall arches of the aisle arcades and chancel
are Early English, two of the pillars are octagonal. These arches are
very high, though not so high as those in _Hough-on-the-Hill_, which
are of about the same date. The three-light clerestory windows, five on
each side, and the roof to the nave, were added with the upper stages
of the tower in 1460, and the Perpendicular aisle windows are large and
handsome, and have a transom running across the tracery in the head of
each. They are filled with most interesting glass, good in design, and
mostly good in colour, all of which was made in the village by the late
Canon Sutton, who also filled several windows in Lincoln Minster. The
ironwork in the church was also made by Mr. F. Coldron and Son at the
village forge, where excellent work is always being done and sent to all
parts of the country. All the work inside the church, and the chancel
in particular, is beautifully finished in every detail, and bears the
impress of being all the work of one mind, and as that mind was Bodley’s,
and he took the utmost pains with it, it need hardly be said that it
comes very near perfection.
Among the things to notice are the long stone responds of light clustered
pillars between each clerestory window, which support the roof timbers.
This is seen in other churches in this part of the county, but is
otherwise by no means common. Another is that at intervals on the outer
moulding of some of the doors and windows are carved rosettes which give
a very rich effect and are, I believe, unique. The excellent lectern
eagle is a copy of one at Oxborough in Norfolk, and a similar one is in
the neighbouring church of Navenby. Thus far I have spoken of the inside,
but it is the outside of the church which gives the greatest delight,
for it is a very perfect specimen, built of good stone, of the finest
proportions, and richly ornamented. The nave and chancel have each an
ornate parapet, while the nave is also embattled and pinnacled. The tower
has the most glorious base-mouldings, and the pinnacled and crocketed
spire soars up 175 feet. Both tower and spire date from about 1320, the
period of the Flowing Decorated style. But the two porches, which are
a little later, are absolute gems of architecture. They have groined
roofs, their parapets are pierced and ornamented, thickly set with
gargoyles, and supported by canopied buttresses. Over the entrance of the
south porch is a figure of Christ seated, and in the north porch is an
ornamental roof ridge of carved stone. These porches are as beautiful as
anything can well be; altogether it would be hard to find in a country
village anything architectural, more pleasing than _Brant Broughton_
Church.
[Illustration: _The Ermine Street at Temple Bruer._]
[Sidenote: THE ERMINE STREET]
We passed through the village, visited the Coldron forge, and then by a
road constantly turning first right then left, with fields of scarlet
poppy or brilliant yellow corn-marigold on either hand, and with a stormy
sky which ever and anon brought us a squall of rain, we drove across
the flat country eastwards till we crossed the railway and reached the
ridge. Climbing this, we come to _Wellbourn_, on the Grantham road, and
going on eastwards over Wellbourn Heath we reach the Ermine Street,
here only a wide grassy track. This we cross and go forwards through a
well-cultivated, but almost uninhabited plain, till we see on the left
a farm road leading over a field to a big farmyard, in the middle of
which stands a solitary square-built Early English tower, with windows
irregularly placed, and steps on one side. This is all that is left of
a Preceptory of the Knights Templars, founded early in the thirteenth
century in the reign of Henry II. by the Lady Elizabeth de Canz at
_Temple Bruer_.
[Sidenote: THE TEMPLARS]
One does not always like to confess one’s ignorance, but I am sure many
people may read that word “preceptory” without at all knowing what
it may mean, or what the difference is between a _Preceptory_ and a
_Commandery_. So we may as well say something about the Templars, and the
kindred order of the Hospitallers. And here I may say that I am indebted
for my facts to a paper read at Lincoln by Bishop Trollope in 1857.
The first, then, of these, in point of time, were the Hospitallers.
But as they long outlived the Templars we will take the history of the
Templars first. This famous order, half-religious and half military, was
founded in 1118, during the first Crusade, by nine French knights, whose
object was to protect pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. At
first they were bound by laws of poverty, and were termed “Poor Knights,”
but Baldwin II., having given them lodging in a part of his palace at
Jerusalem, the abbot of the Temple Convent, which adjoined the palace,
gave them further rooms to live in, and from this they got the name
“Templars.” In 1128 they adopted a white distinctive mantle, to which a
red cross on the breast and on their banner was added in 1166. The fame
of their feats of arms and chivalry induced many members of noble houses
to join the society, and land and treasure were so freely offered them
that they became known for their wealth, as at first for their poverty.
Their head was termed “Grand Master,” and their headquarters were in
Palestine, until they moved, in 1192, to Cyprus. In other countries each
section or “Province” was governed by a “Grand Preceptor.” They first
came to England in the early part of Stephen’s reign, and had a church
in London, near Southampton Buildings, called “The Old Temple,” from
which they migrated in 1185 to the spot where the circular Temple Church
still stands. Their wealth was the cause of their downfall, morally
and physically; and the monarchs, both of France and England, becoming
jealous, Philip IV., in 1307, seized and imprisoned every Templar in his
dominion, 200 in number, on the vague charges of infidelity, sorcery,
and apostasy, and eventually confiscated all their property and burnt
more than fifty of them alive, relegating the rest to perpetual seclusion
in some monastic house. Edward II. did much the same here, except that
there were no burnings or executions. Old Fuller, the historian, was
probably thinking of those in France when he says in his inimitable way:
“Their lives would not have been taken if their lands could have been
got without; but the mischief was, the honey could not be got without
burning the bees.” In 1312 the Pope, Clement V., who was under Philip’s
thumb at Avignon, and had helped him to coerce Edward II., abolished the
order, which was found to be possessed of no less than 9,000 manors and
16,000 lordships, besides lands abroad. Grants were made to favourites,
and also to those who had claims for some benefaction to any Templar’s
estate. Thus Robert de Swines (Sweyne’s)-thorp was to receive 3_d._ a
day for food, and another 3_d._ for himself and 2_d._ for his groom; and
his daughter, Alice Swinesthorpe was to have for life (and she drew it
for thirty years) “7 white loaves, 3 squire’s loaves, 5 gals of better
ale, 7 dishes of meat and fish on Saturday for the week following, and an
extra dish (interferculum) of the better course of the brethren, at Xmas,
Easter, Whitsuntide, Midsummer, The Assumption, and Feast of All Saints,
and 3 stone of cheese yearly and an old gown of the brethren.”
[Sidenote: THE HOSPITALLERS]
Twelve years later Edward granted the whole of their property to the
similar society of “Knights Hospitallers.”
This society came into existence some fifty years before the Templars,
and originated in a band of traders from Amalfi, who got leave from the
Caliph of Egypt to build a church and monastery for the Latins near the
Holy Sepulchre, in order to look after the sick and poor pilgrims who
used to come in large numbers to Jerusalem. Soon a hospital, or guest
house, was added, and a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist; but
the society did not take the distinctive name of Hospitallers, or guest
receivers, until 1099, when Jerusalem was in the hands of the Christians.
They then assumed a white cross as their badge, and were termed Knights
of the Hospital, Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John.
In 1154 they procured a Papal bull, relieving them from payment of
tithes, and exempting them from all interdicts and excommunications,
and giving them other privileges, but binding them never to leave the
order. These marks of Papal favour seem to have made them presumptuous,
and great complaints soon arose of their insolence. They were accused
before the Pope, but they managed to clear themselves and to keep their
privileges. Hence we find that _Temple Bruer_, which came to them after
the destruction of the Knights Templars, still remains exempt from
the payment of tithe, and from episcopal jurisdiction, as being extra
parochial.
[Sidenote: KNIGHTS OF MALTA]
The head of the order had the title of “Grand Prior,” and when the
Christians were expelled from Palestine, the Knights retreated to Cyprus,
after which they took from the Turks the island of Rhodes, which they
held against the Sultan until 1522, when Solyman II., after a long siege,
forced them to capitulate. A few years after that, the Emperor Charles
V. gave them a home in Malta, and they thenceforth were commonly called
Knights of Malta. They fortified the island, and imported soil to make
it productive, and putting to sea with their galleys they made constant
war upon all Turkish vessels. Solyman at length determined to drive them
out of Malta. He despatched a fleet of 180 galleys, carrying 30,000 men.
The Turks took the fort of St. Elmo, but with a loss of 8,000 men; and
when the Emperor sent an army to assist the Knights, La Valette, the
Grand Prior, a famous leader, drove the Moslems off. After this they
remained in Malta until the order was dissolved at the close of the
eighteenth century by order of Napoleon, when most of the Knights took
service in the French army. Whilst the society existed it had branch
establishments in England, where the chief or Prior took precedence of
all the barons, and had a seat in Parliament. Their establishments were
called “commanderies”—while those of the Templars, who were ruled by
“Grand Preceptors,” were called “preceptories.” Of these there were three
in Lincolnshire: at _Willoughton_, four miles south of Kirton in Lindsey;
at _Aslackby_, two miles south of Falkingham; and at _Temple Bruer_; all
three situated close to the Ermine Street or “High Dyke” as they call
it, on Lincoln Heath, and it is from the heath that one of them gets its
name _Templum de la bruère_, or the temple on the heath, shortened into
_Temple Bruer_.
[Sidenote: TEMPLE BRUER]
The lands of these Knights Templars, which were handed over by Edward II.
in 1324 to the Knights Hospitallers, were all sequestrated in England
at the time of the dissolution of the monastic and religious houses in
1538, and, like so many other Lincolnshire estates, granted by Henry
VIII. to his relative, Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. Henry, with his
wife, Katherine Howard, dined at Temple Bruer when on his way to Lincoln
in 1541. The buildings then were of considerable size, and the circular
church, whose pillar bases have been laid bare, a little to the west of
the existing tower, was fifty feet in diameter. It is modelled on the
plan of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, having, as may still be seen in
London, Cambridge, and Northampton, a corridor running round between the
circular arcade of the church and the outer wall. The existing tower is
of the Early English period, fifty feet high, and having three storeys;
the walls of the lower storey are decorated by arcading on two sides, and
the rising levels of the floor indicate that an altar was placed at the
east end, so that it was probably the domestic chapel of the Grand Prior.
The roof of this and the next storey is vaulted, and above the third
storey was a parapet. The rooms were reached by a winding staircase in
the north-west angle. A well nine feet in diameter, and never dry, was
in the precincts, and another, discovered in the eighteenth century, was
found to have in it three large bells. The Earl of Dorset, who owned this
interesting property in 1628, sold it to Richard Brownlow of Belton,
whose daughter and co-heiress carried it to the family of Lord Guildford,
and he sold it to the ancestors of Mr. Chaplin of Blankney.
[Illustration: _Temple Bruer Tower._]
[Sidenote: KNIGHTS AT RHODES]
It shows that the interest in the Order of the Knights of Jerusalem is
not yet extinct when we read the following, which appeared in _The Times_
of December 21, 1913:—
“HOUSE OF THE KNIGHTS AT RHODES.
“(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)
ROME, _Dec. 23_.
“The _Tribuna_ announces that the House of the Knights at
Rhodes has been acquired for France by the French Ambassador at
Constantinople, M. Bompard. The house, which is one of the most
beautiful in the island, is a Gothic edifice dating from the
15th century, and was originally the residence of the French
Priors of the Order of Jerusalem.
“⁂ This appears to refer to the Auberge of the “Langue” of
France, with its shield-adorned façade in the famous street
of the Knights in Rhodes, which is still preserved in fair
condition. Under the Ottoman regime no Christian was allowed
to own a house or to sleep within the walled town of Rhodes,
and before the revival of the Constitution foreigners were
jealously excluded from the majority of the medieval buildings
of the city. It is probably due to this suspicious and
exclusive attitude that no such step as that just taken by
France has been attempted before. It is to be hoped that the
palace of the Grand Masters of the Order of the Hospital, which
ruled the island from 1309 until 1522, is now no longer to be
used as a common prison.”
[Sidenote: SOMERTON CASTLE]
From _Temple Bruer_ we return to the “High Dyke,” and, crossing it, make
westward for the Grantham road; but before we go along it, by _Boothby
Graffoe_ to _Navenby_, we must pause on the Ridge, or “Cliff,” as they
call it there, and look down on a solitary round tower on a slight
elevation about a mile across the flat plain which extends westward
from the Wolds to the Trent. This tower and its grassy mounds are all
that is left of a once fine stronghold, built, about 1281, by Antony
Bec, Archdeacon of Durham, second son of Walter Bec, Baron d’Eresby.
He was consecrated Bishop of Durham in the presence of Edward I., on
January 9, 1284, and he was wise enough, a few years later, when his
growing magnificence excited the jealousy of his sovereign, to present
_Somerton_ to Edward I., and it remained a royal castle for some three
centuries, passing afterwards through several families, among whom were
the Disneys of Norton and Carlton. Edward, son of Thomas Disney of
Carlton-le-Moorland having purchased it from Sir George Bromley, and
being succeeded in 1595 by his son Thomas, who having lost both his sons,
sold it to Sir Ed. Hussey. Hence we find that his son Charles, afterwards
Sir Charles Hussey of Caythorpe, is described in his marriage licence,
April 10, 1649, as Charles Hussey, Esq., of Somerton.
After the battle of Poictiers, in 1356, John, son of Philip of Valois,
King of France, was brought captive to London, together with his third
son Philip. Hence, after a short residence at the Savoy Palace, they
went to Windsor as guests of the King and Queen Philippa, and were
subsequently sent to Hertford Castle. Edward III. soon thought it wiser
to transfer them to Somerton, where they were placed under the custody
of William, Baron d’Eyncourt of Blankney, during the years 1359 and
1360. The expensive furnishing of the castle (_see_ Chap. XXXVII.) and
the provision made for the maintenance of the large number of the king’s
French suite, and of the officers and men who were appointed to guard the
prisoners, and the style of life there, the tuns of French claret, and
the enormous amount of sugar to make French bon-bons, together with the
subsequent history of King John, who, on being set at liberty, returned
in the most honourable way to England in 1363, because his son Louis, Duc
d’Anjou, had broken his parole as a hostage and left England for France,
is fully related by Bishop Trollope. King John died in 1364, at the
palace of the Savoy.
_Somerton Castle_, which we must now visit, was a fortified
dwelling-place with outer and inner moats, and with round towers at
each corner of an irregular parallelogram, only one remains now at the
south-west angle. This is forty-five feet high, and has three storeys—the
lower one vaulted, the highest covered with a conical roof and having two
chimneys, rising well above the plain parapet, which is still perfect,
and springs from a bold and effective moulding. Each floor is lit by
small lancet windows, the middle one much enlarged of late years, for
it is still inhabited, together with some building adjoining it on the
east, as a farm house. The large earthworks around the castle, which are
especially noticeable on the south, are very remarkable, and must be much
earlier than the castle, which seems to have been planted inside these
rectangular embankments, of which the northern side has been levelled,
probably at the time of the building. The earthworks are not Roman in
character, and are probably of very great antiquity. Outside these are at
least two round artificial hills, which have not been as yet explained
with certainty.
[Sidenote: NAVENBY]
Leaving the castle, and driving over the rough field road which leads to
it, we regain a highway which takes us up “the cliff” to the village of
_Navenby_. This is situated on a spur jutting out from the edge of the
cliff, with a deep little valley sweeping round on the south side and
breaking down into the plain. Nestling in the curve of the hill are some
picturesque farm buildings and stacks, and above is an old windmill;
whilst over the horizon peeps through the trees the spire of _Wellingore_
Church. The chancel of Navenby Church, as at Heckington, is as long
as the nave, and almost as high; indeed, this Decorated chancel is as
fine as any to be found, no other being built on at all so magnificent
a scale, except Hawton in Notts, and Heckington and perhaps Merton at
Oxford. The tower, which probably had a spire, fell in the eighteenth
century, and the whole church was restored about forty years ago, by
Kirk of Sleaford, who made the chancel roof of too high a pitch, and
kept the nave roof too low. The pillars in the nave, of which there are
two on each side, have shafts clustered round a central column, four
shafts of coursed masonry alternating with four light detached monolithic
shafts, all united under a circular capital. But the north-west pillar is
thicker than the others, and belongs to the latter part of the twelfth
century. The tower arch is a low one; the fine Decorated east window
of six lights, restored in 1876, has superb tracery, and is nearly as
fine as that at Heckington. There are four large chancel windows, and a
good Early English window in the south aisle. There is also a rood-loft
staircase, and a rood-loft with canopy, or ‘hang over,’ and a modern
rood-beam above bearing a large crucifix and two almost life-size figures
carved and painted. An octagon panelled font stands on a pedestal
of slender columns. The roof of both nave and aisles is painted. The
clerestory, added later, has five three-light windows. The east window is
filled with white glass, slightly toned, and is half hidden by a tapestry
screen used as a reredos, by no means beautiful, and twice as high as
it need be. The Jacobean pulpit and the fine copy of an old brass eagle
lectern, as at Brant Broughton, are to be noticed; but the main glories
of the church are in the chancel, where, besides the splendid windows,
there are, on the south side, three rich sedilia and a piscina; and on
the north, just east of the canopied arch for the founder’s tomb, in
which is now placed a trefoiled stone with Lombardic lettering of Richard
Dewe, priest, is a priest’s door and a very beautiful Easter Sepulchre.
This is only surpassed by those at Heckington, Lincoln, and Hawton, near
Newark. It has only one compartment, with three Roman soldiers, with
mutilated heads, below the opening, and above it, amongst the delicately
carved foliage of the canopy, are two figures of women. Few churches can
give more pleasure to the lover of church architecture than this; and its
fine position on the edge of the cliff, with the wide view over the plain
westward, makes a visit to Navenby very memorable.
[Sidenote: COLEBY]
Going on northwards along the cliff road we pass _Boothby Graffoe_, where
the old church was actually blown down, or, as the Wellingore register
has it, “extirpated in a hurricane,” in 1666—and come to _Coleby_. Here
is an early unbuttressed tower with a rude original arch over the door of
the tower staircase, and with two keyhole windows in the south side, as
in the early Lincoln towers or those at Hough-on-the-Hill, and Clee. Part
of the original tower arch is visible inside the tower, which is entered
from the nave through a very tall narrow arch supported by two very small
pilasters with plain rectangular caps.
[Sidenote: TREVENEN PENROSE]
The two arches of the north arcade are Transition Norman; those on the
south Early English, with good stiff foliage. The tall, plain porch had
once a room over it, and retains its richly moulded Transition doorway.
The font is of the same date, being a massive cylinder with Norman
arcading cut on it, and with four equidistant pillars which give it a
square appearance. The crocketed spire is a good one, Perpendicular in
style, and of better stone than the tower. The three lancet windows at
the east end are filled with good glass, and the seats are of oak with
poppy-heads throughout. The fellows of Oriel College, Oxford, to whom
the living belongs, helped in its restoration by Bodley and Garner in
1901. The wall at the west end of the south aisle, which runs up to the
tower and also forms the west side of the porch, as the aisle has no
window, is one long blank face, which has a singularly ugly look outside.
Inside, there are some good bench-ends, and there is an inscription by
Sir John Coleridge to the Rev. Trevenen Penrose, who spent the greater
part of a long life as vicar of the parish.
[Illustration: _Navenby._]
The Hall is a gabled house of 1628, built by Sir W. Lester, now the
property of the Tempest family, and having classic temples in the
grounds, one of them adapted from the Rotunda in the baths of Diocletian
at Rome.
_Harmston_, the next village, has a tower of the pre-Norman type, with a
mid-wall shaft to the window of the belfry in which are eight bells. A
brass plate commemorates Margaret Thorold who had a family of eight sons
and eleven daughters, and lived to be eighty.
[Sidenote: BRACEBRIDGE]
_Waddington_ has some very good Early English work in its clustered
columns and carved capitals. Here the string of villages, one at every
milestone, ceases, and we go on for three miles seeing the beautiful
minster tower in front of us on the height, and arrive at _Bracebridge_,
a very dark church, but with some most interesting Long-and-Short work
in the tower, in the angles of the nave, and in the south porch, and a
Norman west door to the tower, which is a very early one with mid-wall
shaft to the belfry window. The Norman north door is now blocked. There
is a curious rectangular opening, twice as wide as its height, in the
south aisle, near the porch, which allows a view between the pillars and
through the hagioscope or “squint” on the right of the chancel arch to
the altar. Another squint is on the left side of the chancel arch, which
is a very narrow and early one, through a thick wall.
The nave pillars, two on each side, are cylindrical with four banded
shafts attached. The north aisle and transept are modern. A fine
Transition Norman font is mounted on a new base, and on the pulpit is
still to be seen the old hour-glass stand, as at _Leasingham_; though
there and at _Belton_ in the Isle of Axholme it is attached to a pillar,
at _Sapperton_ and _Hammeringham_ it is on the pulpit. There is also an
old cracked Sanctus bell.
The road over the heath unites with the Grantham road near _Bracebridge_,
and runs into Lincoln by the Stonebow, and on up to the Minster Hill.
So much for the roads east, west, and south. The roads north of Lincoln
demand another chapter. But a few words about Nocton and Norton Disney
shall come first.
CHAPTER XIV
PLACES OF INTEREST NEAR LINCOLN
Nocton—Norton Disney—Doddington—Kettlethorpe.
NOCTON
As an instance of what the great Roman catch-water drain the “Carr-dyke”
effected, we may take the little village of Nocton, six miles south-east
of Lincoln. Here is a little string of villages—_Potter Hanworth_,
_Nocton_, _Dunston_ and _Metheringham_—running north and south on the
edge of a moor which drops quickly on the east to an uninhabited stretch
of fen once all water, but now rich cornland cut into long strips by the
drains which, aided by pumps, send the superfluous water down the Nocton
“Delph” into the Witham River. Along the extreme edge of the moorland
runs the “Carr-dyke” and intercepts all the water which would otherwise
discharge into the already water-logged lowlands, and so makes the task
of dealing with the fen water a possible one.
At _Potter Hanworth_ the Romans had a pottery. The church was rebuilt
in 1857, one of the bells was re-cast in memory of the Diamond Jubilee
of Queen Victoria, and on it were placed Tennyson’s lines from “Morte
d’Arthur.”
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”
On the same occasion the ringing of the Curfew bell, which had been
continued till 1890, was given up, and a clock with four faces put up
instead, which strikes the hours, but is not at all the same thing. Thus
one more interesting and historic custom has disappeared, which is much
to be regretted in this utilitarian and unimaginative age.
[Sidenote: THE D’ARCY FAMILY]
Domesday Book tells us that _Nocton_ was divided in unequal shares
between two landlords, Ulf and Osulf; on the land of the former there
was already a church with a priest in 1086. These owners had given place
to one Norman de Ardreci, written later de Aresci, and finally D’Arcy, a
companion of the Conqueror. Norman D’Arcy’s son granted the churches of
Nocton and Dunston to the Benedictines of St. Mary’s Abbey, York, also
some land to the Carthusians of Kirkstead Abbey, and himself founded a
priory at Nocton for canons of the Orders of St. Augustine, who first
settled in England in 1108. The buildings are quite gone, but the site
is still called the Abbey Field, and the vicarage is called the Priory;
the Priory well, whose water was said to be “remarkably good,” in 1727,
was only filled up about fifty years ago. Why couldn’t they have let it
alone, one wonders. To follow up the history of Nocton: in 1541 Henry
VIII. and Katharine Howard slept there.
The D’Arcy family and their descendants in the female line, whose married
names were Lymbury, Pedwardine, Wymbishe and Towneley, held the property
for three and twenty generations till the middle of the seventeenth
century—a good innings of 600 years. But the losses which the Civil War
brought about made it necessary for Robert Towneley, at the Restoration
in 1660, to sell the estate to Lord Stanhope, from whom it soon passed
by sale to Sir William Ellys, about 1676, and in 1726—by the marriage
of Sir Richard Ellys’ widow—to Sir Francis Dashwood; after whom, in
1767, it descended to a cousin, George Hobart, eventually third Earl of
Buckinghamshire. He altered Nocton considerably, pulled down the church,
which was too near the house, and set up a poor structure further off,
where the present church stands. He also spent much in draining Nocton
fen, and erected a windmill pump which raised the water and sent it into
the Witham, and worked well for forty years till it was superseded in
Frederick Robinson’s time (1834) by a forty-horse-power steam engine
which was found to pump the water faster than the fens could supply it.
The earl died in 1804; ten years later his daughter, Lady Sarah Albinia,
carried the estate to Frederick John Robinson, second son of Lord
Grantham, who became Prime Minister and was created Viscount Goodrich in
1827, and Earl of Ripon in 1833; and, as a member of Sir Robert Peel’s
cabinet, moved in the House of Lords the second reading of the Bill for
the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. In 1834 the house at Nocton was
burnt down, and the earl’s young son, afterwards Marquis of Ripon, laid
the foundation stone of the present house in 1841. The earl died in 1859,
and his widow, who survived him eight years, built in his memory the
present fine church, which was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. In 1889
Lord Ripon sold the estate to Mr. G. Hodgson of Bradford.
It is interesting to hear of a school being set up in 1793 at Nocton;
first as a private school by John Brackenbury of Gedney, grandson of
Edward Brackenbury of Raithby, near Spilsby, which was continued for
forty-six years after her father’s death in 1813, by his daughter
Justinia, who became Mrs. Scholey. In her time it was an elementary
school which Lady Sarah financed and managed, the children paying a penny
a week.
[Sidenote: DUNSTON PILLAR]
Another thing that was set up was a land lighthouse on Dunston Heath.
This was a lonely tract where inhabitants had not only been murdered
by highwaymen, but had even been lost in the storms and snow-drifts on
the desolate and roadless moor. Here then Sir Francis Dashwood set up
the Dunston Pillar, ninety-two feet high with a lantern over fifteen
feet high on the top. The date on it is 1751. The fourth Earl of
Buckinghamshire, who as Lord Hobart was Governor of Madras, took down the
lantern on July 18, 1810, and set up in its place a colossal statue of
George III. to commemorate the king’s jubilee.
[Sidenote: NOCTON HALL]
The granddaughter of the third earl, whose father (The Very Rev. H.
L. Hobart) lived at the Priory, being, _inter alia_, vicar of Nocton
and Dean of Windsor, and also of Wolverhampton, tells me that the mail
coaches used to pass the pillar and leave all the letters for the
neighbourhood at one of the four little lodges close by. She has several
interesting specimens of the work done by the Nocton School of Needlework
under the guidance of Justinia, whose family were remarkable for their
Scriptural as well as “heathen Christian names,” _e.g._, Ceres and
Damaris. Justinia herself always, as they say in Westmorland, used to
“get” Justina. These specimens include a very clever and faithful copy in
black silk needlework of an engraving by Hoylett from a picture by Thos.
Espin of old Nocton Hall, which was burnt down in 1834. The needlework
artist has done one of the trees in the picture most beautifully, but has
given the rein to her imagination by working in two fine palm trees in
place of the oaks of the picture. There is a sampler done at the vicarage
by the dean’s daughter, and inscribed:—
“Nocton Priory, 1839.
Louisa C. Hobart.”
And two large samplers with the usual pretty floral borders worked by
Justinia’s daughters, signed “Alice Scholey, 1832, and Betsey Scholey,
1848.” The latter has some rather primitive representations of the
old Hall and its two lodges; also the Vicarage and the School, and a
libellous portrait of Lincoln Minster. Alice Scholey was of a more
Scriptural turn of mind and apparently fond of birds, for she has owls
in the centre of green bushes, and pheasants or peacocks among her
flowers; but her central picture is the temptation, where Adam and Eve,
worked in pink silk, _au naturel_, stand on either side of a goodly tree
covered with fruit, a gorgeous serpent twining round the trunk, and one
remarkably fine plum-coloured apple temptingly within reach of Eve’s hand.
Certainly Justinia’s school was in advance of the time, but the art
needlework doubtless owed much to the interest taken in it by Sarah
Albinia, Countess of Ripon.
Samplers of the eighteenth century are now much sought after. I saw
one lately of 1791, on which a little mite of seven, in days when the
“three R’s” were taught along with the use of the needle in the good old
sensible way, had stitched in black silk letters:—
The days were long
The weather hot
Sometimes I worked
And sometimes not.
Seven years my age
Thoughtless and gay
And often much
Too fond of play.
The first stanza with its pathetic little picture is genuine enough, but
the second was manifestly dictated by her elders.
[Sidenote: SAXON ORNAMENT]
Among the treasures long preserved at Nocton was an Anglo-Saxon ornament
of great beauty (see illustration, Chap. XXII) in which three discs of
silver with a raised pattern of dragons, &c., and with pins four inches
long are connected by silver links so as to form a cloak-chain to fasten
the garment across the breast. The pins have shoulders an inch from
the sharp points to prevent their shaking loose. This for a time was in
a museum at Lincoln, and on the dispersal of the collection was bought
and presented to the British Museum, and is in the Anglo-Saxon room. In
the same room are kept the very interesting finds from the Anglo-Saxon
cemetery at _Sleaford_, consisting mainly of bronze ornaments and
coloured beads. The cloak-chain was found in the Witham at _Fiskerton_,
four miles from Lincoln, when the river was deepened in 1826.
[Sidenote: THE MASQUERADE]
Sir Charles Anderson, in his excellent Lincoln pocket guide, gives some
notion of the gaiety which distinguished Nocton in the eighteenth century
by quoting an account of a masquerade held there on December 29, 1767,
which begins:—
“Met at the door by a Turk, in a white Bearskin, who took our tickets.”
It is curious to note the use of the word Turk for any dark-skinned
person in a turban, for later in the list of dresses we have: “Mr.
Amcotts, a Turk, his turban ornamented with diamonds. Mr. Cust, a Turk;
scarlet and ermine; turban and collar very rich with diamonds. He
represented the Great Mogul,” who would have been little pleased to be
called a Turk, I imagine. Amongst more than seventy other dresses which
are described we find: “Lady Betty Chaplin: a Chinese Lady, in a long
robe of yellow taffety; the petticoat painted taffety. Her neck and hair
richly ornamented with diamonds.”
But rich jewellery was the order of the night whether it was proper to
the costume or not, so we find “Lady Buck: a Grecian Lady, scarlet satin
and silver gauze; her neck and head adorned with diamonds and pearls.”
The host and hostess are thus described:—
“Mr. Hobart: ‘Pan.’ His dress dark brown satin, made quite close to his
shape, shag breeches, cloven feet, a round shock wig, and a mask that
beggars all description, a leopard skin over his back fastened to his
shoulder by a leopard’s claw. In his hand a shepherd’s pipe.”
“Mrs. Hobart; First “Imoinda,” a muslin petticoat, puffed very small,
spotted with spangles. The arms muslin puffed like a dancer. Her second
dress “Nysa” or “Daphne.” She came in footing it, and singing a song in
“Midas.” Muslin and blue ornaments; a white chip hat and blue ribbons.”
Several dancers had two costumes. Thus “Lord George Sutton. First a
Pilgrim; next a Peasant Dancer; pink and white.
Miss Molly Peart: a Peasant Dancer; same colours as Lord George.
Miss Peart: ‘Aurora’ Blue and White. The Moon setting on one side of her
head; the Sun rising on the other.
Miss A. Peart: a Dancer; pink and silver.”
Mr. and Miss Hales went as a Dutchman and “a Dutchwoman, brown and pink,”
and Mrs. Ellis as “a Polish Lady; pink and silver; a white cloak and a
great many diamonds.”
Another classic lady to match ‘Aurora’ was “Miss Manners: ‘Diana’ her
vest white satin and silver; her robe purple lute-string; a silver bow
and quiver: her hair in loose curls, flowing behind, and a diamond
crescent on her forehead.”
I should judge that the “Eyewitness” who wrote the account was a Mr.
Glover because of the minute particularity with which his own costume is
set forth, thus: “Mr. Glover: a Cherokee Chief; a shirt and breeches in
one, puffed and tied at the knees; a scarlet mantle, trimmed with gold,
one corner across his breast; scarlet cloth stockings; brown leather
shoes, worked with porcupine quills and deer’s sinews; a gold belt; gold
leather about his neck, and before like a stomacher, and over that a long
necklace and gorget; head-dress of long black horsehair, tied in locks of
coloured ribbons, a single lock hanging over his forehead; ear-rings red
and blue; plumes of black and scarlet feathers on his head; a scalping
knife tucked into his girdle; a tomahawk in his hand, and a pipe to smoke
tea with.”
Mrs. Glover went in black and yellow as a Spanish lady.
Then we have Henry the Eighth, a shepherdess, “a Witch with blue gown,
red petticoat and high crowned hat,” a friar in a mask, a Sardinian
knight, a Puritan, a sailor, “Lord Vere Bertie a very good Falstaff,” and
many Spaniards, among them “Dr. Willis: a Spaniard with a prodigious good
mask.”
THE NORTON DISNEY BRASS
[Sidenote: NORTON DISNEY]
_Norton Disney_ (= de Isigny, a place near Bayeux) was the home of a
family who lived here from the thirteenth century to nearly the end of
the seventeenth.
[Sidenote: THE BRASS]
The castle was in the field near the church, just across the road to the
west, but has quite disappeared, as has also the seventeenth century
manor-house. The church, which is well worth a visit, belonged to the
Gilbertines of Sempringham (_see_ Chap. IV.). The manor is now the
property of Lord St. Vincent, a title bestowed on Admiral Sir John Jervis
when he so handsomely defeated the Spaniards near the cape of that name
on the coast of Portugal in 1797. On opening the door you find that you
have to descend three steps into the church. Here the arcade consists
of two Norman arches, and one next the chancel smaller and of later
date. There are old carved benches without poppy-heads, and a very plain
old oak screen with rood stairs on the south side. The east window is
filled with stained glass in memory of the Lord St. Vincent who fell at
Tel-el-Kebir. The aisle has an old roof with carved bosses, and there is
a very deeply carved font. Outside, the look of the church is spoilt by
some very inharmonious additions, among these is the north chapel to the
chancel, inside which, on a rough brick floor, are the monuments which
give the church its interest; these are six in number, three to ladies.
One of them is a recumbent effigy in coif and wimple of “Joan d’Iseney,”
1300. One a curious sepulchral slab with the half-effigy of a lady at one
end and her feet showing at the other, with Norman French inscription
to “Joan Disney.” Another is the recumbent effigy of Hantascia Disney,
a name of frequent use in the family. Close to this on the ground is a
slab with the matrix of a fine brass of a knight under a canopy, while
another knight is on an altar tomb in the chancel. These are all of the
fourteenth century. But the most important is a brass of the sixteenth
century. This is a thick brass plate three feet by two, now set in an
oak frame and hinged so that one may see the reverse side on which is
engraved a long inscription in Dutch recording the foundation of a
chantry in Holland in 1518 by Adrian Ardenses and the Lady Josephine
Van de Steine. The face of this brass is divided horizontally into five
compartments, at the top is a pediment with a shield bearing the Disney
arms impaling those of Joiner in the centre, and on either side are
crests of the Disney and Hussey family—a lion passant regardant and a
stag couchant under a tree. The next compartment shows the half-length
figures with their names below of “Willm Disney Esquier” in armour
and helmeted, and “Margaret Joiner” his wife; he in profile, she
three-quarters face, they are kneeling at a faldstool with open books,
their hands joined in prayer, and between them on a scroll: “Sufferance
dothe Ease.” Behind him are four sons and behind her five daughters, all
with hands joined in prayer and with their names engraved on labels above
them. The next compartment shows three shields with the arms of Hussey,
Disney and Ayscough, in which Hussey has three squirrels sitting up,
Disney has three fleurs de lys, and Ayscough three asses coughing. In the
compartment below these are the half-length figures of Richard Disney,
full face in armour with very high shoulder-pieces, and his two wives who
are three-quarter face; and below are their names engraved thus: “Nele
daughter of Sr Wilton Husey Knyght, Richard Disney, Janne daughʳ of Sʳ
Wilton Ayscoughe Kᵗ.” Behind the first wife are ranged in two tiers her
seven sons and five daughters and their names were engraved above them.
“Sara, Ester, Judeth, Judet and Susan” are still there, but the sons’
names are gone; a bit of the brass which held them, about six inches by
one and a half, having been cut out, in connection, it is said, with a
lawsuit arising out of Richard Disney’s will. They can be supplied from
Gervase Holles’ MS. as William, Humphrey, John, Daniel, Ciriac, Zachariah
and Isaac.
The lowest compartment has this inscription:—
“The lyfe, conversacion and seruice, of the first above named Willm
Disney and of Richard Disney his Sonne were comendable amongest their
Neigbours trewe and fathefull to ther prince and cutree and acceptable to
Thallmighty of Whome we trust they are receved to Saluation accordinge to
the Stedfast faythe which they had in and throughe the mercy and merit
of Christ oʳ Savior. Thes truthes are thus sette forthe that in all ages
God may be thankfully Glorified for thes and suche lyke his gracious
benefites.”
[Sidenote: THE DISNEYS]
No dates are given, but William Disney’s will was proved in 1540; Richard
Disney’s in 1578; and that of Jane, the second wife of Richard, in 1591.
She was the younger sister of Anne Askew, who was so cruelly burnt for
heresy at Smithfield in 1546, because she had read the Bible to some
poor folk in the cathedral. She had previously been married to George
St. Poll of Snarford, by whom she had a son. Canon Cole, in his “Notes
on the Ecclesiastical History of the Deanery of Graffoe during the 15th
and 16th centuries,” says that “such demi figures as these are rare in
the 16th century, and helmets are seldom seen on the heads of knights
at this date,” and he shows an engraving of the brass, which, of course,
cannot be earlier than 1578. Richard Disney was one of those who profited
most largely by the dissolution of the monasteries. His first wife, Nele
Hussey, was grand-daughter of the unfortunate John Lord Hussey, who was
beheaded in 1537. Early in the next century one branch of the Disneys
removed from Norton to the next parish of Carlton-le-Moorland, where
Ursula Disney’s burial on August 22, 1615, is in the register; and her
husband, Thomas, removed to Somerton Castle, three miles to the east, the
lease of which he bought from Sir George Bromley, but, having no issue,
he sold it again to Sir Edward Hussey. Canon Cole also notices that it
was while the Disneys were at Carlton that the very unusual event in
Elizabethan times, the rebuilding of a great part of the parish church,
took place. Churches, as a rule, were getting dilapidated, and the
archdeacon’s visitations, preserved in the bishop’s registry at Lincoln,
some of which go back to the time of Henry VII., show many presentments
for absence of service-books, decay of walls and roofs, or churchyard
fences. For instance, at Bassingham in 1601 the churchwardens are cited
“for that their churchyard fences toward the street are in manie places
downe, by reason whereof their churchyard is abused by swyne and such
unseemlie cattell.”
The smiling youthful faces of the figures in this most remarkable brass,
and the modern-looking whiskers and beard and moustache, combined
with the helmet, give a singularly unancient look to the wearers, and
irresistibly call to mind what one has so often seen of late in the
twentieth-century pageants.
DODDINGTON HALL
Between the road which runs west from Lincoln to Saxilby, and the old
Roman Foss Way from Lincoln to Newark, which went on by Leicester,
Cirencester, and Bath to Axminster, a tongue of Nottinghamshire runs
deep into the county. South of this and north of the Foss Way are a few
villages of no particular importance, amongst them _Eagle_, which was
once a preceptory of the Knights Templars. But here also, within six
miles of Lincoln, is _Doddington_. This deserves especial mention for its
fine Elizabethan hall, which is still very much as it was three hundred
years ago.
[Sidenote: DODDINGTON HALL]
The station of Doddington and Harby is just over the border, and Harby
village is in Nottinghamshire. A statue over the doorway in the church
tower commemorates the fact that Here Queen Eleanor died. Edward I. was
holding a council at Clipston in Sherwood Forest in 1290 when the queen
was taken ill and was removed to the house of one of her gentlemen in
attendance who lived at Harby. After her death her heart was buried in
Lincoln Minster and her embalmed body was taken by stages to Westminster,
a beautiful cross being subsequently ordered to be set up at each resting
place, ten of the thirteen were either not completed or subsequently
destroyed, all those in the county being among the number. These were
at Lincoln, Grantham, and Stamford. The only three Eleanor crosses that
have survived the abominable destruction of all beautiful things from
which the country suffered, first at the hands of Henry VIII.’s minister
Cromwell, and then from the acts of Parliament passed by the iconoclasts
of the Reformation, and finally by the soldiery of the Civil War, are at
Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham.
[Sidenote: AND ITS OWNERS]
The first owner of Doddington Manor that we know of was one Ailric, in
Edward the Confessor’s time, who gave it as an endowment to the newly
built Abbey of Westminster. The family of Pigot held it under the abbot,
paying a rent of £12, and the estate remained with them till 1486, after
which Sir John Pigot, having no heir, his widow sold it to Sir Thomas
Burgh of the Old Hall, Gainsborough, and his family 100 years later sold
it, in 1586, to John Savile, M.P. for Lincoln; but when, seven years
later, he ceased to represent the town, he sold it to Thomas Taylor, for
many years registrar to the Bishops of Lincoln. He was a wealthy man,
and at once set to work to build the present hall, which was finished in
1600. It is built of red and black brick with stone quoins and mullions,
and is approached by a stone gateway with two brick storeys above it and
three gables. It stands between two quadrangles, with gardens in that on
the west, and with a cedar-planted lawn on the east, and the E-shaped
house is surmounted by three octagonal brick turrets with leaden cupolas.
It is 160 feet long and seventy-five feet deep on the wings. There is no
superfluous ornament, all being solidly plain but harmonious outside,
and with fine stately rooms inside. The hall is fifty-three feet by
twenty-two, and the long gallery on the third floor ninety-six feet by
twenty-two, the house being all one room thick. A good deal of internal
decoration—oak panels, a staircase, and marble chimney-pieces, and heavy
architraves over the doors—was the work of Lord Delaval about 1760. The
pictures are numerous, mostly family portraits, one being of Lord Hussey
of Sleaford, beheaded after the Lincolnshire rebellion, 1536. At the
south end of the long gallery is a group by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Thomas Taylor died in 1607, and his son in 1652, when the estate devolved
on his niece, Lady Hussey of Honington. Her husband, whose great uncle
was the man beheaded by order of Henry VIII., was fined as a Royalist
in 1646 in the enormous sum of £10,200, of which £8,759 was actually
paid—half of it in his lifetime, and the rest by his widow and his
eldest son’s widow, Rhoda, who had for her second husband married Lord
Fairfax. The accession to her uncle’s estate at Doddington just two years
after she had cleared this huge debt on Honington must have been truly
welcome to Lady Hussey, but she only lived to enjoy it for six years,
and was succeeded by her grandson, Sir Thomas Hussey, who lived till
1706. Then his title passed to Sir Edward Hussey of Caythorpe and his
estate to his three daughters, the last of whom, Mrs. Sarah Apreece, by
will dated 1747, settled it on her daughter, Rhoda, the wife of Captain
Francis Blake-Delaval, R.N., who had large estates in Northumberland,
Seaton Delaval, Ford Castle near Flodden Field, and Dissington. The
estate remained with the Delavals till 1814, when Edward Hussey Delaval,
a learned man of science and an F.R.S., died, and was buried in the nave
of Westminster Abbey. Lord Delaval held the property for nearly forty
years and spent much on the house, but to spite his brother Edward he
had the meanness to cut down all the timber of any value. His youngest
daughter was the beautiful Countess of Tyrconnel who died in 1800, and to
her daughter he left Ford Castle. He himself died at the age of eighty at
Seaton Delaval, and was buried in the family vault in St. Paul’s Chapel,
Westminster Abbey.
His brother Edward was only one year younger, but lived to the age of
eighty-five. Then, in 1814, Seaton Delaval went to his nephew, Sir Jacob
Astley, but Doddington to his widow and daughter, the latter of whom
became Mrs. Gunman. The mother survived the daughter, and in 1829 it was
found that they had left all their property to a friend, Colonel George
Ralph Payne Jarvis, who had served in the Peninsular War, and whose
grandson, Mr. G. Eden Jarvis, is the present owner.
KETTLETHORPE
[Sidenote: KETTLETHORPE]
The tongue of Nottinghamshire, mentioned above, runs into the county as
far as Broadholme, near Skellingthorpe, within five miles of the city.
The northern boundary of this tongue is the Saxilby road, between which
and the Trent is _Kettlethorpe_, which has an interesting history, though
the present hall was reconstructed in 1857 by Colonel Weston Cracroft
Amcotts, father of the present Squire of Hackthorn, who dropped the
name of Amcotts after his father’s death in 1883, and handed over the
Kettlethorpe estate to his brother Frederick, whose widow is now lady of
the Manors of Kettlethorpe and Stow.
The name takes us back to the invasions of Ketil the Dane, and the old
spelling of Ketilthorp is therefore the correct one.
In 1283 Sir John de Kewn was the owner. Later it passed to the De Cruce
or De Sancta Cruce or De la Croix or De Seynte Croix family.
In 1356 John De Seynte Croix, son of William de la Croix, conveyed the
manor and advowson to Sir Thomas Swynford, Knight, one of a family who
had held land of the Darcys at Nocton in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries.
Sir Hugh de Swynford was employed in his wars by John of Gaunt, son of
Edward III., and he died in 1371. His widow, Katharine, being placed in
charge of John of Gaunt’s children, became his mistress and had four
children by him who were afterwards legitimised, she took the name of
Beaufort, and of her sons one became Earl of Somerset, one Duke of
Exeter, one Bishop of Lincoln and of Winchester, and then Cardinal
Beaufort, whilst Joan became Countess of Westmorland. Katherine Swynford
was called “Lady of Ketilthorpe.” In 1394 John of Gaunt’s second wife,
Constance of Carlisle, died, and in 1396 he married Katherine at Lincoln,
and her title in Deeds of that time is “The Lady Katherine, Duchess of
Lancaster, Lady of Ketilthorpe.” Her father was Sir Payne (Lat. Paganus)
Roelt, and her sister Philippa is said to have been the wife of Geoffrey
Chaucer.
John of Gaunt died in 1399 at Lincoln, and Katherine, dying four years
later, was buried on the south side of the Angel Choir, her son Henry
being at that time Bishop of Lincoln. Later, the tomb of her daughter,
who died in 1440, was placed near her. The tombs were defaced in the
Civil War. The Swynfords remained owners of Kettlethorpe for 150 years;
now only a fourteenth century gateway and a portion of the moat remain.
[Sidenote: THE AMCOTTS FAMILY]
Sir William Meryng was the next owner, and in 1564 it passed from the
Meryngs to John Elwes, who in 1588 conveyed it to W. Meekley, whose
successor sold it to Gervase Bellamy, of Luneham. He died in 1626, and
his heirs were his two daughters, _Mary_, who married Gervase Sibthorp
of Luneham, ancestor of the Sibthorps of Canwick, and _Abigail_, whose
husband, Charles Hall, became owner of Kettlethorpe. His son, Thomas,
married for his second wife the widow of Vincent Amcotts, of Harrington,
who had died in 1686, and their son left the property to his nephew
Charles Amcotts, of Amcotts, in the Isle of Axholme. He, in 1762,
purchased from Lord Abingdon the manor of Stow, once the property of the
Bishops of Lincoln. He enclosed the lordship, and, dying in 1777, his
two sisters inherited. The husband of the survivor of these sisters,
Wharton Emerson, of Retford, had assumed the name of Amcotts, and in
1797 was created a baronet. He died in 1807, and his daughter Elizabeth
married Sir John Ingilby, and their son, known as Sir William Ingilby
Amcotts, held both the Amcotts and Ingilby baronetcies inherited from his
grandfather Sir Wharton Amcotts, and from his father Sir John Ingilby.
He died in 1854 and the baronetcies died with him, but the estate passed
to his sister Augusta, wife of Robert Cracroft of Hackthorn, who took
the name of Amcotts. His son, Weston Cracroft Amcotts, was Member of
Parliament for Mid-Lincolnshire 1866-1874. He it was who reconstructed
the hall which Sir William Ingilby Amcotts had allowed to get into
disrepair, and rebuilt the tower of West Keal church, which had fallen.
He died in 1883, and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son Edward
Weston Cracroft of Hackthorn.
For most of my facts about Kettlethorpe and Doddington I am indebted
to the exhaustive papers by Rev. Canon Cole, Prebendary of Lincoln,
contributed to the Lincoln Architectural Society’s Journal, to whom also
I owe valuable information about the brass at Norton Disney, which we
visited together, and also a pleasant and profitable hour in the minster.
CHAPTER XV
HERMITAGES AND HOSPITALS
SPITAL-ON-THE-STREET
A little lonely hermitage it was,
Down in a dale, hard by a Forest’s side,
Far from resort of people that did pass
In travel to and froe: a little wyde
There was a holy chappell edifyde,
Wherein the hermite duly went to say
His holy things each morne and eventyde.
SPENSER, _Faerie Queene_. I. I. 34.
_Spital-on-the-Street_ is an ancient hospital situated twelve miles
north of Lincoln on the Roman Ermine Street, which had its origin in
a Hermitage. The Hermits or “Eremites,” dwellers in the Eremos or
wilderness, commonly placed their habitats in remote spots, though some
stationed themselves near the gates of a town where they could assist
wayfarers with advice and gather contributions at the same time for
their own support; others dwelt by lonely highways in order to extend
hospitality to benighted wayfarers. A hermitage on the “Ermine Street”
between Lincoln and the Humber would be of the latter sort. For the
Street runs in a bee line for two-and-thirty miles through an absolutely
tenantless country. Villages lie pretty continuously a few miles distant
on either side, but with the exception of Spital itself the Street passes
through nothing till it arrives within five miles of its termination.
The hermitage would therefore be a welcome asylum to a belated traveller
on a stormy night and the sound of the chapel bell, or the gleam of the
hermit’s rushlight through the darkness would be just salvation to him.
Probably such a picture was in Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote:—
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
The chapel attached to the hermitage was one of four churches in
Lincolnshire dedicated to St. Edmund King and Martyr.[4] A licence was
granted by Edward II. for land and rent to be appropriated by the Vicar
of Tealby for the payment of the chaplain; and, by a document signed
at Tealby in the year 1323 and witnessed by nearly all the dignitaries
of the Cathedral of Lincoln, the foundation was placed under the
jurisdiction of the Lincoln Dean and Chapter. Ten years later we find
the hermitage called “_Spital_-on-the-Street,” so that its uses had
already been enlarged, though we have no documentary evidence of this.
All we know of, is the building of a house for the chaplain by John of
Harrington in 1333.
[Sidenote: THOMAS DE ASTON]
In 1396 Richard II., “at the request of his dear cousin John de
Bellomonte, grants to Master Thomas de Aston, Canon of Lincoln, leave
to newly build a house adjoining the west side of the chapel of St.
Edmund the King and Martyr at Spitell o’ the Street, for the residence
of William Wyhom the Chaplain and of certain poor persons there resident
and their successors,” and before the end of the fourteenth century it
had buildings sufficient for the maintenance of these poor persons. As
such it escaped in Henry VIII.’s time, but in the sixteenth century the
property was seized by Elizabeth for her own use in the most barefaced
manner and sold by her. The Sessions for the Kirton division of Lindsey
were for many years held in the chapel, but subsequently it fell into
disrepair and was pulled down by Sir William Wray in 1594, and a new
sessions house built close by, on which was this Latin couplet,
Hæc domus odit amat punit conservat honorat
Nequitiam pacem crimina jura bonos.
In 1660 Dr. Mapletoft, of Pembroke College, Cambridge, being appointed
Sub-Dean of Lincoln and also Master of the Spital Hospital, at once
rebuilt the chapel and set to work to improve the revenue, and when he
became Dean of Ely in 1668, he retained his Mastership of Spital, and
so well did he and his next-but-one successor, Chancellor Mandeville do
their work, that, whereas it had sunk to a master and two poor persons to
whom he paid 2_s._ each, they restored it to its complement of seven poor
people and bought land for it, which so increased in value that, when
the Charity Commissioners took the Spital in hand in the reign of Queen
Victoria, the revenues were estimated at £959, which was nearly all of it
being misappropriated.
[Illustration: _Wykeham Chapel, near Spalding._]
[Sidenote: THE NEW SCHEME]
[Sidenote: MAPLETOFT’S INSCRIPTION]
In 1858 a new scheme was drawn up, and now seven alms-people of each sex
receive £20 a year, and besides other annual payments £5,500 has been
spent out of the Spital funds on the Grammar School at Lincoln and on
founding and maintaining a middle-class school at Market-Rasen called
after the Spital’s founder _The De Aston School_. Of the old hospital
at Spital only the chapel built by Mapletoft in 1662 remains; a plain
structure with its east end to the road where the entrance door is, the
altar being at the west end. Below the small square bell-cot is a stone
bearing this inscription:—
Fui Aᵒ Dni 1398 ⎫
Non Fui 1594 ⎬ Domus Dei et Pauperum
Sum 1616 ⎭
Qui hanc Deus hunc destruat.
G.P. 1830.
This means:—
I was in 1398 ⎫
I was not in 1594 ⎬ The House of God and of the poor
I am in 1616 ⎭
Whoever destroys this house may God destroy him.
This means that it was founded by De Aston as a chantry and hospital in
1398,[5] pulled down by Wray in 1594 and rebuilt by Mapletoft in 1661.
The mason who carved the date has transposed the two last figures in 1661.
G.P. should be J.P. for John Pretyman, the last “Master.”
CHAPTER XVI
ROADS NORTH FROM LINCOLN
Kirton-in-Lindsey—The Carrs—Broughton—Brigg—The North
Wolds—Worlaby—Elsham—Saxby-All-Saints—Horkstow—South
Ferriby—Barton-on-Humber—St. Peter’s and St. Mary’s—Greater
care of Churches.
Of the three roads north from Lincoln we have spoken of the road on the
ridge which is the continuation of the Cliff road on which we travelled
from Navenby to Lincoln. The view is the notable thing on this road, for,
though it looks down on a series of small villages below its western
slope, Burton, Carlton, Scampton, Aisthorpe, Brattleby, Cammeringham,
Ingham, Fillingham, Glentworth, Harpswell, Hemswell, Willoughton,
Blyborough and Grayingham, all in a stretch of fourteen miles, it passes
through nothing of importance but _Kirton-in-Lindsey_. This Kirton is
a very old place, the manor being once held by Piers Gaveston, the
favourite of Edward II., and later by the Black Prince. The office of
Seneschal was filled at one time by the Burgh family of Gainsborough.
The church is an interesting one, and has a richly carved and moulded
west doorway. Leading from the nave to the tower is a very massive double
Early English arch, resting on a large circular pillar, and two thick
responds. The south doorway is like the western one, richly carved with
tooth moulding. The porch is used as a baptistry. On the north wall of
the nave is a wall-painting representing the seven sacraments and blood
flowing from the crucified Saviour to each.
[Sidenote: “CLIFF” AND “CARR”]
The road east of Ermine Street goes through any number of villages, for
it goes on the low ground, and each parish runs up to the Ermine Street
and has its portion of high ground or “cliff.” Normanby Cliff, Owmby
Cliff, Saxby Cliff, etc., and from the west side each village does the
same, so that we have in succession Brattleby, Ingham, and Hemswell
Cliff. The winds on the ridge apparently, which “extirpated” the church
of Boothby Graffoe, have always deterred people from building on the
height; but none of the places on this low road which occur regularly at
intervals of two miles are of any special importance except Glentham,
which will be noticed later. We will therefore run along the middle
road, the grand old Roman Street, which begins at Chichester and, as
seen on the map, goes through the county north of Lincoln as straight as
an arrow for over thirty miles. At the twelfth mile we pass Spital, and
when, after eighteen miles we get to the latitude of Kirton-Lindsey on
the cliff road, we shall find that the branch road to the right, which
goes to Brigg, takes all the traffic, and the Ermine Street for seven or
eight miles is disused. So, turning off, we pass _Redbourne_ Hall and
_Hibaldstow_, the place of St. Higbald, who came to Lincolnshire across
the Humber with St. Chad to bring Christianity to the Mercians in the
seventh century. This parish runs up to the ridge, and in the middle of
it is an old camp at Gainsthorpe on the “Street.” At Scawby Park, with
its fine lakes, the property of the Sutton-Nelthorpes, we turn eastwards
and reach Brigg. This, once a fishing place on the Ancholme River, is now
the one market town of all this low-lying neighbourhood. Roads from the
four villages of _Scawby_, _Broughton_, _Wrawby_ and _Bigby_ unite here,
and the great Weir Dyke or “New River Ancholme” which runs from the river
Rase to the Humber goes through it. It is eleven miles from Bishopsbridge
on the Rase to Brigg, and seven from Brandy Wharf, whence boats used to
run to meet the Humber boats at Ferriby Sluice, ten miles north of Brigg.
Hereabouts the fens are called “carrs.” We noticed the term “carr dyke”
for the Roman drain near Bourn, which runs from the Nene to the Witham;
and the map along the whole course of the Ancholme, which runs north for
twenty miles, is covered with “carrs.” The villages are at the edge of
the Wold generally, but they all have their bit of fen and all are called
by this name, Horkstow carrs, Saxby carrs, Worlaby carrs, Elsham carrs,
etc.
_Carr_ is a north country word, and has two distinct meanings in
Lincolnshire.
1. The moat-like places which originally surrounded the inaccessible
islets, with which the Fenland at one time abounded; but now used chiefly
of low-lying land apt to be flooded.
2. A wood of alder, ash, &c., in a moist boggy place, _e.g._, “Keal
Carrs,” near Spilsby.
A third meaning is less common, viz., the humate of iron or yellow
sediment in water which flows from peaty land.
[Sidenote: BROUGHTON AND BRIGG]
Of the four parishes above mentioned which meet at Brigg,[6] _Broughton_
on the Ermine Street is worth a visit. The pre-Norman church and
tower, like _Marton_, has a good deal of herring-bone work, and, like
_Hough-on-the-Hill_, an outer turret containing a spiral staircase. There
is a small rude doorway, and as at Barton, the tower with its two apses
probably formed the original church.
The present nave is built on the Norman foundation, and the cable
moulding is visible at the base of two of the pillars. There is a chapel
in the north aisle, and on the north side of the chancel a good altar
tomb with alabaster effigies of Sir H. Redford and his wife, 1380, and
a fine brass on the floor of about the same date. This chancel was once
sixteen feet longer. In another meanly built chantry is a monument to
Sir Ed. Anderson, 1660. In Broughton woods, as at Tumby, the lily of the
valley grows wild. North of Broughton the Ermine Street becomes again
passable, and, after running some miles through a well-wooded country,
is crossed by the railway at Appleby Station, whence it becomes a good
road again, but again falls into disuse when the road turns to the left
for _Winterton_, a large village in which three fine Roman pavements were
ploughed up in 1747. Here we have a large cruciform church with a very
early tower. Afterwards the Street continues, a visible but not very
serviceable track, to _Winteringham Haven_, the Roman “Ad Abum.”
[Sidenote: OLD BOAT OF BRIGG]
In _Brigg_ we had hoped to see the old boat which was dug out near the
river in 1886, it is forty-eight feet long and four to five feet wide,
hollowed out of a single tree, and could carry at least forty men over
the Humber, though not perhaps across the sea. Its height at the stern
was three feet nine inches, and it was six inches thick at the bottom.
The tree trunk was open at the thick or stern end, and two oak boards
slid into grooves cut in the sides and bottom to make a stern-board.
It probably had bulwark-boards also, certainly it had three stiffening
thwarts, and the stern end had been decked, as a ledge still shows on
either side on which the planking rested. One very interesting feature
in it was that the boat had been repaired, with a patch of oak boarding
six feet by one foot, on the starboard side, the board being bevelled
at the edges and pegged on with oak pins. A similar boat made out of a
huge oak tree is in the portico of the British Museum. In this, which is
fifty feet long and four feet wide, tapering off a little at either end,
both the ends and two thwarts are left solid. The latter are not more
than six inches high, but sufficient to add considerably to the strength
of the hull. The boat is three inches thick at the gunwale and possibly
more at the bottom, and has no keel. But this most interesting relic of
Viking days has been removed from Brigg, for what reasons I know not, to
the Museum at Hull, and is no longer in the county. A British corduroy
road or plank causeway was also found below the mud from which the boat
was dug out, and is therefore probably of greater age, though such a
mud-bearing stream as the Humber can make a considerable deposit in a
very short time. This fact is illustrated by the process of “warping,”
which is described in the chapter on the Isle of Axholme.
_Brigg_, without its old boat, has little to detain us, so we can pass to
_Wrawby_, and then desert the main road, which goes east through a gap in
the Wold to _Brocklesby_, and turn northwards to _Elsham_, where we come
up against the most northerly portion of the “Wolds” as distinguished
from the “Cliff” or Ridge which lies more to the west. The main road
or highway to _Barton_ runs right up the hill and crosses the Wold
obliquely, and, as usual, being on the high ground, exhibits no villages
in the whole of its course, but we will turn sharp to the left and take a
byway which goes by “the Villages” of which we shall pass through no less
than half a dozen in the six miles between Elsham and the Humber.
At _Elsham_ is the seat of Sir John Astley. The church has a rich tower
doorway with curious sculptured stones on either side.
[Sidenote: SAXBY AND HORKSTOW]
Any road which runs by the edge of a curving range of hills is sure
to be picturesque; and the continuation of the Wolds south of Elsham,
after the Barnetby Gap, where the railway line gets through the Wolds
without tunnelling, with the string of villages all ending in “by,”
Bigby, Somerby, Searby, Owmby, Grasby, Clixby, Audleby, and Fonaby,
which lead the traveller to _Caistor_, affords pleasant travelling. But
it does not come up in varied charm to this western edge of the Wold,
which goes farthest north, and ends on the plateau which overlooks
the Humber near _South Ferriby_. On this route the first village from
_Elsham_ is _Worlaby_, and whereas _Elsham_ had once a small house of
Austin Canons founded by Beatrice de Amundeville before 1169, and given
by Henry VIII. at the Dissolution to the all devouring Duke of Suffolk,
_Worlaby_ had its benefactor in John, first Lord Bellasyse, who founded
in 1670 a hospital for poor women, of which the brick building still
exists. The twisting road with its wooded slopes and curving hollows is
here extremely pretty. We next reach _Bonby_, and soon after come to
_Saxby All Saints_. This is a really delightful village, and evidently
under the care of one owner, for all the houses are extremely neat and,
with the exception of two proud-looking brick-built houses of the villa
type, all have tiled roofs and buff-coloured walls. That the village
is grateful to the landlord and his agent, and is also, like Mrs. John
Gilpin, of a thrifty mind, is quaintly testified by the inscription on
a drinking fountain in the village, with a semicircular seat round one
side of it which tells how it was set up “in honour of the 60ᵗʰ year of
Queen Victoria’s reign, and of Frederick Horsley, agent for 42 years
on Mr. Barton’s estate.” Each of these parishes extends up on to the
Wold, and down across the fen, and the map shows this and marks Saxby or
Elsham “Wolds” as well as Saxby or Elsham “Carrs”; and in each village a
signpost points west “to the bridge,” which goes over the land drain and
the Weir Dyke.
In the next village of _Horkstow_, a big elm stands close to the gates
of the churchyard and parsonage. Here the fine air and the bright breezy
look of sky and landscape fill one with pleasure, and the snug way in
which the churches nestle against the skirt of the wold give a charming
air of peace and retirement. The church here is singular in its very
sharp rise of level towards the east. You mount up six steps from the
nave at the chancel arch, further east are two more steps and another
arch, and again further on, two more and another arch. It looks as though
the ground had been raised, for the capitals of the pillars on which
these last two arches rest are only four feet and a half from the floor.
The north arcade is transition Norman, the arches on the Norman pillars,
instead of round, being slightly pointed.
[Sidenote: QUAINT EPITAPHS]
A Colonel of the sixty-third regiment, who died in 1838, has a mural
tablet here, which tells us that “In the discharge of his publick
duties he was firm and just yet lenient, and as a private gentleman his
integrity and urbanity endeared him to all his friends.” This is almost
worthy to be placed beside that of the man who on ending “his social
career” is stated to have “endeared himself to all his friends and
acquaintances by the charm of his manner and his elegant performance on
the bassoon.” Curious, what things people used to think proper to put up
in churches! One of the oddest is at Harewood in Yorkshire, where, under
a bust of Sir Thomas Denison, who is represented in a wig, his widow
writes that “he was pressed and at last prevailed on to accept the office
of Judge in the Kings Bench, the duties of which he discharged with
_unsuspected integrity_.” Doubtless she meant with an integrity which was
above suspicion, but it reads so very much as if those who knew him had
never for a moment suspected him of possessing the virtue mentioned. For
other examples see Chapter V.
After _Horkstow_ we come to _South Ferriby_, where a chalk road leads
along the edge of the cliff towards a little landing stage on the water’s
edge, giving a pretty view over the wide estuary to the Yorkshire
continuation of the Wold, and the little village of _North Ferriby_
opposite.
The church of South Ferriby, which is dedicated, as many coast churches
are, to St. Nicholas, the patron Saint of children and fishermen, has its
nave running north and south, and a bit railed off at the north end for
the altar, though that is now placed at the south end.
The name suggests a ferry over the Humber, but the locality seems
to forbid this, for in no place is the Humber wider until you have
almost reached _Grimsby_, and from _Barton_ to _Hessle_, about three
miles further down stream, it is only about half the width, and there,
no doubt, there was a ferry. The reason of this great width is that
the Humber has made inroads here and washed away a good deal of land
which used to be between Ferriby Hall and the water. This being partly
deposited on the “old Warp” sand bank, once the breeding place of many
sea birds, has formed a permanent pasture there, now claimed by the Crown
and called “Reads Island.”
[Sidenote: THE BARTON HOY]
A hundred years ago the ‘hoy,’ a sloop-rigged packet, used to take
passengers from Barton Waterside Inn, just north of Barton, to Hull; and
Sir J. Nelthorpe notes in his pocket book, under date August 9th, 1793.
“arrived at Scawby after a very bad passage over the Humber, having been
on the water five hours, and at last forced to run on shore in Barrow
Haven, not being able to make Barton, owing to the negligence of the
boatmen in not leaving Hull in time; my horses, seven in number, remained
in the boat from four o’clock in the morning till seven at night, before
they could be landed.”
Coming back from the Cliff Edge road, we turn up the hill for
_Barton-on-Humber_, and from the top of the Wold, which here comes to an
end, we get a really beautiful and extended view in all directions. But
we must now speak of Barton, with its two old churches.
BARTON-ON-HUMBER
[Sidenote: BARTON-ON-HUMBER]
_Barton-on-Humber_ had a market and a ferry when Domesday Book was
compiled, and was a bigger port than Hull. At the Conquest it was
given to the King’s nephew, Gilbert of Ghent, son of Baldwin Earl of
Flanders, whose seat was at Folkingham. The ferry is still used, and
the Hull cattle boats mostly start from Barton landing-stage, but most
of the passenger traffic is from the railway pier at New Holland, four
miles to the east. The town is a mile from the waterside. It has two
fine churches, of which St. Peter’s is one of the earliest in England;
curiously one of the same type of Saxon church is also at a Barton,
Earl’s Barton in Northants, and not far from it is another of similar
date, at Brixworth, which is held to be the most noteworthy of all the
early churches in England. Barnack and Wittering in the same county
are also of the same style and of the same antiquity, and at Dover, at
Bradford-on-Avon, and at Worth and Sompting in Sussex are others similar.
Stow, near Lincoln, Broughton near Brigg, and Hough-on-the-Hill, and
the two Lincoln towers and Bracebridge, are of similar age, but these
last, like Clee and so many in the neighbourhood of Grimsby, Caistor and
Gainsborough, have little but their tower or part of their tower left
that can be called Saxon, while at Stow, and some of the churches in the
other counties mentioned, there is more to see of the original building.
The last restoration of St. Peter’s, Barton, in 1898, has put the church
into good condition and left the old work at the west end much as it was
a thousand years ago; probably the church at first was very like what we
may still see at _Brixworth_. The tower outside is divided into panels by
strips of stone, which go deep into the walls and project from the rubble
masonry, as at Barnack. This has been aptly termed “Stone carpentry,” but
cannot really be a continuation in stone of a previously existing method
of building with a wooden framework, such as we see in the half-timbered
houses of the south of England, because that method of building was
later. It is possibly a method imported from Germany; certainly the
double light with the mid-wall jamb came from Northern Italy to the
Rhenish provinces, and may have come on to England from thence. Hence it
has been termed “Teutonic Romanesque.”
[Illustration: _The Avon at Barton-on-Humber._]
[Sidenote: A SAXON CHURCH]
[Sidenote: ST. PETER’S, BARTON]
Of the four stages of the tower the lowest has an arcading of dressed
stone, as there is at Bradford-on-Avon, and on the east, south and west
sides a round-headed doorway, and on the north a triangular-headed one,
with massive “Long-and-Short” work. The next stage exhibits triangular
arcading with double lights and a massive baluster and capital under a
triangular arch. The third stage has no arcading, but a similar two-light
window. The fourth stage is not Saxon but early Norman in style. From
the west of the tower projects a sort of annexe, fifteen feet by twelve,
of the same width as the tower and cöeval with it, having quoins of
“Long-and-Short” work, this is pierced with two small rude lights north
and south, and with two circular lights on the west. These circular
lights are of extraordinary interest, for they still have in them,
across the top of the upper opening and at the bottom of the lower one,
a portion of the old original Saxon oak shutter, perforated with round
holes to let in light and air, a thing absolutely unique. A chancel,
whose foundations have been recently discovered, projected from the tower
eastward, and just below the floor, near the north wall, is a curious
bricked chamber, which might have been a small tomb.
[Illustration: _St. Peter’s, Barton-on-Humber._]
[Sidenote: ST. MARY’S, BARTON]
The tower has four doorways irregularly placed and all differing from
each other: it is fitted up for daily morning service, for which it has
been used intermittently for over a thousand years; for no doubt the
original church consisted simply of the tower and the two chambers east
and west of it. At present, from the interior of the spacious Decorated
nave, with its added Perpendicular clerestory, when you look up at the
west end and see the rude round-headed arches of the first and second
stages of the tower, and the double triangular-headed light of the next
stage, all of which come within the nave roof, you see at the same time
two deep grooves cut in the tower face for the early steep-pitched roof.
These start from the double light and finish by cutting through the
upright stone strips which run like elongated pilasters up the whole
height of the tower on either side. The tower and its annexe is of such
absorbing interest that one hardly looks at the rest of the church, or
stops to note its beautifully restored rood screen with a new canopy to
it, which serves to hide the wide ugly chancel arch. But we shall perhaps
be able to make up for this if we go on to St. Mary’s Church, which was
the church of the people of Barton, and served by a secular priest, St.
Peter’s being an appanage of Bardney Abbey. The churches both stand high,
and are quite near one another. St. Mary’s was a Norman building, as
the north arcade testifies; the south arcade was rebuilt in the Early
English period, to which the massive tower also belongs, the parapet
being later. Once the nave and chancel had a continuous roof till the
clerestory was added, and were of the same width, and built of brick and
stone intermingled and set anyhow. The four-light windows in the chancel
are handsome. The north arcade has five round arches, and one, at the
west end, pointed. The south arcade has only four arches, but larger and
with slenderer columns, consisting of eight light shafts round a central
pillar. On the south the chantry chapel extends the whole length of the
chancel, and has beside the altar an aumbry and, what is very unusual in
such a chapel, sedilia. The aisles are wide and out of proportion to the
building in both churches. The east window is white, with one little bit
of old glass in it, and on the floor is a full-sized brass of Simon Seman
Sheriff of London, in Alderman’s gown. Some Parliamentarian soldiers’
armour is in the vestry of St. Peter’s. There are also two fine oak
chests, one hollowed out of a section of a large tree with the outer slab
of the tree several inches thick as a lid. A similar, but smaller, chest
is in Blawith church vestry, near Coniston Lake, Lancashire.[7]
[Illustration: _St. Mary’s, Barton-on-Humber._]
[Sidenote: INTEREST IN CHURCH HISTORY]
In Barton St. Peter’s the Rector has provided a very full account of
the history of the church, for which all who visit it must be extremely
grateful.
It is very pleasant to find that the number are so decidedly on the
increase of clergymen who take an interest in the past history of their
churches, and write all they can find out about them, either in their
parish magazines or in a separate pamphlet. Some of these, too, take
pains with their old registers, and if only the rector, or someone
in the parish whom he could trust to do the work with skill, care,
and knowledge, would copy the old sixteenth and seventeenth century
registers in a clear hand, the parish would be in possession of the most
interesting of all local documents in a legible form, and the originals
could be safely housed in a dry place, which is by no means the case with
all of them at present, and no longer be subjected to the wear and tear
of rough handling and the decay from damp which has been so fatal to the
earliest pages of most of them.
The printing and placing more frequently in the church of a card,
pointing out the salient features and giving what is known of the
history of the building, would also be a boon to those visitors who know
something of architecture, and would stimulate a taste for it in others,
and a respect for old work, the lack of which has been the cause of so
much destruction under the specious name of restoration in the earlier
half of the past century. Things are much better now than they were
two generations ago, but ignorance and want of means may still cause
irreparable damage, which, if the above suggestion were universally
carried out, would become less and less possible.
[Sidenote: CHURCH PATRONAGE]
Amongst those who take the greatest interest in their churches I am
especially indebted to the Rev. G. G. Walker, Rector of Somerby near
Grantham, the Rev. Canon Sutton, of Brant Broughton, the Rev. F.
McKenzie, of Great Hale near Sleaford, and the Rev. C. H. Laing, of
Bardney, who has done such good work in the excavation of the famous
abbey. The writer, too, of letters in _The Spilsby and Horncastle
Gazette_, on town and village life in Lincolnshire, brings together much
interesting information. From him I gather that as far back as 668,
when Theodore was Archbishop of Canterbury, local provision was made
for the village clergy who were then, of course, but few in number. His
wise arrangement, that those who built a church should have the right
of choosing their pastor, initiated the system of private patronage
and thereby encouraged the building and endowing of churches, so that
it is not surprising to hear that in Domesday Book—400 years later than
Theodore’s time—the county of Lincolnshire had no less than 226 churches.
The original patron often gave the right of presentation to an abbey,
which was a wise plan, as it ensured to the people a pastor, and to the
pastor an adequate means of living, and provided for the building and
upkeep of the church, which was often larger than the population of the
village warranted either then or since.
CHAPTER XVII
THE NORTH-WEST
Winteringham—Alkborough and “Julian’s
Bower”—Burton-Stather—Scunthorpe and Frodingham—Fillingham
and Wycliff—Glentworth and Sir Christopher
Wray—Laughton—Corringham—Gainsborough—The Old Hall—Lea and Sir
Charles Anderson—Knaith and Sir Thomas Sutton—A Group of Early
Church Towers—Lincolnshire Roads.
It is quite a surprise to the traveller in the north of the county to
find so much that is really pretty in what looks on the map, from the
artistic point of view, a trifle “flat and unprofitable,” but really
there are few prettier bits of road in the county than that by “the
Villages” under the northern Wolds, and there is another little bit of
cliff near the mouth of the Trent which affords equally picturesque bits
of village scenery combined with fine views over the Trent, Ouse, and
Humber.
From _South Ferriby_ a byway runs alongside the water to _Winteringham_,
from whence the Romans must have had a ferry to _Brough_, whence their
great road went on to the north.
In _Winteringham_ church there are some good Norman arches, and a fine
effigy of a knight in armour, said to be one of the Marmions. The road
hence takes us by innumerable turns to _West Halton_, where the church
is dedicated to St. Etheldreda, who is said to have hidden here from her
husband Ecgfrith, when she was fleeing to Ely, at which place she founded
the first monastery, in 672, six years before the building of the church
at Stow. Murray notes that in the “Liber Eliensis” Halton is called
Alftham.
Three miles to the south-east we find the large village of _Winterton_,
just within a mile of the Ermine Street, and it is evident that a good
many Romans had villas on the high ground looking towards the Humber,
for both here and at _Roxby_, a mile to the south, good Roman pavements
have been found, and another, four miles to the east, at Horkstow.
Roxby church shows some pre-Norman stone work at the west end of the
north aisle, and a fine series of canopied sedilia in the chancel, with
unusually rich and lofty pinnacles. At _Winterton_ a Roman pavement
was noticed by De la Pryme in 1699, and another with a figure of Ceres
holding a cornucopia was discovered in 1797. The churchyard has an
Early English cross, and the tower, which is engaged in the aisles, is
of the primitive Romanesque type, with the Saxon belfry windows in the
lower stage, and elegant Early English ones above. An early slab is
over the west door, the nave has lofty octagonal pillars with bands of
tooth ornament. The transepts are unusually wide and have rich Decorated
windows. A Holy Family, by Raphael Mengs, forms the altarpiece.
[Sidenote: MAZES]
From here we go west to _Alkborough_, and on a grassy headland
overlooking the junction of the Trent with the Ouse, we find a
saucer-shaped hollow a few feet deep and forty-four feet across, at
the bottom of which is a maze cut in the turf by monks 800 years ago.
It is almost identical in pattern with one at Wing, near Uppingham,
in Rutland, and unlike those “quaint mazes on the wanton green”
mentioned in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which “for lack of tread are
undistinguishable,” it has been kept cleared out, and a copy of it laid
down in the porch, as we find to be done on one of the porch piers at
Lucca Cathedral, and in the nave of Chartres Cathedral. These mazes
were Christian adaptations of the Egyptian and Greek labyrinths, and
were supposed to be allegorical of the mazes and entanglements of sin
from which man can only get free if assisted by the guiding hand of
Providence, or of Holy Church. Hence in a Christian Basilica in Algeria
the words “Sancta Ecclesia” are arranged in a complicated fashion in
the centre of the maze. Other mazes used to exist at Appleby, Louth,
and Horncastle in Lincolnshire, and at Ripon one of the same pattern,
but half as large again as the Alkborough maze, was only ploughed up
in 1827. At Asenby in Yorkshire is a similar one still carefully kept
clear. That on St. Catherine’s Hill, Winchester, is quadrangular and much
simpler. At Leigh in Dorset is a “Miz Maze.” Northants, Notts, Wilts,
Beds, Cambridge, and Gloucestershire, all had one at least. _Comberton_
in Cambridge has one of precisely the same pattern, and at _Hilton_, in
Huntingdonshire, is one called by the same name as that at Alkborough,
“Julian’s bower.” This is thought to be a reminiscence of the intricate
‘Troy’ game described in Virgil, _Aen._ v., 588-593, as played on
horseback by Iulus and his comrades:—
“Ut quondam Creta fertur Labyrinthus in alta
Parietibus textum caecis iter, ancipitemque
Mille viis habuisse dolum, qua signa sequendi
Falleret indeprensus et irremeabilis error.
Haud alio Teucrum nati vestigia cursu
Impediunt texuntque fugas et proelia ludo.”
And the fact that a labyrinthine figure cut in the turf near Burgh on
the Solway by the Cumberland herdsmen was called “the walls of Troy”
somewhat favours the interpretation. But it seems rather a far-fetched
origin. Doubtless they served as an innocent recreation for the monks who
lived at St. Anne’s chapel hard by, and the idea of such labyrinthine
patterns is found in many churches abroad, for they are executed in
coloured marbles, both in Rome and in the Early church of St. Vitale at
Ravenna. The mazes formed of growing trees, as at Hampton Court, are more
difficult to make out, as you cannot see the whole pattern at one time.
[Sidenote: ALKBOROUGH]
The church at _Alkborough_ was, like Croyland, a bone of contention
between the monks of Spalding and Peterborough, each claiming it as a
gift from the founder Thorold, in 1052. Tradition says that it was partly
rebuilt by the three knights, Brito, Tracy, and Morville, who had taken
refuge in this most remote corner of Lincolnshire, where one of them
lived, after their murder of Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. The original
Early tower and tower-arch remain, and a fragment of a very early
cross is now to be seen by the north pier. One of the bells has this
inscription:—
“Jesu for yi Modir sake
Save all ye sauls that me gart make.”
[Sidenote: BURTON-STATHER]
In the village is a really beautiful old Tudor house of brick, with stone
mullions, called Walcot Old Hall, the property of J. Goulton Constable,
Esq. The little isolated bit of chalk wold which begins near Walcot is
but four miles long, and in the centre of it is perched the village
of _Burton-Stather_. The church stands on the very edge of the cliff,
and a steep road leads down to the Staithe, a ferry landing stage, from
which the village gets its name. Here, at a turn in the road, close to
the village pump, still in universal use by the road side, we stopped
to admire the wide and delightful view. The Trent was just below us.
_Garthorpe_, where the other side of the ferry has its landing place,
was in front, across the Trent lay the _Isle of Axholme_, green but
featureless, and beyond it the sinuous Ouse, like a great gleaming snake,
with the smoke of Goole rising up across the wide plain, and beyond the
river, Howden tower; while, on a clear day, Selby Abbey and York Minster
can be seen from the churchyard. We leave the village by an avenue of
over-arching trees, and cross the Wold obliquely, passing Normanby
Hall, the residence of Sir B. D. Sheffield, many of whose ancestors are
buried in Burton-Stather church, and leaving the height, descend into a
plain filled with smoke from the tall chimneys of the _Scunthorpe_ and
_Frodingham_ iron furnaces. To come all at once on this recent industrial
centre is a surprise after the bright clear atmosphere and keen air
in which we have been revelling all day. But we soon leave the tall
chimneys behind and find that the road divides; the left passing over
to the “Cliff” at _Raventhorpe_ near _Broughton_ on the Ermine Street,
and continuing south past _Manton_, where the black-headed gull, “_Larus
Ridibundus_,” the commonest of all the gulls on the south coast of
England, breeds on land belonging to Sir Sutton Nelthorpe of Scawby, to
_Kirton in Lindsey_, and so by _Blyborough_, _Willoughton_, _Hemswell_,
and _Harpswell_, to _Spital-on-the-Street_; and thence by _Glentworth_
and _Fillingham_ to Lincoln.
Of these places _Blyborough_ is curiously dedicated to St. Alkmund,
a Northumbrian Saint, to whom also is dedicated a church founded in
the ninth century by the daughter of Alfred the Great in Shrewsbury.
_Willoughton_ once had a preceptory of the Templars, founded in 1170.
_Harpswell_ in its Early Norman, or possibly pre-Norman, tower has a
mid-wall shaft carved with chevron ornament, similar to that in the upper
of two sets of early double lights on the south side of the tower of
Appleton-le-Strey near Malton in Yorkshire. It also possesses a clock
which was given in memory of the victory at Culloden, 1746. Moreover it
contains several fine monuments; but _Glentworth_ and _Fillingham_ are
of more interest than all these. _Glentworth_, for its very interesting
church, and _Fillingham_, because from 1361 to 1368 it was the home of
the great John Wyclif, who held the living as a ‘fellow’ of Balliol
College, Oxford.
[Sidenote: WYCLIF]
Wyclif was made Master of Balliol in 1360, and became rector of
Fillingham in the same year. In 1368 he moved to Ludgershall in Bucks,
and in 1374 to Lutterworth, where he died on December 31, 1384. He was a
consistent opposer of the doctrine of transubstantiation, for which he
was condemned by the University of Oxford; and he renounced allegiance to
the Pope, who issued no less than five Bulls against him. The Archbishop
of Canterbury persecuted him in his latter years, and forty-four years
after his death his bones were exhumed and burnt by order of the Synod of
Constance, and the ashes cast into the Swift. He made the first complete
translation of the Bible into English from the Vulgate, and in this he
was assisted by Nicolas of Hereford, who took the Old Testament, Wyclif
doing the New. Chaucer, who died in 1400, thus describes him in his
Prologue to the “Canterbury Tales”:—
A good man was ther of religioun,
And was a poure Persoun of a toun;
But riche he was of holy thought and werk.
He was also a lerned man, a clerk
That Christes gospel trewly wolde preche.
Wide was his parische, and houses fer asonder,
But he ne lefte not for reyne ne thonder,
In sicknesse nor in mischiefe to visite
The ferrest in his parische, muche and lite,
Upon his feet, and in his hand a staf.
This noble ensample to his sheep he gaf,
That first he wrought and afterward be taughte.
Out of the Gospel he the wordes caughte
And this figure he added eek thereto,
That if golde ruste, what shal iren do?
A better preest, I trowe, ther nowher non is,
He wayted after no pompe and reverence,
Ne maked him a spiced conscience,
But Christes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taught, but first he folowed it himselve.
[Sidenote: SIR CHRISTOPHER WRAY]
_Glentworth_ has a typical pre-Norman tower, built of small stones with
dressed quoins. It has the two stringcourses, the first being two-thirds
of the way up from the ground with only thin slits for lights below it
and with the usual mid-wall shaft in the belfry window above it, but with
an unusual impost; a slab with a boldly-cut cross on it forms the jamb in
the light over the west window, and the south side shows ornamentation
similar to that which we noticed at Stow. Besides the tower, the
chancel-arch and a narrow priest’s door are all that remains of the Early
work. The monument to Sir Christopher Wray, who lived here from 1574 to
1592, is a very fine one. The judge is represented in his robes and hat,
with ruff, which his wife also wears, she having a hood and gown with
jewelled stomacher. Four daughters are figured kneeling below, while
the son kneels above in armour. Marble pillars with Corinthian capitals
support the arch over the recess in which the figures lie, and it was
once richly coloured and enclosed by a screen of wrought ironwork.
The right hand road from Scunthorpe runs down the centre of the
plain half-way between the Cliff and the Trent, through a number of
villages. Of these _Ashby_ still maintains a Duck Decoy near the Trent.
_Bottesford_ has a fine cruciform church, with a handsome chancel,
having narrow deep-set lancet windows of unusual length, ornamented with
tooth moulding, a singular arrangement of alternate lancet and circular
windows in the clerestory, and stone seats round the Early English arcade
pillars, as at Claypole. _Messingham_, with its stained-glass and oak
furniture collected by Archdeacon Bailey from various churches in his
Archdeaconry and elsewhere, as also _Scotter_ and _Scotton_, are but
milestones on the way to _Northorpe_, where are two good doorways, one
Norman, and one, in the south porch, Decorated, with fine carved foliage,
and the old door still in use. The western bays of the arcade are built
into the walls of the Perpendicular tower, which has been inserted
between them. A sepulchral brass with inscription to Anthony Moreson,
1648, has been inserted into an old altar slab, shown as such by its five
crosses. Thanks to Mrs. Meynell Ingram the church of _Laughton_, three
miles west of Northorpe, was beautifully restored by Bodley and Garner in
1896. Here is a very fine brass of a knight of the Dalison (D’Alençon)
family, about 1400, which, like that of Thomas and Johanna Massingberd at
Gunby, has been made to serve again by a parsimonious Dalison of a later
century.
Roads lead both from _Northorpe_ and _Laughton_ to _Corringham_. This
village is on the great east-and-west highway from Gainsborough to
Market-Rasen, and here, too, the fine Transition Norman church has been
magnificently restored by Bodley at the sole cost of Miss Beckett, of
Somerby Hall. It now has a fine rood-screen, good modern stained-glass
windows, and a painting of the adoration of the Magi for a reredos. There
is here a brass in memory of Robert and Thomas Broxholme, 1631, placed
by their brother and sister, Henry and Mary, who all had “lived together
above sixty years and for the most parte of the time in one family in
most brotherly concord.” A long rhymed epitaph goes on to say:—
“Though none of them had Husband Child or Wife
They mist no blessings of the married life;
For to the poore they eva were insteed
Of Husband Wife and Parent at their need.”
[Sidenote: GAINSBOROUGH]
[Sidenote: “THE MILL ON THE FLOSS”]
From _Corringham_ a turn to the right brings us after four miles to
_Gainsborough_. From this town on the extreme edge of the county four
roads and four railway lines radiate, and the Trent runs along the edge
of the town with a good wide bridge over it, built in 1790, for which a
stiff toll is demanded. It is described by George Eliot in “The Mill on
the Floss,” as “St. Oggs,” where the ‘Eagre’ or ‘bore’ is thus poetically
referred to. “The broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks
to the sea; and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage
with an impetuous embrace.” Constantly overrun by the Danes, the town
was eventually looked on as his capital city by Swegen, who, with his
son Canute, brought his vessels up the Trent in 1013, and died here,
“full King of the Country,” in 1014. In the Civil War it was occupied
first by the Royalists and afterwards by the Parliamentarians, and one of
Cromwell’s first successful engagements was a cavalry skirmish at _Lea_,
two miles to the south, when he routed and killed General Cavendish,
whom he drove “with some of his soldiers into a quagmire,” still called
‘Cavendish bog.’ The place has some large iron works and several
seed-crushing mills for oil and oil-cake, and much river traffic is done
in large barges. Talking of barges, Gainsborough has the credit of having
owned the first steam-packet seen in Lincolnshire waters. This was the
‘Caledonia,’ built at Glasgow, and brought round by the Caledonian Canal,
to the astonishment of all the east coast fishermen, in 1815. She was a
cargo boat, but she took passengers to Hull, and was a great boon to the
villages on the Trent.
[Illustration: _North Side, Old Hall, Gainsborough._]
[Illustration: _South Side, Old Hall, Gainsborough._]
[Sidenote: THE OLD HALL]
River traffic below Gainsborough is somewhat hampered during the time
of spring tides by the Eagre, which, when the in-rushing tide overcomes
the river current and rides on the surface of the stream, rising in a
wave six or seven feet high, rolls on from the mouth of the Trent to
Gainsborough, a distance of more than twenty miles. The long street
leading to the bridge is so dirty and narrow that you cannot believe as
you go down it that you are in the main artery of the town. But when
you have crossed the bridge and look back, the long riverside with its
wharf and red brick houses, boats, and barges, has a very picturesque
and old-world effect. The great sight of the town is the Old Hall,
which stands on a grassy plot of some two acres, with a very poor iron
railing round it, and a road all round that. In the middle of this rough
grass-grown plot in the heart of the town is a charming old baronial
hall, rebuilt in the times of Henry VII. and Elizabeth, after its
destruction in 1470, and still occupied as a private residence. There was
doubtless a building here before the time of the Conquest, and here it
would be that Alfred the Great stopped on the occasion of his marriage
with Ethelwith, daughter of Ethelred, and here, too, it would be that
Swegen died, and his son Canute held his court. The present building is
of brick and timber with a fine stone-built oriel on the north side, as
the centre of a long frontage, and is of various patterns, having tall
chimneys and buttresses on the west, and a brick tower on the north-east,
and two wings on the south projecting from a magnificent central hall
with much glass and woodwork, and a lantern. The large kitchen with its
two huge fireplaces is at the end of this hall. Henry VIII. and Katharine
Howard were entertained here by Lord Burgh, whose ancestor rebuilt
the hall in Henry VII.’s time, _c._ 1480; and another of his Queens,
Katharine Parr, was often here, being at one time the wife of Lord
Burgh’s eldest son.
[Sidenote: THE MASTER BUILDER]
The wide area round the hall, with its untidy grass and the miserable
iron fence, gives a singularly forlorn appearance to a beautiful and
uncommon-looking building. It is supposed that the famous master-builder,
“Richard de Gaynisburgh,” was born at Gainsborough, with whom, then
styled “Richard de Stow,” the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln in 1306
contracted “to attend to and employ other masons under him for the new
work,” at the time when the new additional east end or Angel Choir
as well as the upper parts of the great tower and the transepts were
being built. He contracted “to do the plain work by measure, and the
fine carved work and images by the day.” One of the Pilgrim Fathers was
a Gainsborough man, and a Congregational Chapel has been built as a
memorial to him.
From Gainsborough, going north, we come at once to _Thonock_ Hall, the
seat of Sir Hickman Bacon, the premier baronet of England, and _Morton_
is just to the west, where the church has a very good new rood screen
and five Morris windows, from designs by Burne-Jones. Between Morton
and Thonock is a large Danish camp, called Castle Hills, with a double
fosse. On the other side of the town the westernmost road of the county
runs south by _Lea_, _Knaith_, and _Gate Burton_ to _Marton_, and thence
to _Torksey_, which in early times was a bigger place than Gainsborough,
and so on to _Newark_, but another road branches off by _Torksey_ to the
left, for _Saxilby_ and Lincoln, twelve miles distant.
[Sidenote: SIR CHARLES ANDERSON]
_Lea_ church stands high, and has a chantry in which is a cross-legged
knight, Sir Ranulph Trehampton, 1300, and some good early glass of
about 1330. Of Trehampton’s manor-house only the site remains, but the
hall, which is full of antiquarian treasures, was the home of that
well-known Lincolnshire worthy Sir Charles Anderson, Bart., the county
antiquarian, 1804-1891. He was a charming personality. The following
story, referring to him, was told me by that delightful teller of good
stories, the Very Rev. Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester. At the time when
a railway was being cut (between Lincoln and Gainsborough probably, for
that passes through Lea), but at all events in a part of the county in
which Sir Charles took a great interest, he was visiting the works, when
an insinuating Irish navvy stopped and looked at him and then said, “So
you’re Sir Charles Anderson, are ye? Sure now there’s scores of Andersons
where I come from; there’s one now in Sligo, a saddler. Ach! he’s a good
fellow is that; the rale gintleman. He gives without asking.” Then, after
a pause, “You’ve a look of ’em.” The Andersons lived in Lincolnshire from
the days of Richard II., first at Wrawby then at Flixborough, temp. Henry
VII.
[Illustration: _Gainsborough Church._]
_Knaith_ is noticeable as being the birthplace, in 1532, of Thomas
Sutton, the founder of the Charterhouse in London, where he is buried.
The church has what is not at all common in English churches, a
baldacchino over the altar, but in fact it is not an ordinary church,
being just a part of an old Cistercian nunnery, founded by Ralph Evermue,
about 1180.
[Sidenote: THE CHARTERHOUSE]
Thomas Sutton was of Lincoln parents. He served in the army and was
made inspector of the King’s Artillery. Having leased some land in the
county of Durham, he proceeded to work the coal there, and became very
wealthy, in fact the wealthiest commoner in the realm, and with at least
£5,000 a year, so that he was able to give Lord Suffolk £13,000 for the
house then called Howard House in Middlesex, which had been the original
Charterhouse, founded in 1371 by Sir Walter Manney and dissolved in 1535.
This was in May, 1611. He wished to do something to benefit the nation,
but he left the details to the Crown. He died in December of the same
year, but his charity was arranged to support eighty poor folk, and to
teach forty boys, being, like Robert Johnson’s foundation at Uppingham,
both a hospital and a school. The hospital remains in its old buildings
in London, the school was moved in 1872 to Godalming, where it greatly
flourishes.
A central road runs through the middle of the flat country, half-way
between the Lincoln-and-Gainsborough road and the Ridge. This takes us
from _Corringham_ by a string of small villages to _Stow_, and thence
by _Sturton_ to _Saxilby_, and so back to Lincoln. Of those villages
_Springthorpe_ and _Heapham_ both have the early unbuttressed towers,
described in Chapters XXII. and XXIII., the former with herring-bone
masonry, the latter, like Marton, is unfortunately covered with stucco.
In the next village of _Upton_ again we find herring-bone masonry; at
_Willingham-by-Stow_, the base of the tower is early Norman; so that
in spite of the ruthless way in which succeeding styles destroyed the
work of their predecessors, we have a large group in this neighbourhood
of churches whose early Norman or even Saxon work is still visible. At
_Sturton_ is a good brick church by Pearson, reminding one of that by
Gilbert Scott at Fulney, just outside Spalding.
[Sidenote: LINCOLNSHIRE ROADS]
A few years ago, when the first motor made its way into Lincolnshire,
the road from Gainsborough to Louth was one long stretch of small loose
stones. It had never even dreamt of a steam roller, and there were always
ruts for the wheels, and as Lincolnshire carriage wheels were set three
or four inches wider apart so that they could accommodate themselves to
the cart ruts, when we brought a carriage up from Oxfordshire it was
found impossible to use it till the axles had been cut and lengthened so
that it could run in the ruts. But this was a great improvement on the
days my grandmother remembered, when it took four stout horses to draw a
carriage at foot’s pace from Ingoldmells to Spilsby (and this was only
100 years ago), or when Sir Charles Anderson saw a small cart-load of
corn stuck on the road and thatched down for the winter there, doubtless
belonging to a small farmer who had but one horse, which could not draw
the load home. Mention is made in this chapter of Scunthorpe. The iron
workers there appear to be keen footballers, for I notice that there is
now (December, 1913) one family there of eleven brothers between the ages
of 18 and 43, ten of them experienced players, who challenge any single
family anywhere to play two matches, one at the home of each team. I
wonder if any family of eleven stalwart sons will be found to take them
on.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ISLE OF AXHOLME
Epworth and the Wesleys—“Warping”—Crowle—St. Oswald—St.
Cuthbert.
The _Isle of Axholme_, or Axeyholm, is, as the name when stripped of its
tautology signifies, a freshwater island, for _Isle_, _ey_ and _holm_ are
all English, Anglo-Saxon, or Danish, for “island,” and _Ax_ is Celtic for
water. The whole region is full of Celtic names, for it evidently was a
refuge for the Celtic inhabitants. Thus we have Haxey, and Crowle (or
_Cruadh_ = hard, _i.e._, _terra firma_), also _Moel_ (= a round hill),
which appears in Melwood. Bounded by the Trent, the Idle, the Torn, and
the Don, it fills the north-west corner of the county, and is seventeen
miles long and seven wide. The county nowhere touches the Ouse, but ends
just beyond _Garthorpe_ and _Adlingfleet_ on the left bank of the Trent,
about a mile above the Trent falls. The northern boundary of the county
then goes down the middle of the channel of the Humber estuary to the
sea. Once a marsh abounding in fish and water-fowl, with only here and
there a bit of dry ground, viz., at _Haxey_, _Epworth_, _Belton_ and
_Crowle_, it has now a few more villages on Trent side, and two lines of
railway, one going south from Goole to Gainsborough, and one crossing
from Doncaster by Scunthorpe and Frodingham to Grimsby.
[Sidenote: TWO LINCOLNSHIRE MEN]
An unfair arrangement was made by Charles I. by which the Dutchman
Vermuyden, the famous engineer who afterwards constructed the “Bedford
Level,” undertook to drain the land, some of which lies from three to
eight feet below high water-mark, he receiving one-third of all the land
he rescued, the king one-third, the people and owners only the other
third between them. This gave rise to the most savage riots; and the
Dutch settlement at _Sandtoft_, where it is said that the village is
still largely Dutch, was the scene of endless skirmishes, sieges, and
attacks. A good insight into the lawlessness of the time is obtained
from a book called “The M.S.S. in a Red Box,” published by John Lane.
The ancestors of Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk, whose banishment with
Bolingbroke in lieu of trial by combat, is described in the opening
scenes of Shakespeare’s “Richard II.,” had a castle in Norman times near
_Owston_, between Haxey and East-Ferry on the Trent: so that both the
would-be combatants were Lincolnshire men.
Bolingbroke in the play is banished
“till twice five summers have enriched our fields,”
and Mowbray’s sentence is pronounced by the king in these words:—
“Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom,
Which I with some unwillingness pronounce:
The fly-slow hours shall not determinate
The dateless limit of thy dear exile.
The hopeless word of never to return
Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.”
_Richard II._, I. 3.
Norfolk was banished in 1398, and died in Venice in the following year,
and in Act IV., Scene 1 of the play, when Bolingbroke announces that he
shall be “repealed”:—
“and, though mine enemy, restored again
to all his lands and signories.”
The Bishop of Carlisle answers:—
“That honourable day shall ne’er be seen.
Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought
For Jesu Christ; in glorious Christian field,
Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross
Against black Pagans, Turks and Saracens;
And, toil’d with works of war, retired himself
To Italy; and there at Venice gave
His body to that pleasant country’s earth,[8]
And his pure soul unto his Captain Christ,
Under whose colours he had fought so long.”
[Sidenote: THE WESLEY FAMILY]
In the church of _Belton_ is a fine effigy of a knight in chain armour,
an hour-glass-stand on a pillar near the pulpit, as at Leasingham, and a
monument to Sir Richard de Belwood. _Temple Belwood_, in the centre of
the island, was a preceptory of the Knights Templars. _Epworth_ is the
chief town, and is famous as the birthplace of John Wesley. His father,
Samuel, was the rector of S. Ormsby when he published his heroic poem in
ten books on the Life of Christ, which caused him to be hailed by Nahum
Tate, the Laureate of the day, as a sun new risen, before whom he and
others would naturally and contentedly fade to insignificance.
“E’en we the Tribe who thought ourselves inspired
Like glimmering stars in night’s dull reign admired,
Like stars, a numerous but feeble host,
Are gladly in your morning splendour lost.”
Queen Mary, to whose “Most sacred Majesty” the poem was dedicated,
bestowed on him the Crown living of Epworth, to which he was presented
in 1696, two years after her death. But, though he owed his living to
the Whigs, rather than side with the dissenters, he voted Tory, and was
accordingly persecuted with great animosity by high and low, thrown into
prison for a debt, his cattle and property damaged, and in 1709 his home
burnt down, which made a deep impression on his six-year-old son John,
who never forgot being “plucked as a brand from the burning.”
John, the fifteenth child, was the middle brother of three, who all had a
first-rate public school and university education, getting scholarships
both at school and college: John at Charterhouse, the others under Dr.
Busby at Westminster, and all at Christchurch, Oxford, whence John, at
the age of seventeen, wrote to his mother “I propose To be busy as long
as I live.” Eventually he became a Fellow of Lincoln. The whole family
were as clever as could be, and the seven daughters had a first-rate
education from their father and mother at home. Mrs. Wesley was a
remarkable woman, a Jacobite—which was somewhat disconcerting to her
husband, who had written in defence of the Revolution—and a person of
strong independence of spirit. Of her daughters, Hetty was the cleverest;
and she is the only one who gives no account of the famous “Epworth
Ghost,” which is significant, when both her parents and all her sisters
wrote a full account of it. Hetty’s poems are of a very high standard of
excellence, and it is more than likely that she wrote the verse part—for
it is partly in prose dialogue—of “Eupolis’ Hymn to the Creator,” which
is far better than anything else attributed to Sam Wesley. He died in
1735, and John, who had been curate to him at Epworth and _Wroot_ (the
livings went together), left the neighbourhood; and the place which had
been the home of one of Lincolnshire’s most remarkable families for
nearly forty years knew them no more. (_See_ Appendix I.)
[Sidenote: JOHN WESLEY]
Lincoln, however, saw John Wesley, for he preached in the Castle yard
in 1780, as his father had done seventy-five years earlier, when he was
spitefully imprisoned for debt. He was preaching at Lincoln again in
1788, and again in July, 1790, in the new Wesleyan Chapel. Eight months
later he died. His last sermon was preached at Leatherhead, February 23,
1791, and his last letter was written on the following day to Dr. John
Whitehead. He died on March 2, aged 88, having, as he said, during the
whole of his life “never once lost a night’s sleep.” A memorial tablet
to John and his brother Charles was placed in 1876 in Westminster Abbey.
But there is also a fine statue of him as a preacher in gown and bands,
showing a strong, rugged and kindly face, and at the base an inscription:
“The world is my parish.” This is in front of the City Road Chapel, which
he had built in Moorfields, and where he was buried, but not till 10,000
people had filed past to take their last look at the well-known face as
he lay in the chapel.
Dean Stanley visiting this once, said that he would give a great deal to
preach in the pulpit there, and when, to his query whether the ground was
consecrated and by whom, the attendant answered, “Yes; by holding the
body of John Wesley,” he rejoined, “A very good answer.”
John Wesley himself had been denied access to Church of England pulpits
for fifty years, 1738-1788. Even when he preached at Epworth in 1742, it
was from his father’s tombstone; and in most cases his congregations,
which were often very large, were gathered together in the open air.
We hear of him preaching to a large assemblage in the rain at North
Elkington, on April 6, 1759; and also at Scawby, Tealby, Louth, Brigg
and Cleethorpes; but in June, 1788, he notes in his diary: “Preached in
church at Grimsby, the Vicar reading prayers (a notable change this),
not so crowded in the memory of man.” Each president of the Wesleyan
Conference sits in Wesley’s chair on his inauguration, and has Wesley’s
Bible handed to him to hold, as John Wesley himself holds it in his left
hand in the statue.
[Sidenote: WARPING]
We have alluded to the process of _warping_ which is practised in the
isle. The word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon _Weorpan_ (= to turn
aside); it indicates the method by which the tide-water from the river,
when nearly at its highest, is turned in through sluices upon the flat,
low lands, and there retained by artificial banks until a sufficient
deposit has been secured, when the more or less clarified water is turned
back into the river at low tide, and the process may be continuously
repeated for one, two, or three years. The water coming up with the
tide is heavily charged with mud washed from the Humber banks, and this
silt is deposited to the depth of some feet in places, and has always
proved to be of the utmost fertility. The process is a rather difficult
and expensive one, costing £10 an acre, but it needs doing only once in
fourteen years or so. A wet season is bad for warping, and 1912 was as
bad as 1913 was good.
At _Crowle_ is a church of some importance, for in it is a bit of very
early Anglian carving, probably of the seventh century. It is part of
the stem of a cross, and has been used by the builders of the Norman
church as a lintel for their tower arch. On it are represented a man
on horseback (such as we see on the Gosforth cross, and on others in
Northumbria), some interlacing work and a serpent with its tail in its
mouth. Also two figures which I have nowhere seen accurately explained,
but explanation is easy, for if you go and examine the great Anglian
cross at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire, you will find just such a pair
of figures with their names written over them thus: “S. Paulus et S.
Antonius panem fregerunt in Deserto.” The figures are so similar that
they would seem to have been carved by the same hand, and the cross at
Ruthwell can be dated on good evidence as but a year or two later than
that at Bewcastle, whose undoubted date is 670.
[Sidenote: ST. OSWALD]
The church is dedicated to _St. Oswald_, not the archbishop of York
who died in 992 and was buried at Worcester, but the sainted king of
Northumbria who died in battle, slain by Penda, King of Mercia, at
Maserfield, A.D. 642. His head, arms and hands were cut off, and set
up as trophies, but were afterwards kept as holy relics, the hands at
Bamborough, while one arm was for a time at Peterborough. The head was at
Bamborough, and later at Lindisfarne in St. Cuthbert’s Cathedral, where
the monks placed it in St. Cuthbert’s coffin. He had died in 687, and
this coffin, when the Danes pillaged the cathedral, was taken away by
the monks to Cumberland and carried by them from place to place in their
flight, according to St. Cuthbert’s dying wish; and from 690 to 998, when
it finally rested in the cathedral, it was kept in the coffin which is
now in Durham Library. For 100 years, 783 to 893, it rested at Chester,
and then passed to Ripon, and so to Durham, where it was enshrined and
visited by hundreds of pilgrims. The marks of their feet are plain to
see still. In 1104 the coffin was opened, and St. Oswald’s head seen in
it. In 1542 the shrine being defaced, the body was buried beneath the
pavement. In 1826 it was again opened, and some relics then taken out are
now in the Cathedral Library—a ring, a cup and patten, the latter about
six inches square, of oak with a thin plate of silver over it, and a
stole. This was beautifully worked by the nuns at Winchester 1,000 years
ago, and intended for Wulfstan, but on his death given by them to King
Athelstan, and by him to St. Cuthbert’s followers.
[Sidenote: ST. CUTHBERT’S TOMB]
The late Dean Kitchin described to me how, in company with a Roman
Catholic bishop and a medical man, he had opened what was supposed to
be St. Cuthbert’s tomb about the beginning of this century. The old
chronicler had related how he was slain in battle, how the body was
hastily covered with sand and afterwards taken up, and for fear of
desecration was carried about by the monks whithersoever they went, until
at last it was laid in a tomb, and a shrine built over it in Durham
Cathedral. He also said that the saint suffered from a tumour in the
breast, the result of the plague in 661, which latterly had got better.
It was known where the shrine was and the reputed tomb was close by. The
tomb slab was removed; beneath it were bones enough to form the greater
part of one skeleton, and there were two skulls. “What do you think of
that?” asked the dean; the bishop at once replied “St. Oswald’s head.”
The doctor then said, “This body has never been buried.” “How do you make
that out?” “Because the skin has not decayed but dried on to the limbs
as you see, as if it had been dried in sand,” just as tradition said.
“Also,” he said, “there is a hole in the breast here which has partly
filled up, evidence probably of a tumour or abscess which was healing,”
again just what the chronicler stated. One of the skulls showed a cut
right through the bone, like the cut of axe or sword, again corroborating
the story of the death of St. Oswald in battle. The whole account seemed
to me to be most interesting, and certainly it would be difficult to
obtain more conclusive proof of the veracity in every detail of the old
chronicler.
CHAPTER XIX
THE NORTH-EAST OF THE COUNTY
Thornton Curtis—Barrow—The Hull-to-Holland
Ferry—Goxhill—Thornton Abbey—Immingham—The New
Docks—Stallingborough—The Ayscough Tombs—Great
Cotes—Grimsby—The Docks—The Church, Cleethorpes—Legend of
Havelock the Dane.
We will now return to the north-east of the county.
From _Brocklesby_ a good road runs north by _Ulceby_, with its
ridiculously thin, tall spire, and _Wootton_, to _Thornton Curtis_ and
_Barrow-on-Humber_.
[Sidenote: THORNTON CURTIS]
_Thornton Curtis_ is a place to be visited, because it possesses one
of the seven black marble Tournai fonts like those at Lincoln and
Winchester. This stands in a wide open space at the west end of the
church, mounted on a square three-stepped pedestal. The four corner
shafts, like those at Ipswich, are of lighter colour than the central
pillar and the top. The latter has suffered several fractures owing to
its having been more than once moved, and the base is much worn as if it
had been exposed to the weather. The sides are sculptured with griffins
and monsters, and on the top at each corner is a bird. Of the church
the groined porch has been renewed, but the doorway is old and good,
and part of the ancient oak door remains with the original fine hinges,
and a design in iron round the head of the door. On the floor near the
south-west corner of the church is a sepulchral stone slab with a half
effigy of a lady in deep relief showing at the head end. There is a fine
wide Early English tower arch, and the handsome arches of the nave are
borne on clustered pillars, which are all alike on the north side, but
of different patterns on the south side, and with excellent boldly cut
foliage capitals, the western capital and respond being especially fine.
The north aisle is very wide, and the church unusually roomy. The pine
roof and the oak seats were all new about thirty years ago. The light
and graceful rood screen is also new, and has deep buttress-like returns
on the western side, as at Grimoldby. The chancel has late twelfth
century lancets, one with a Norman arch, the others pointed, showing the
transition period; once the church was all Norman, but it was extended
westwards early in the thirteenth century. There are two charming
piscinas of the same period, with Norman pilasters and round-headed
arches, but the western one has had a later pointed arch, apparently put
on in more recent times.
In the north aisle wall there are three arched niches for tombs, and on
the north side of the chancel outside is a wide Norman arch with a flat
buttress curiously carried up from above the centre of the archway, as in
the Jews’ House at Lincoln. Near the south porch is a mural tablet carved
in oak, with old English lettering, which reads thus:—
In the yer yat all the stalles
In thys chyrch was mayd
Thomas Kyrkbe Jho Shreb
byn Hew Roston Jho Smyth
Kyrk Masters in the yer of
Our Lorde God MCCCCCXXXII.
In the churchyard is half of the shaft of a cross, octagonal, with
rosettes carved at intervals on the four smaller sides. Like the font, it
is mounted on a broad, square three-stepped pedestal.
At _Barrow_, two miles further north, there was once a monastery,
founded in the seventh century by St. Ceadda, or Chad, on land given by
Wulfhere King of Mercia. This is an interesting corner of the county. New
Holland, where the steam ferry from Hull lands you, is but three miles
to the north, and near _Barrow Haven_ station, between the ferry pier
and Barton, is a remarkable ancient Danish or British earthwork called
“The Castles”—a large tumulus-topped mound with a wide fosse, and with
other mounds and ditches grouped round it, which, when occupied, were
surrounded by marshes and only approachable by a channel from the Humber.
The claim that this is the site of the great battle of Brunanburh in 937
cannot be looked upon as more than the merest conjecture. Both _Barton_
and _Barrow_ have been claimed for it; and “Barrow Castles” might or
might not have had some connection with the great battle, which certainly
is referred to as near the Humber in Robert de Brunne’s chronicle, as
follows:—
“He brought the King Anlaf up the Humber
With seven hundred ships and fifteen, so great was the number.
Athelstan here saw all the great host,
He and Edward his brother hurried to the coast.
At Brunnisburgh on Humber they gave them assault,
From Morning to Evening lasted the battle,
At the last to their ships the King gave them chase
All fled away, that was of God’s grace.”
[Sidenote: THE HULL FERRY]
The Great Northern Railway runs south from Holland pier to Ulceby, and
then splits right and left to Brigg and Grimsby; and here let me warn
anyone who thinks to bring a motor over by the ferry to or from Hull. The
sloping stage at New Holland is fairly easy, though the boats’ moveable
gangway is not provided with an inclined approach board, the simplest
thing in the world, but each car or truck has to bump on and off it
with a four-inch rise, and an extra man or two are required to lift the
wheels of each loaded truck on or off—a childishly stupid arrangement
which reflects no credit on the brains of the officers of the Central
Railway, who own the ferry service; but on the Hull side matters are much
worse, and I don’t think that any method of loading or unloading even in
a remote Asiatic port can be so barbaric and out-of-date as that which
the Central Railway provides for its long-suffering customers. To get a
motor on board from Hull is both difficult and dangerous; after threading
an intricate maze of close-set pillars a car has to go down a very steep
and slippery gangway, and when at the bottom has to turn at right angles
with no room to back, and across a moveable gangway so narrow that the
side railing has to be taken off and a loose plank added to take the
wheels; then, whilst the car hangs over the water on the slippery slope,
several men lift the front part round to the left and then, with a great
effort, drag the back wheels round to the right, and after filling up a
yawning gap between the slope and the gang-plank by putting a piece of
board of some kind, but with no fit, to prevent the wheel from dropping
through or the car going headlong into the sea, the machine is got on to
the deck; and then all sorts of heavy goods on hand-barrows are brought
on, four men having to hang on to each down the slippery planks, and
these are piled all round the motor, and all are taken off on the other
side with incredible exertions before the motor has a chance to move.
The crossing itself takes but twenty minutes, but the whole process of
getting on, crossing and getting off, occupied us two hours, and a really
big car would never have been able to get over at all. No one at the
Hull Corporation pier seems to know anything about the use of a crane
for loading purposes, and it is evident that passenger traffic with any
form of vehicle is not to receive any encouragement from this anything
but up-to-date railway company. Why do not the Hull Corporation insist on
something very much better? The parallelogram between the railway and
Humber, when it turns south opposite Hull, has a belt of marsh along the
river side, and because it was in old times so inaccessible, it contains
some fine monastic buildings.
[Illustration: _Great Goxhill Priory._]
[Sidenote: GOXHILL]
[Sidenote: THORNTON ABBEY]
Two miles west of Barrow is _Goxhill_. Here there is a fine church tower,
with a delicate parapet, and a mile south is the so-called “Priory,”
which was probably only a memorial chapel served by a hermit in the pay
of the De Spenser family. Murray gives this entry from the bishop’s
registers for 1368: “Thomas De Tykhill, hermit, clerk, presented by
Philip Despenser to the chapel of St. Andrew in the parish of Goxhill, on
the death of Thomas, the last hermit.” It is now a picturesque ruin of
two stories, the lower one vaulted and with three large Decorated windows
at the sides, and a large double round-headed one at the end, all now
blocked, the building being used for a barn. Two miles from this, and
near Thornton Abbey Station, is all that is left of _Thornton Abbey_.
A fine gateway, second only to that at Battle Abbey, and two sides of
a beautiful octagonal chapter-house, with very rich arcading beneath
the lovely three-light windows. Founded in 1139, for a prior and twelve
Augustinian canons, it became an abbey in 1149, and in 1517 a “mitred”
abbey, the only one in the county except Croyland. And these two are now
the most notable of all the monastic remains in Lincolnshire. One of
its abbots was said to have been walled up alive, and Bishop Tanner, in
his MS. account of the abbey, now in the Bodleian, says of Abbot Walter
Multon, 1443: “He died, but by what death I know not. He hath no obit,
as other Abbots have, and the place of his burial hath not been found,”
and Stukeley, 1687-1765, says that on taking down a wall in his time a
skeleton was found in a sitting posture, with a table and a lamp, but I
am glad to think that though the tradition is not infrequent,—probably as
an echo from the days of the Roman Vestal Virgins—there is no positive
evidence of anyone ever being immured alive; though an inconvenient dead
body was doubtless got rid of at times in that way.
[Sidenote: THE ABBEY GATE]
The principal remaining part of the abbey is the fine grey stone gateway,
a beautiful arch flanked by octagon turrets, with a passage through
them, and then other arches on each side, and beyond these two corner
towers. Above the central archway there are two rows of statues in
niches with canopies. The Virgin being crowned by the Holy Trinity is
flanked by full-length statues of St. Antony and St. Augustine. Other
figures are above these, but not easy to make out. Inside the gateway
are guard rooms, and a winding staircase leading to the large refectory
hall. An oriel in this contained an altar, as the piscina and a squint
from an adjoining chamber testify. The approach over the ditch up to
the gateway is by a curious range of massive brickwork, with coved
recesses and battlements, all along on each side. The ruin is owned by
Lord Yarborough, and is kept locked, but an attendant is always on the
spot, as both the abbey and Brocklesby Park are favourite objects for
excursions from Hull, Grimsby, and Cleethorpes.
[Illustration: _Thornton Abbey Gateway._]
[Sidenote: THE CHAPTER HOUSE]
The abbey was a very magnificent one, occupying 100 acres. Henry VIII.
was so well entertained there in 1541 that when he had suppressed the
abbey he bestowed the greater part of the land on a new foundation in the
same building, a college of the Holy Trinity; but a few years later,
either in 1547 or 1553, that in turn was dissolved, and the land granted
to the pitifully subservient Bishop Henry Holbeche. Inside the gateway
is a large square, on the east side of which stood the chapter-house,
a handsome octagonal building, of which two sides remain, as does also
a fragment of the beautiful south transept, and, still further south,
the abbot’s lodging, now in use as a farmhouse. The church was 235 feet
long and sixty-two feet wide, the transepts being double of that. The
architecture was mainly of the best Decorated period. There are many
slabs with incised crosses still to be seen, one of Robert Girdyk, 1363.
[Illustration: _Remains of Chapter House, Thornton Abbey._]
_East Halton_ lies east of the abbey, whence the road runs through
_North_ and _South Killingholme_, at the corner of which is a picturesque
old brick manor-house of the Tudor period, with linen-pattern oak
panelling and grotesque heads over the doors inside, and outside a
remarkably fine chimney-stack and some fine old yew trees. The church has
a very large Norman tower-arch, an interesting old roof and the remains
of a delicately carved rood-screen. From here we go to _Habrough_ and
_Immingham_, where some curious paintings of the Apostles are set between
the clerestory windows.
[Sidenote: IMMINGHAM DOCK]
_Immingham_ village is more than two miles from the haven, and here the
most enormous works have long been in progress. Indeed, at _Immingham_
a new port has sprung up in the last five years, and to this the Great
Central Railway, who so utterly neglect the convenience of passengers
with vehicles at the Hull ferry, have given the most enlightened
attention, and by using the latest inventions and all the most advanced
methods and laying out their docks in a large and forward-looking
way to cover an enormous area, have created a dock which can compete
successfully with any provincial port in England.
A deep-water channel leads to the lock gates on the north side of what
is the deepest dock on the east coast, with forty-five acres of water
over thirty feet deep. It runs east and west, and it is about half a
mile long. A quay 1,250 feet long, projects into the western half of
this, leaving room for vessels to load or unload on either side of it,
direct from or into the railway trucks. A timber-quay occupies the
north-west side of the dock, and the grain elevator is at the east end,
while all along the whole of the south side runs the coaling quay. There
are at least twenty-seven cranes able to lift two, three, five, ten,
and one even fifty tons on the various quays, and on the coaling-quay
eight hoists, on to which the trucks are lifted and the coal shot into
the vessels, after which the truck returns to the yard by gravitation
automatically. Each of these hoists can deal with 700 tons of coal an
hour, and as each hoist has eight sidings allotted to it there are 320
waggons ready for each. One of these hoists is moveable so that two
holds of a vessel can be worked simultaneously. The means for quick and
easy handling of the trucks, full and empty, by hydraulic power, and
light for the whole dock also is supplied from a gigantic installation
in the power-house, near the north-west corner of the dock; and this
quick handling is essential, for the many miles of sidings can hold
11,600 waggons, carrying 116,000 tons of coal or more, besides finding
room for empties. The coal is brought from Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Notts,
and Lincolnshire, and not far short of 3,000,000 tons of coal will be
now sent out of England from this port alone.[9] It seems to the writer
that to send away at this tremendous rate from all our big coaling
ports the article on which all our industries virtually depend is a
folly which no words are too strong to condemn. With coal England has
the means of supplying all her own wants for many generations, but it
is not inexhaustible, and when it is gone, where will England be? Will
anything that may be found ever take its place? And, unless we are able
to reassure ourselves on this point, is this not just a case in which a
wise State would step in and prohibit export, and not allow the nation to
cut its own throat like a pig swimming? Large store sheds are now (1914)
being built for wool to be landed direct from Australia. Thus Immingham
will compete with Liverpool, where I have seen bales so tightly packed
that when you knock with your knuckles on the clean-cut end of one it
resounds like a board.
[Sidenote: STALLINGBOROUGH]
Going on south from Immingham village we come, after three miles, to
_Stallingborough_.
[Sidenote: THE AYSCOUGH TOMBS]
The old church having fallen, the present brick parallelogram, with tower
and campanile, was built in 1780. Inside, though destitute of any touch
of church architecture, it is beautifully clean, and if you penetrate up
to the very end you will be rewarded by seeing what the organ absolutely
obscures till you reach the altar rail—a really wonderful alabaster tomb
of the Ayscoughe, Ayscugh, or Askew family, at the north-east corner,
inside the chancel rail. Above is part of a bust of Francis, the father,
who lived at South Kelsey, near Caister, and who so basely, in terror
for himself, betrayed his sister Anne’s hiding-place, which resulted
in her being first tortured and then burnt at Smithfield in 1546, her
crime being that she had read the Bible to poor folk in Lincoln Minster.
The whole story is too horrible to dwell upon. This cowardly brother is
portrayed half length, in a recess, leaning his head on his left hand
and holding in his right a spear. From this it will be seen that this is
no ordinary sepulchral monument, but a work of art. Below him his son,
Edward of Kelsey, 1612, lies supine in plate armour and a ruff, with bare
head pillowed on a cushion, while on a raised platform, just behind him,
his wife Esther, daughter of Thomas Grantham, Esq., leans on her right
elbow; she, too, in a ruff with hair done high and with a tight bodice
and much-pleated skirt. The faces look like portraits, and Sir Edward has
a singularly feeble, but not unpleasant, face, with small, low forehead.
On the wall at his wife’s feet is a painted coat of arms on a lozenge,
with nineteen quarterings, and a real helmet is placed on the tomb slab
below it. The slab is a very massive one, and below it is an inscription
in gold letters on a black ground in Latin, which is from Psalm CXXVIII.
“Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thine house,
thy children like the olive branches round about thy table, lo thus shall
the man be blessed that feareth the Lord”; and beneath this, on the side
of the tomb, are the kneeling effigies of six sons and six daughters.
The whole thing—both the effigies and the inscription—is similar to the
Tyrwhit tomb at _Bigby_. Above the mural monument of the father is the
Ayscoughe crest, a little grey ass coughing, and under his half-effigy
is a later inscription, which doubtless refers to his son, and not to
himself, the poor, unhappy cause of his sister’s dreadful sufferings. It
runs thus:—
Clarus imaginibus proavum, sed mentis honestae
Clarior exemplis, integritate, fide.
Una tibi conjux uni quae juncta beatas
Fecerat et noctes et sine lite dies.
Praemissi non amissi.
And a thing called on the monument an “Anigram,” which is past the
understanding of ordinary men, is also part of the inscription. The
extraordinary state of preservation of the whole group is a marvel.
Other inscriptions and brasses are in the church, though partly hidden
by the organ and the altar, one to the second wife of Anne’s father, Sir
William, along with others of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In
the churchyard is the stem of a cross.
Four miles further south the fine broad fifteenth-century tower of _Great
Cotes_ of rich yellow stone, attracts anyone who is passing from Goxhill
to Grimsby, and it is a church which well repays a visit.
[Sidenote: GREAT COTES]
In the churchyard, after passing under a yew-tree arch, you see a
magnificent walnut on a small green mound. There is no porch. You enter
by a small, deeply moulded doorway at the north-west end of the north
aisle. The pillars of the arcades are clusters of four rather thick
shafts, some with unusually large round capitals, but others various
in shape, and all of a bluish grey stone. There are four bays, three
big and one a small one next the tower at the west end. There is a flat
ceiling, both in nave and chancel, which cuts off the top of the Early
English tower arch; hence the nave and aisles are covered, as at Swaton,
near Helpringham, by one low, broad slate roof, reminding one of that at
Grasmere. The chancel arch, if it can be called an arch at all, is the
meanest I ever saw, and only equalled by the miserable, and apparently
wooden, tracery of the east window. The chancel, which is nearly as long
as the nave, is built of rough stones and has Decorated windows. On the
floor is a curious brass of local workmanship probably, to Isabella,
wife of Roger Barnadiston, _c._ 1420, and the artist seems to have
handed on his craft, for the attraction of the church is a singular
seventeenth century brass before the altar, to Sir Thomas Barnadiston,
Kt. of Mikkylcotes, and his wife Dame Elizabeth, and their eight sons and
seven daughters. The children kneel behind their kneeling parents, who
are, however, on a larger scale, and have scrolls proceeding from their
mouths. Above them is a picture of the Saviour, with nimbus, rising from
a rectangular tomb of disproportionately small dimensions, while Roman
soldiers are sleeping around. A defaced inscription runs all round the
edge of the brass, and in the centre is the inscription in old lettering:
“In the worschypp of the Resurrectio of o̅r Lord and the blessed sepulcur
pray for the souls of Sir Thos Barnadiston Kt. and Dame Elizabeth his wife
and of yʳ charite say a pʳ noster ave and cred
and ye schall have a C days of p~don to yoʳ med”
[Sidenote: GRIMSBY]
Another six miles brings us to the outskirts of _Grimsby_, the
birthplace, in 1530, of John Whitgift, Queen Elizabeth’s Archbishop of
Canterbury. This is not at all an imposing or handsome town, but the
length of the timber docks, and the size and varied life in the great
fish docks, the pontoons which project into the river and are crowded
with fishing boats, discharging tons of fish and taking in quantities
of ice, are a wonderful sight. 165,510 tons of fish were dealt with in
1902—it is probably 170,000 now; and 300 tons of ice a day is made close
by. The old church is a fine cruciform building, with a pair of ugly
turrets at the end of nave, chancel, and transepts. Inside it is fine
and spacious, and in effect cathedral-like. The transepts have doorways
and two rows of three-light windows with tooth moulding round the upper
lights and the gables. A corbel table with carved heads runs all round
the church.
The south transept Early-English porch had eight shafts on either side,
in most cases only the capitals now remain. The south aisle porch is
good, but less rich. The tower arches are supported on octagonal pillars,
which run into and form part of the transept walls. They are decorated by
mouldings running up the whole length. The nave has six bays, and tall,
slender clustered columns and plain capitals, with deeply moulded arches.
Dreadful to relate, the columns and capitals are all painted grey.
There is a unique arrangement of combined triforium and clerestory,
the small clerestory windows being inserted in the triforium into the
taller central arches of the groups of three, which all have slender
clustered shafts. This triforium goes round both nave, chancel and
transepts, a very well carved modern oak pulpit rests on a marble base
with surrounding shafts. The lectern is an eagle of the more artistic
form, with one leg advanced and head turned sideways and looking upwards.
I wonder that this is not more common, for I see it is figured in the A.
and N. Stores catalogue. The sedilia rises in steps, as at Temple Bruer.
A raised tomb carries the effigy of Sir Thomas Haslerton, brought from
St. Leonard’s nunnery; he is in chain armour with helmet. A chapel in
the north aisle has a squint looking to the high altar. This chapel is
entered by a beautiful double arch from the transept, with Early capital
to the mid pillar. The proportions of the whole church are pleasing,
and its size is very striking. The tower has an arcaded parapet, and on
each side two windows set in a recess under a big arch, between them a
buttress runs up from the apex of a broad and deep gable-coping, which
goes down each side of the tower, forming the hood-mould into which the
gables of the nave transepts and chancel fit. All the doors, curiously
enough, are painted green outside. There is in the churchyard a pillar
with clustered shafts and carved capital, the base of which rests on a
panelled block, which looks like an old font. Many bits from the old
church, which was restored throughout in 1885, are ranged on the low wall
of the churchyard walk, some of which look worthy of a better place.
The line from the docks runs along by the shore to _Cleethorpes_, where
the Humber begins to merge into the sea. The wide, firm sands and the
rippling shallow wavelets of the brown seawater are the delight of
thousands of children; the air is fresh, food and drink are plentiful,
and all things conspire to make a trippers’ paradise, while the Dolphin
Hotel, which, like the others, looks out on the sea, is no bad place for
a short sojourn in the off season.
[Sidenote: THE CORPORATION SEALS]
The corporation had in old times two seals, one the common seal, and
one the mayor’s seal; the latter showed a boar charged by a dog and a
huntsman winding his horn, an allusion to an ancient privilege of the
mayor and burgesses of hunting in the adjacent woods of Bradley Manor.
The common seal bore a gigantic figure of a man with drawn sword and
round shield, and the name ‘Gryem,’ the reputed founder of the town;
on his right a youth crowned, and the name ‘Habloc,’ and on his left a
female figure with a diadem and the legend “Goldeburgh,” the name of the
princess he is said to have married.
These two interesting and distinctive old seals have, sad to say, been
discarded for one bearing the arms of the corporation, just like what any
mushroom town might adopt.
The figures on the old seal alluded to the tradition embodied in the
old Anglo-Danish ballad of Havelock the Dane, which was borrowed from a
French romance of the twelfth century, called “Le lai de Aveloc,” which
in turn was probably taken from an Anglo-Saxon original. It tells how
Havelock, son of the Danish King Birkabeen, was treacherously put to
sea and saved by one Grim, a Lincolnshire fisherman, who brought up the
waif as his own. He grew to be of huge stature and strength and of great
beauty, and, from serving as a scullion in the king’s kitchen, he became
betrothed to the king’s daughter; and his royal descent being discovered,
the Danish king rewarded Grim with a sum of money with which he built a
village on the coast and called it Grim’s town or Grimsby.
CHAPTER XX
CAISTOR
The Roman Castrum—The Church and the Hundon Tombs—Rothwell
and the Caistor Groups of Early Church Towers, “Riby,”
“Wold,” “Cliff” and “Top”—Pelham Pillar—Grasby and
the Tennyson-Turners—Barnetby—Bigby—The Tyrwhit
Tombs—Brocklesby—The Mausoleum—The Pelham Buckle.
[Sidenote: CAISTOR]
_Caistor_ is the centre from which roads radiate in all directions, so
much so that if you describe a circle from Caistor as your centre at the
distance of _Swallow_ it will cut across seventeen roads, and if you
shorten the distance to a two-mile radius, it will still cross eleven,
though not more than four or five of them will separately enter the old
Roman town. For the town has grown round a Roman “Castrum,” and the
church is actually planted in the centre of the walled camp. A portion
of the solidly grouted core of their wall shows on the southern boundary
of the churchyard, and bits of it still exist to the east and west just
beyond the churchyard boundary, and also a little further from the church
on the north. Even the well which the Roman soldiers used, one of many
springs coming out of the chalk, for Caistor is on the slope of the Wold,
is still in use to the south-east of the church, and was included within
the walls of the “Castrum.”
Dr. Fraser of Caistor, who takes a keen interest in the subject, kindly
showed me a plan on which such portions of the wall as have been laid
bare, in some half-a-dozen spots, were marked. He lives in a house
belonging to the Tennyson family, the poet’s uncle and his brother
Charles having both tenanted it. The place has a long history. It was
a hill fort of the early Britons, then it was occupied by the Romans
till late in the fourth century, and, after their departure, it was a
stronghold of the Angles, who called it, according to Bede, Tunna-Ceaster
or Thong-caster, which might refer to its being placed on a projecting
tongue of the Wold, just as Hyrn-Ceaster or Horncastle is so named,
because it is on a horn or peninsular, formed by the river. In 829
Ecgberht, King of Wessex, defeated the Mercians in a battle here, and
offered a portion of the spoil to the church, if a stone dug up about 150
years ago with part of an inscription apparently to that effect can be
trusted. Earl Morcar, who had land near Stamford, was lord of the manor
in Norman times, and the Conqueror gave the church to Remigius for his
proposed Cathedral.
For the present church inside the Roman camp goes back to probably
pre-Norman times. The tower has a Norman doorway, and has also a very
early round arch, absolutely plain, leading from the tower to the nave,
and it shows in its successive stages Norman, Early English, Decorated,
and Perpendicular work. The lower part of the tower has angle buttresses
and two string-courses, and, except the battlements, which are of hard
whitish stone, the whole building is, like all the churches in the
north-east of the county, made of a rich yellow sandy ironstone with
fossils in it. This gives a beautiful tone of colour and also, from its
friable nature, an appearance of immense antiquity. The north porch has
good ball-flower decoration, but is not so good as the Early English
south door with its tooth ornaments; here the old door with its original
hinges is still in use. The octagonal pillars stand on a wide square base
two feet high with a top, a foot wide, forming a stone seat round the
pillar, as at Claypole and Bottesford. The nave arcade of four bays is
Early English with nail-head ornament. Since Butterfield removed the flat
ceiling and put a red roof with green tie-beams and covered the chancel
arch and walls with the painted patterns which he loved, the seats, like
the porch doors at Grimsby, have all been green! This, to my mind, always
gives a garden woodwork atmosphere. In the north aisle is a side altar,
and near it are the interesting tombs of the Hundon family, while in the
south aisle, behind the organ, is a fine marble monument with a kneeling
figure in armour of Sir Edward Maddison, of Unthank Hall, Durham, and
of Fonaby, who died in his 100th year, A.D. 1553. His second wife was
Ann Roper, sister-in-law to Margaret Roper, who was the daughter of Sir
Thomas More, and who—
“clasped in her last trance
Her murdered father’s head.”
[Sidenote: THE HUNDON TOMBS]
The Hundon tombs have recumbent stone effigies under recessed arches
in the North wall, one being of Sir W. de Hundon cross-legged, with
shield, and clad in chain-mail from head to foot. He fought in the last
crusade, 1270. Another, in a recess massively cusped, is of Sir John de
Hundon, High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1343, and Lady Hundon his wife,
in a wimple and the dress of the period. Sir John is in plate armour,
with chain hauberk, and girt with both sword and dagger, and both wear
ruffs. She has a cushion at her head, and a lion at her feet. He lies
on a plaited straw mattress rolled at each end, and wears a very rich
sword-belt and huge spurs, but no helmet.
[Sidenote: PRE-NORMAN TOWERS]
The singular cluster of very early church towers near Caistor are similar
to those near Gainsborough, and to another group just south of Grimsby
(_see_ Chapter XXIII.). South of Caistor is _Rothwell_, which we hoped
to reach in a couple of miles from Cabourn, but could only find a bridle
road, unless we were prepared to go two miles east to Swallow, or two
miles west to Caistor, and then make a further round of three miles
from either place. The church, which keeps the register of marriages
taken in Cromwell’s time before Theophilus Harneis, Esq., J.P., after
publication of banns “on three succeeding Lord’s Days, at the close of
the morning exercise, and no opposition alleged to the contrary,” has two
very massive Norman arches, the western bays with cable moulding. The
tower is of the unbuttressed kind, and exhibits some more unmistakable
“Long-and-Short” work than is at all common in the Saxon-built towers of
Lincolnshire churches, built, that is to say, if not by Saxon hands, at
least in the Saxon style, and in the earliest Norman days. The village is
in a depression between two spurs of the Wold, and a road from it, which
is the eastern one of three, all running south along the Wold, leads
to Binbrook. The middle road is the “High Dyke,” the Roman road from
Caistor to Horncastle, and has no villages on it. The western one goes by
_Normanby le Wold_, Walesby, and Tealby, and joins the Louth-and-Rasen
road at North-Willingham. From this road you get a fine view over the
flats in the centre of the county, as indeed you do if you go by the main
road from Caistor to Rasen. This takes you through _Nettleton_, where
there is another of these early towers, but not so remarkably old-looking
a specimen as some. A buttress against the south wall of the tower is
noticeable, being carefully devised by the mediæval builders so as not
to block the little window. _Usselby_, three miles north of Rasen, lies
hidden behind “The Hall,” and is the tiniest church in the county. It has
a nave and chancel of stone, and a bell-turret, and hideous brick-headed
windows. At _Claxby_, close by, some fine fossils have been found. The
eastern main road to Grimsby has most to show us, for on it we pass
_Cabourn_ and _Swallow_, both of which have towers like Rothwell, as
also has _Cuxwold_, which is half-way between Swallow and Rothwell. All
these unbuttressed towers are built of the same yellow sandy stone, and
generally have the same two-light belfry window with a midwall jamb.
_Cabourn_ was the only church we found locked, and we could not see why,
and as the absence of the rector’s key keeps people from seeing the
inside, so the presence of his garden fence, which runs right up to the
tower on both sides, keeps them from seeing the west end outside—a horrid
arrangement, not unlike that at Rowston. The tower has a pointed tiled
roof, like a pigeon cote, a very small blocked low-side window is at the
south-west end of the chancel, and the bowl of a Norman font with cable
moulding, found under the floor of the church, has been placed on the top
of the old plain cylinder which did duty as a font till lately. The view
from Cabourn hill, which drops down to Caistor, is a magnificent one. To
the north the lofty Pelham Pillar, a tribute to a family distinguished
as early as the reign of Edward III., stands up out of the oak woods, a
landmark for many a mile.
_Swallow_ has no jamb to its belfry window. But it has a very good Norman
door, and round-headed windows. The south aisle arches have been built
up. During the recent restoration two piscinas, Norman and Early English,
were found, the former with a deep square bowl set on a pillar. The next
church has the singular name of _Irby-on-Humber_, though the Humber is
eight miles distant. Here we find Norman arcades of two arches with
massive central pillars, thicker on the north side than the south, and
Early English tower and chancel arches. An incised slab on the floor
has figures of John and Elianora Malet, of the late fourteenth or early
fifteenth centuries. In the south aisle there is a blocked doorway to
the rood loft, and a piscina. The east window is of three lancets. All
the woodwork in the church is new and everything in beautiful order.
_Laceby_ Church, two miles further on, has a Transition tower, and an
Early English arcade with one Norman arch in the middle. There are some
blow-wells in the parish, as at _Tetney_. John Whitgift, Archbishop of
Canterbury, at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, was formerly rector here.
[Sidenote: LINCOLN LONGWOOLS]
A mile to the left as we go from Irby to Laceby, lies the fine and
well-wooded park of Riby Grove, the seat of Captain Pretyman, M.P. The
Royalists won a battle here in 1645, in which Colonel Harrison, the
Parliamentary leader, was slain. He was buried at Stallingborough. Riby
of late years has been famous for the flocks and herds of the late Mr.
Henry Dudding, which at their dispersal in July, 1913, realised in a two
days’ sale 16,644 guineas. Over 1,800 Lincolnshire long-wool sheep were
sold, the highest price being 600 guineas for the champion ram at the
Bristol and Nottingham shows, who has gone to South America, in company
with another stud ram who made eighty guineas, and several more of the
best animals. But though the ram lambs made double figures, as the
best had been secured before the sale the prices on the whole were not
high, the sheep on the first day averaging just over £4 9_s._ Among the
shorthorns 160 guineas was the highest price; this was given for a heifer
whose destination was Germany. It is owing to men like Mr. Dudding that
Lincolnshire farming and Lincolnshire flock and stock breeding has so
great a name.
About five miles further, we come to the suburbs of Grimsby, and the road
runs on past _Clee_ to _Cleethorpes_.
It is curious how different localities, though in the same neighbourhood,
have their own special and different terms for the same thing, thus:
alongside the ridge north of Lincoln, each village has its bit of
“Cliff,” and from Elsham to the Humber each has its bit of “Wold,”
while on the continuation of the Wold near Caistor from Barnetby to
Burgh-on-Bain the same thing is called neither “Cliff” nor “Wold,” but
“top”; and we have Somerby, Owmby, Grasby, Audleby, Fornaby, Rothwell,
Orby, Binbrook, Girsby and Burgh “top,” etc. There is an Owmby “Cliff” as
well as an Owmby “top,” but the words sufficiently indicate the position
of the villages—one (near Fillingham) on the Ermine Street, and one (near
Grasby) north of Caistor.
[Sidenote: THE PELHAM PILLAR]
There is no view, I think, in the county so wide all round as that from
the top of the Pelham Pillar. It stands on one of the highest points of
the Wold, from whence the ground falls on three sides. In front are the
woods of Brocklesby and the mausoleum, with the Humber and Hull in the
distance; on the right Grimsby, the Spurn Point, and the grand spire of
Patrington in Holderness, and on the left the wide mid-Lincolnshire plain
as far as “the Cliff.” Of the Wold villages between Caistor and Barnetby,
where the Wold stops for a couple of miles and lets the railway and the
Brigg-to-Brocklesby road through on the level, none affords a better
view than Grasby. But the whole of this road is one not to be missed. As
we pass along it we first reach _Clixby_, which shows, or rather hides,
a tiny church in a thick clump of trees by the road side, where is a
churchyard cross, restored after the model of Somersby. The little stone
church has been once very dilapidated, and is now renewed with a double
bell-turret in brick—no wonder it hides itself in the trees. There is
also a remarkable modern graveyard cross of dark stone, of a very early
primitive shape, such as is seen on some of the incised grave stones of
Northumbria. North of _Clixby_ is _Grasby_. This church was the home
for over forty years of the poet’s brother Charles Tennyson-Turner, the
author, with Alfred, of the “Poems by Two Brothers,” and afterwards of
many sonnets written at Grasby. It would be difficult to surpass the
charm of one called ‘Letty’s Globe’:
LETTY’S GLOBE.
When Letty had scarce passed her third glad year,
And her young artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a coloured sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peeped
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap’d
And laugh’d and prattled in her world-wide bliss,
But when we turned her sweet unlearned eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry,
‘Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!’
And while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.
[Sidenote: CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER]
A white marble tablet of chaste design on the wall of the nave shows a
couple of sprays of bay or laurel beneath the Christian monogram, bending
to right and left over the inscription, on the left to “Charles Tennyson
Turner, Vicar and Patron of Grasby, who died April 25, 1879.
True poet surely to be found
When truth is found again.”
and on the right to “Louisa his wife, died May 20, 1879.
More than conquerors through him that loved us.
They rest with Charlotte Tennyson in the cemetery at Cheltenham.”
Charlotte was his brother Horatio’s first wife; his wife Louisa was
the sister of Lady Tennyson, the two brothers having married two Miss
Sellwoods, nieces of Sir John Franklin. Tennyson’s grandfather had
married Mary Turner of Caistor, and Charles succeeded his uncle Sam
Turner.
The church, with its low broached spire, has a nave and a north aisle,
but has little of the old left in it, except the south doorway and some
Early English clustered pillars, and a curious plain font set on four
little square legs mounted on steps. The church was rebuilt, and the
schools and vicarage built _de novo_ by the Tennyson-Turners, for until
his time the vicar had lived at Caistor. Under the east window outside is
a stone let into the wall with three dedication crosses on it.
We must follow this Caistor and Brigg highway along the edge of the Wold
to Bigby, where it turns to the left, and only a byway runs north to
_Barnetby le Wold_ which looks down on _Melton Ross_, so named from the
Ros family to whom Belvoir came by marriage with a d’Albini heiress in
the thirteenth century. Sir Thomas Manners—Lord Ros—was created Earl of
Rutland in the sixteenth century.
[Sidenote: THE TYRWHIT TOMBS]
_Barnetby_ Church has a most ancient appearance; it stands high in
a field by itself, the village lying below. A long, high wall of
brick and stone, grey with lichen, a low tower and a flat roof and
windows irregularly placed, make up a building of undoubted antiquity.
Inside, and lately recovered from the coal-hole, is a Norman lead
font, thirty-two inches across. This is unique in Lincolnshire, though
twenty-eight others are known in other counties, the best being that
at Dorchester-on-Thames. From Barnetby we must retrace our steps for a
couple of miles to see _Bigby_, which is well placed on the edge of the
Wold. The church has corbels all round, as at Grantham, under a parapet
of later build and of a lighter-coloured and harder stone. The old thick
tower is of the yellow stone, with a good two-light window to the west.
The porch is of oak with panelled sides. The nave has an Early English
arcade of three bays, with slender octagonal pillars. The tower arch is
low, the chancel arch lofty. Here we find two fonts, not superimposed,
as at Cabourn, but one in each aisle. One is low and formed of grey
marble, the other has an old carved stone bowl of _nine_ panels on a new
pedestal. This number of sides is unique. Near it is placed an incised
slab showing the figure of a lady of the Skipwyth family, 1374, and
another lady of the same name has a recumbent effigy in the chancel, _c._
1400. The nave and chancel roof are one,[10] and in the chancel are some
more interesting monuments. On the floor a brass of Elizabeth Tyrwhit,
wife of William Skipwyth of Ormsby, _c._ 1520. On the north side a large
altar tomb with alabaster effigies of Sir Robert Tyrwhit of Kettelbie,
1581, and his wife. He is on a plaited mattress rolled at each end for
his head and feet, and below his feet a wild man or “Wode-howse” on all
fours and covered with hair. Two of these support the feet of Ralph Lord
Treasurer Cromwell in the fine brass at Tattershall, and the Willoughby
chapel at Spilsby shows one. His wife lies nearest the wall, with a lion
at her feet and a cushion for her head; both wear ruffs, and he is in
armour, but without helmet. In many respects the monument resembles the
tomb of Sir John and Lady Hundon at Caistor, but is still more like the
Ayscoughe tomb at Stallingborough.
On the two ends and front of the tomb are figures of their children,
twenty-two in number, two or three infants in cradles, the rest all
kneeling, and above them is the old metrical version of the 128th Psalm,
running round three sides of the tomb. The front or middle portion bears
the following lines:—
Like fruitful vine on thy house side
So doth thy wife spring out.
Thy children stand like Oliveplantes
Thy table round about.
Thus art thou blest that fearest God,
And he shall let thee see
The promiesed Hierusalem and his felicitie.
Inside the chancel rails is a mural monument with life-size figures of a
man and his wife kneeling, but the lady’s head is gone. The man is Robert
Tyrwhit, who made a runaway match with Lady Bridget Manners, maid of
honour to Queen Elizabeth, who was highly incensed at it, and doubtless
used language appropriate to the occasion. At the back of the sedilia two
or three little brasses have been inserted, one to Edward Nayler, rector
1632, with wife and seven children. He is described as “a painefull
minister of God’s word.”
From Bigby four miles brings us to Brigg, passing near _Kettleby_, the
home of the Tyrwhits, who kept up a blood feud with the Ros family
till the beginning of the seventeenth century—not a very neighbourly
proceeding—and as they only lived four miles apart their combats and
murders were perpetual.
[Sidenote: BROCKLESBY]
The road which runs north from Caistor goes along the top of the Wold
as far as “Pelham’s Pillar,” where the real High Wold stops. It is then
460 feet above sea level. Caistor itself, on the western slope, is only
150 feet up, but the High Wold keeps rising south of Caistor till it
attains its highest point between Normanby-le-Wold and Stainton-le-Vale,
at about 525 feet. From “Pelham’s Pillar” the road forks into three,
and runs down into the flat at _Riby_, _Brocklesby_, and _Kirmington_,
where there is a church with a bright green spire sheathed with copper.
_Brocklesby_, Lord Yarborough’s seat, has a deer park more than two miles
long. It is entered on the west side through a well-designed classical
arch, erected by the tenantry in memory of the third lord. Extensive
drives through the woods planted by the first lord, who married Miss
Aufrere of Chelsea, and was created Baron Yarborough in 1794, reach as
far as the “Pelham Pillar,” some six miles from Brocklesby. On the pillar
it is recorded that twelve and a half million trees were planted. The
planter, who rivals “Planter John,” he who laid out the many miles of
avenue at Boughton near Kettering, was an Anderson, whose grandmother was
sister of Charles, the last of the Pelhams, hence the family name now is
Anderson-Pelham.
[Illustration: _The Welland, near Fulney, Spalding._]
[Sidenote: THE KOH-I-NOOR]
The mausoleum on the south side, designed by Wyatt in 1794 in memory of
Sophia, first Countess of Yarborough, is in the classical style, with a
flat dome rising from a circular balustrade supported on twelve fluted
Doric columns. It stands on an ancient barrow, in it is a monument by
Nollekens, of the Countess. The house, part of which was rebuilt after a
fire in 1898, has the appearance of a brick and stone Queen Anne mansion.
In it are some of the exquisite wood carvings by Wallis of Louth, some
of whose work was admired in the first “Great Exhibition” of 1851,
attracting almost as much attention as the Koh-i-noor Diamond, then in
its rough form, as worn by “Akbar the Great,” by Nadir Shah, and by “The
Lion of the Punjab,” Runjeet Sing. It is now in the crown of the Queen of
England, and, being re-cut, is much smaller, but far more brilliant. In
addition to a fine hall and staircase there is a picture gallery built in
1807 to take the paintings and sculptures which had been collected by Mr.
John Aufrere of Chelsea, father-in-law of the first Lord Yarborough. The
gem of this collection is the antique bust of Niobe, purchased in Rome by
Nollekens the sculptor, who has himself contributed a fine bust of the
first earl’s wife. In a conservatory are portions of another once famous
collection of antiques, tombs, altars, and statues, made by Sir Richard
Worsley and kept as a kind of classical museum till 1855 at Appuldurcombe
in the Isle of Wight.
[Sidenote: THE PELHAM BUCKLE]
Religious houses abounded here. Thornton Abbey is only five miles off,
and here, outside the park to the north-west, is Newsham Abbey, 1143,
perhaps the earliest Premonstratensian house in England. On the east was
the Cistercian nunnery of Colham, and just at the south of the park, in
the village of Limber, was an alien priory belonging to the Cistercian
house of Aulnay in Normandy. Newsham abbey, which was worth twice what
the other two were, became part of the spoil which was absorbed by
Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. The gardens have some fine cedars,
and the church with its curious tower and small spire is in the garden
grounds. There are some Pelham monuments in it of the sixteenth and
seventeenth century: one to Sir John and one to Sir William and Lady
Pelham and their seventeen children. At her feet is the head of a king
and the Pelham “Buckle,” commemorating the seizure by a Pelham of King
John of France, at the battle of Poictiers.
[Illustration: _Thornton Abbey Gateway._]
CHAPTER XXI
LOUTH AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD
Louth Church—“The Weder-Coke”—The Pilgrimage of Grace—Letter
read in Lincoln Chapter-House from Henry VIII—“The Lyttel
Clause”—The Blue Stone—Turner’s Horse-fair—The Louth
Spire—Louth Park Abbey—Kiddington—Roads from Louth—Cawthorpe
and Haugham—Dr. Trought’s Jump—Well Vale—Starlings.
[Sidenote: LOUTH]
Louth spire is one of the sights of Lincolnshire; it is a few feet higher
than Grantham, which it much resembles, and in beauty of proportions and
elegance of design one feels, as one looks at it, that it has really no
rival, for Moulton, near Spalding, though on the same lines, is so much
smaller.
The way in which it bursts upon the view as the traveller approaches
it from Kenwick, which lies to the southward, is a thing impossible
to forget. Taking the place of originally a small Norman, and later a
thirteenth century building, the present church of St. James dates from
the fifteenth century. Louth once had two, if not three, other small
churches, dedicated to St. John, St. Mary, and St. Herefrid; but no
certain traces of these remain, and only the north and south doorways
of the thirteenth century church are now visible. Excavations made at
the last restoration in 1867 revealed the pillar bases of this church
and some fragments of eleventh century moulding of the earlier one. The
present building has nothing of interest inside—it is only the shell
from which the living tenant has long been absent. Once its long aisles
were filled with rich chapels, and the chancel arch was furnished with
a rood-loft and screen, and the church was unusually rich in altars,
vessels, vestments, and books, of which only the inventory remains. In
the vestry an oak cupboard has medallions carved in the panels of Henry
VII. and Elizabeth of York; and that is all. The steeple, with its large
belfry windows, was doubtless built for its clock and bells; there were
at first but three, which in 1726 were increased to a full peal of eight,
but the clock and its chime was there as early as 1500. The spire was not
completed till 1815; the weathercock was fixed then, but no lightning-rod
until 1844 after the spire had been struck and damaged three times, in
the sixteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth centuries; in the eighteenth it
escaped.
The first of the Louth churchwardens’ books has an ill-written entry of
the year 1515-16, the time of the second (or thirteenth century) church,
which tells us that one Thomas Taylor, a draper, bought a copper basin in
York and had it made at Lincoln into a “Wedercoke” for the church. This
is very interesting, for the basin had been part of the spoil taken from
the King of Scots at Flodden.
[Sidenote: THE KING’S LETTER]
Twenty years later the vicar of Louth was hanged with others, at Tyburn,
for his part in the Lincolnshire rebellion, when 20,000 men took up arms
in defence of the pillaged monasteries. Concerning this rebellion, there
is a graphic account of the receipt of Henry VIIIth’s letter in response
to the people’s petition, which was read in the chapter-house at Lincoln,
on October 10, 1556. Moyne tells how, when they thought to have read the
letter secretly among themselves in the chapter-house, a mob burst in
and insisted on hearing it: “And therefore,” he goes on to say, “I redd
the Kynges letter openly and by cause there was a lyttyl clause therein
that we feared wolde styr the Commons I did leave that clause unredd,
which was persayved by a Chanon beying the parson of Snelland, and he
sayde there openly that the letter was falsely redd be cause whereof I
was like to be slayn.” Eventually they got out by the south door to the
Chancellor’s house, while the men waited to murder them at the great
West door, “And when the Commons persayved that wee were gone from theym
another way, they departed to ther lodgings in a gret furye, determynyng
to kill us the morowe after onles wee wolde go forwards with theym.”
[Illustration: _Bridge Street, Louth._]
The “lyttyl clause” referred to as likely to “styr the Commons,” was
wisely omitted, for it is that in which the king expresses his amazement
at the presumption of the “rude commons of one shire, and that one of
the most brute and beastly of the whole realm and of least experience,
to take upon them to rule their prince whom they were bound to obey and
serve.”
This rebellion, which was called the Pilgrimage of Grace, brought
disaster on many Lincolnshire families. Over sixty of all conditions
were put to death for it in Louth alone, and others at Alford, Spilsby
and Boston, and at all the monasteries, and the vicars of Cockerington,
Louth, Croft, Biscathorpe, Donington and Snelland and some others, as
well as John Lord Hussey at Sleaford, suffered for their religion and
were canonized as martyrs by the Pope. A list of more than one hundred
victims is given in “Notes and Queries,” III., 84.
The town has a museum of some interest, and outside of it may be seen a
large boulder of some foreign stone, probably brought by an icefloe from
Denmark or Norway. This used to stand at a street corner in the town, but
was afterwards removed to the inn-yard at the back, and painted blue, and
was known for many years as the blue stone. Speaking of stone, we have a
record that a good deal of the stone for building the church spire in the
sixteenth century was landed at Dogdyke, and drawn thence on wheels or
carried on pack horses on flag pavements across the fen. The stone is of
good quality and adapted for carving.
There is notably good openwork on the east gable of the church, much
resembling that at Grimoldby and Theddlethorpe-in-the-Marsh, a few miles
to the east of Louth. Turner’s picture of the horse fair at Louth shows
the spire, which was no doubt the motive of the picture, and until one
has seen it, both from a distance and from the street of Louth itself,
one can have no notion how beautiful a thing a well-proportioned spire
can be, one is never tired of looking at it.
An old statue of Edward VI. over a doorway in the Westgate indicates
the grammar school where Alfred and Charles Tennyson spent a few
uncomfortable years. The school seal shows a boy being birched, with the
motto “Qui parcit virgam odit filium,” and date 1552. Among other pupils
were Governor Eyre, one of the victims of British sentimentality, and
Hobart Pasha. Thomas of Louth gave a clock to Lincoln Minster in 1324,
and William de Lindsey, Bishop of Ely, 1290, who has there a beautiful
monument, was also a Louth native.
[Illustration: _Hubbards Mill, Louth._]
[Sidenote: LOUTH PARK ABBEY]
Louth Park Abbey, about a mile and a half to the east of the town, was
built on a site belonging to the Bishops of Lincoln, and was given to the
Cistercian colony from Fountains Abbey, who found Haverholme too damp for
comfort, by Bishop Alexander in 1139. The Cistercians built themselves a
large church, 256 feet long and sixty-one feet in width, with transepts
which more than doubled this; parts of these and the chancel, also a
portion of the west front and one nave pillar, are all that is left
of it, but the ground plan has been excavated, which shows that there
were no fewer than ten bays to the nave, and massive circular piers.
There was a cloister on the south, surrounded by monastic buildings,
and east of these a chapter-house with groined roof springing from six
pillars. A very large gateway stood at the south-west, and outside was a
double moat to which the water from St. Helen’s Spring was conducted by
what is still known as “the Monk’s Dyke.” It flourished greatly at the
beginning of the fourteenth century, having then sixty-six monks and 150
lay brethren. The Louth Park Abbey Chronicle, though very valuable, is
not exactly contemporaneous with the things it mentions, for it was all
written by a scribe in the fifteenth century. It covers the years from
1066 to the death of Henry IV. in 1413.
Near the abbey, but on the other side of the canal, is _Keddington_,
where the arch of the organ chamber is made of carved stones, no
doubt brought from the abbey. The church, which is built of chalk and
greensand, is older than any in the immediate neighbourhood, and has a
Norman south door. It has a remarkable lancet window on the south side,
in the upper part of which is a carved dragon, and has also what is very
rare, a wooden mediæval eagle lectern.
[Sidenote: ROADS FROM LOUTH]
Half-a-dozen main roads radiate from Louth, one might call it eight, for
two of the half-dozen divide, one within a mile, and one at a distance of
two miles from the town. They go, one north to Grimsby, twenty miles of
level road along the marsh, and one west to Market Rasen, by the Ludfords
and North Willingham, fifteen and a half miles. One mile out, this road
divides and goes west and then south to Wragby by South Willingham,
sixteen and a half miles. Both of these roads, as well as that which runs
south-west to Horncastle, fourteen and a half miles, cross the Wolds and
are distinctly hilly, rising and falling nearly four hundred feet. The
fifth road, which goes due south to Spilsby, sixteen miles, though seldom
as much as 250 feet higher than Louth, which stands about seventy-five
feet above sea level, affords fine views, and is a very pleasant road
to travel. But all these highways must be dealt with in detail later.
The sixth road from Louth runs south-east to Alford, and keeps on the
level of the marsh, and the seventh and eighth roads run eastwards across
the marsh to the sea, one branching off the Alford road at Kenwick and
avoiding all villages, comes to the coast at Saltfleet; the other,
starting out from Louth by Keddington and Alvingham, loses itself in many
small and endlessly twisting roads which connect the various villages and
reaches the sea eventually at Donna Nook and Saltfleet, places five miles
apart, with no passage to the sea between them—nothing but mud flats,
samphire beds and sea birds. There is a charm about “the waste enormous
marsh,” and also about the high and windy Wolds, which never palls, but
before we journey along either of the highways from Louth I should like
to introduce one of those byways which form the chief delight of people
who love the country.
[Sidenote: SOME BYWAYS]
We will leave Louth, then, by the Spilsby road, and when we reach the
second milestone, 147 miles from London, turn and look at the beautiful
spire of Louth Church rising from a group of elms in the middle distance
of a wide panorama. From our height of 300 feet we look across the whole
marsh to the sea, ten miles to the east, and far on beyond Louth we look
northwards towards Grimsby and the Humber, the perpetually shifting
lights and shades caused by the great cumulus clouds in these fine level
views, the many farmsteads and occasional church towers—
“The crowded farms and lessening towers”
of our own Lincolnshire poet—all combine to make a very satisfactory
picture to which the wonderfully wide extent which lies unrolled before
us, lends enchantment; and always the eye reverts to rest with delight on
that perfect spire standing so high above the trees by the banks of the
river Lud.
At length we turn and pursue our way, but soon quit the Spilsby road and
go down the hill to the left, past the entrance to Kenwick Hall, till
we reach the Alford road, and, turning to the right, come to the pretty
little village of _Cawthorpe_.
[Sidenote: DR. TROUGHT’S JUMP]
This is not a bad centre for country walks. You can walk on a raised
footpath all along the side of the curious water-lane, and if you go out
in the opposite direction the road to _Haugham_ takes you through two
miles of as pretty a road as you could desire; it is called “Haugham
Pastures,” but it is really a road through a wood, without hedges,
reminding one of the New Forest or the “Dukeries.” On the right, going
from Cawthorpe, the trees extend some distance with oak and fern and all
that makes the beauty of an English wood; on the other side it is only a
belt of trees through which at intervals a grassy tract curves off from
the road and leads to the fields; and as we passed in September we could
see the corn-laden waggons moving up towards us or the teams going afield
among the sheaves. No county could supply a prettier series of pictures
of simple pastoral beauty than this byway through “Haugham Pastures.” A
deep lane near the little brick-built manor-house is noticeable as the
site of a famous jump. The roadway is about fifteen feet wide, with steep
sides and a low hedge, the top of which is nine or ten feet above the
roadway. Over these Dr. Trought of Louth, on a famed hunter, once jumped
for a wager, flying from field to field, a distance of some twenty feet.
[Illustration: _The Lud at Louth._]
One of the charming peculiarities of Cawthorpe is that here the “Long
Eau” stream runs between hedge-banks over a level sand and gravel bed
and forms a water street, which extends for about a furlong. There is a
similar thing at Swaby, six miles to the south, where the “Great Eau”
runs along a street or road through the village. At Cawthorpe the water
is always running and usually about six inches deep. The village lies
in a hollow with curiously twisting little roads in it, and is very
picturesque with its farms and trees and quaint little brick manor-house
standing near the church at the three cross ways.
[Sidenote: A BEAUTIFUL ROAD]
Rising from the hollow, the small byway runs with here and there
beautiful trees and often on the right a tall hedge or narrow strip of
plantation, reminding one of the roadside “shaws” in Hampshire, while
on the left there is always a view down over cornfields and beyond the
tops of the Tothill oak woods right across the fertile belt of the marsh
to the shining line of the distant sea. With many a twist the byway
runs on through _Muckton_ village to _Belleau_, where it crosses the
above-mentioned Swaby or Calceby beck and looks down on the picturesque
church, standing in the grassy meadows, and on the brick turret and
groined archways of the old Manor-house, and so on to _South Thoresby_,
where the broken ground and the fine trees tell of an old mansion which
stood there till last century; and past _Rigsby_, till it meets the
Spilsby and Alford highway just below Miles-cross-Hill, whence it runs
on through the avenue of elms to _Well_. And all the way, as it has run
along the top of the eastern escarpment of the Wold, it has afforded us
an outlook over a wide expanse of the marsh such as none of the other
roads on the high wolds can equal. True, the Lincoln cliff road gives
a finer view and runs further, but I don’t think there is any prettier
ten-mile stretch in the county than this ‘Middle road’ from Well to Louth.
At the entrance gate of Well Vale Hall the road divides, either route
ending at Alford. _Well Vale_, a fine sporting estate and also a famous
stronghold for foxes, the residence of Mr. Walter H. Rawnsley, is, I
venture to think, the prettiest spot in the county. For a mile or more a
grassy track descends from the top of Miles-Cross-Hill through a wooded
valley where fine beeches stretch out their long arms, and pines and
larch crown the chalky turf-clad sides, till the mouth of the Vale opens
out into a park, whose rolling slopes are studded with handsome trees,
and as you near the mansion, the front of which looks out across its
brilliant flower-beds and quaint pinnacled gateway upon the little church
flanked by branching elms on the summit of a grassy hill, you see a fine
sheet of water fed by a copious chalk stream which passes the house and
is then conducted to a still larger lake on the garden side, stretching
with a double curve from the giant cedars on the lawn to a vanishing
point, of which glimpses only are caught through the stems of the Scotch
firs and oaks in the distance. The history of Well goes back to Roman
times, and has been told fully by the Rev. E. H. R. Tatham, Rector of the
neighbouring parish of _Claxby_, where the site of a Roman camp is still
visible, another being at _Willoughby_, two miles off eastwards in the
levels, where the marsh begins.
[Sidenote: HISTORY OF WELL]
The name was derived in Saxon times from the strong spring which wells
out from the chalk and feeds the lakes on either side the house. The
names Burwell and Belleau in the immediate neighbourhood are of similar
origin, though the latter is a Norman name. At the time of the Conquest
_Well_ and _Belleau_ were both bestowed on Gilbert de Gaunt, the
Conqueror’s nephew, and were let by him to one Ragener, whose family
took the addition “de Welle” and lived here for four centuries. In the
thirteenth century we hear of a church at Well, and William de Welle
(the third of the name) in 1283 obtained a licence for a market and fair
at Alford. His son Adam was summoned to Parliament as a baron in 1299.
In the fifteenth century the name was changed from Welle to Welles, and
Leo Lord Welles fell at Towton in 1461. The title was now combined with
that of Willoughby d’Eresby, and Leo’s son, Richard, who took it _jure
uxoris_, he having married the Willoughby heiress, was the Lord Welles
who was so basely put to death in 1470 by Edward IV. for complicity in
the Lincolnshire rebellion, together with his son-in-law, T. Dymoke, and
his son Robert. _See_ Chap. XXXIII.
Leo, who fell at Towton, had married for his second wife, Margaret
Duchess of Somerset, and her son John joined Henry VII., and after the
battle of Bosworth the king restored to him the Welles estate which had
been forfeited after Robert’s execution, made him a viscount, and gave
him the hand of Cicely, daughter of Edward IV. and sister to his own
queen, in marriage. It is interesting to read in Mr. Tatham’s paper that
“This lady carried the heir-apparent, Prince Arthur, at his baptism at
Winchester in 1486.” She subsequently married one of the Kyme family of
Kyme Tower near Boston. John Viscount Welles died in 1499, and the male
line of the Welles became extinct, but the Willoughby line went on, for
Cicely, the sister of the unfortunate Richard Welles, had married Sir R.
Willoughby, and her grandson William succeeded to that title as the ninth
Lord Willoughby. He was the father of Catharine Duchess of Suffolk and
subsequently wife of Richard Bertie, whose monument occupies so large a
space in the Willoughby chapel at Spilsby. The Welles estate remained
with the Willoughbys (who in 1626 were created Earls of Lindsey) till
1650, when the extortionate fines levied on Royalist families by the
Parliament made it necessary for Belleau and Welle to be sold. Belleau
went to Sir H. Vane, and Well to W. Wolley, who sold it about 1700 to
Anthony Weltden, a man who had a romantic career in the early days of the
Hon. East India Company. From him Well passed to James Bateman, one of
whose sons became Lord Bateman. Another, James, succeeded to the estate
and built the present house about 1725, a wing of which was pulled down
about 1845. This James married Anne, daughter of Sir Robert Chaplin of
Tathwell, who also came to live and die at Well. Bateman’s daughter
and heiress married a Dashwood in 1744—probably it was he who planted
the Vale (he died in 1825)—and in 1838 the estate was purchased by Mr.
Christopher Nisbet Hamilton, whose daughter, Mrs. Hamilton Ogilvy, has
just sold it to Mr. Walter H. Rawnsley.
[Sidenote: WELL VALE]
The following lines were written on the gate at the top of Well Vale by a
traveller taking his yearly tramp from Horncastle for a dip in the sea at
Mablethorpe, a good twenty miles.
Some say “All’s well that ends well,”
But here Well begins well.
They say too “Truth is in a well,”
But here there is in truth a Well.
Welcome then Well! since I well come along to her,
For well I’ve known Well and the charms that belong to her
Passing well to the view looks the Vale of fair Well,
And I, passing Well too, must bid her farewell
’Till again I’m this way; or perhaps for aye.
Farewell then (or ‘vale’) to fair Well Vale.
Farewell! Fair Well!
This is more than a mere assemblage of puns—there is some poetry in the
old fellow, and the penultimate line has an added pathos from the fact
that only a few months later the poet bid his final farewell to life, on
November 10, in the same year, at the age of seventy-six.
[Sidenote: THE STARLINGS]
Speaking of Well Vale, I think I have seen and heard more starlings
collected together in a young larch plantation there than I ever came
across at once elsewhere. The only multitude of birds at all comparable
to it was the army of cranes I have seen covering half a mile or more of
sandbank in the Nile, near Komombos, while clouds of them kept dropping
from the sky. They have black wings and white bodies, so that aloft they
looked black, but standing on the sandbank as close as they could pack
they looked all white.
But to return to our starlings. It is a very curious thing this massing
of countless thousands of these birds amongst the osiers[11] in the fenny
parts of the county, or in some of the plantations in the Wolds. If you
take your stand about sunset near one of these, when the wood pigeons,
after much noisy flapping of their wings, have settled down to rest,
a loud whirring noise will make you look up to see the sky darkened
by a cloud of these birds, which will be only the advance portion of
the multitudes that will quickly be converging from all sides to their
roosting quarters. They have been feeding in many places, often at a
considerable distance; but each night they assemble, and for a quarter
of an hour or more the noise of their chattering and fluttering as each
successive flight comes in will be indescribable. If a disturbing noise
is made, myriads will rise with one loud rush, but nothing will prevent
their return and, when the noise and movement has at length subsided,
the trees will be black with their living load, which will sleep till
sunrise, and then again disperse for the day in quest of food, returning
every night for several weeks, till the call of spring scatters them for
good.
CHAPTER XXII
Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Mediæval Art—Fonts.
When we talk of Anglo-Saxon art it is not to be implied that no artistic
work was done before Saxon time in Britain. But if we speak of churches,
though doubtless British churches were once to be found here, there are
certainly none now existing, and we cannot get back beyond Saxon times.
The British churches were built probably of wattle, or at the best of
stones without mortar, and so were not likely to be long-lived. Still,
Stonehenge is British work, and domed huts, like beehives, similar to but
smaller and ruder than those to be still seen in Greece, were made by the
ancient Britons. It was the Romans who first introduced architecture to
our land. They had learnt it from those wonderful people, the pioneers of
so much that we all value, the Greeks, who in turn had got their lessons
from Egypt and Assyria. That takes us back eight thousand years, and we
still profit by the art thus handed down through the centuries. When the
Romans left us, all the arts at once declined in our islands, and notably
the art of building.
In speaking of the churches in the south of the county, I drew attention
to the number in which traces of Saxon work were still visible and
spoke of the two remarkable specimens only three miles over the border
at Wittering and Barnack. It is pleasant to hear so good an authority
as Mr. Hamilton Thompson say that Lincolnshire is more rich than any
other county in churches which, though only in few instances of a
date indisputably earlier than the Conquest, yet retain traces of an
architecture of a distinctly pre-Norman character. We do not vie with
Kent and Northumbria, for we cannot show anything which can be referred
to the first century of Anglo-Saxon Christianity associated with the
name of Augustine, nor had St. Ninian, St. Kentigern, St. Oswald, St.
Cuthbert, or St. Wilfrid any work to do in Lincolnshire. St. Paulinus
alone, by his visit to Lincoln, connected the province of Lindsey, which
was part of his diocese of York, with the religious life of Northumbria.
But the only existing trace of this is the dedication of the church in
Lincoln to St. Paul, _i.e._, St. Paulinus.
[Sidenote: SAXON TOWERS]
Still, Saxon architecture was a real thing in the two centuries preceding
the Norman invasion, and we have in Lincolnshire an unusually large
number of churches (I can mention no less than thirty-eight at once),
which represent a late state of Saxon architecture carried out probably
by Saxon workmen for Norman employers and bearing traces of Norman
influence. At Stow, near Lincoln, is some very fine Saxon work, but there
the Norman overlies the Saxon more decidedly than it does in the notable
church of Barton-on-Humber; both of these have been discussed in previous
chapters. But we may here draw attention to the less magnificent Saxon
remains in the county, and notice how often the churches with Saxon work
still visible, lie in groups. Thus, quite in the north we have Barton,
Winterton, and Alkborough, with Worlaby not far off. Then in the course
of ten miles along the road from Caistor to Grimsby we have Caistor,
Cabourn, Nettleton, Rothwell, Cuxwold, Swallow, Laceby, Scartho, and
Clee; with Holton-le-Clay and Waith just to the south on the road to
Louth. On the west, near Gainsborough, we have a group of five close
together at Corringham, Springthorpe, Harpswell, Heapham, and Glentworth;
and Marton and Stow are not far away, one by the Trent and the other on
the central road between the Trent and the ‘Cliff.’
[Sidenote: “LONG-AND-SHORT” WORK]
Lincoln has its two famous church towers of St. Mary-le-Wigfords and
St. Peters-at-Gowts. Near it, to the south, are Bracebridge, Bramston,
Harmston and Coleby, the two latter close together, and all with traces
of “Long-and-Short” work; and if we continue our way southwards, we shall
pass Hough-on-the-Hill between Grantham and Newark, with its interesting
pre-Conquest stair turret, and so finish our Saxon tour by visiting three
churches on or near the river Glen, at Boothby-Pagnell, Little Bytham and
Thurlby. This is not an exhaustive list, for Great Hale near Heckington
must be included, and Cranwell near Sleaford and Ropsley near Grantham,
both show “Long-and-Short” work. But the more closely the churches
mentioned are examined, the more clear it becomes that, though the dates
of the building, when we can get at them, mostly point us to the eleventh
century, the art is of a pre-Conquest type, and could only have been
executed before the general spread of Norman influence which that century
witnessed. We are therefore quite justified in speaking of this work as
Saxon.
Here, perhaps, the term “Long-and-Short” work should be explained.
It is often said that the Saxon architecture was the development in
stone of the building which had previously been done in timber and
wattle, and thus in Barnack, and Barton, and at Stow, but nowhere else
in Lincolnshire, parallel strips of stone run up the tower at intervals
of a couple of feet, as if representing the upright timbers. This
theory, perhaps, will not bear pressing; still, though the arch over
a window is often triangular, made by leaning two slabs one against
another, not unfrequently a square-ended stone projects from the top of
a rounded arch, which seems to be a reminiscence in stone of the end
of a wooden beam. This may be seen at Barnack on the south side of the
tower. The towers have no buttresses, and though the stones between the
upright strips are small and rubbley, the stones at the angles of the
tower are fairly large and squared. When these are long-shaped, but set
alternately perpendicular and horizontal, this is called “Long-and-Short”
work, and is definitely “Saxon,” even though built by Norman hands.
The herring-bone work, as seen at Marton, is Romanesque and a sign of
Norman builders. They also copied the Romans in facing a rubble core with
dressed stone, whereas the Saxons only used dressed stones at the angles.
[Illustration: _Ancient Saxon Ornament found in 1826 in cleaning out the
Witham, near the village of Fiskerton, four miles east of Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: SAXON ORNAMENTS]
The enormous activity of the Norman builders in every part of the kingdom
has thrown previous architectural efforts into the shade; but the Normans
found in England a by no means barbarous people. Anglo-Saxon or Anglian
art had exhibited developments in many directions, in metal work and
jewellery, in illumination of MSS., in needlework, in stone-carving, as
well as in architecture; and when Augustine landed in 597 it was not to
a nation of barbarous savages, but to people quite equal in many ways to
those he had lived among in Italy or conversed with in Gaul, that he
had to preach the tenets of Christianity. As proof of this we can point
to the beautiful carved stonework of the Anglians of Northumbria on the
great crosses of Bewcastle and Ruthwell, and the cross of Bishop Acca of
Hexham, now in the Durham library, all of the seventh century; and to the
Lindisfarne Gospels of St. Wilfred’s time which was only some fifty years
later; whilst to show the continuity of Anglo-Saxon art we have the St.
Cuthbert stole in the Durham Cathedral library, a triumph of needlework
by the nuns of Winchester in the days of Athelstan; and, besides the
celebrated Alfred Jewel, a silver trefoil brooch[12] found at Kirkoswald
in Cumberland, which, for purity of design, richness of ornamentation
and beauty of execution, it would be difficult to match in any age or
country, and the cloak chain, found at Fiskerton, described in Chapter
XIV.; all these are quite first-rate in their different lines, and should
make us speak with respect of our Saxon ancestors.
Having already noted the Gainsborough group (Chap. XVII.) and the Caistor
group (Chap. XX.), we will now make our way towards a third group of
pre-Norman towers to be seen on the Louth and Grimsby road.
[Sidenote: NORMAN DWELLINGS]
In Norman times strongholds and churches were built all over the country,
and doubtless many domestic houses which did not aspire to be more than
ordinary dwelling-places. It is curious how almost entirely these have
vanished; one at Boothby Pagnell and three in Lincoln are among the
very few left. In Lincoln ‘The Jews’ House,’ ‘Aaron’s House,’ and ‘John
of Gaunt’s Stables’ or ‘St. Mary’s Guild’ go back to the beginning of
the twelfth century. They none of them would satisfy our modern notions
of comfort, but neither do the much later houses, such as the mediæval
merchant’s house called “Strangers’ Hall,” in Norwich, which is so
interesting and so obviously uncomfortable. When King John of France was
confined at Somerby Castle in the fourteenth century he had to import
furniture from France to take the place of the benches and trestles which
was all that the castle boasted, and to hang draperies and tapestries on
the bare walls; and though some of these were supplied him by his captor,
comfortable furniture seems to have been not even dreamt of at that time
in England.
[Sidenote: ROOD-SCREENS]
For the churches the Normans did surprisingly well, as far as the
building and stonework went, but the beautiful woodwork, which is the
glory of our Lincolnshire marsh churches, is mostly the work of the
men of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century. We see this mediæval
workmanship sometimes in the bench ends and stalls and miserere seats,
but most notably in such of the rood screens as have escaped the
successive onslaughts made on them in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, whilst the shameful neglect of the eighteenth and the shocking
ignorance of both clergy and laity in that and the first part of the
nineteenth century, have swept away much that was historically of the
utmost interest, and which the better informed and more responsible
guardians of the churches to-day would have preserved and treasured. This
mediæval woodwork is found most frequently in the more remote parts of
the country. The best rood loft I have ever seen is in a little church
in Wales, near Towyn, and some of the finest rood screens with canopies
are in the churches of Devon; of these, Mr. Hubert Congreve, in his
paper contributed to the Worcester Archæological Society, notes that at
_Stoke-in-Teignhead_ there is one of the fourteenth century, carved in
the reign of Richard II. From this the loft has been removed, and it
was generally the case that when this was taken away as idolatrous, the
screen itself was not objected to.
Many of these screens in the Devon churches have an extremely rich and
deep cornice, and they often extend right across the nave and both
the aisles. Perhaps the finest of these is in the famous parson Jack
Russell’s church at _Swymbridge_. This is of the fifteenth century. From
the same source we learn that _Bovey Tracey_ has a similar screen, but
it has had to be greatly restored since the Commonwealth destruction,
and that _Atherington_ has a lovely screen in the north aisle, with
fan-shaped coving springing from figures of angels holding shields. The
cornice is delicately carved, and there is some fine canopy work over the
parapet, with niches which once held figures of the saints. This screen
was originally in the chapel at Umberleigh Manor, and is perhaps the only
screen in the county which has never been painted. When I visited lately
the quaint little town of _Totnes_ I saw what is most uncommon—a stone
screen. This dates from 1479, and richly and beautifully carved, much
after the pattern of the screen in the Lady Chapel at Exeter Cathedral.
All this fine mediæval work suffered terribly from the ultra-Protestant
mania for iconoclasm which exhibited itself in the reign of Edward VI.,
in 1547, and again under Elizabeth in 1561. Finally, under the Parliament
both in 1643 and 1644, was issued “An ordinance of the Lords and Commons
assembled in Parliament for the utter demolishing, removing and taking
away of all Monuments of superstition and idolatry.”
This Act provided specifically for the taking away of all altar rails and
the levelling of the “Chancel-ground” and the removal of the Communion
table from the east end, and the destruction of all stone altars, so that
it is always noticeable when we find one such, either in a side chapel or
in the pavement, with its five and occasionally six dedication crosses
cut on the stone. Norwich has one in which a small black slab bearing the
crosses is let into the large altar slab.
[Sidenote: ICONOCLASM]
All images, “representative of the persons of the Trinity or of any
Angell or Saint” were to be “utterly demolished,” and all vestments
“defaced”; with the quaint proviso that the order should “not extend to
any image, picture or coat-of-arms set up or graven onely for a Monument
of any King, Prince or Nobleman, or other dead person _which hath not
been commonly reputed or taken for a saint_.”
FONTS.
In our English churches the most noticeable bit of mediæval work is in
many cases the font, which has often escaped when all the rest of the
building inside and out has been defaced by neglect or destroyed by
restoration. Much destruction followed on the Reformation, and even in
Elizabeth’s reign, in spite of a royal mandate to preserve the old form
of baptism “at the font and not with a bason,” attacks were constantly
made on the fonts, and especially on the font-covers, which makes the
preservation of the _Frieston_ font-cover with a figure of the Virgin
Mary on the top very remarkable. We have in the churchwardens’ accounts
in various places this contemptuous entry:—
“Item. For takynge doune _ye thynge ower the funt_ XIIᵈ.”
Parliamentarian soldiers went to greater lengths and broke up the font
itself in very many churches. The bowls were often cast out or buried in
the churchyard. At _Ambleston_ in Wales the font pedestal was only ten
years ago found in use by a farmer as a cheese-press, and the bowl on
another farm doing duty as a pig-trough.
Still many have escaped with the loss of their carved covers, and how
great the loss is can be judged when we see the beauty of such work as
the cover which we still have at Ufford in Suffolk, eighteen feet high,
or the similar ones at _Grantham_ and _Fosdyke_ and _Frieston_ in our
own county, or at _Ewelme_ (Oxon), and _Thaxted_ (Essex), and again in
Suffolk at _Sudbury St. Gregory_ and _Hepworth_, and one at _Thirsk_ in
Yorkshire which rises to the height of twenty-one feet. Sometimes the
cover takes the form of a canopy, as at _Swymbridge_ in Devon, and more
beautifully in that erected by Bishop Cosin at _Durham_ in 1663. The
_Sudbury_ font-cover has doors in it, as we see in the Jacobean cover
in _Burgh-le-Marsh_ church, and in the beautiful modern cover at _Brant
Broughton_, both in Lincolnshire.
[Sidenote: FONTS, SAXON AND NORMAN]
There were at one time many Saxon fonts, most of which were swept away
and replaced in a different form by the Normans. One of the earliest we
have is in _St. Martin’s Church, Canterbury_, the lower part of which,
built of twenty-eight wedge-shaped stones, is Saxon or Romano-British,
the upper part being Norman put on to heighten it, with the old Saxon
rim crowning it, though by some this is called Transitional. This font
was inside the church when King Ethelbert was baptised by St. Augustine
in the ninth century. But we get back still further when we find runic
inscriptions, as on the wonderful square tub font at _Bridekirk_,
Cumberland, and on the little low hollowed stone at _Bingley_, Yorkshire,
attributed to the eighth century, and having three lines of runes which
are read thus:—
“Eadbert, King, ordered to hew this dipstone for us, pray you for his
soul.” He reigned 737 to 758, when as Æthelred King of Mercia in 675, had
done at Bardney Abbey in the previous century, he resigned the crown and
took the tonsure. _Mellor_, in Derbyshire, has a Saxon font, but without
inscription.
The remarkable font at _Bag Enderby_, Lincolnshire (_see_ Chap. XXX.),
with its Scandinavian myth, is unique among fonts, though it has
counterparts on many of the pre-Norman crosses in Northumbria. The font
at _Deerhurst_, Gloucestershire, is also a very early one, and covered
with Celtic scroll-work, this, though of the same kind, is bigger than
the usual plain little stone tubs which, as a rule, mark the Saxon period.
The Norman fonts also are mainly of tub form, but often ornamented with
cable moulding and arcading, as at _Silk Willoughby_, Lincolnshire.
[Sidenote: LINCOLNSHIRE FONTS]
The lead fonts, twenty-nine of which are in existence, are all Norman;
most of these have arcading all round and figures within the arches;
perhaps the best is at _Dorchester_, Oxon, showing the apostles. But at
_Brookland_, in Romney Marsh, there is a double row of arcading with
the signs of the Zodiac above, and figures cleverly emblematic of the
months below. At _Childrey_, Berks, the figures are without arcading and
represent bishops with crosiers, all quaintly of the same attenuated
shape, and in very high relief. Berkshire and Oxon have several of these
lead fonts, and Gloucestershire exhibits six, all cast in the same mould;
Lincolnshire has only one at _Barnetby-le-Wold_, which is noticeable,
however, as being the largest of them all, thirty-two inches in diameter;
that at _Brookland_ being the deepest with sixteen inches.
The _Tournai_ group of black marble or basalt with thick central pedestal
and four corner shafts, of which that at Winchester is the best, are
described under Lincoln, in Chap. XIX. This form of support is pretty
general through the thirteenth century, often with much massive carving
and ornamentation on bowl and shafts, until the shafts developed, in some
cases, into an open arcade round the central pillar, as best seen at
_Barnack_, Northants. The tallest fonts and finest in design are of the
fifteenth century, and are mostly octagonal pedestal fonts and frequently
mounted on steps as in the churches of the Marsh near Boston, _e.g._,
_Benington_ and _Leverton_. Some bowls are found with seven panels as
at _Hundleby_, six as at _Ewerby_, _Heckington_ and _Sleaford_, nine as
at _Orleton_, in Herefordshire, and at _Bigby_, in Lincolnshire, thus
giving eight panels for figures, and allowing one to be placed against a
wall or pillar; and ten, twelve, fourteen, and sixteen are not unknown.
In our own county we have mentioned the font in nearly every case when
describing a church, and will only now recall a few instances of the
best. In addition to the _Tournai_ font at _Thornton Curtis_ and that
of lead at _Barnetby_, the finest specimens of Early English will be
found at _Thorpe St. Peter’s_ near Wainfleet—a very chaste design; the
supporting shafts are gone, but the capitals show heads of bishop, king,
and knight, and a knot of flowers supporting the bowl; and at _Weston_,
near Spalding, where is one of singularly graceful form, standing on
steps with a broad platform for the priest. At _Thurlby_, near Bourne,
is a tub of Barnack stone which has pilasters all round it, and curious
carved work dividing the panels, the whole being set on four square stone
legs.
Of Decorated fonts, _Ewerby_ is remarkable; hexagonal, with sides
going straight down from the bowl, each panel representing a window
with tracery, tending in design to Perpendicular, so that it probably
dates from the end of the fourteenth century. The windows are filled
with diaper work, and surrounded by a border of quatre-foils and
flowing foliage. Other good Decorated fonts are at _Strubby_ and
_Maltby-le-Marsh_ and _Huttoft_, all near Alford. The Perpendicular
period is best seen at _Covenham St. Mary_, _North Somercotes_, _Bourne_,
_Pinchbeck_, _Leverton_, and _Benington_.
It is on the panels of the handsome fifteenth century fonts that the
seven sacraments are carved, leaving one panel for any appropriate
subject, and these panels are often real pictures of the methods of the
time, and form most valuable records; the pedestal usually has its panels
filled with Apostolic figures.
[Sidenote: EAST ANGLIAN FONTS]
It is curious that nearly all the thirty “seven sacrament fonts” in
the kingdom are found in East Anglia; those of _Walsoken_, _Little
Walsingham_, _East Dereham_, and _Great Glenham_ in Norfolk, and
_Westall_ in Suffolk, are specially fine. And the churchwarden’s accounts
for _East Dereham_ show that no expense was spared on the making; the
total of £12 14_s._ 2_d._, being equivalent to over £200 of our money.
The sacraments depicted are Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, The
Eucharist, Holy Orders, Holy Matrimony, and Extreme Unction. But to
return to our own county.
_Utterby_, near Louth, has an open channel to drain the water off from
the font into the churchyard—a very uncommon feature.
_Wickenby_, near Wragby, retains the old bar and staple to secure the
font cover, at the time when the fonts were all ordered to be locked
to prevent possibility of the water being tainted by magic. “Water
bewitched” is a familiar expression for weak tea. I wonder if it comes
from this.
Of later fonts the quaintest is in _Moulton_ church, near Spalding, and
now disused. It represents the trunk of a tree carved in stone, the
branches going round the bowl and the serpent round the trunk, with Adam
and Eve, rather more than half life size, discussing the apple. It dates
from 1830, and seems to be a copy of one in the church of St. James’,
Piccadilly, said to have been carved in marble by Grinling Gibbons.
Mr. Francis Bond, in his charming book on porches and fonts, says that
some of the fonts in our most ancient Lincolnshire churches, _Cabourn_,
_Waith_, _Scartho_ and _Clee_, look older than they are by reason of
their coarse workmanship. He notes that the cover of the _Skirbeck_ font
belonged to a larger one destroyed by the Puritans, the present font
having been put up in 1662.
[Sidenote: WOODEN FONTS]
The material of all the fonts described above is either stone or lead.
We have very few of any other material, but of these by far the most
interesting are those made of solid oak, of which specimens are extant
at _Dinas-Mawddwy_ (pronounced Mouthy) and _Evenechtyd_ in Wales. But
one might go on long enough talking about fonts, and I would only urge
readers to go themselves and study them, and if they would pick out a
few of the finest they should visit the fonts and font covers we have
mentioned, and especially such typical fonts as are to be found at
_Winchester_ and _Durham_, at _Walsoken_ in Norfolk, at _Fishlake_ in
Yorkshire, and _Bridekirk_ in Cumberland, whenever they happen to be in
those neighbourhoods.
The worst of fonts is that they are so easily removable. Even in such
out-of-the-way places as _Crowle_ the font has not remained, though the
Norman south wall with its beautiful doorway is in quite good repair.
CHAPTER XXIII
ROADS FROM LOUTH, NORTH AND WEST
The Grimsby Group of Pre-Norman
Towers—Waith—Holton-le-Clay—Scartho—Clee—Humberstone—Tetney
—Ravendale—Ashby-cum-Fenby—Roads to Lincoln and
Horncastle—Hainton—Glentham—West Rasen—The Pack-horse
Bridge—Toft-next-Newton and Newton-by-Toft—Gibbet-posts—Middle
Rasen—The Labourer—Market Rasen—North Willingham—Tealby
and Bayons Manor—Bishop Odo—South Elkington—Road from
Horncastle—The South Wolds—Tathwell—Jane Chaplin.
[Sidenote: JUNE FLOWERS]
The road from Louth to Grimsby, in its first part, is described
elsewhere; but north of Ludborough it passes through a succession of
small villages in each of which is a very early church tower. These are
all somewhat similar to the two primitive churches in Lincoln and to the
famous one at Barton-on-Humber, but they have no “Long-and-Short” work
which is distinctive of the _Saxon_ towers, and so the term _Romanesque_
perhaps best describes them. They are certainly pre-Norman. Similar
groups have been described near Caistor and Gainsborough in Chaps. XVII.
and XX., and others mentioned in Chap. XXII. It was a bright and breezy
morning early in June when we set out from Well to visit this remarkable
group. The trees were at their best, chestnuts and may trees still in
bloom, and in the wayside gardens the laburnum with its “dropping-wells
of fire” was a joy to see. As we passed along the wind brought the strong
scent of the mustard fields and the delicious perfume of the beans, not
badly described by the Barber to his wife as “just like the very most
delicious hair-oil, my dear.” The pastures were golden with buttercups,
but the most wonderful sight of all was the profusion of chervil,
or cow-parsley (_Anthriscus_), which, with its lace-like flowers, at
times filled the space of grass between the road and the hedge with
mile upon mile of its delicate white blossom, and in places lined every
hedge, showing above the ordinary low-cut Lincolnshire fence, or, where
the hedge was higher, whitening the lower half in lines of flowery
loveliness. It nowhere encroached on the cultivated land, but every hedge
and ditch and roadside was marked out by it in a profusion of soft white
blossoms which was quite astonishing. We note that the “tender ash” is
still, as our Lincolnshire poet has it, delaying ‘to clothe herself when
all the woods are green,’ but a few days of such balmy sunshine will woo
even her leaves from out the bud, and full summer will be with us. The
red cattle are feeding in little herds, and the sheep, white from the
hands of the shearer, are dotted about the fields. The labourers seem,
most of them, to be at the same work, weeding the corn; but as we get
further on to the heavy lands whence _Holton-le-Clay_ so aptly gets its
name, we see teams of four horses abreast harnessed to the “Drags,” by
which the great clods are broken up.
The first of the group of towers we look at is _Waith_, a small cruciform
building in a churchyard thickly planted with trees, two fine cedars
among them. There are some Early English arcades to the nave, but
outside, the tower alone is ancient. This originally was just the width
of the nave, and has no openings in the north and south walls. It is
also built, not of rubble with quoins, but of dressed stones throughout,
solidly but roughly built, with a tiny opening low down; and above the
invariable string course, a double light of two small round-headed arches
supported by a stout mid-wall shaft with heavy impost. Coming away, we
note on a tombstone the curious and possibly Roman surname ‘Porcass.’ Two
miles south-west is _Grainsby_ where, as at Clee and Scartho, the stones
bear the red marks of Danish fire, and where, inside the tower, is an old
boulder stone. Two miles north, on the Grimsby road, is _Holton-le-Clay_,
where the tower of the church is of similar antiquity, all but the top
storey above the string-course. The west side has only one very small
window, but it has on the east side a good tall Romanesque tower-arch,
and there is an Early Norman or Saxon font. The rest of the church is of
the poorest in all respects.
[Sidenote: SCARTHO]
As we proceed, the tall windmill with six sails shows above the _Waltham_
woods on our left, and we pass a roadside inn with the sign of “The Old
Pop Shop.” Three miles more and we reach _Scartho_, a village which is
beginning to take the overflow of Grimsby and is full of new buildings.
This is the only living in the north or east of England which belongs
to Jesus College, Oxford. The church is very interesting on account of
its tower, which is Saxon in all but the absence of “Long-and-Short”
work. The stones of the tower are of all shapes and kinds, the quoins
alone being of hewn stone. Below are only the tiny windows common to all
Saxon towers, and above, the belfry has two-light windows with the usual
mid-wall shaft. In the west of the tower is a doorway with a round head
of large stones and massive imposts.
There is a deep, narrow archway from the nave into the tower, with a
little window looking into the nave, and there have been originally tall
arches in both the north and south walls, narrow of necessity so as to
leave wall enough at each angle for the tower to stand on. A charming
original font is there, but hideously placed on a modern inverted stone
bowl. The tower and the font are the only things worth looking at, but
both of these are of unusual interest. The parapet is Perpendicular and
built of different stone, and it is easy to see from the red appearance
of many calcined stones used in the tower that it has been rebuilt from
the old materials after a former church had been burnt by that scourge
of Lincolnshire—the Dane. The principal entrance is now through a big
doorway, but in the thirteenth century was in the south wall of the tower.
Leaving _Scartho_ we quickly reach the outskirts of Grimsby, and, turning
to the right on the Cleethorpes road, we come in a couple of miles
to the church of _Clee_. This is the best of the group we have been
visiting. It is one of the earliest churches in the county, and is highly
interesting, not only for the venerable antiquity of its tower, but for
the fine and varied early Norman and Transition architecture in the body
of the church. As a rule there is nothing left of any antiquity in these
pre-Norman churches but the tower.
[Sidenote: CLEE]
There is a narrow western doorway and a much taller one of similar
character opening into the nave; each has Voussoirs set in double
rows. Just above the belfry on the west face is a keyhole light made
of top and side stones, and a circular light in the south face. Mr.
Jeans, in Murray’s “Lincolnshire,” notes that they have all similar
characteristics—“Rubble walling with large quoins, a bold string-course
dividing them into stages, tall, narrow doorways with rude imposts and
coupled belfry windows with a massive mid-wall shaft.” All this we find
at _Clee_, and the red calcined stones in the wall tell of the Danish
fire here as at Scartho. The early Norman arcade in the north of the nave
has square piers with shafts at the corners, one of them twisted, like
the work in Durham Cathedral. All are different in their structure and in
the carving of their capitals. The south arcade has thick round columns
of later Norman work with chevron, billet, and very thick cable moulding.
The arches are round, and the stones of the moulding, as at Somerby,
being cut by various hands and without plan or drawing, fit together, but
are hardly any two of them of the same sized pattern. This is quite usual
in Norman arch mouldings. I noticed it lately over the west doorway of
the fine tower of New Romney, Kent. The arches at the east of each aisle
which give upon the transepts are pointed, but with Norman mouldings,
and the transept arches are the same; the transepts themselves and the
low central tower and the chancel are all modern. The old tower is, as
usual, at the west end. On the shaft of one of the south arcade pillars
is a very interesting record of two notable Bishops of Lincoln. It is in
Latin, cut on a small tablet of marble about six inches by eight, and
let in flush with the pillar. It says that “the Church was dedicated
in honour of the Holy Trinity and the blessed Virgin by Hugh Bishop of
Lincoln in the year 1192, in the time of King Richard and re-dedicated
after restoration by Bishop Christopher Wordsworth in 1888.” 1192 was the
same year in which Bishop Hugh began the choir at Lincoln, which is pure
Early English, but doubtless the nave at Clee was built some years before
it was dedicated. The font is a massive Norman one, and a portion of the
shaft of an early cross stands just inside the door.
[Illustration: _Clee Church._]
[Sidenote: PRE-NORMAN TOWER]
[Sidenote: ASHBY-CUM-FENBY]
The pathway to the church is lined on either side with tall fuschias,
not a usual sight near the east coast. This church is the old parish
church of _Cleethorpes_, which is the most crowded of the Lincolnshire
watering-places, the goal of endless excursions from all the neighbouring
counties, but not a place of any attraction for residents. Six miles
due east across the river Humber is the revolving light of the Spurn
Head lighthouse, plainly seen from the hill above Alford, thirty miles
away. Between the Louth and Grimsby main road and the sea another road
runs south from Clee by Humberstone and Tetney, thence to Covenham
and Alvingham and so to Louth. _Humberstone_ is a parish which goes
with Holton-le-Clay, though they are about three miles apart. It is
remarkable for its fine avenues of trees, and has a good Perpendicular
tower. But in this respect it is surpassed by the extremely well-built
and well-designed tower at the next village of Tetney. This, unlike the
body of the church, is entirely of good, hard, grey Yorkshire stone.
Some “Blow Wells,” which are circular pits of very blue water 100 feet
deep, are in a field half a mile to the south-east of the church. There
are others at _Laceby_ and _Little Cotes_, both in the valley of the
Freshney river, six miles off. The water comes through faults in the
limestone ridge four or five miles to the west. A stream also flows
through Tetney, which comes out of the Croxby pond near _Hatcliffe_, the
only piece of water in the neighbourhood. The roads we have been writing
of are all entirely in the flat ground, but from the Louth and Grimsby
main road a branch goes off to the left, after crossing a fourteenth
century bridge with ribbed arches, at _Utterby_, which runs north along
the western edge of the Wold past Brocklesby to Barrow on Humber. This,
when it is opposite to Waith, has on its left a place called Ravendale,
and, on its right, a little hidden away village, called Ashby-cum-Fenby.
At _Ravendale_ there was once a priory belonging to a Premonstratensian
abbey in Brittany. It was seized by the Crown with other alien priories
in 1337 to form part of the dowry of Joan of Navarre, Queen of Henry IV.
_Ashby-cum-Fenby_ has very pretty Early-English two-light windows in the
belfry, set round with dog-tooth moulding. A Crusader effigy of 1300 is
at the west end of the tower, and two fine monuments to two sisters of
the Drury family are in good preservation; one to Sir F. and Lady Wray
closely resembles the Irby monument at Whaplode, and, as the families
are related, probably the work is by the same sculptor. That of Susannah
Drury in the chancel is a good piece of sculpture, but the whole has
literally been whitewashed, which does not improve it. The churchyard is
for the most part deplorably neglected, and a few sheep would greatly
improve it. A row of almshouses with tiny gardens, made like the
Workmen’s row at Tattershall, adjoins the west side of the churchyard.
The road after this passes nothing of importance near it, till it reaches
Brocklesby.
Close to the bell ropes in the tower at Tetney is a neat little brass
which aptly commemorates a fine old parishioner as follows:—
Matthew Lakin
born 1801 died 1899 One of the regular bellringers of
Tetney for 84 years and sometime Clerk and Sexton.
The highway which goes out of Louth on the west, after passing Thorpe
Hall, within a mile of the town, soon splits into two, the one going
up the hill to the right has, at first, a north-easterly course, but
after passing through South Elkington leaves North Elkington on the
right and goes on due east to Market Rasen and Gainsborough, and is the
great east-and-west road of North Lincolnshire: the only other roads
which take that direction being the Boston-Sleaford-and-Newark and the
Donington-and-Grantham roads in the southern part of the county, and the
great Sutton-Holbeach-Spalding-Bourne-and-Colsterworth road. But none of
these run so straight.
[Sidenote: HAINTON]
The other road from the foot of South Elkington hill goes on at first
due west till, passing Welton-le-Wold on the right and Gayton-le-Wold on
the left, it drops into the picturesque little village of Burgh-on-Bain
(pronounced Bruff). So far we have had a wide Wold view, but no blue
distances over fen or marsh; but _Grimblethorpe_ and _Burgh-on-Bain_ are
in two parallel little valleys, and when the road turns here, at seven
miles distance from Louth, to the south-west, a quite different type of
country is entered, beginning with the woods of _Girsby_, the seat of Mr.
J. Fox, quondam joint Master of the Southwold Hounds, and _Hainton_ Hall
and park, where the Heneage family have been seated since the time of
Henry III. The church tower has some of the characteristics of the early
Norman or pre-Norman groups, and both church and chantry-chapel are rich
in monuments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and brasses of
still earlier date. The altar tombs of 1553 and 1595 are magnificent, and
the kneeling effigies of 1559 and 1610 are in excellent preservation.
The helmets and spurs over the effigy of John (1559), and the gilded
armour of Sir George (1595), are especially noticeable, as also are the
varied spellings of the name—in 1435 Henege, in 1530 Hennage, and in 1553
Henneage.
[Sidenote: GLENTHAM]
From here a road leads to the left to _South Willingham_ and
_Benniworth_, but the main road runs through _East and West Barkwith_,
with those fine grass borders, each wider than the road, which are
characteristic of the Wold highways, for five miles to _Wragby_, eleven
miles from Lincoln. Near East Barkwith Station is Mr. Turnor’s residence,
Panton Hall, and from West Barkwith a road goes to the _Torringtons_.
Here Gilbert of Sempringham was rector, and established one of his
Gilbertine houses. The road on either side of the rather town-like
village of _Wragby_ is uninteresting, till suddenly, at a distance of
eight miles, the towers of Lincoln Minster appear, not in front, but away
to the left, and then again disappear from view. But the road turns, and
after four miles, lo! again the Minster, straight in front; and as you
approach from the north-east you see all three towers at the end of the
long road, getting ever finer as you approach and are able to make out
the details of the architecture. Only too quickly you come to the top of
the hill, and gaze at the splendid upper windows of the great bell tower,
now close on your right, then sweep down the curve and, passing through
the Minster yard by the Potter and Exchequer gates, go out northwards by
the old Roman Ermine Street. We soon reach the turn to Riseholme, where
from 1830, when Buckden was given up, the bishops resided, until Bishop
King built the present house in the Old Palace grounds in Lincoln, and
where in the churchyard are the tombs of her much-revered Bishops Kaye
and Wordsworth, though their monuments are in the cathedral. After this
we pass nothing, the road running straight on for over thirty miles,
and on much the same level all the way. But we will only go to the
thirteenth milestone and turn to the right at _Caenby_ Corner, where
the Gainsborough and Louth road crosses the Ermine Street, and so make
our way back by Market Rasen. The first village we shall come to is
_Glentham_, which contains in chancel and chantry several monuments
of the Tourney family from 1452. It is believed that the church was
originally dedicated to “Our Lady of Pity,” hence, over the porch is a
beautiful little carving of the Virgin holding the dead Christ, and the
Tourney arms below it. A brass to Ann Tourney has the following play on
words:—
“Abiit non obiit, preiit non periit.”
Till the early part of last century, a rent charge on some land in the
village provided a shilling each for seven old maids every Good Friday
for washing the recumbent effigy of a lady of the Tourney family which
is under the gallery, with water from “The New Well.” This singular
survival of the custom of washing an effigy of the dead Christ for a
representation of the entombment is now abandoned, as the land was sold
in 1852 without reservation of the rent charge on it. The effigy was
known as “Molly Grime,” a corruption of “Malgraen,” which means in some
ancient tongue or dialect the ‘Holy-Image-Washing.’ (“Lincs. Notes and
Queries.” I., 125.)
The church is rather a curiosity, being seated throughout with box pens
and having a gallery at the west end. Even the font is painted, and is a
cheese-shaped stone on three legs placed on a round block. The door is
old and has an unmistakable sanctuary ring on it, as at Durham, and the
porch has a pretty little two-light window on each side.
[Sidenote: THE TOURNAYS]
The Tournays of Caenby are one of the genuine old county families, having
held land in it certainly since 1328. John Tournay, in the sixteenth
century, married a Talboys co-heiress, and was brother-in-law to Sir
Christopher Willoughby and Sir Edward Dymoke.
The manor of Caenby-cum-Glentham, given in the thirteenth century
to Barlings Abbey, and at the dissolution, along with so many other
things, bestowed by Henry VIII. on Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was
purchased by Edward Tournay in 1675, but he had inherited another manor
in Caenby, or Cavenby through a long line of ancestors from the family
of Thornton, of whom one Gilbert de Thornton was Lord Chief Justice of
the King’s Bench, 1289-1295. The present representative of the Tournays,
or Tornys, who, to suit both spellings, have a tower for a crest and
a chevron between three Bulls for their coat of arms, is Sir Arthur
Middleton of Belsay Castle, Northumberland, who parted with the property
at Caenby in 1871.
Three miles beyond Glentham we reach “Bishops’ Bridge” inn. Here a
fourteenth century bridge crosses the stream at the junction of the River
Rase with the Ancholme. Thence, after several turns, the road reaches
_West Rasen_, where there is a most picturesque and interesting Pack
Horse Bridge of the same date, with three ribbed arches, placed at right
angles to the present road. The church has heavy embattled turrets and
some curious carved figures in the chancel.
[Sidenote: THE ‘GOOD OLD DAYS’]
Going south from here, a roundabout road takes you to _Buslingthorpe_,
passing by the two oddly-named villages of _Toft-next-Newton_ and
_Newton-by-Toft_, each apparently, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee,
leaning for support on the other. Two miles to the west, on the Normanby
road, is Gibbet-posthouse. The name Gibbet-post or Gibbet-hill is not
uncommon, but I doubt if a single post remains. Eighty years ago some
still held their ghastly record. My uncle, Edward Rawnsley, who was born
in 1815, told me once that he had passed one with a skeleton hanging in
chains, as he rode from Bourne to Wisbech. The Melton Ross gallows was
renewed in 1830.
Only two miles east of West Rasen we reach _Middle Rasen_, which has an
interesting church. It once had two, one on each side of the stream; the
existing one, which belonged to Tupholme Abbey, has a very fine Norman
south door and Norman piers to the chancel arch, and a deeply moulded
Early English arcade, on which is a singular beaded moulding. There is
also a low-side window and a beautiful Perpendicular rood screen, also a
fourteenth-century effigy of a priest with vestments and chalice. In the
churchyard is the font of the other church.
In the days of toll-bars there were two at Middle Rasen; usually they
were let to the highest bidder, and the man who took the main road gate
in the year 1845 is still living, at the age of eighty-nine, in 1912. A
toll-bar keeper in the days before railways, when all the corn went to
market by road, had little rest at night, as waggons full or empty passed
through at all hours. In his early days food was dear—tea eight shillings
a pound—and wages were low, and bread and water and barley-chaff dumpling
were the common fare. He is now a rate-collector and, of course, can
read and write, but he never went to school, and at eight years of age
he began to earn a little by “scaring crows.” At fifteen he was mowing
and using the flail at his native village of Legbourne. In a field, near
where the station now is, he remembers a man mowing wheat for six days on
bread and water, and the crop yielded six quarters to the acre. A woman
of ninety-three, now living in the Wolds, remembers when flour was 4_s._
6_d._ a stone, and a loaf cost 11½_d._ instead of 2½_d._ They mixed rye
with wheat flour and baked at home; and a labourer who earned enough to
buy a stone of flour a day thought he could live well.
Only the other day I heard of a labouring family living just between
the Wold and the Marsh, seven sons of a retired Crimean soldier. The
clergyman used to make them a present at the christening if he might
choose the name, and he gave them grand historic names for them to
live up to, _e.g._, Washington and Wellington, and the plan certainly
answered, for they all took to the land and by steadiness, hard work and
good sense raised themselves first to a foreman’s position and then to
that of small occupiers, with the result that the family now farms three
or four hundred acres between them. Yet they, as children, had had a
hard struggle, and never knew either luxury or comfort. Their cottage
had but two rooms, and half the family having gone to bed with the sun,
habitually got up when night was but half over and came and sat round
the fire whilst the other half went to bed. The conditions of life have
improved since then, but the men of to-day can’t have more of the right
stuff in them.
Another instance of the same kind which goes to prove that no walk of
life is without its chances, if only the man is strenuous and sober and
gifted with good sense, is that of a family in the Louth neighbourhood,
three grandsons of a labouring man, who in two generations have raised
themselves to such purpose that they now farm between them some
10,000 acres. Of course the great factors in such successful careers
are steadiness and industry, and that shrewd good sense which is so
characteristic of the best Lincolnshire natives.
Not many years ago I talked with a small farmer in Hampshire, whose
wages as a labourer used to be ten and sixpence a week, when a pair of
boots cost eighteen shillings; but then, he said, they did wear well.
The family lived, year in year out, on hot water with barley in it and a
sprinkling of salt. And yet, incredible as it may seem, he and his wife
had brought up a family of ten. There was some grit in those people.
[Sidenote: MARKET RASEN]
From _Middle Rasen_ it is little more than a mile to _Market Rasen_. Men
still living there can recall the Shrove Tuesday football, when the whole
male population of the village, aided by friends from outside, spent some
strenuous hours in trying to get the ball into Middle Rasen. The windows
were boarded up all along the road, and the struggle of hundreds of rough
fellows was more concerned in pushing their opponents into the beck by
the roadside than in keeping on the ball.
The town has an unusual number of schools in it. The De Aston School,
founded 1401 at Spital, was set up here in 1862 as a middle-class school,
and has been most successful; and the church school and still larger
Wesleyan school between them can accommodate nearly 400 children.
From Market Rasen three miles of low country brings us to _North
Willingham_. The Hall, the home of Mr. Wright, was for over a hundred
years the residence of the family of Boucherett, whose former mansion
stood a couple of miles to the west. The present house with its pretty
bit of water faces the road. In the village we may see a blacksmith who,
at the age of ninety, can still shoe a horse. We are now twelve miles
from Louth; a road to the left goes to Tealby and Bayons Manor, and to
the right by _Sixhills_ to Hainton; and here, instead of going right on
up the sweep of the hill, we will make the round by Tealby and come back
to the high road at Ludford Parva.
[Sidenote: BAYONS MANOR]
_Tealby_ is quite an ideal village, with beautiful trees, a fine and
well-placed church, a stream and bridges and picturesque cottages. One
road leads from it up the steep “Bully hill,” a 300 feet rise, another
road takes us to _Bayons Manor_, the seat of the Tennyson d’Eyncourt
family. Originally there was an old eleventh or twelfth century fortified
dwelling about a hundred yards up the hill, traces of which may still
be seen in bank or dyke. This was replaced about the sixteenth century
by a fairly large house, at one time thatched; part of this remains as
the nucleus of the present castellated mansion built in the romantic
era of the Waverley novels and completed with drawbridge and barbican
in the middle of the last century by Charles Tennyson, M.P., uncle of
the poet, who, after the death of his father, George Tennyson, took the
name of d’Eyncourt. His grandson, E. Tennyson d’Eyncourt, now lives
there. The house has a fine open-roofed hall, and is replete with
interesting mementoes of the Tennysons as well as of the ancient family
of d’Eyncourt. The site is good, with a charming garden sloping to the
park, in which is a fine piece of water. The name Bayons is derived from
its first Norman possessor, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. He was half-brother
to William the Conqueror on the mother’s side, and he was so exalted a
personage that he was called “Totius Angliae Vice-dominus, sub rege.”
Thus he was on occasions the king’s representative, and seems to have had
as much land in Lincolnshire and elsewhere granted to him by William, as
Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk had under Henry VIII., for we hear that
he held seventy-six manors in the county and 463 in other parts.
It is interesting to know that Bulwer Lytton in 1848, when he was trying
to recover his seat for Lincoln, wrote his historical romance “Harold”
here, making good use of his friend Mr. Tennyson d’Eyncourt’s fine
collection of early English chronicles.
A little north of Tealby is the temporarily disused church of _Walesby_,
where once Robert Burton (1577-1640), author of the “Anatomy of
Melancholy,” was rector, before he went to Segrave in Leicestershire. It
is hoped that this church may soon be in use again.
One of the many roads across the Wolds from Rasen to Grimsby passes
through _Walesby_ to _Stainton-le-Vale_ and _Thorganby_, another goes
through _Tealby_, _Kirmond-le-Mire_, and _Binbrook_, once a market town,
and near to _Swinhope_, the ancestral seat of the Alingtons. Both roads
after this unite and pass by _East Ravendale_, _Brigsley_, _Waltham_ and
_Scartho_.
A clear stream flows north through a narrow valley from Kirmond top
through Swinhope, Thorganby, Croxby pond, Hatcliffe, and almost to
Barnoldsby, and thence east to Brigsley, and so across the marsh to
Tetney Haven.
[Sidenote: SOUTH ELKINGTON]
Leaving Tealby, we climb to the top of the Ludford ridge, and, turning
to the right, come to the Market Rasen and Louth highway at Willingham
Corner, thence, to the left, by _Ludford Magna_ with its cruciform church
on the infant ‘Bain.’ To the right we notice Wykeham Hall, further on
to the left the church of _Kelstern_, standing solitary in a field, and
soon we reach the singularly beautiful and well-wooded approach to Louth
by _South Elkington_, the seat of Mr. W. Smyth. The church here, whose
patronage goes with the Elkington estate, was given about 1250 to the
convent at Ormsby, which presented to it until the dissolution, when it
fell to the Crown, and was given, in 1601, by Queen Elizabeth to the
famous John Bolle of Thorpe Hall. This Hall we now pass on our approach
to Louth, and a splendid picture awaits us when we see that lovely spire
of Louth church, standing up out of a grove of trees, and eventually
presenting itself to our eyes, in its full height and beautiful
proportions, as we come into the town by the west gate.
[Sidenote: LOUTH SPIRE]
The highway from Louth to Horncastle is best traversed the reverse way.
Starting from Horncastle with its little river—the Bain—its cobble-paved
streets and its pretty little thatched hostel, the King’s Head, the Louth
road brings us soon to West Ashby. Then, at a distance of four miles
from Horncastle, we come suddenly on the unpretending buildings of the
Southwold Hunt kennels. These are in the parish of _Belchford_, which
lies half a mile to the right.
[Illustration: _Westgate, Louth._]
We now climb 300 feet up Flint Hill, a name which tells us that we are
on an outlier of the chalk wolds, and a fine view opens out on the
left which we can enjoy for a mile, after which the road turns to the
right and discloses a totally different scene. In front lies the snug
village of _Scamblesby_, and behind it the south-eastern portion of the
South Wolds, sweeping round from Oxcombe’s wooded slope in a wide curve
to Redhill, behind which the Louth and Lincoln railway emerges near
_Donington-on-Bain_. It is a fine landscape.
We descend to the village, and passing in the wide valley the turn to
Asterby and Goulceby on the left, set ourselves to climb the main ridge
of the Wolds by _Cawkwell_. On the top of the hill we pass a cross road
which runs for many miles right and left without coming to anything in
the shape of a village; and naturally so, for the road like the Roman
streets in the Lake District, keeps sturdily along the highest ground,
and who would care to live on a wind-swept ridge?
[Sidenote: TATHWELL]
To the right the Wold runs up to nearly 500 feet, but our road only
crosses it, and after little more than a mile we see the level of the
marsh and the tall spire of Louth five miles ahead of us. The road
here forks, and forsaking the direct route by Raithby we will take the
right-hand road and in a couple of miles find ourselves dropping to the
village of _Tathwell_. This we circle round and arrive at the lane which
leads to the church.
This little church, dedicated to St. Vedast, who was Bishop of Arras
and Cambray (_circa_ 500), was once a Norman building, but the Norman
pilasters supporting the round tower-arch of the eleventh century are
all that is left of that period, unless the four courses nearest the
ground of large stones of a hard, grey, sandstone grit can be referred
to it. Upon these now is built a structure of brick with a broad tower
at the west and an apse at the east; but the charm of the place is its
situation, on a steep little hill overlooking a good sheet of clear
chalk-stream water. You look westwards across this to a pathway running
up the slope opposite which is fringed with a fine row of beeches, and
just below you at the edge of the little graveyard you see the thatched
roof of a primitive cottage, whilst beyond it the ground is broken into
steep little grass fields, the whole most picturesquely grouped.
We leave the secluded little village, and turning to the right, pass
between the Danish camp on Orgarth Hill and the six long barrows on Bully
Hill (the second hill of the name, the other being near Tealby). These
are all probably of the same date; the latter in a field adjoining the
road. A mile more and we turn to the left at Haugham, where is another
and larger tumulus, after passing which, on the left, we soon come to the
main Louth and Spilsby road.
The number six seems to have been a favourite one with the Vikings.
Eleven miles to the west of Bully Hill is “Sixhills,” between Hainton and
North Willingham, and another place of the same name near Stevenage in
Hertfordshire shows a fine row of six tumuli close to the road side.
[Sidenote: JANE CHAPLIN]
On October 25 there was a funeral in the Tathwell churchyard, when, in
presence of her surviving grand-children and great-grandchildren Jane
Chaplin was laid to rest beside the husband who had died forty years
before. She was not only of a remarkable age—it is seldom that a coffin
plate bears such an inscription:—
“Jane Chaplin, born 24th June, 1811, died 21st October, 1913”—
but during all that long life she was always cheerful and kindly and full
of interest, and up to the very last, within two hours of her death,
she was bright and happy, lively with talk and merriment, and in full
possession of all her faculties. On her 102nd birthday she received her
relatives and delighted them with her reminiscences of the days before
they were born, telling the writer how she remembered Alfred Tennyson
asking her to dance at the local ball, and adding that she was still
able to read and to paint, though she had of late years given up reading
by candlelight for fear of trying her eyes, and saying how thankful she
was that she felt so well and had no pains and was, in fact, much better
than she used to be fifty years ago. She had left Lincolnshire and lived
of late years at Bournemouth and then at Cheltenham, where she literally
‘fell on sleep’ and passed from this life to the next, without any
illness or struggle, in the happiest possible manner. Truly, we may say
with Milton—
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast.
CHAPTER XXIV
LINCOLNSHIRE BYWAYS
Willoughby and Captain John Smith—Grimoldby—South
Cockerington—Sir Adrian Scrope’s Tomb—Alvingham—Two Churches
in one Churchyard—Yarborough—The Covenhams—Hog-back
View—Milescross Hill to Gunby—Skendleby—South Ormsby and
Walmsgate—Belchford—Thorpe Hall—The Elkingtons.
The Romans had a road from the sea probably by Burgh and Gunby and then
on the ridge by Ulceby cross-roads to Louth, and so on the east edge of
the Wold north to the Humber.
It is not a particularly interesting route, but if at Gunby we turn to
the right we shall pass _Willoughby_ with its old sandstone church in a
well-kept churchyard, a somewhat rare thing on this route. The church
(St. Helen’s) has some Saxon stones in the south wall of the tower, and
a double arch on the north side of the chancel, a Norman arch in front
of a fourteenth century one. Here, in 1579, was born the redoubtable
Captain John Smith, president of Virginia and the hero of the famous
Pocahontas[13] story, a man whose life was more full of adventure than
perhaps any in history. The interest which Pocahontas created when she
came to England is evinced by the number of inn signs of “The belle
Sauvage.” The church has a singular slab with the head and shoulders of a
man, name unknown, in relief cut on it at one end—his feet showing at the
other, something after the fashion of a “sandwich-man.” The huge belfry
ladder is also noteworthy, being made of two trees, whole, with stout,
rough timber spiked to them for steps.
[Sidenote: GRIMOLDBY]
From _Willoughby_ to _Alford_ and on by _Saleby_, _Withern_,
_Gayton-le-Marsh_, _Great_ and _Little Carlton_, and _Manby_, the road
is not remarkable; but, after crossing the main road from Horncastle
to Saltfleet, which has come over the Wold _viâ_ Scamblesby, Cawkwell
and Tathwell, it arrives at _Grimoldby_. Here the church is noteworthy
for the size and excellence of its gargoyles. Outside it has heavy
battlemented parapets, a good gable-cross with pent-house over it, as on
the Somersby cross, and the entire shaft of a churchyard cross. Inside,
the nave is whitewashed, but the fine old roof remains, and on one of
the beams is the pulley block for the rood light, as at Addlethorpe and
Winthorpe. The door is old and has been enriched with carving and there
is the lower part of a good rood screen with three returns, possibly for
lights, projecting twelve inches westwards. This arrangement is also
found in the rood screen at Thornton Curtis. In the north porch is a fine
holy water stoup.
[Illustration: _Manby._]
For the next six miles churches are to be found at every mile.
[Sidenote: SIR ADRIAN SCROPE]
_South Cockerington_ has a little holy water stoup just inside the door.
Part of a handsome rood screen is stowed away under the tower, the rest
being in _Manby_ Church. The church has had a profusion of consecration
crosses—a dozen have been noticed, some of which still remain cut in the
stone and filled with dark cement. Nearly all the churches about here
are in two styles—Decorated and Perpendicular; and though _Grimoldby_
exhibits only one style, it is the transition between these two. The
most noticeable thing in the church is the alabaster altar tomb to Sir
Adrian Scrope, with effigies of his five sons over whom is the legend
‘similis in prole resurgo,’ and two daughters and an infant, over whom is
written ‘Pares et impares.’ Does this mean “Like in face but different in
character,” or “Like their father but not so good-looking”? The knight
is represented armed and half reclining on one elbow, with his helmet
behind him and his mailed glove by his knee, the head and face very
life-like, the hands and fingers extremely delicate. On a brass plate he
is described as the thrice honourable Adrian Scrope, Kt., etc., and this
verse follows:—
Tombs are but dumb day-books, they will not keepe
There names alive who in these wombes doe sleepe,
But who would pen the virtues of this knight
A story not an epitaph must write.
It was not easy to find the way to _South Cockerington_ as the road to
it literally forms a square, and then passes on from the churchyard gate
right through a farm; but to reach _North Cockerington_ you seem to go
round at least five sides of a square or squares, then cross the Louth
River, and then a bridge just above a water mill, and passing by two
gates through a farmyard you arrive in a grass field, in which, devoid of
any sort of fence on the north and west sides, the plain-looking church
of _Alvingham_ stands; a gate leads to the south door, near which a few
yards of grass is mown, but the rest of the churchyard is a tangle of
long grass and tall nettles; and amongst them, within a stone’s throw,
stands a second and larger church of _North Cockerington_, in which no
service is held. “There _is_ some wildernesses!” was the apt remark of
our driver as we reached the churchyard gate.
Two churches in one churchyard are to be found at Evesham in
Worcestershire, and at Reepham in Norfolk. These I have seen; others are
at Willingate in Essex, and at Trimley in Suffolk. At Evesham there is
even a third tower for the bells. This is of stone, but in a few other
places, as at Brookland in Romney Marsh, the bell tower is a separate
timber erection. The reason for two here was that Alvingham, dedicated
to St. Adelwold, is the parish church, but there was once a Gilbertine
priory for monks and nuns close by, to which the other church served as a
chapel. This was also the parish church of North Cockerington at a very
early date, mention being made of it in a charter of about 1150.
The Alvingham Cartulary or priory book, once in possession of F. G.
Ingoldby, Esq., is now in Louth Museum, and among the charters is a
curious entry of an agreement between the joint occupiers of a meadow
that their men should meet on a certain day at Cockerington Church and
there fix a day for beginning to mow.
[Sidenote: YARBOROUGH WEST DOOR]
The next village is one which gives his title to Lord _Yarborough_.
The church, like so many in this neighbourhood, Grimoldby and South
Cockerington being honourable exceptions, is locked, but the chief point
of interest is to be seen outside. This is a beautiful example of a
richly carved doorway. The mouldings of the square head are good and set
with little ornaments, and very bold and original carvings run round the
arch of the doorway. The space between the arch and the outer square
head mould is filled with shallow carved work representing on the left,
the fall, with Adam, Eve, the Serpent, and much good foliage carving;
and on the right the Lamb and the emblems of the Passion. An old English
inscription runs round the arch of the doorway, but is only in part
decipherable; the stone is a white hardish sandstone, and the surface a
good deal worn, but the whole design is most elegant and unusual.
A mile more brings us to the two churches of _Covenham_, within a
quarter of a mile of each other, and both locked. Covenham _St. Mary_
seems to be built of a hard chalk. There are mason-marks high up on each
pilaster of the porch. The other church, of _St. Bartholomew_, was once a
cruciform building. It is made of the same white material, but the tower
is now covered with Welsh slate, and one transept is gone. The fonts
in both churches are good. That in St. Mary’s is, for beauty of design
and boldness of execution, the best in the neighbourhood, but they do
not compare for beauty and size with those in the Fen churches, which
are lofty and set on wide octagonal basements of three or four steps.
Here, the brass to Sir John Skipwyth, who died at, or in the year of,
Agincourt, 1415, is in exceptionally good condition. He is armed and has
both the long dagger and sword, the latter suspended from his left arm by
a strap. The tail of the lion on which he stands is erect between the leg
of the knight and his sword.
The rest of the route by _Fulston_, _Tetney_ and _Humberston_ to
Grimsby is not of any interest until we come to _Clee_, which, with its
interesting Saxon church tower, we have already described.
[Sidenote: A ROMAN ‘HOG’S BACK’]
In the Wold country the main roads usually run along the ridges of the
Wolds and afford views on either side. One of the best of these, “Hog’s
Back” views is obtained from one of the byways which starts from the
Spilsby and Alford road at the top of Milescross hill, and runs south
till it reaches Gunby. It skirts the wooded belt of the Well Vale estate,
and drops into the village of _Ulceby_ which, like most of the tiny Wold
villages, lies on the bank of a small stream in a wooded hollow, where
the church and farm and a few cottages form a pleasing picture of rural
retirement.
Mounting again, the road turns to the left and goes straight ahead on
what is evidently a portion of a Roman “street,” giving on the left a
view of the “Marsh” towards Mablethorpe, with its grey shimmering line
which denotes “the bounding main,” and on the right a still more distant
prospect over the flat “fen” lands in the direction of Boston, whose
columnar tower rises far up into the sky. The blue haze of the marsh, the
purple distance over the fens, with, in the autumn, the long, drifting
lines of grey smoke from the burning “quitch,” or “twitch” as they
usually call it here, make a delightful impression; and then if we turn
fenwards we drop into the leafy hollow of _Skendleby_ village, where once
the Conqueror’s friend, Gilbert de Gaunt, resided, and to which William
of Waynfleet, the famous Bishop of Winchester, was presented as vicar by
the convent of Bardney in 1430. It is a pretty village with its church
and manor-house, and thatched, white-washed cottages bright with flowers,
and its well-stocked farm. A tall windmill crowns the next height; this
is Grebby Mill, and it is interesting to find that there has been a
windmill there for 600 years.
For _Grebby_ is old enough to be mentioned in Domesday Book, and in 1317
we have mention of a windmill there belonging to Robert de Willoughby and
Margaret his wife.
[Sidenote: THE FLOODED FEN]
From the windmill one looks down to the old brick tower of _Scremby_
church, which is the last building on the edge of the slope from which
the endless levels of the fen begin and run south till they reach
Crowland and Peterborough. From whence the great cathedral, with its
splendid west front, looked out in the disastrous August of 1912 over
miles and miles of corn-land where the tall sheaves stood up out of a
vast expanse of water, the result of the abnormal rains and the burst
dyke which made Whittlesea Mere once more resume its ancient appearance.
Below Scremby the road runs to the left to _Candlesby_, and so rejoins
that starting-place of so many byways—_Gunby_.
There was a church at Scremby in Norman times; at the dissolution the
manor came to the all-acquiring Duke of Suffolk. Now-a-days the handbook
dismisses it as “of no special interest,” but eighty-five years ago it
was thought worth while to mention that “at the west end of the nave is a
neat and commodious singing-gallery.”
Those who wish to see the beauties of the country must leave the high
ridge every here and there and make a round into the little villages
which lie at the foot of the Wolds, mostly on the western slopes where
they escape the strong sea winds.
From the Spilsby-and-Louth road a byway branches westwards, close to
_Walmsgate_, which will illustrate this, for it quickly drops into the
pretty village of _South Ormsby_, and, skirting the park on two sides,
runs on to the village of _Tetford_ with its red roofs and grey-green
church tower nestling under the hill. Thence the white line of road goes
north over Tetford hill to _Buckland_ and _Haugham_, and so rejoins the
main road again about four miles north of Walmsgate.
But before leaving Tetford we should take a look at the fine grassy
eminence of “Nab hill” with its entrenched camp, behind which lie the
kennels of the Southwold hounds at _Belchford_.
The road from Alford to Louth, by _Belleau_ and _Cawthorpe_, which runs
along the eastern edge of the South Wold and gives such a fine view over
the marsh, is interrupted at Louth, and you must go out for the first
four miles on the Louth and Grimsby main road, but on reaching Utterby
a turn to the left will bring you to a road which goes all the way to
Brocklesby without passing through any village but _Keelby_ in the whole
sixteen miles. This solitary road begins better than it ends for when it
gets opposite to _Barnoldby-le-Beck_, which is just half way, it sinks to
the level of the marsh.
[Sidenote: FOTHERBY TOP]
There are plenty of roads between Louth and Caistor, to the north-west,
along the Wolds, which are here some eight miles wide; and it would be
well worth while for the sake of the view over the marsh to take a little
round from Louth, starting out on the Lincoln road by Thorpe Hall, the
interesting home of the Bolles family, the ffytches, and, later, of
some of the Tennysons. By this route you soon come to the parting of
the ways to Wragby and Market Rasen, and taking the right hand road by
_South Elkington_, the charming residence of Mr. W. Smyth, you climb
up to a height of 400 feet, and taking the road to the right by _North
Elkington_—whose church has a fine pulpit copied from one still to be
seen at Tupholme Abbey, near Bardney—reach _Fotherby top_, from which
for a couple of miles you can command as fine a view of the marsh from
Grimsby to Mablethorpe as you can desire. Then leaving the height you can
go eastward by _North Ormsby_, and, joining the Grimsby-and-Louth road
at _Utterby_, run back to Louth. All approaches to Louth are rendered
beautiful by the splendid views you get of that marvellous spire; and as
the road drops steeply into the town you will hardly know whether the
approach from this northern side or from Kenwick on the south forms the
most striking picture.
CHAPTER XXV
THE BOLLES FAMILY
The byway which runs west from the Spilsby and Alford road, at the foot
of Milescross hill near Alford station, after passing Rigsby, comes to
a farm with an old manor-house and tiny church in a green hollow to the
left. A deep sort of cutting on this side of the church has, along its
steep grassy brow, a line of very old yew trees, not now leading to
anything. This is all there is of the hamlet from which an ancient and
notable family derived its title, the Bolles of Haugh.
_Haugh_ church is a small barn-like building of chalk; the nave
twenty-four feet, and the chancel twenty-one feet long, with an
enormously thick, small, round-headed arch between them. The chancel is
floored with old sepulchral slabs and stone coffin tops, several with
Lombardic lettering, and all apparently of the Bolle or Bolles family who
lived partly at Haugh in the old manor close to the church, and partly at
Thorpe Hall, Louth.
[Sidenote: SIR JOHN BOLLES]
[Sidenote: COLONEL BOLLES AT ALTON]
The family of Bolle seemed to have lived at Bolle Hall, Swineshead, from
the thirteenth century till the close of the reign of Edward IV., 1483,
when, by an intermarriage with the heiress of the Hough family, the elder
branch became settled at Hough or Haugh, near Alford, and one of the
younger branches settled at Gosberkirke (Gosberton) and spelt their name
Bolles. The men of both branches were active both in civil and military
positions. Sir George of Gosberton succeeded to the manor of Scampton,
near Lincoln, from his father-in-law, Sir John Hart, Lord Mayor of
London, 1590. He too became Lord Mayor in 1617, both men being members of
the Grocers’ Company. He was knighted by James I., after withstanding
his majesty in the matter of travelling through the city of London on
a Sunday, on which occasion his conduct somewhat recalls that of Judge
Gascoigne in Shakespeare’s “Henry IV.” He died in 1621, and his monument
is in St. Swithin’s church, London. His son John was made a baronet by
Charles I., and _his_ son George is commemorated on a monument opposite
to that of his grandfather, in a pretty Latin inscription beginning—
Nil opus hos cineres florum decorare corollis;
Flos, hic compositus qui jacet, ipse fuit.
We hear of a Sir George Bolle being killed at Winceby in 1643, fighting
against Cromwell; certainly George’s brother, Sir Robert of Scampton,
was one of the jury in 1660 for trying the regicides, and at the death
of his son, Sir John, in 1714 the title became extinct. The distinctions
of the elder branch, who settled at Haugh, were more military than
civil. Their name also has passed away, their lineal descendants being
named Bush, Ingilby, Bosville and Towne. The earliest monument to this
branch is on a brass plate in Boston Church to Richard Bolle of Haugh,
1591, son of Richard Bolle of Haugh and Maria, daughter and heiress of
John Fitzwilliams of Mablethorpe. He was thrice married, and his only
son Charles died a year before him, 1590, and is commemorated at Haugh.
His daughter Anne married Leonard Cracroft, the others married John and
Leonard Kirkman of Keel. His son Charles, whose mother was a Skipworth of
South Ormsby, had four wives, his first wife a daughter of Ed. Dymoke of
Scrivelsby, and his fourth a daughter of Thomas Dymoke of Friskney. His
only son, John, was the son of number two, Brigitt Fane; and his daughter
Elizabeth of number three, Mary Powtrell. To this son John, there is also
in Haugh Church a well-preserved monument, which shows him kneeling with
his wife, attended by their three sons and five daughters, in the usual
Jacobean style; date 1606, Aet. suæ 46. Sir John built Thorpe Hall, and
was a famous Elizabethan captain. He was at the siege of Cadiz under
Essex, 1596, and had custody of the young lady of high position who goes
by the title of the Spanish Lady or the Green Lady, and whose story is
told in Percy’s “Reliques” in the ballad of “The Spanish Lady’s love for
an Englishman.” Sir John Bolle is the hero of the story. The lady fell
in love with him, but on hearing that he had a wife at home, she retired
to a nunnery and sent rich presents to his wife of tapestry, plate and
jewels, and her picture in a green dress. The jewels are now in the hands
of many of Lady Bolle’s descendants, the necklet of 298 pearls being,
it is said, in the Bosvile family at Ravensfield Park, Yorkshire. The
last warden of Winchester College was called Godfrey Bolles Lee, and
was related to the Bosviles; and, curiously enough, in the Cathedral of
Winchester is a brass plate giving an account of the death of Colonel
John Bolles. It seems that Charles, the elder of the three sons whose
effigies are on Sir John’s monument in the quaint little church of Haugh,
was a Royalist, living at Thorpe Hall, Louth, where he raised a regiment
of foot, which was commanded by his brother John, a soldier of unusual
gallantry. Charles once saved his life when pursued, by hiding under the
bridge at Louth. The regiment was engaged at Edgehill and other places,
and finally cut to pieces in a most bloody engagement inside Alton Church
in Hampshire. Clarendon tells us that Sir William Waller, finding that
Lord Hopton’s troops lay quartered at too great distance from each other,
had, by a night march, come suddenly upon the Royalist forces at Alton.
The horse made good their escape to Winchester, and Colonel Bolles,
who was in command of his own regiment of 500 men, being outnumbered,
retired with some four score men into the church, hoping to defend it
till succour arrived. But the enemy, as he had not had time to barricade
the doors, entered with him, and some sixty of his men were killed
before the rest asked for quarter; this was granted, but Colonel Bolles
refused the offer, and was killed fighting. Alton is seventeen miles from
Winchester, and the little brass plate on the eastern pillar of the north
arcade of the nave in Winchester Cathedral, just where the steps go up to
the choir, has a counterpart in Alton Church. The inscription on it was
composed almost fifty years after the event by a relative who describes
himself M.A., but he does no credit to the learning of the time, for it
is full of errors, both of spelling and of facts; for instance, he calls
the gallant Colonel, Richard instead of John, and gives the date of the
fight as 1641 instead of December, 1643; but it is too quaint a thing not
to be transcribed in full.
[Sidenote: THE WINCHESTER BRASS]
A Memoriall.
For this renowned Martialist Richard Boles of ye Right
Worshipful family of the Bolleses in Linkhornsheire; collonell
of a ridgment of Foot of 1300 who for his gratious King Charles
ye first did Wounders att the Battell of Edgehill: his last
action, to omit all others, was at Alton in this County of
Soughthampton, was sirprised by five or six thousand of the
Rebells, which caused him there Quartered, to fly to the
church, with near fourscore of his men, who there fought them
six or seven houers, and then the Rebells breaking in upon
him he slew with his sword six or seven of them, and then was
slayne himselfe, with sixty of his men about him.
1641
His Gratiouse Souveraigne, hearing of his death, gave him
his high comendation in ye pationate expression. Bring me a
Moorning Scarffe; i have Lost one of the best Comanders in this
Kingdome.
Alton will tell you of that famous Fight
Which ye man made and bade this world goodnight,
His Verteous life feared not Mortalyty,
His body might, his Vertues cannot die.
Because his blood was there so nobly spent
This is his Tombe, that church his Monument.
Ricardus Boles Wiltoniensis in Art Mag:
Composuit Posuitque dolens
An Dom 1689.
A somewhat similar bit of spelling is this from a private diary:—
“The iiii day of Sept 1551 ded my lade Admerell wyffe in Linkolneshire
and ther bered.”
The third brother, Edward, died and was buried at Louth, 1680 A.D., at
the age of seventy-seven. He left £600 to purchase land, the rents “to
be divided among the poorest people of Louth at Christmas, Easter and
Whitsuntide for ever, and to be disposed of ‘in other charitable and
pious uses for the good of the said Toune.’” The income of the bequest is
now worth £85 a year.
[Sidenote: THE GREEN LADY]
Sir Charles, the elder brother, had a son and a grandson called John, the
last of the name. This John’s half-sister, Elizabeth, whose mother was a
Vesci, married Thomas Bosvile, rector of Ufford, and was buried at Louth
in 1740; their daughter Bridget also marrying a Bosvile. The children
of Bridget’s elder sister Elizabeth married into the families of the
Ingilbys and the Massingberds, while another sister, Margaret, married
James Birch, James Birch’s daughter married a Lee, and his grandson,
Captain Thos. Birch, assumed the name of Bosvile and sold Thorpe Hall.
He died in 1829. Sir Charles also had a daughter Elizabeth, who married
Thomas Elye of Utterby, whose granddaughter Sarah married Richard Wright
of Louth, whence are descended the Wrights of Wrangle. Canon Wright, her
great great grandson, has a picture of this Sarah Elye in which she is
represented as wearing a ring which was one of the Spanish jewels, some
of which are in possession of the Canon’s family now. The picture of the
Green Lady was unfortunately sold at the Thorpe Hall sale, and it is said
that another small picture of her, painted in the corner of a portrait of
Sir John Bolles by Zucchero, was lost when the picture was restored and
considerably cut down, in the last century.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE MARSH CHURCHES OF EAST LINDSEY
West Theddlethorpe—Saltfleetby—All Saints—Skidbrook—South
Somercotes—Grainthorpe—Marsh Chapel.
THE PLAGUE-STONE
An inconspicuous little byway starts from near Alford station and runs
parallel with the line about a mile northwards to _Tothby_, where it
bends round and loses itself in a network of lanes near _South Thoresby_.
At Tothby, under a weeping ash tree on the lawn in front of the old Manor
House farm, is an interesting relic of bygone days. It is a stone about a
yard square and half a yard thick, once shaped at the corners and with a
socket in it. Evidently it is the base of an old churchyard, wayside, or
market cross of pre-reformation times. And it has been put to use later
as a plague-stone, having been for that purpose placed on its edge and
half buried probably, and a hole seven inches by five, and two and a half
inches deep, cut in the upper side. This was to hold vinegar into which
the townspeople put the money they gave for the farm produce brought from
the country in times of plague.
The great desire was to avoid contact with possibly plague-stricken
people. So the country folk brought their poultry, eggs, etc., laid
them out at fixed prices near the stone and then retired. Then the town
caterer came out and took what was wanted, placing the money in the
vinegar, and on his retiring in turn, the vendors came and took their
money, which was disinfected by its vinegar bath. The buyers, of course,
had to pay honestly or the country folk would cut off the supplies, and
_they_ probably appointed one of their number as salesman.
[Sidenote: THE PLAGUE-STONE]
On the whole the plan is said to have answered well enough, and the
stone is an interesting relic of the time. There is one _in situ_ at
Winchester, not so big as this, and now built in as part of the basis
to the Plague Monument outside the West Gate of the city. It is, I
believe, plain to distinguish, being of a darker colour than the rest
of the monument; but you cannot now see the hole in it any more. That
stone was used in 1666, the year after the great plague in London. The
Croft register speaks of 1630 as the plague year, but a plague seems to
have visited Partney in 1616; at Louth 754 people died in eight months
in 1631. At Alford the plague year was 1630. On the 2nd of July in that
year the vicar, opposite the entry of Maria Brown’s burial has written
“Incipit pestis” (the plague begins), and between this date and the end
of February, 1631, 132 out of a population of about 1,000, died, the
average number of burials for Alford being 19 per annum, so that the
rate was 100 above normal for the nineteen months; indeed, for the rest
of 1631 only eight burials are registered in ten months. July and August
were the worst months, six deaths occurring in one family in eleven days.
It has been said that the stone was placed on the top of Miles-Cross
hill, whence the folk from Spilsby and the villages of the Wolds, when
they brought their produce, could look down on the plague-stricken town
from a safe distance. But that would be a long pull for the poor Alford
people, and it is more likely that it was placed near where the railway
now crosses the high road; certainly the Winchester stone was barely 100
yards from the Gate.
We can now go back to Alford and start again on the Louth road. To get
to the fine Marsh churches of the east Lindsey district, four miles out
we turn off to the right near Withern, and pass two little churches on
the border of the district called _Strubby_ and _Maltby-le-Marsh_. Each
of these has, like _Huttoft_, a remarkable font, but that at _Maltby_
is extraordinarily good—angels at each corner are holding open books,
and their wings join and cover the bowl of the font, below an apostle
guards each corner of a square base. There is in this church, too, a
cross-legged effigy of a knight. In _Strubby_ are some good poppy-head
bench ends and a fourteenth century effigy without a head, and on the
south wall near the door a curious inscription in old English letters
hard to decipher. There is also a small re-painted Jacobean monument
with effigies of Alderman W. Bailett, aged ninety-nine, his two wives and
nine children.
[Illustration: _Mablethorpe Church._]
[Sidenote: MABLETHORPE]
The whole of the region between the Alford-and-Louth road and the coast
is a network of roads with dykes on either side, which never go straight
to any place, but turn repeatedly at right angles, so that you often have
to go right away from the point you are aiming at. That point is always a
church steeple standing up with its cluster of trees from the wide extent
of surrounding pasture-land. The only direct road in the district is that
which runs north-east to _Mablethorpe_, close on the sea. This is quite
a frequented watering-place. Here, as at Trusthorpe and Sutton, the sea
has swallowed up the original church, but the present one, half a mile
inland, has some sixteenth century tombs and brasses; one notable one of
Elizabeth Fitzwilliam, 1522, which represents her with long, flowing
hair as in that of Lady Willoughby in Tattershall Church, and Sir Robert
Dymoke at Scrivelsby. There is here a seaside open-air school for invalid
children.
[Sidenote: THEDDLETHORPE]
Three miles north is _West Theddlethorpe_ (All Saints), one of the
largest and finest of all the Marsh churches. Here, as elsewhere,
the green-sand, patched with brick, on which the sea air favours the
growth of grey lichen, gives a delightful colour to the tower. The
battlemented parapets are of Ancaster stone, and were once surmounted at
short intervals by carved pinnacles, and the nave gable, as at Louth,
is beautifully pierced and worked, with carved bosses and rosettes set
in the lower moulding. There are five two-light clerestory windows on
either side, and inside are many good bench ends, both old and new,
and a Perpendicular chancel screen with doors, and two chantries, each
still keeping its altar slab in position, and having good oak screens
ornamented with rich and unusual Renaissance carved open-work panels. In
one of these chantries is a shallow recess with a beautiful carved stone
canopy which once held a memorial tablet. A list of the vicars from 1241
to 1403 gives first the name of William Le Moyne (the monk), and in 1349
we have Nicholas de Spaigne on the nomination of Edward III. An important
little brass of Robert Hayton, 1424, shows, as Mr. Jeans tells us, the
latest instance of “Mail Camail.” In the churchyard is a most singular
tombstone to Rebecca French, 1862, the stump of a willow carved in stone
about four feet high with broken branches and—symbol of decay—a large
toadstool growing from the trunk.
Three miles further north, and still close by the sea bank, we come to
the church of _Saltfleetby-All-Saints_. A most provoking habit prevails,
possibly with reason, but none the less trying to those who come to
see the churches, of keeping the keys of the locked-up church at some
distance off, even when there is a cottage close at hand. The church is
in a sadly ruinous condition, and the picturesque porch literally falling
to bits. On it is a shield bearing a crucifixion. The tower, which leans
badly to the north-west, has two Early English lancet lights to the west
and double two-light windows above. The gargoyles are very fine, and
cut, as usual, in Ancaster stone. In the north aisle are two beautiful
three-light windows with square heads and embattled transoms. There are
some Norman pillars and capitals, also a good rood screen and a handsome
Decorated font set on a reversed later font. This church, like so many
in the Marsh, is only half seated, though even so it is too big for the
population, as probably it always has been.
Within a mile to the north-east we pass _Saltfleetby-St.-Clements_,
a church which has been moved from a site two fields off, and very
carefully rebuilt in 1885, and shows an arcade of five small arches
beautifully moulded resting on massive circular columns. It has also a
good font on a central shaft with clustered columns round it, and in
the vestry, part of a very early cross shaft. Hence we soon reach the
sea at _Saltfleet_ on a tidal channel, as the name indicates. Here is a
remarkable old manor-house.
The parish church of Saltfleet is at _Skidbroke_, which stands in the
fields a mile inland. In the churchyard is a tall granite cross in memory
of Canon Overton of Peterborough. The church is of Ancaster stone which
has a much longer life than the green-sand, but the parapets of the nave
are of brick now, with stone coping. The belfry of all these churches is
approached by rough and massive ladders. In the west of the tower is a
good doorway. The chancel is a poor one.
Two miles through the rich meadows brings us to _South Somercotes_,
remarkable as having a spire, but of later date than the tower. Here the
chancel is absolutely bare, with painted dado and red tiled floor and
no fittings of any kind. It looks something like a G.N.R. waiting-room,
without the table. There is a very elegant rood screen, and an
exceptionally tall belfry ladder or “stee,” also, as in the two churches
just visited, ancient tablets in memory of the family of Freshney. The
family still flourishes; and at the Alford foal show, September 1912,
a Freshney of South Somercotes carried off several prizes. Unlike
Skidbrooke, the church has houses and even shops close to it. We saw
here a fell-monger’s trolley drive up with a strange assorted cargo from
the station of Saltfleetby-St.-Peters. There were several packages and,
sitting amongst them, several people all huddled together. It stopped at
the village corner to deliver a long parcel draped in sacking—it was a
coffin.
[Sidenote: THE GRAINTHORPE BRASS]
A few miles north is _Grainthorpe_, the old roof lately renovated. The
whole church well cared for, and in the chancel a mutilated but once
very beautiful brass, with a foliated cross, probably in memory of
Stephen-le-See, who was the vicar about 1400. The stem is gone, the head
shows some very delicate work, and the base stands on a rock in the sea
with five various fishes depicted swimming. It was once seven feet high;
and, if perfect, would be the most beautiful brass cross extant.
[Sidenote: THE HARPHAM TABLET]
Three miles north we reach the fine church of _Marsh Chapel_. This
was once a hamlet of _Fulstow_, four miles to the west on the road
to Ludborough. It is Perpendicular from the foundation. Here, as at
Grainthorpe, is a rood screen partly coloured, the lower part being new.
The church is seated throughout in oak, and evidently used by a large
congregation. The capitals of both arcades are battlemented. On the
chancel wall is an exquisite little alabaster tablet put up in 1628,
representing Sir Walter Harpham, his wife and little daughter—quite a
gem of monumental sculpture. The parents died in 1607 and 1617. The
lofty tower has a turret staircase with a spirelet—a rare feature in
Lincolnshire, though common in Somersetshire—and the church is all built
of Ancaster stone.
Going north we reach _North Cotes_ and Tetney lock, where we can see
part of the Roman sea bank, though Tetney haven now is almost two miles
distant. The Louth river, which is cut straight and turned into the Louth
Navigation Canal, runs out here.
The by-road we have been following from the south ends here; but a branch
running due west passes to _Tetney_ village and thence joins the Louth
and Grimsby highway at Holton-le-Clay.
CHAPTER XXVII
LINCOLNSHIRE FOLKSONG
Dan Gunby and The Ballad of the Swan.
There is no great quantity of native verse in this county, and children’s
songs of any antiquity are by no means so common with us as they are in
Northumbria, but there is _The Lincolnshire Poacher_ with its refrain,
“For ’tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year,” the
marching tune of the Lincolnshire Regiment; and there is an old quatrain
here and there connected with some town, such as that of Boston, and that
is all.
It was my luck, however, to know, fifty years ago, a man who wrote
genuine ballad verses, some of which I took down from his lips. They
have never been printed before, but seem to me to be full of interest,
for the man who wrote them was a typical east-coast native, a manifest
Dane, as so many of these men are—unusually tall, upright, with long nose
and grey eyes, and a most independent, almost proud, bearing. He was a
solitary man, and made his living, as his earliest forefathers might have
done, by taking fish and wild fowl as best he could; and, for recreation,
drinking and singing and playing his beloved fiddle. It seemed as if the
runes of his Scandinavian ancestors were in his blood, so ardently did
he enjoy music and so strongly, in spite of every difficulty, for he had
had little education, did he feel the impulse to put the deeds he admired
into verse.
[Sidenote: R. L. NETTLESHIP]
It is something to be thankful for that, in spite of railways and Board
Schools, original characters are still to be found in Lincolnshire. They
were more abundant two generations ago, but they are still to be met
with, and one of the most remarkable that I have personally known was
this typical east-coaster, whose name was Dan Gunby. It was in September,
1874, when I was a house master at Uppingham, under the ever-famous
Edward Thring, that my dear friend, R. L. Nettleship, then a fellow of
Balliol, came to our house at Halton, and after a day or two there, we
passed by Burgh over the marsh to Skegness, eleven miles off.
[Illustration: _Southend, Boston._]
We were making for the old thatched house by the Roman bank, for this
belonged to our family, and here, with one old woman to “do” for us,
and with the few supplies we had brought with us and the leg of a
Lincolnshire sheep in the larder, we felt we could hold out for a week
whilst we read, unmolested by even a passing tradesman. Sundays we spent
at Halton, walking up on Saturday and down again on Monday, after which
we took off our boots for the rest of the week.
[Sidenote: DAN GUNBY]
One night about ten o’clock, as we were sitting over our books, a step
was heard on the plank bridge, and a loud knock resounded through the
house. I went to the door and opened it. It was pitch dark, and from the
darkness above my head, for Dan was a tall man, came a voice: “Ah’ve
browt ye sum dooks. Ye knaw me, Dan Gunby.” We gratefully welcomed them
as a relief from the sheep, and after a talk we agreed to go over and see
Dan in his home at Gibraltar Point, where the Somersby Brook, “a rivulet
then a river,” runs out into Wainfleet haven. Accordingly, on the 12th
of September, 1874, we set off, going along on the flat dyke top for
four miles till we came to what seemed the end of the habitable world.
Here the level, muddy flat stretched out far into the distant shallow
sea, groups of wading shore-birds were visible here and there, and an
occasional curlew flew, with his melancholy cry, overhead, or a lonely
sea-gull passed us—
“With one waft of the wing.”
We came to a small river channel with steep, slimy banks; just beyond
it was an old boat half roofed over, and, sitting on it, was our friend
Dan mending a net. We shouted to ask how we were to get to him, and he
said, “Cum along o’er, bottoms sound.” We pulled off our boots and got
down without much difficulty, but to get up, “Hic labor, hoc opus est.”
But Dan shouted encouragement: “Now then, stick your toäs in, and goo
it.” We did ‘goo it,’ and soon landed by the old boat, and sitting on it,
we asked him if he always slept there, and what he did for a living. He
answered “Yees, this is my plaäce, an’ it’s snug, an all. Ye see I hev a
bit of a stoäve here.”
“Is that your duck-shout (the name for a sort of canoe for duck shooting)
and gun?”
“Yees, ye sees I’m a bit of a gunner, an’ a bit of a fisherman, an’ a bit
of a fiddler.”
“And a bit of a poet, too, aren’t you, Dan?”
“Well, I puts things down sometimes in the winter evenings like.”
“About your shooting, isn’t it?”
“Yees, moästlins.”
“And you have got tunes to them?”
“Yees. It’s easy to maäke the tunes up o’ the fiddle, but the words is a
straänge hard job oftens.”
“Well now, will you let us hear one of them?”
“To be sewer I will,” and he took his fiddle and sat on the gunwale,
while we listened to the following:—
It was in the iambic metre—which befits a ballad—with occasional anapæsts.
[Sidenote: THE SWAN]
[Sidenote: YOUNG JIM HALL]
“It’s called The Swan this ’ere un,” he said, and, with a preliminary
flourish on the fiddle, he went off.
I should say that we got the words in his own writing afterwards spelt as
I give them.
THE SWAN.
Now it Gentel men hall cum lisen to me,
And ile tell you of a spre,
When Sam and Tom Gose in there boats,
Tha never dise a Gre.
CHORUS.
For the Halls they are upon the spre,
Tha’ll do the best tha can,
Am when tha goä to seä my boys
Tha meäns to shoot a Swan.
Then a storking down clay-’ole,[14]
And laying as snug as tha can,
For it’ Slap Bang went both the guns
And down come the Swan.
Now Sam and Tom ’as got this Swan,
Tha do not now repent;
Tha will pull up to Fosedyke Brige,
And sell him to Hary Kemp.
Now Sam and Tom they got a shere
Tha dow not see no Feer,
Tha will call too the Public-house,
An git a Galling of Beer.
Sam says to Tom here’s luck my lad,
We will drink hall we can;
And then wele pull down Spalding sett
To loke for another Swan.
There’s young Jim Hall he has a fine gun
Tha say it weighs a ton,
And he will pull down Spalding Set
To have a bit of fun.
CHORUS.
For the Halls they are upon the spre,
Tha’ll do the best tha can,
And when tha goä to seä my boys
Tha means to shoot a swan.
And when tha hev got side by side
Tha moastly scheme and plan,
Tha meän to shoot either duck or goose
Or else another swan.
Jim, Bill an Tom was storking
At thousands of geese in a line,
Tha fired three guns before daylight
An killed ninety-nine.
(My eye! they did an’ all.)
The old man larned the boys to shoot
Without any fere or doubt,
And young Jim Hall he was the man
Who made the Gun and Shout.[15]
There’s young Ted Hall he’s fond of life,
His diet is beäf and creäm
He cares nothing about shooting
He’d rayther goä by steäm.
Captain Rice, he’s deäd an gone,
We hope he is at rest,
All his delight was guns and boäts,
And he always did his best.
He was a hearty old cock
As ever sailed on the sea.
He has paid for many a galling of ale
When he was in company.
CHORUS.
For the Halls tha are upon the spre,
Tha’ll do the best tha can,
An when tha goä to seä my boys
Tha meäns to shoot a swan.
[Sidenote: CAPTAIN RICE]
Dan paused for some time after he had finished the ballad, and then said
with much feeling in look and voice, “Captain Rice, poor chap, he died
after I’d gotten yon lines finished, and I had to alter them, ye knaw. It
took me three weeks to get ’em altered.”
The captain was well remembered; he had “paid for many a galling of ale.”
But the family that Dan most admired were the Halls, the old man and his
three eldest sons—Jim, Bill and Tom. Young Ted he despised; he cared
nothing about shooting, he would rather sit in a train!
He tells in two other short ballads of how they hunted the seal on the
bar or on the long sand, and there is a poetic touch in the way he makes
the seals talk, and in the description of their eyes and teeth.
But “The Swan” is Dan’s great achievement, and is a real good folk song,
and has lines with the true ballad ring. “Down come the swan” is a fine
expressive line, and “He was a hearty old cock, As ever sailed on the
sea” has a ring in it like _Sir Patrick Spens_.
When Dan came to the astonishing kill of ninety-nine he never failed to
make the ejaculation I have given above; the geese were Brent geese and
were feeding in a creek or wet furrow. There was a big gun used in the
“Gruft holes” or deep channels in the sands going seaward, where the
gunner sat waiting for the “flighting” of the ducks. This was called a
“raille,” and was fired from the shoulder. The gun which weighed a ton is
a poetic exaggeration; but the old duck-shout guns were more than one man
would care to lift, and about six to eight feet long. The man lay on a
board to sight and fire this miniature cannon or demi-culverin, which was
loaded to the muzzle, and the rusty piece of ordnance shot back with the
recoil underneath him; had it been made fast to the canoe or duck-shout
it would have torn the little boat to bits.
[Sidenote: THE SEALS]
The ballads of the seals are as follows:—
SEALS ON THE BAR.
1.
There is two seäls upon the bar,
Tha lay like lumps of lead.
When tha see Sam and Tom coming
Tha begins to shaäke their head.
CHORUS.
For the Halls tha are upon the look out
Tha love to see a seäl,
An when tha git well in my boys
He’s bound to taäste a meäl.
2.
The owd seäl said unto his wife,
Yon’s sumthing coming sudden,
We must soon muster out o’ this
Or we shall get plum-pudden.
CHORUS.
For the Halls they are upon the look out
Tha love to see a seäl,
An when they git well in my boys
He’s bound to taäste a meäl.
SEÄLS ON THE LONG SAND.
1.
Bill and Jim was shoving down the North
And keepin close to the land,
Jim says to Bill, we’ll pull across,
Right ower to the Long Sand.[16]
CHORUS, _after each verse_.
For the Halls tha are upon the look out,
Tha love to see a seäl,
An when tha git well in my boys,
He’s bound to taäste a meäl.
2.
And when tha hed got ower
Tha hed a cheerful feel.
Bill says to Jim “What greät heäd’s yon?”
It must be a monstrous seäl.
3.
For his eyes like fire they did shine
An his teeth was long an white,
Then slap bang went boäth the guns,
An he wished ’em boäth good-night.
4.
Well done, my lad! We’ve hit ’im hard,
He’ll niver git ashore,
For I knaw his head will ake to-day
And ’twill be very sore.
CHORUS.
For the Halls tha are upon the look out,
Tha love to see a seäl,
An when tha git well in my boys
He’s bound to taäste a meäl.
Seals are more common on this coast than one would think. Only this
autumn, 1913, great complaints have been made by the fishermen of the
destruction of soles, etc., in the ‘Wash’ by the increased number of
these unwelcome visitors.
[Sidenote: NORTH COUNTRY HUMOUR]
[Sidenote: NATURE’S POETS]
Dan Gunby, in spite of his fiddling and attendance at all the dances in
the neighbourhood, was not of a jovial nature. His life was hard and his
outlook on it was always serious, and any humour which he had was of the
dry order, which is so frequent in the northern counties. Terse remarks
with a touch of humour, sly or grim, he doubtless showed at times, but a
real hearty laugh he would seldom allow himself. We find this same almost
unconscious habit of saying a biting thing in a sly way frequent in the
counties north of Lincolnshire, as for instance, when in Westmorland
a man meeting a friend says, “I hear Jock has gotten marriet” and the
rejoinder, which expresses so much in so few words, both about the man in
question and the subject of matrimony generally, is “Ah’m gled o’ that,
ah niver liked Jock.” Another time, a man meets a ‘pal’ and for a bit
of news says, “We’m gotten a chain for oor Mayor,” and the answer, “Han
yo? We let yon beggar of ourn go loose” is far more funny than was ever
intended. But Gunby and his likes, of whom there are more in the regions
of the hills and fells than elsewhere, have not only the seriousness
of those who live solitary and have leisure to do a deal o’ thinking,
but dwelling apart in places where they can commune with Nature and the
stars they get the poetic touch from their surroundings. The mountain
shepherd goes up on to the heights and spends long hours with his dog
and sheep. He marks the great clouds move by, and listens to the voice
of the streams. He knows “the silence that is in the starry sky;” the
great constellations are his companions; he sees the rising moon, and the
splendours of the dawn and sunset. Those sights which fill us with such
delight and wonder when beheld now and then in a lifetime, are before his
eyes repeatedly. Now he watches the storm near at hand in all its fury,
the thunder echoing round him from crag to crag; soon the clouds roll
off and disclose the brilliant arch of the rainbow across the glistening
valley, each perfect in its different way. At one time he must be out
on the slopes sparkling with snow, at another his heart gladdens at the
approach of spring, and he feels himself one with it all. And so the
changing seasons of the year cannot fail to touch him more than most
men, and what the heart feels the lips will strive to utter. In the same
way Dan Gunby used to watch the wide sunsets across the marsh, and see
the floods of golden light on the shore, and the ebbing and flowing of
the far-spread tide about his anchored cabin. He saw, at one time, the
ripples crested with gold by the sun’s last rays, at another the red orb
rising from the sea on a clear morning; or, in the mist which closed him
in, he listened to the cries of the sea-birds sweeping by invisible.
At times, when the wind was up and the tide high, he heard the roar of
the waves dashed on the sand; or, upon a calm night, he looked out on
a gently moving water led by the changing moon. There were always some
voices of the night, and usually some visions both at eve and morn; and
with his observant eye and ear, and his leisure to reflect, while Nature
was his one companion, how could he fail to be in some sort a poet?
I lately heard of a shepherd or crofter who was quite a case in point;
but as he was not a Lincolnshire native but lived in the Scotch Lowlands,
I put the account of him and his poetry, which, by the help of a Scotch
lady, I have succeeded in collecting, small in quantity but some of
it very good, I think, in quality, into an appendix at the end of the
volume.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE MARSH CHURCHES IN SOUTH LINDSEY
Alford—Markby—Hogsthorpe—Addlethorpe—Ingoldmells—Winthorpe—Skegness—The
Bond Epitaph—Croft—The Parish Books—Burgh-le-Marsh—Palmer
Epitaph—Bratoft—The Armada—Gunby—The Massingberd Brasses.
Starting from _Alford_, a little town with several low thatched houses in
the main street, and a delightful old thatched ivy-clad manor, we will
first look into the church which stands on a mound in the centre of the
town, to see the very fine rood screen. Before reaching the south porch
with its sacristy or priests’ room above, and its good old door, we pass
an excellent square-headed window. Inside, the bold foliage carving on
the capitals at once arrests the eye. The pillars, as in most of these
churches, are lofty, slender and octagonal. The steps to the rood loft
remain, and a squint to the altar in the north aisle chapel. On the other
side is a carved Jacobean pulpit of great beauty, east of which is a
low-side window, and east of that again a tomb with recumbent alabaster
figures of Sir Robert Christopher and his wife, date 1668, in perfect
condition.
From Alford a road goes north to Louth, branching to the right three
miles out, to run to Mablethorpe, the favourite seaside resort of the
Tennysons when living at Somersby. But we will follow the road to
_Bilsby_, where Professor Barnard keeps his unapproachable collection of
Early English water-colours. From here we can reach _Markby_, a curious
thatched chapel standing inside a moat, and now disused. Then we can
look in at _Huttoft_ to see the extremely fine font which resembles that
at Covenham St. Mary, and Low Toynton, near Horncastle; after which,
passing by _Mumby_, we will make for the first of the typical Marsh
churches at _Hogsthorpe_.
Markby vicarage goes with _Hannah-cum-Hagnaby_ rectory. Once there was
an Austin or Black Friars priory at Markby, and at Hagnaby—a hamlet in
Hannah or Hannay—an abbey of Premonstratensian or White Canons, which
was founded in 1175 by Herbert de Orreby and dedicated to St. Thomas the
Martyr.
[Illustration: _Markby Church._]
The registers at _Markby_ are among the earliest in the kingdom,
beginning in 1558, those in Hannay dating from 1559. The first year of
their institution was 1838.
[Sidenote: THE HUTTOFT FONT]
The _Huttoft_ font is of the fourteenth century, and is four feet eight
inches high, so it needs a step like those at Wrangle, Benington, and
Frieston, and that at Skendleby. On the bowl are represented the Holy
Trinity, the Virgin and Child, the Virgin holding a bunch of lilies, and
the Child an apple. On six of the panels are the Apostles in pairs, as at
Covenham St. Mary. The under part has angel figures all round supporting
the bowl. The shaft has eight panels with figures of popes, bishops, and
holy women, and at the base are symbols of the four evangelists. The
string-courses show three different roofs to the nave.
[Sidenote: HOGSTHORPE]
_Hogsthorpe_, like most of the churches in the neighbourhood, is built
of the soft local green-sand, which is found near the edge of the marsh
where the Wolds die away into the level. The tower shows patches of
brickwork which give a warm and picturesque appearance. The south porch
is here, as is the rule, built of a harder stone, and is handsome and
interesting. A pair of oblong stones of no great size are built in on
either side above the arch with an inscription in old English letters,
beginning, oddly enough, both in this church and in one at Winthorpe a
few miles off, with the right hand stone and finishing on the left. The
words are, “Orate pro animabus Fratrum et Sororum Guilde Sᶜᵗᵃᵉ Mariæ
hujus Ecclesiæ quorum expensis et sumptibus fabricata est haec porticus.”
The church has had its roof renewed in pine wood. It also has the worst
coloured window glass I have ever seen, an error of local piety.[17] The
registers begin in 1558.
[Sidenote: ADDLETHORPE]
From here the road, with countless right-angled turns, runs between the
reedy dykes to the Perpendicular church of _Addlethorpe_ (St. Nicolas).
Here the south porch is unusually good, with figures of angels on the
buttresses and beautiful foliage work carved on the parapet. On the apex
is a well-cut crucifix and, as at Somersby, on the back is a small figure
of the Virgin and Child. A large holy-water stoup stands just within the
door. There is a window in the porch, also a niche and a slab with the
following inscription:—
The Cryst that suffered
Grette pangs and hard
hafe mercy on the sowle
of John Godard
That thys porche made
and many oder thynges dede
There-for Jsu Cryst
Qwyte hym hys mede.
Over the buttresses of the north aisle are gargoyles holding scrolls; one
has on it “Of Gods saying comes no ill,” another—
God : for : ihs : m’̅c̅y : bryng : he̅ : to : blys :
Yᵗ : ha̅ : p̅d̅ : to : ys :
Cut with a knife on the western pilaster of the porch is—
“January 1686
Praise God.”
The glory of this church is its wealth of old wood work, in which it is
not surpassed by any in the county, though its neighbour, Winthorpe, runs
it hard.
[Illustration: _Addlethorpe and Ingoldmells._]
The chancel here, as at the older Decorated church of Ingoldmells, which
is within half a mile, has been pulled down, and the rood screen acts
as a reredos. There are two extremely good parclose screens, and old
benches with carved ends throughout the church. Another fine oak screen
goes across the tower arch, inscribed, “Orate pro animabus Johannis
Dudeck Senior et uxor̅ ejus.” The noble roof is the original one.
The pulley-block for lowering the rood light is still visible on the
easternmost tie-beam but one, as it is also at Winthorpe and Grimoldby.
A new rafter at the west end has painted on it, “Struck by fireball June
27, 1850.”
The Boston wool trade is alluded to in the epitaph “Hic jacet Ricardus
Ward qdm. Mr̅ctor Stapali Calais MCCCCXXXIII.”
A slab in the north aisle to Thomas Ely, 1783, has a singular inscription
on it:—
“Plain in his form but rich he was in mind,
Religious, quiet, honest, meek and kind.”
Evidently a real good fellow though he _was_ plain.
[Sidenote: CHURCHWARDEN’S ACCOUNTS]
The following extracts from the churchwarden’s accounts between the years
1540 and 1580 are curious.
Itm payde to the Scolemʳ (Schoolmaster) of Allforde
for wryting of Thoms Jacson Wylle iiijᵈ
Itm payde unto Thoms Wryghte for dressynge
the crosse ijᵈ
Itm payde for a horsse skyne for bellstryngs ijˢ iᵈ
Itm payde to the players iiijᵈ
Itm reseuyd (received) for ye Sepuller lyghte
gatheryd in ye cherche iiˢ iᵈ
Itm reseuyd for ye wyttworde[18] of Rycharde Grene xijᵈ
Itm Receuyd of Anthony Orby for his wyffs yereday[19] xijᵈ
Itm payde un to Wyllm Craycrofte for the rente
of ye Kyrke platte ijˢ vᵈ
Itm payde for washing the corporaxys[20] iiijᵈ
Itm payd for a ynglyghe sultʳ [an English
psalter] xxᵈ
Receuyd of Thomas Thorye for o̅n̅ thrughestone iijˢ iiijᵈ
Itm payde for the Sepulcre xˢ
Itm for a paire of Sensors xˢ iiijᵈ
Receuyd of John Curtus for his Wyff lying in ye
churche viˢ viijᵈ
Receuyd[21] of ye said John for o̅n̅ thrughstone xxᵈ
It Recd for ye sowll of John Dodyke xiiiˢ
It Recd for ye sowll of Syr Gregory Wylk viᵈ
Impmus [In primis] payd for certeffyenge of
ye Rodloffe xijˢ
Itm payd for dyssygerenge [_query_ dressing] of
ye Rod loffte iijˢ iiijᵈ
It given to ye men of mumbye chappelle for
carryinge of ye lytle belle to Lincolne xijᵈ
It Layde oute for a lytle booke of prayer for
Wednesdays and frydayes iijᵈ
The church has six bells.
From the account of the charities left in Addlethorpe we find that in
1554 a gift of land was sold for £4 an acre, but in 1653 an acre situated
in Steeping let for 15_s._
[Sidenote: INGOLDMELLS]
The adjoining parish with its mellifluous name of _Ingoldmells_,
(pronounced Ingomells), has had its suffix derived from the Norse _melr_,
said to mean the curious long grass of the sandhills. It might perhaps
be more correctly considered as the same suffix which we have on the
Norse-settled Cumbrian coast at Eskmeals, or Meols, where it is said
to mean a sandy hill or dune, a name which would well fit in with the
locality here. Thus the whole name would mean the sand-dunes of Ingulf,
a Norse invader of the ninth century. A farmer we met at Winthorpe, next
parish to Ingoldmells, alluded to these sandhills when he said, “It is a
sträange thing, wi’ all yon sand nobbut häfe a mile off, that we cant hav
nowt but this mucky owd cläy hereabouts: not fit for owt.” But the Romans
found the clay very useful for making their great embankment along the
coast.
_Ingoldmells_ church, though good, is not so fine as Addlethorpe; but
it has a very interesting little brass, dated 1520, to “William Palmer
wyth ye stylt,” a very rare instance of an infirmity being alluded to on
a brass. The brass shows a crutched stick at his side. The porch has a
quatrefoil opening on either side, and a niche; and a curious apse-like
line of stones in the brick paving goes round all but the east side
of the fine front. Round the base of the churchyard cross is a later
inscription cut in 1600, J. O. Clerk. “Christus solus mihi salus,” and
figures run round three sides of the base, beginning on the north 1, 2,
3; and on the east 4, 5, 6; none on the south, but on the west 5, 6,
7, 8, 9, at the corner 10; and again on the north, 11, 12. Doubtless
it was a form of sundial, the cross shaft throwing its shadow in the
direction of the figures. Of the four bells one has fallen and lies on
the belfry floor. One has on it, according to Oldfield, “Wainfleet and
the Wapentake of Candleshoe, 1829,” “Catarina vocata sum rosa _pulsata_
mundi” (I am called Catherine, the beaten rose of the world); and on
another is the rhyme—
“John Barns churchwarden being then alive
Caused us to be cast 1705:”
At Partney a bell has the same Catarina legend, but with _dulcata_ (=
sweet) instead of _pulsata_. S and C are often interchanged, and I think
the ‘p’ is really a ‘d’ upside down on the Ingoldmells bell, especially
as the bell is of about the same date and was also cast by the same
man—Penn of Peterborough. I must admit, however, that _pulsata_ on a bell
with a clapper has something to be said for it; still, _dulcata_ (sweet)
is the obviously proper epithet for rose.
[Illustration: _The Roman Bank at Winthorpe._]
[Sidenote: THE SEA BANKS]
[Sidenote: RICH OAK CARVING]
From this church the road runs to the sea bank near Chapel, and gets
quite close to it. You can walk up the sandy path amongst the tall
sand-grass and the grey-leaved buckthorn, set with sharp thorns and a
profusion of lovely orange berries, till from the top you look over to
the long brown sands and the gleaming shore, where a retiring tide is
tumbling the cream-coloured breakers of a brown sea. Returning to the
road we go for some distance along the old Roman bank, which we leave
before reaching Skegness in order to get to _Winthorpe_ (_St. Mary_).
This Decorated church was restored in 1881 by the untiring energy of
“Annie Walls of Boothby,” but not so as to spoil its old woodwork, which
is remarkably fine. In the body of the church all the seats have their
old carved fifteenth century bench ends, and in the chancel are four
elaborately carved stall-ends. In one of these, amidst a mass of foliage,
St. Hubert is represented kneeling, as in Albert Dürer’s picture, before
a stag who has a crucifix between his antlers, from which the Devil, who
appears just behind him, in human shape but horned, is turning away. The
poppyhead above this panel is exquisitely carved with oak leaves and
acorns, and little birds, with manikins climbing after them. The old
roof, with the rood-light pulley-block visible on one of the tie-beams,
still remains, and the rood screen, too, though its doors have been
foolishly transferred to another screen at the west end, and ought to be
put back in their place; and at the end of each aisle, as at Addlethorpe,
are good parclose screens. Within one of these, the roof of the north
aisle has a painted pattern on the rafters and good carved bosses once
painted and gilt.
The seventeen steps to the rood loft are all there, also an aumbrey; and
we are told that one of the chantries was founded and endowed by Walter
De Friskney, 1316, and dedicated to St. James.
In the south wall of the tower is a singular fireplace, originally used
for baking the wafers.
In the north chantry is an altar slab with three consecration crosses
on it, and a sepulchral slab to “Ricardus Arglys (Argles?), Presbyter,
De Bynington” (near Boston) who died on the 20th of November, 1497; and
there are, in the nave, brasses to Richard Barowe with his wife Batarick
and their three children, 1505, and to Robert Palmer, 1515, doubtless a
relative of “W. Palmer with ye stylt” in Ingoldmells.
The inscription on the former is “Richard Barowe sumtyme marchant of
the stapyll of Calys, and Batarick his wyfe, the which Richard decissyd
the XX day of Apryle the yere of owre Lord A.MCCCCC and fyve, on whose
soullys Ihu̅ have mercy Amen for charitie.”
The Barrows were an old and notable family, one of them was Master of
the Rolls and Keeper of the Great Seal, 1485. They were long settled at
Winthorpe, and in 1670 Isaac Barrow was Bishop of St. Asaph, and his
nephew was well known to history as the Master of Trinity, 1672-1677, and
a celebrated divine.
[Sidenote: WINTHORPE]
One of Robert Palmer’s descendants, Elizabeth of Winthorpe, married
George Sharpe, who was Archbishop of York in 1676, so Winthorpe furnished
a bishop and an archbishop’s wife in the same decade.
William Palmer was apparently part donor of the south porch of Winthorpe,
which is very like those at Addlethorpe and Hogsthorpe, having a gabled
and crocketed parapet carved with graceful flowing foliage; and on the
two stones, lettered in Early English as at Hogsthorpe, are the lines:—
Robert Lungnay and Wyll’ P
alm’: thay payd for thys
God in hys mercy
bryng them to his blys.
Over the east gable of the nave is a sanctus bell-cot, and in the tower
are four good bells, three of which are thus inscribed:—
1. 1604 I sweetly tolling do men call
to taste of meat that feeds the soul.
2. Jesus be our speed.
3. Antonius monet ut Campana bene sonet.
In the west of the south aisle is the well-carved head of the churchyard
cross, of which, as usual, only half of the shaft remains. On the head is
a crucifixion, and on the other side the Virgin and Child. This head was
found in 1910 a mile and a quarter from the church. It closely resembles
that still standing intact at Somersby.
Opposite, in the west end of the north aisle, are two bases of columns
belonging to a former church of the thirteenth century, which church is
first mentioned in the donation of it by William de Kyme to the abbey of
Bardney, 1256.
The registers of the church begin in 1551.
From the foregoing it will be seen how extremely interesting these Marsh
churches are, and these four are not the only ones in this part of the
Marsh, _Croft_ and _Burgh_ being both within three or four miles of
_Winthorpe_. _Theddlethorpe_, north of these, is a finer building, as is
_Burgh-le-Marsh_; but I doubt if any other church has such a wealth of
old carved woodwork as Addlethorpe or Winthorpe. There is, cut on the
south-east angle of Winthorpe tower, a deep horizontal line with the
letters “H.W. 1837.” This indicates the level of high-water mark on the
other side of the sea bank, and as the mark on the tower is eight feet
nine inches from the ground, though the 1837 tide was an exceptionally
high one, it gives some idea of what this part of the Marsh must at times
have been in the days before the Romans made their great embankment. A
plan for improving the drainage of the land at Winthorpe was made as
early as 1367, and a rate was exacted of 1_s._ an acre.
[Sidenote: SKEGNESS HOUSE]
_Skegness_, now, next to Cleethorpes, the best known and most frequented
by excursion “trippers” of all the east coast places, used to be fifty
years ago only a little settlement of fishermen who lived in cabins built
on the strip of ground between the road and the ditches on each side. A
lifeboat shed and an old sea-boat set up on its gunwale for a shelter,
with a seat in it, and a flagstaff close by, used chiefly for signalling
to a collier to come in, were on the sea bank. Behind it was an hotel,
and one thatched house just inside the Roman bank, built by Mr. Edward
Walls about 1780. This was cleverly contrived so that not an inch of
space was wasted anywhere. It was only one room thick, so that from the
same room you could see the sun rise over the sea and set over the Marsh.
It was here that Tennyson saw those “wide-winged sunsets of the misty
marsh” that he speaks of in “The Last Tournament,” and took delight in
their marvellous colouring.
The house rose up from the level behind and below the bank, and the back
door was on the ground floor, with a porch and hinged leaves to shut out
the terrific wind from N. and E. or N. and W. as required, but on the
sea front, access was obtained by a removable plank bridge from the bank
top which landed you on the first floor. Here was the summer home of all
our family—a children’s paradise—when you ran straight out bare-foot on
to the sandy bank and so across the beautiful hard sands and through the
salt-water creeks down to the sea. This at high water was close at hand
with tumbling waves and seething waters, but at low tide, far as eye
could reach was nothing but sand, with the fisherman’s pony and cart, and
his donkey and boy at the other end of the shrimp net, moving slowly
like specks in the distance along the edge of the far-retreating sea.
This enchanting desolation is now the trippers’ play ground, with stalls
and donkeys and swings and sham niggers and a pier and lines of shops.
It must be admitted that it has all its old health-giving breezes, and
also a fine garden and a cricket field and golf links of the very best. A
new line from Lincoln has just been opened (July 1st, 1913), which runs
through Coningsby, New Bolingbroke and Stickney, to join the old loop
line between Eastville and Steeping, and for a shilling fare will bring
thousands from Lincoln, Sheffield and Retford, to have a happy day of
nine hours at what the natives call “Skegsnest.”
We have seen that the Romans had a bank all along this coast to keep
out the sea, and besides their five roads from Lincoln, one of which
went to Horncastle, they had a road from Horncastle to Wainfleet; and a
road, part of which we have noticed, from Ulceby to Burgh and Skegness.
Skegness lies midway between Ingoldmells, which is the most easterly
point of the county, and _Gibraltar Point_, from which the coast sweeps
inland and forms the northern shore of the Wash. Across, on the further
side of this, was the Roman camp at Brancaster (Branodunum), and here
at Skegness there seems to have been a Roman fort which has now been
swallowed up by the sea.
[Sidenote: OLD POTTERIES]
Near Ingoldmells, about fifty years ago, the sea, at low water, laid bare
some Roman potteries, so called, from which the Rev. Edward Elmhirst got
several specimens of what were called “thumb bricks.” These were just
bits of clay the size of sausages, but twice as thick, some as much as
two and a half inches thick and four inches high, which had been squeezed
in the hand, the impress of the fingers and thumb being plainly visible;
the extremities, being more than the hand could take, were rather bigger
than the middle. They were flat enough at each end to stand, and had
doubtless been used to place the pottery on when being burnt in the kiln.
It is more than probable that these potteries were pre-Roman. They are
about a quarter of a mile south of the Ingoldmells outfall drain, and
half way between high and low-water mark. They are only exposed now and
then, and appear to be circular kilns about fifteen feet in diameter,
with walls two feet thick, and now only a foot high. The reason of their
existence is found in a bed of dark clay which underlies all this coast.
The only pot found has been a rough, hand-made jar with rolled edge and
marks of the stick or bone with which the outside had been scraped and
trimmed. Now, doubtless the Romans used the wheel. Moreover, these kilns
are far outside the Roman bank, and not likely, therefore, to be for
Roman use. Tree roots are found in the walls and inside the circle of the
kilns, of the same sort as those of which at one time a perfect forest
existed, the stumps of which are sometimes visible at low tide. At the
time the Romans made their sea bank the sea must have come right over
this forest, so that we may perhaps say that those thumb-bricks bear the
impress of the fingers of the earliest inhabitants of Britain, and are
therefore of extraordinary interest.
On the eastern side of South Lindsey the running out of the roads, from
Burgh and Wainfleet, to the coast always seemed to point to the existence
of some Roman terminus near Skegness. Some years after he had noted this
as probable, the Rev. E. H. R. Tatham, who has made a study of Roman
roads in Lincolnshire, discovered that in the court rolls of the manor of
Ingoldmells, the mention is made of a piece of land called indifferently
in a document dated 1345, “Chesterland,” or “Castelland”; and again
in 1422, four acres of land in “Chesterland” are mentioned as being
surrendered by one William Skalflete (Court Rolls, p. 248), this land
is never mentioned again, and the presumption is that it was swallowed
by the sea. And in 1540 Leland mentions a statement made to him, that
Skegness once had a haven town with a “castle,” but that these had been
“clene consumed and eaten up with the se.”
[Sidenote: ROMAN CASTRUM]
These terms “Chester” and “caster” point to a Roman fort or “castrum,”
and the fact that the names “Chesterland” and “Castelland” exist in
medieval documents dealing with the land in the immediate neighbourhood
seems to go a long way towards confirming Mr. Tatham’s conjecture of
the existence of a Roman fort near Skegness, over which the sea has now
encroached.
[Sidenote: AN EARLY BRASS]
[Sidenote: CROFT]
From Skegness we will now turn inland, and after about four miles reach
_Croft_ (All Saints) by a road which keeps turning at right angles
and only by slow degrees brings a traveller perceptibly nearer to the
clump of big, shady trees which hide the church, parsonage and school.
Large trees grow in all parts of the forlorn churchyard, and the church
when opened has a musty, charnel-house smell, but one soon forgets
that in amazement at the fine and spacious fourteenth century nave and
clerestory, its grand tower and its large and lofty fifteenth century
Perpendicular chancel and aisles. The wide ten-foot passage up the nave
between the old poppy-head seats fitly corresponds to the large open
space round the font, which rises from an octagonal stone platform as big
as that of a market cross. There is a quantity of old woodwork besides
the seats. A good rood-screen—though like all the others, minus its
coved top and rood-loft—shows traces yet of its ancient colouring; birds
and beasts of various kinds are carved both as crockets above and also
in relief on the panels below, and two good chantry screens fill the
eastern ends of the aisles. A very fine Jacobean pulpit and tester was
put up by Dr. Worship, the vicar from 1599 to 1625, in memory of his wife
Agnes, whom he describes in a brass on her tomb, dated 1615, as “a woman
matchless both for wisdom and godlyness.” The two greatest treasures in
brass are the extremely fine eagle lectern, its base supported by three
small lions, which was found in the moat of the old Hall, the seat of the
Browne family, flung there probably for safety and then forgotten; and a
notable half-effigy, head and arms only, of a knight in banded mail, with
a tunic over the hauberk, and hands joined in prayer. The legend round
him is in Norman French, but his name is lost; the date is said to be
1300, so that this is, next to that at Buslingthorpe, the earliest brass
in the county.
The Browne family are perpetuated in the chancel, where on the north wall
are two similar monuments of kneeling figures facing each other, both
erected about 1630. The first is to Valentine Browne, a man with a very
aquiline nose, and his wife Elizabeth (Monson), with effigies in relief
of their fifteen children. He is described as “Treasurer and Vittleter
of Barwick, and Dyed Treasurer of Ireland.” Barwick is “The March town
of Berwick-on-Tweed.” The tomb was erected _c._ 1600 by his second son
John who lived at Croft, and whose effigy is on the other tomb along with
his wife Cicely (Kirkman), of whom we are told “she lived with him but
20 weeks and dye without issue ætatis 21 Ano Domini 1614,” just a year
before Agnes Worship, the vicar’s wife. Another monument, a marble slab
eighteen inches square, has this inscription:—
“Here lyeth Willyam Bonde Gentleman, whoe dyed An̅o Dom̅ 1559 leaving two
sonnes, Nicolas Docter in Divinitie, and George Docter in physicke, the
elder sonne, who dyed the ____ et etatis ____ and here is buryed. THE
which in remembrance of his most kynd father haith erected this lytle
moniment”
Bondus eram Doctor Medicus nunc vermibus esca,
Corpus terra tegit, spiritus astra petit,
Ardua scrutando, cura, morbis, senioque
Vita Molesta fuit: Mors mihi grata quies.
The guide-books say that this was erected by Nicolas, D.D., who
afterwards became president of Magdalen College, Oxford. But clearly
it was by George the M.D., and he left spaces for his own death date,
which were never filled; perhaps he is not buried at Croft, but he must
have been near his end when he wrote the Latin lines which are all about
himself, and may be thus translated—
I was Bond a Physician, now I am food for worms,
The earth covers my body, my spirit seeks the stars,
From difficult studies, anxiety, diseases and old age
Life was a burden; death is a welcome rest to me.
There is a note in the church accounts to the effect that the old bell
was (re-)cast at Peterborough by Henry Penn in 1706 and inscribed
“prepare to die.”
This church is, for spaciousness and for the amount of good old woodwork,
and for its monuments, one of the very best. As we leave it we notice
carved on the door, “God save the King 1633.”
I believe that Bishop Hugh-de-Wells who was appointed Bishop of Lincoln
in 1209, but who, mistrusting King John, did not take up the work of his
See till 1218, when John was dead, was a native of Croft.
The parish books of _Croft_ show “The dues and duties belonginge and
appertaininge unto the office of the clarkes of Crofte. A.D. 1626.”
He collected the Easter gratuities of the neighbours in the parish; he
got twenty shillings a year for looking after the clock, “to be paid by
the churchwards.”
“For skowringe and furbishinge the eagle or ‘brazen lectorie’
2/6 by the yeare. Sixpence for ‘evry marriadge,’ fourpence ‘for
the passinge bell ringeinge for every inhabitant &c. that are
deceased.”
And “Item the privilege of makeinge the graves for the deceased
before any other yf he will take the paines and canne doe yt.”
[Sidenote: THE PARISH CLERK]
Evidently the clerks were old men and not always capable of wielding the
spade and pick; and now comes an entry which lets one into the secret
of why the registers were often so ill-kept. Instead of the entries
being made by the parson at the time, the clerk put them down “from time
to time,” and they were copied from his notes once a year. Under this
system, of course, there were both mistakes and omissions, often for many
months and even years together.
This is the entry:—
“Itm for the Register keepinge from tyme to tyme of all
Christnings Marriadges and burialles from Ladyday to Ladyday
until they be ingrossed: two shillings and sixpence a year.”
Possibly “from tyme to tyme” may mean on each occasion, but it sounds
precarious.
His fixed salary, besides fees, was, in 1773, thirty shillings and two
strikes (—4 bushels) of corn out of the two quarters (—sixteen bushels)
which was given from the glebe every Easter to the poor by the parson.
The Sexton’s wages at the same date were given thus:—
as Sexton 2. 10. 0.
for dogs wipping 0. 7. 6.
Dressing church round 0. 2. 0.
For oyle 0. 2. 4.
For ringing the bell at 8 and 4 1. 0. 0.
-------------
04. 01. 10.
The “Parish Clerk” in Lincolnshire was, as a rule, a rougher-looking
individual than he appears in Gainsborough’s splendid picture in the
National Gallery, but he was generally an original character, both in
word and deed. I heard of one in Ireland who announced, “There will
be no sarmon this afternoon as the Bishop has been providentially
prevented from praching,” and many a quaint saying is recorded of
those Lincolnshire clerks of the last century. Boys were their special
aversion. In the old days at Spilsby the clerk kept a stick, and during
the sermon would go down to the west end of the building, and the sound
of his weapon on the boys’ heads quite waked up the slumberers in the
seats nearer the pulpit. One hears of a clerk putting a stop to what he
considered an unnecessary afternoon service and saying to the clergyman,
“We ha’en’t no call to hev sarvice just for you and me, sir.” “Oh, but I
thought I saw some people coming in.” “Just a parcel of boys, sir; but I
soon started they.” But it is not the clerks only who show an intelligent
interest in the parson and the services, though from generations of
somewhat slovenly performance, the churchgoers had difficulty at first
in appreciating the high-church ritual which here and there they saw for
the first time. One kindly old woman on seeing in one of the Fen churches
some unexpected genuflexions and bows, said afterwards, “I _was_ sorry
for poor Mr. C., he was that bad of his inside that he couldn’t howd
hissen up.” And another I knew of who, when asked how they got on with
the new ritualistic clergyman, and whether he hadn’t introduced some new
methods, replied, “Oh, yis, he antics a bit; but we looves him soä we
antics along wi’ him.”
[Sidenote: BURGH-LE-MARSH]
From Croft we turn north to _Burgh-le-Marsh_ (SS. Peter and Paul) whose
fine lofty tower, with its grand peal of eight bells, stands on the
extreme edge of the Wold and overlooks the marsh, and, like “Boston
Stump,” is visible far out to sea, The exterior is very fine, and the
church, like Croft, has retained its chancel, so ruthlessly destroyed
in the case of Addlethorpe and Ingoldmells. The nave is wide and lofty,
but the pillars poor. It is all Perpendicular, and has much interesting
screen work which has been a good deal pulled about, even as late as
1865, the year in which similar destruction was wrought at Ingoldmells.
The rood screen now stands across the tower arch, and the chancel screen
is a patchwork. There are two porches, north and south, the latter of
brick, a good pulpit and a canopied font-cover which opens with double
doors, dated 1623. On the north aisle wall is a plain brass plate with
the following dialogue in Latin hexameters:—
Quis jacet hic? Leonardus Palmerus Generosus.
Quae conjux dilecta fuit? Catherina. Quis haeres?
Christopherus (cui nupta Anna est). Quis filius alter?
Robertus. Gnatae quot erant? Tres, Elizabetha
Ac Maria, ac Helena. An superant? Superant. Ubi mens est
Defuncti? Rogitas. Dubio procul astra petivit.
obiit Die Martis octavo
Anno Domi 1610.
ætatis suæ 70.
Who lies here? Leonard Palmer, Gentleman.
Who was his beloved wife? Catherine. Who his heir?
Christopher (whose wife was Anna). Who was his second son?
Robert. How many daughters were there? Three, Elizabeth
and Mary and Helen. Are they living? Yes. Where is the spirit
of the departed? You ask. Doubtless it has sought the stars.
He died Mar. 8, 1610, aged 70.
[Sidenote: BRATOFT]
At Burgh the straight road from Skegness to Gunby turns to the left to
pass through _Bratoft_. This church with picturesque ivy-clad tower has a
good font, a chancel and parclose screens, and the rood-loft doorway. It
has been well restored in memory of C. Massingberd, Squire of Gunby, and
contains a very curious painting on wood which now hangs in the tower;
it was once over the chancel arch, and by its irregular shape it is
clear that it was originally made to fit elsewhere. It is signed Robert
Stephenson. The Armada is shown as a red dragon, between four points of
land marked England, Scotland, Ireland and France with the following
lines:—
Spaine’s proud Armado with great strength and power
Great Britain’s state came gapeing to devour,
This dragon’s guts, like Pharoa’s scattered hoast
Lay splitt and drowned upon the Irish coast.
For of eight score save too ships sent from Spaine
But twenty-five scarce sound returned again non Nobis Domine.
Bratoft Hall, the residence of the Bratofts and Massingberds, was built
in a square moated enclosure of two acres, which stood in a deer park of
two hundred acres. It was taken down in 1698, and the Hall at Gunby built
about the same time. The bridge over the moat of two brick arches was
standing in 1830 intact.
[Sidenote: GUNBY]
The twisting byeways lead from here back into the Skegness, Burgh, and
Spilsby road. The Hall at _Gunby_[22] is a fine brick mansion, the home
of the Massingberds. A pretty little church stands in the park, in which
are two very valuable brasses of the Massingberd family, one dated 1405,
of a knight, Sir Thomas, in camail and pointed Bascinet, and his lady
Johanna, in a tight dress and mantle. The other of William Lodyngton,
Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, in his judicial robes, 1419. The
Massingberd brass has had its incised inscription beaten out, and, with
a new inscription in raised letters, has been made to serve for another
Thomas and Johanna Massingberd in 1552, the figures, costumed as in
1400, serving for their parsimonious descendants of 150 years later. A
precisely similar case of appropriation by two Dallisons with dates 1400
and 1546 and 1549, may be seen in Laughton church near Gainsborough; and
again on a stone slab of the Watson family in Lyddington, Rutland. About
1800 Elizabeth Massingberd, sole heiress of Gunby, married her neighbour,
Peregrine Langton, son of Bennet Langton, the friend of Dr. Johnson, who
on marriage took the name of Massingberd. Their grandson was the Algernon
Massingberd, born 1828, who left England in 1852, and since June, 1855,
was never again heard of. In 1862 his uncle, Charles Langton Massingberd,
took possession of the estate.
From Gunby various small by-roads lead literally in all directions; you
can take your choice of eight within half a mile of the park gates, and
Burgh station, on the Boston and Grimsby line, is only just outside the
boundary.
CHAPTER XXIX
CHURCHES IN SOUTH LINDSEY
Spilsby to Wainfleet—Little
Steeping—Tomas-de-Reding—Monksthorpe—The Baptists—Thomas
Grantham—Firsby—Thorpe—Churchwarden’s Book—The
“Dyxonary”—Wainfleet—William of Waynflete—Halton Holgate—Sire
Walter Bec—Village Carpentry.
The record of the churches in the marsh land of the South Lindsey
division would not be complete without some mention of Wainfleet. The
Somersby brook, which, winding “with many a curve” through Partney
and Halton, becomes at last “the Steeping river,” is thence cut into
a straight canal as far as Wainfleet, and then, resuming its proper
river-character, goes out through the flats at Wainfleet Haven, near that
positive end of the world, “Gibraltar Point.”
_Little Steeping_ has just undergone a most satisfactory restoration in
memory of its once rector, Bishop Steere, who succeeded Bishop Tozer of
Burgh-le-Marsh as the third missionary bishop in Central Africa, and
there did a great work as a missionary, and also built the first Central
African cathedral in what had previously been the greatest slave market
of the world—Zanzibar. The restorers have had a most interesting find
this year (1912), for the chancel step, when taken up, proved to be the
back of a fine recumbent effigy of a fourteenth century rector. Doubtless
the monument was taken from the arched recess in the north wall of the
chancel and thus hidden to save it from destruction in the sixteenth or
seventeenth century. The masons who fitted it into its new bed had no
scruple in knocking off the inscribed moulding on one side, and a bit of
the carved stone got broken off and was found in the rectory garden.
[Sidenote: LITTLE STEEPING]
The figure represents a robed priest, with feet curiously clothed in what
look like socks. The face is good and in excellent preservation. The
work was probably local, for the ear is of enormous size. The mutilated
inscription read originally: “Tomas de Red_ing priez qe Dieu pour sa
grace_ de sa alme eyt merci.” The letters in italics are missing. Thomas
de Reding was presented to Little Steeping in 1328. There is a very good
font, and the south porch outer arch is remarkable for the very unusual
depth of its hollowed moulding on both of the outer porch pilasters. The
canopied work over the head of the inner doorway is good, but quite of a
different character, and the wide projection of the north arcade capitals
is noticeable. A stone on the outer wall marked “1638 W P & R G” gives
the date of a destructive restoration, when tomb slabs were cut up for
window-sills and some ruthless patchwork put in on the north side of
both aisle and chancel. A good rood screen with canopy has been put in,
old work being used where possible, and a new churchyard cross erected
on the old base, with figures of St. Andrew and the Crucifixion, under a
canopy like that at Somersby. The octagonal font in rich yellow stone has
figures difficult to make out, and a small niche over the north-east pier
of the nave arcade is to be noted; probably it contained some relic or
image. The stone brackets for the rood loft remain, but there is no trace
left of the staircase. The seats and pulpit of dark stained deal are
interesting, as they were all made by Bishop Steere himself. The tower is
patched with the old two-inch bricks, which always look well, and with
some of the larger modern kind, which seldom do.
Our best way now is to return to the Spilsby-and-Firsby road at _Great
Steeping_, which will take us past _Irby_ to _Thorpe-St.-Peter_ and
_Wainfleet_.
[Sidenote: THE BAPTISTS]
The hamlet of _Monksthorpe_ in Great Steeping parish indicates by its
name the fact that Bardney Abbey had an estate here. No trace now remains
of the manor built by Robert de Waynflete, when he retired in 1317 from
the abbey and had the proceeds of the estates in Steeping and Firsby and
two cells in Partney and Skendleby assigned to him for the maintenance
and clothing of himself and family. But part of the moat is visible,
and one may see here in a chapel enclosure a baptist’s pool bricked
and railed round on three sides with one end open and sloping to the
water, for the Baptists walked into the pool and did not believe in the
efficacy of infant baptism. This was doubtless one of the places which
was ministered to by the famous leader of the “General Baptist Church”
who suffered such shameful and repeated persecution in the days of
Cromwell and Charles II., Thomas Grantham, for he was a native of Halton,
where the name still exists, and throughout a long life showed himself
a man of a truly religious and eminently courageous heart, of whom his
native village may well be proud. He died in 1692, aged seventy-eight, at
Norwich, and was buried inside the church of St. Stephen, as a memorial
to him set up therein states, “to prevent the indecencies threatened to
his corpse,” such as, we read on a tombstone in Croft churchyard, had
been perpetrated on the body of his friend and fellow-Baptist, Robert
Shalders, whose body was disinterred on the very day of his funeral by
inhabitants of Croft, and dragged on a sledge and left at his own gates.
Doubtless the clergyman was privy to this, so hot was the feeling for
religious persecution in those days, and took credit to himself for it,
for in the parish book of Croft we may read as follows:—
“Dec 20th, 1663. These persons here underwritten, viz. Roger
Faune, Gent., Robert Shalders, Anne Montgomerie, Cicilie
Barker, Alice Egger, were excommunicated in the parish church
of Croft the day and year above written,
“per me R. Clarke Curate Ibid
Philip Neave ⎫
John Wells ⎭ Churchwardens.”
[Sidenote: THORPE]
[Sidenote: CHURCHWARDEN’S BOOK]
Two miles east of Steeping a good road to the right goes to _Firsby_,
where is a small church built by Mr. G. E. Street to show how an entirely
satisfactory building adapted to the needs of quite a small parish could
be put up at a very small cost. The whole church cost under £1,000,
and was built in less than six months, and opened November 5, 1857. In
_Thorpe_ we find a graceful font, a well-carved Perpendicular screen and
a good Jacobean pulpit. The place belonged after the Conquest to the Kyme
family. The Thorpe churchwardens’ book commences in 1545, and in 1546
contains such items as these about the rood light and the light in the
Easter Sepulchre:
“Anᵒ regᵒ regˢ Hen. VIII, xxxvij.
“By thys dothe ytt appr what Symon Wylly̅son & Roger
Hopster hath payᵈ & layd for the cherche cocernyng the
rode lyght & ye Sepulture lyght in ye xxxvj yere of ye rene
off ower Soffera̅t lorde king He̅r̅y ye viij.
fyrst payd by yᵉ hands off yᵉ forsayd Rogʳ for
one powd waxe makyng and a half agenst
lent j½d
Item payd to Gu̅rwycke Wyffe for brede and
ale to ye waxe makyng for yᵉ supulture lyght xiiijd
Item payd for j powde waxe maykyng for the
rode lyght aga̅s̅t estʳ jd
Item payd to yᵉ clark for kepping off yᵉ sepulture
lyght ijd.”
In the reign of Edward VI the churchwardens seem to have had a jumble
sale of all the odds and ends in the church, which they called the
“offalment” or rubbish.
“Anᵒ Reg E. VIᵗⁱ Vᵗᵒ.
“Howffulment in the church soulde & delyvered by ye hands of
John Greene & Robert Emme cherche masters.”
Amongst the various items of metal and woodwork, vestments, chests,
books, &c., we have:—
“Item off John Wolbe yᵉ elder for an Albe and an old
pantyd cloth iiijˢ
Item to John Wolbe all yᵉ boks in yᵉ cherche ijˢ iiijᵈ
Item sowlde to Wᵐ Keele ij altar clothes, a robe vˢ
Item sowlde to Sir John Westmels curate, ij robes iiijˢ
Item Sowlde Wᵐ Sawer ij corporaxs[23] wᵗ otre ofelment iijˢ vijiᵈ”
They were probably restoring their church, for we have two years later:—
“Itᵐ pᵈ for a wayn and iiij beasts for sand to the cherche viijᵈ”
This was in the first and second year of Queen Mary, and they were then
busy putting back what they had sold in Edward’s reign, making side
altars, etc., hence we find:—
“Itᵐ pᵈ for yᵉ clothe yᵉ roode was paynted on xiiijᵈ
Itᵐ pᵈ for paentyng off the roode ijˢ viijᵈ
Itᵐ pᵈ to yᵉ man that mayd the syd aulters in wageys xijᵈ
Itᵐ pᵈ to Thomas hymlyn Wyffe for meat & dryncke too them
that mayd the saide aulters ijˢ viijᵈ
Itᵐ pᵈ to yᵉ man that makg. the Roode in prte of paementt xijᵈ”
Other interesting items are—
“Itᵐ payd to yᵉ players off ca̅dylmesse day viijᵈ
Itᵐ payd in yᵉ same year to yᵉ players whytche playd off yᵉ
Sonday next after Sant Mathyes day vjᵈ”
One might make quite an amusing “story of a dictionary” from the various
entries in the Thorpe churchwardens’ book about an Elliott’s Dictionary
which, in the middle of the sixteenth century the vicar bequeathed to
his successors _in perpetuo_. It is described as “one boke called a
dyxonary,” and evidently exercised both vicar and wardens a good deal
until one vicar bethought him of the device of “delivering” it to the
parish to be kept along with various volumes of homilies, and expositions
and the paraphrases of Erasmus.
But it is time to leave Thorpe; and two miles will bring us to
_Wainfleet_ which, as its name declares, though now a couple of miles
from the sea, was once a haven for sea-going ships, for “Fleet” means
a navigable creek. This little place gave its name in the fifteenth
century to a great man, William of Wainfleet, or Waynflete, Headmaster
of Winchester, and first headmaster and Provost of Eton, successor to
Cardinal Beaufort as Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor of England
under Henry VI. He was a great builder, for he possibly planned, and
certainly completed, Tattershall Castle, built Tattershall church, and
founded Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1457, the first college to admit
commoners, a wise and far-seeing innovation of Waynflete’s; and in his
native town erected in 1484 the Magdalen College School, a fine brick
building seventy-six feet by twenty-six with its gateway flanked by
polygonal towers recalling the entrance to Eton College. In the south
tower is a remarkable staircase, and in the north a bell.
[Sidenote: WAINFLEET]
His adoption of St. Mary Magdalen as the patron of his school at
Wainfleet and his college at Oxford may have originated in his having
been appointed by Cardinal Beaufort to the mastership and chantry of St.
Mary Magdalen hospital on Magdalen Down outside Winchester.
The bishop lived to the reign of Richard III., and died in 1486. He
erected a monument to his father, Richard Patten. The son is called
either Patten or Barbour, for he bore both names indifferently, though he
soon discarded them both for the name of his birthplace, as was commonly
done from the eleventh to the sixteenth century; his brother also taking
the name of Waynflete. This monument was in the original church of All
Saints, for the second church of St. Thomas had long been destroyed. But
All Saints’ church, built cruciform and with a light wooden spire on
account of the soft nature of the soil on which it stood, was destined to
the same fate, for the foolish inhabitants having, in 1718, put a heavy
brick tower to it, with five bells in it, the weight brought a great part
of the building to ruin. Subsequently it was pulled down, and the present
church was set up at some distance from the old site in 1820, when the
inhabitants added vandalism to their folly and wantonly demolished this
fine tomb. The broken bits were collected and placed in the Magdalen
School, and later were, by the intervention of the rector of Halton
Holgate, Rev. T. H. Rawnsley, obtained for the President and Fellows of
the Bishop’s College at Oxford, and are now on the north side of the
altar in the College Chapel. The figure has its feet resting on a bank of
flowers and its head on a cushion and pillow supported by his two sons,
John the Monk and William the Bishop. The face of the latter resembles
the father, but is not so broad or so old as that of John. It is to be
noted that Lincolnshire has produced two Bishops of Winchester, each of
them the founder of a college at Oxford—Bishop Fox and Bishop Waynflete.
The town is older than Boston and existed in Roman days, possibly under
the name of Vannona, and apparently a Roman road ran from Doncaster to
Wainfleet, passing through Horncastle and Lusby. Certainly “Salters
road,” which crosses the East Fen, was a Roman road, and the Romans made
a good deal of salt from the sea-water in the immediate neighbourhood of
Wainfleet. In the charter rolls of Bardney Abbey (_temp._ Henry III.) we
read that Matthew, son of Milo de Wenflet, paid annually “to God, Saint
Oswald and the Monks of Bardney 4 shillings and eighteen sextaires of
salt by the old measure” for the land he held in the village of Friskney.
Later we find that (_temp._ Edward II.) Hugh le Despencer held lands in
Wainfleet in 1327, and we know that a Robert le Despencer did so in Burgh
in the time of Edward I. In the reign of Edward III. Wainfleet furnished
two ships and forty seamen for the invasion of Brittany.
_Wainfleet St. Mary’s_ lies one and a half miles to the south. The church
is a massive structure with five arches on the north and four on the
south of the nave.
We have now completed the round of the Marsh churches, and in so doing,
on leaving Gunby, we struck into the Spilsby and Wainfleet road, just
where the Somersby brook, there called the Halton river, is crossed by
an iron bridge. This we did not cross, but keeping always to the left
bank we followed the stream to Wainfleet. We must now go back and cross
this iron bridge, and trace the road thence for four miles and a half
to Spilsby. This will take us on to the Wold. We shall only pass one
village, but this is one of infinite charm.
[Sidenote: HALTON HOLGATE]
[Sidenote: THE HOLLOW-GATE BRIDGE]
_Halton Holgate_ stands on the very edge of the Wold, where the
green-sand terminates, and looks far across the Fen to Boston. The name
of the village is always properly pronounced by the natives Halton
Hollygate, _i.e._, hollow gate or way; for the descending road has been
cut through the green-sand rock, and where the cutting is deepest a
pretty timber footbridge is thrown over it, leading from the rectory to
the churchyard. The garden lawn has, or had, two fine old mulberry trees.
These were once more common—for in the reign of James I. an order went
out for the planting of mulberry trees in all rectory gardens with a view
to the encouragement of the silk trade by the breeding and feeding of
silkworms, whose favourite diet is the mulberry leaf. From the garden,
“Boston stump” is visible eighteen miles to the south. The church is a
particularly handsome one with massive well-proportioned tower, and large
belfry windows, eight three-light clerestory windows on either side and a
fine south porch of Ancaster stone. The rest is built of the beautifully
tinted local green-sand, with quoins of harder Clipsham stone. Inside it
is spacious, with lofty octagonal pillars. It is seated throughout with
oak, and has several good old oak poppy-heads and some large modern ones
copied from Winthorpe and carved by a Halton carpenter. Here it is worth
notice that for the last hundred years Halton has never been without
wood-workers of unusual talent.
[Illustration: _Bridge over the Hollow-Gate._]
[Sidenote: HALTON CHURCH]
South of the chancel two tall blocked arcades, leading to a Lady chapel
long pulled down, were opened by the Rev. T. Sale, rector in 1894, who
had reseated the chancel and filled the east window with good stained
glass. The chapel, which now holds the organ, was rebuilt in memory of
the two previous rectors, Rev. T. H. Rawnsley (1825-1861) and R. D.
B. Rawnsley (1861-1882), and their wives Sophia Walls and Catharine
Franklin. The fine effigy of a Crusader, called Henry de Halton, had
been buried for safety and forgotten, like that of the priest at Little
Steeping, and the sepulchral slab with Lombardic lettering, of Sir Walter
Bec, of the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, is the oldest
monument in the neighbourhood. The inscription is: “Sire Walter Bec jist
ici de ki alme Dieu ait merci.” There is a fine peal of six bells, and a
“tingtang,” a thing very common in Lincolnshire, and reminiscent of the
pre-Reformation Sanctus bell.
We have so often seen, owing to the negligence of church authorities,
damp church walls, and wet streaming down from gutter or stack-pipe,
which is blocked with growing grass or sparrows’ nests, to the great
detriment of the building, that it is pleasant to record the useful
activity of the Halton churchwardens, of whom one has carved, and the
other put together, a fine oak screen, with the names and dates of all
the known rectors, churchwardens and clerks of the parish.
[Illustration: _Halton Church._]
In the north wall of the chancel is a priest’s door, which has always
been in constant use. It is a beautiful bit of Perpendicular work with
an exceptionally good hood-moulding and lovely carving of waved foliage
in the spandrels. These north side doors are sometimes called “Devils’
doors,” as they were not only to let the priest in but also to let the
Devil out, being left open at baptisms to let him fly out when the infant
renounces the Devil and all his works, and becomes the child of grace.
The idea that the north was the Devil’s side had possibly something to
do with the repugnance, hardly yet quite overcome, to a burial on that
side of the churchyard.
[Sidenote: LOCAL WORKMANSHIP]
An avenue of elms, planted by the Rev. T. H. Rawnsley about 1830,
starting from the “Church Wongs,”[24] leads past the tower at the west
to the Hollow-gate road, close to where a pit was dug by the roadside
to get the sandstone for repairing the tower; and to-day, as we pass
along to Spilsby, we shall see a wall of sandstone rock exposed on the
right of the road, and a lot of blocks cut out and hardening in the
air preparatory for use at Little Steeping, and we shall naturally be
reminded of the words of Isaiah, “Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn,
and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.”
We have said that the restoration of Halton Holgate church was carried
out by the Rev. T. H. Rawnsley about 1845, and it is remarkable that
it was done so extremely well; for at that particular time the art of
architectural restoration was almost at its lowest. As far as they went
there were no mistakes made by the restorers at Halton, and the carved
work for the seats was copied from the best models to be seen in any
Lincolnshire church, and executed under the eye of the rector and his
son, Drummond Rawnsley, by a Halton carpenter. That is just as it should
be, and just as it used to be, but it is not often possible of attainment
now.
Jesus College chapel at Cambridge underwent a much needed restoration at
the same bad period, _i.e._, in 1849, and here too, by the genius of the
architect, excellent work was done, some good old carving being preserved
and very cleverly matched with new work well executed, and by a very
curious coincidence, the shape of some of the poppy-heads and the plan
of the panel carving is almost identical with that which was executed at
Halton, after the Winthorpe pattern.
CHAPTER XXX
SPILSBY AND ITS BYWAYS
Spilsby Market-town—The Churches and Willoughby Chapel—The
Franklins—The Talk of the Market—Lincolnshire Stories and
Others—Byways—Old Bolingbroke—Harrington Church—The Copledike
Tombs—The Hall—Bag-Enderby—Remarkable Font—Somersby—The
Churchyard Cross—The Brook—Ashby Puerorum.
[Sidenote: SPILSBY CHURCH]
Spilsby is the head of a petty-sessional division in the parts of
Lindsey. The name is thought by some to be a corruption of Spellows-by,
to which the name of Spellows hill in the neighbourhood gives some
colour. The old gaol, built in 1825, had a really good classic portico
with four fluted columns and massive pediment. Most of the buildings
behind this imposing entrance were pulled down after fifty years, and
all that it leads to now is the Sessions House and police station. The
long market-place is interrupted in one place by a block of shops, and
in another by a mean-looking Corn Exchange; but at one end of it still
stands an elegant, restored market cross, and at the other a bronze
statue by Noble of Sir John Franklin, the most famous of Spilsby’s sons,
the discoverer of the “North West Passage.” His hand rests on an anchor,
and on the pedestal are the words: “They forged the last link with their
lives.” Just beyond the town a fine elm-tree avenue leads to Eresby, the
seat whence the Willoughby family take their title. In Domesday Book,
1086, Spilsby and Eresby are said to belong to the Bishop of Durham. His
tenant Pinco, or one of his sons, the Fitz Pincos, acquired it; and about
1166 a Pinco heiress married Walter Bec, whose grandson has a sepulchral
slab in Halton church, _c._ 1243. In 1295 a John, the son of Walter,
was created Baron Bec of Eresby, the younger brothers being Antony,
Bishop of Durham, and Thomas, who was consecrated Bishop of St. David’s
at Lincoln in 1280. Lord Bec died in 1302, in which year Sir William of
Willoughby (near Alford), who had married his daughter and heiress Alice,
obtained a charter for a market at Spilsby every Monday. Their son Robert
was the first Baron Willoughby De Eresby, who died in 1316. His son John
fought at Crécy 1346, and in 1348 founded the College of the Holy Trinity
at Spilsby, and the chantry which, when he and his successors in the
fourteenth and sixteenth centuries with their huge altar tombs filled
up the chancel of the old church, even blocking up the entire chancel
arch with the stone screen of the Bertie monument, became eventually the
chancel of the parish church. For the old church consisted of a nave and
chancel into which the west door opened direct; it had probably a narrow
north aisle, and certainly a large south aisle was added with the Trinity
chapel at the east end of it. This aisle and chapel are now the nave and
chancel of the church, which was restored in Ancaster stone in 1879, and
a new south aisle added, the tower alone remaining of green-sand with
lofty hard-stone pinnacles. In this the bells have just been re-hung,
in December, 1913. John, second Baron Willoughby (1348), also the third
(1372), who fought at Poictiers, and the fourth, with his second wife,
Lady Neville, at his side (1380), have huge altar tombs with effigies in
armour; he died 1389. A brass commemorates his third wife (1391), and
another fine one, said to be Lincolnshire work, the fifth baron and his
first wife (1410). Both these ladies being of the family of Lord Zouch.
The gap between the fifth and the tenth Lord Willoughby is accounted for
thus:—
[Sidenote: WILLOUGHBY D’ERESBY]
The sixth Lord was created Earl of Vendome and Beaumont and died 1451.
His second wife was Maud Stanhope, co-heiress of Lord Cromwell of
Tattershall. The seventh and eighth, best known by their other title
of Lord Welles, were both put to death for heading the Lincolnshire
rebellion against Edward IV., the father by an act of bad faith on the
king’s part, who had taken him, together with Dymoke the Champion, out of
the Sanctuary in Westminster; and the son because, in revenge, joining
Sir Thomas de la Launde, he had fought the Yorkists and been defeated
at the battle of Loose-coatfield near Stamford, 1470. The ninth lord
was William, who was descended from a younger son of the fifth Baron
Willoughby, since Richard Hastings, whom Joan, the sister and heiress of
the eighth Lord Welles, had married, left no issue. There is a monument
in Ashby church near Spilsby, though in a very fragmentary condition, to
William and also to Joan and Richard Hastings. William married Katherine
of Aragon’s maid-of-honour, Lady Mary Salines, for his second wife, and
by a will, dated Eresby 1526, desired to be buried and have a monument
erected to himself and his wife at Spilsby, but this was never done. The
stone screen with its supporting figures of a hermit, a crowned Saracen,
and a wild man, erect, set up in 1580, is in memory of his daughter and
heiress, Katherine Duchess of Suffolk, and her second husband, Richard
Bertie, her first husband being that Charles Brandon who obtained so huge
a share of the estates confiscated by Henry VIII. in Lincolnshire. They
lived at Grimsthorpe, on the west side of the county, which the king had
given to Katherine’s parents; and thenceforth that became the chief seat
of the Willoughby family, and the series of monuments is continued in
Edenham church. But there is one more monument, in what is now called the
Willoughby chapel at Spilsby. This is to a son of the duchess, Peregrine
Bertie, tenth Baron Willoughby; he died at Berwick in 1601, and was
buried at Spilsby as directed in his will; his daughter, Lady Watson,
died in 1610, and, as she wished to be buried near her father, Sir Lewis
Watson of Rockingham erected a monument to both father and daughter, the
latter reclining on her elbow, with the baby, which caused her death, in
a little square cot at her feet. Peregrine was so named because he was
born abroad, his parents having fled from the Marian persecutions. His
wife was the Lady Mary Vere who brought the office of chamberlain into
the Willoughby family. It was claimed by her son Robert, the eleventh
baron, who in 1630 was made Earl of Lindsey, and thus the barony became
merged in the earldom, the fourth earl being subsequently created Duke of
Ancaster.
Eresby Manor was burnt down in 1769, and only the moat and garden wall
and, at the end of the avenue, one tall brick-and-stone gate-pillar
surmounted by a stone vase remain. At the suppression of the college and
chantries the Grammar School was founded on the site of the college, just
to the north of the church, Robert Latham being the first master, in
1550.
At the south-west end of the church are three tablets to three remarkable
brothers born in Spilsby towards the end of the eighteenth century.
[Sidenote: THE FRANKLINS]
Major James Franklin, who made the first military survey of India, and
contributed a paper to the Geological Society in 1828, died in 1834. Sir
Willingham Franklin who, after a distinguished career at Westminster and
Oxford, died, with wife and daughter, of cholera, 1824, at Madras, where
he was judge of the Supreme Court. And Sir John Franklin, the famous
Arctic navigator, who fought at Trafalgar and Copenhagen, and died in
the Arctic regions on June 11, 1847, before the historic disaster had
overtaken the crews of the _Erebus_ and _Terror_. His statue stands in
his native town, and also in Hobart Town, where he lived for a time as
Governor of Tasmania, and is one of the two statues in London which
were set up by the nation. On his monument in Westminster Abbey are the
beautiful lines by his friend and neighbour, and relative by marriage,
Alfred Tennyson.
Not here! the white North has thy bones; and thou,
Heroic sailor-soul,
Art passing on thy happier Voyage now
Towards no earthly pole.
The other brother, Thomas Adams Franklin, raised the Spilsby and Burgh
battalion of volunteer infantry in 1801. Major Booth followed his good
example and raised a company at Wainfleet to resist the invasion by
Napoleon, and the men of the companies presented each of them with a
handsome silver cup. Five Franklin sisters married and settled in the
neighbourhood; and Catharine, the daughter of Sir Willingham, married
Drummond, the son of the Rev. T. H. Rawnsley, vicar of Spilsby. Thus
quite a clan was created, insomuch that forty cousins have been counted
at one Spilsby ball. Drummond succeeded his father as rector of Halton,
and very appropriately preached the last sermon in the old church at
Spilsby at the closing service previous to its restoration, speaking from
the pulpit which his father had occupied from 1813 to 1825. His sermon,
a very fine one, called “The Last Time,” was from 1 St. John ii. 18, and
was delivered on Trinity Sunday, 1878.
[Sidenote: LINCOLNSHIRE STORIES]
The time to visit Spilsby is on market day, when, round the butter cross,
besides eggs, butter and poultry, pottery is displayed “on the stones,”
stalls are set up where one may buy plants and clothes, and things hard
to digest like “bull’s eyes,” as well as boots and braces, and near
“the Statue” at the other end, are farm requisites, sacks, tools, and
the delightful-smelling tarred twine, as well as all sorts of old iron,
chains, bolts, hinges, etc., which it seems to be worth someone’s while
to carry from market to market. It is here that the humours of the petty
auctioneer are to be heard, and the broad Doric of the Lincolnshire
peasant. In the pig market below the church hill you may hear a man
trying to sell some pigs, and to the objection that they are “Stränge
an’ small,” he replies, “Mebbe just now; but I tell ye them pigs ’ull
be greät ’uns,” then, in a pause, comes the voice from a little old
woman who is looking on without the least idea of buying, “It ’ull be
a straänge long while fust,” and in a burst of laughter the chance of
selling that lot is snuffed out, or, as they say at the Westmorland dog
trials, “blown off.”
[Sidenote: MORE STORIES]
There is an unconscious humour about the older Lincolnshire peasants
which makes it very amusing to be about among them, whether in market,
field or home. My father never returned from visiting his parish without
some rich instance of dialect or some humorous speech that he had heard.
Finding a woman flushed with anger outside her cottage once, and asking
her what was amiss, he was told “It’s them Hell-cats.” “Who do you call
by such a name?” “Them Johnsons yonder.” “Why? What have they been
doing?” “They’ve been calling me.” “That’s very wrong; what have they
been calling you?” “They’ve bin calling me Skinny.” At another time a
woman, in the most cutting tones, alluding to her next-door neighbours
who had an afflicted child, said, “We may-be poor, and Wanty [her
husband] says we _are_ poor, destitutely poor, and there’s no disgraäce
in being poor, but _our_ Mary-Ann doant hev fits.” Another time, when
my sister was recommending a book from the lending library describing a
voyage round the world, and called “Chasing the Sun,” a little old woman
looked at the title and said, “Naäy, I weänt ha’ that: I doänt howd wi
sich doings. Chaäsing the Sun indeed; the A’mighty will soon let ’em know
if they gets a chevying him.” In the same village I got into conversation
one autumn day with a small freeholder whose cow had been ill, and asked
him how he had cured her, he said, “I got haafe a pound o’ sulphur and
mixed it wi’ warm watter and bottled it into her. Eh! it’s a fine thing
I reckon is sulphur for owt that’s badly, cow or pig or the missis or
anythink.” Then, with a serious look he went on, “There’s a straänge
thing happened wi’ beans, Mr. Rownsley.” “What’s that?” “Why, the beans
is turned i’ the swad” (= pod). “No!” “Yees they hev.” “How do you mean?”
“Why they used to be black ends uppermost and now they’r ’tother waay
on.” “Well, that’s just how they always have been.” “Naay they warn’t. It
was ’81 they turned.” They _do_ lie with the attachment of each bean to
the pod, just the way you would not expect, and having noticed this he
was convinced that up to then they had really lain the way he had always
supposed they did, so difficult is it to separate fact from imagination.
The similes used by a Lincolnshire native are often quite Homeric, as
when an old fellow, who was cutting his crop of beans, the haulm of
which is notoriously tough, resting on his scythe said, “I’d rayther
plow wi two dogs nor haulm beans.” Then they have often a quiet, slow
way of saying things, which is in itself humorous. I remember a labourer
who was very deaf, but he had been much annoyed by the mother of a man
whose place he had succeeded to. He was working alongside of his master
and _apropos_ of nothing but his own thoughts, he said, “Scriptur saäys
we should forgive one another; but I doänt knoä. If yon owd ’ooman fell
i’ the dyke I doänt think _I_ should pull her out. I mowt tell some ’un
on her, but I doänt think I should pull her out howiver.” There is some
kindliness in that, though in quantity it is rather like the Irishman’s
news: “I’ve come to tell you that I have nothing to tell you, and there’s
some news in that.” But the Lincolnshire native is a trifle stern; even
the mother’s hand is more apt to be punitive than caressing. “I’ll
leather you well when I gets you home, my lad,” I have heard a mother say
to a very small boy, and I have heard tell of a mother who, when informed
that her little girl had fallen down the well, angrily exclaimed, “Drat
the children, they’re allus i’ mischief; and now she’s bin and drownded
hersen I suppose.”
In Westmorland it is the husband who _will_ take too much at market
on whom the vials of the wrath of the missis are outpoured, and they
generally know how to “sarve” him. One good lady, on being asked
“How_ever_ did you get him ower t’wall, Betty?” replied “I didna get him
ower at a’—I just threshed him through th’ hog-hole” (the hole in the
wall for the sheep, or hoggetts, to pass through).
Speaking of tippling, there is no more delightful story than this from
Westmorland, of a mouse which had fallen into a beer vat and was swimming
round in despair, when a cat looked over, and the mouse cried out, “If
ye’ll git me oot o’ this ye may hev me.” The cat let down her tail and
the mouse climbed up, and shaking herself on the edge of the vat, jumped
off and went down her hole, and on being reproached by the cat as not
being a mouse of her word, answered, “Eh! but ivry body knaws folks will
say owt when they’re i’ drink.”
[Sidenote: OLD BOLINGBROKE]
There are several pretty little bits of country near Spilsby, but the
most interesting of the by-ways leads off from the Horncastle road
at Mavis Enderby, and, going down a steep hill, brings us to _Old
Bolingbroke_, a picturesque village with a labyrinth of lanes circling
about the mounded ruins of the castle, where, in 1366, Henry IV. “of
Bolingbroke” was born. It was built in 1140 by William de Romara, first
Earl of Lincoln, and was, till 1643, when Winceby battle took place, a
moated square of embattled walls, with a round tower at each corner. Here
Chaucer used to visit John of Gaunt and the Duchess Blanche of Lancaster,
on whose death, in 1369, he wrote his “Book of the Duchess.” The castle,
after the Civil Wars, sank into decay, and the gate-house, the last of
the masonry, fell in 1815. The road onwards comes out opposite Hagnaby
Priory. William de Romara, who three years later founded Revesby Abbey,
had for his wife the second Lady Lucia, the heiress of the Saxon
Thorolds, an honoured name among Lincolnshire families. She brought him,
among other possessions, the manor of Bolingbroke. Her second husband was
the Norman noble, Ranulph, afterwards earl of Chester. The Thorolds were
descended from Turold, brother of the Lady Godiva. There apparently were
two _Lady Lucias_, whose histories are rather mixed up by the ancient
chroniclers. The earlier of the two was, it seems, the sister of the
Saxon nobles, Edwin and Morcar, and of King Harold’s queen Ealdgyth. Her
hand was bestowed by the conqueror upon his nephew, Ivo de Taillebois (=
Underwood), who became, according to Ingulphus and others, a monster of
cruelty, and died in 1114.
[Sidenote: HARRINGTON]
There are several by-ways to the north-west of Spilsby, which all
converge on _Harrington_. Here the church contains several monuments of
interest. At the east end of the nave, a knight in chain armour with
crossed legs and shield is said to be Sir John Harrington (_circa_
1300); and against the chancel wall, but formerly on the pavement, is
the brass of Margaret Copledike (1480). Her husband’s effigy is missing.
Under the tower window is the monument to Sir John Copledike (1557),
and in the chancel south wall a canopied tomb with a brass of Sir John
Copledike (1585). Opposite is a Jacobean monument, which testifies to
the illiteracy of the age with regard to spelling, to Francis Kopaldyk,
his wife and two children (1599). In the time of Henry III. it was spelt
Cuppeldick. A Perpendicular font with the Copledike arms stands against
the tower arch.
Close to the church is Harrington Hall, with its fine old brick front
and projecting porch. Hanging over the doorway is a large dial with
the Amcotts arms, a curiously shaped indicator, and the date 1681. On
either side of the porch which runs up the whole height of the house, are
twelve windows, under deep, projecting, corbelled eaves. Inside is an old
oak-panelled room, most richly carved. The house is the property of the
Ingilby family, and at present the residence of E. P. Rawnsley, Esq., who
has been for many years Master of the Southwold Hunt.
Somersby is but two miles off, and we may without hesitation turn our
thoughts to the terraced garden of this delightful old hall when we read
in Tennyson’s “Maud”:—
“Birds in the high Hall-garden
When twilight was falling,
Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,
They were crying and calling.”
The poet loved to tell how, when he was reading this and paused to ask,
“Do you know what birds those were?” a lady, clasping her hands, said,
“Oh, Mr. Tennyson, was it the nightingale?” though in reading it he had
carefully given the harsh caw of the rooks.
[Sidenote: BAG ENDERBY]
To get from here to _Somersby_ you pass through _Bag Enderby_, where
there is a fine church, now in a very ruinous state. The very interesting
old font, which stands on two broken Enderby tombstones, has some unusual
devices carved on it, such as David with a viol, and the Virgin with the
dead Christ. One, the most remarkable of all, is a running hart turning
back its head to lick off with its long tongue some leaves from the tree
of life growing from its back. This symbolism is purely Scandinavian; and
that it could be used on a Christian font shows how thoroughly the two
peoples and their two religions were commingling.[25] The large number
of villages about here ending in “by”—Danish for hamlet—is sufficient
evidence of the number of settlers from over the North Sea who had taken
up their abode in this part of the county.
[Illustration: _Somersby Church._]
The green-sand, which underlies the chalk, and of which almost all the
churches are built, crops out by the roadside in fine masses both here
and at Somersby and Salmonby, as it does too at Raithby, Halton, Keal,
all in the immediate neighbourhood of the chalk wolds. Inside the church,
slabs on the floor of the chancel retain their brass inscriptions to
Thomas and Agnes Enderby (1390), and Albinus de Enderby, builder of the
tower (1407); and on the wall is a monument to John and Andrew Gedney
(1533 and 1591). The latter represented in armour and with his wife and
family of two sons and two daughters. The wife, whose name is spelt first
Dorithe, then Dorathe, “died the 7th of June 1591 and Andrew ____” the
blank being left unfilled.
The knives and scourges of Crowland Abbey (_see_ Chap. XLI.) are seen
in the old glass. The custom of giving little knives to all comers at
Crowland on St. Bartholomew’s Day was abolished by Abbot John de Wisbeche
in the reign of Edward IV. In the tower is a fine peal of disused bells.
[Sidenote: SOMERSBY CROSS]
Dr. Tennyson held this living with _Somersby_. This is a smaller
building, but it retains in the churchyard a remarkable and perfect
cross, a tall, slender shaft with pedimented tabernacle, under which are
figures, as on the gable cross at Addlethorpe and on the head of the
broken churchyard cross at Winthorpe—the Crucifixion is on one side and
the Virgin and Child on the other.
From Somersby there are two roads to Horncastle—each passes over the
brook immortalised in “In Memoriam” and in the lovely little lyric, “Flow
down cold rivulet to the sea,” and branching to the left, one passes
through Salmonby, where Bishop William of Waynflete is said to have been
rector. This is doubtful, but probably he was presented to the vicarage
of Skendleby by the Prior of Bardney in 1430. The other and prettier
road goes by _Ashby Puerorum_ and _Greetham_, and both run out into the
Spilsby and Horncastle road near _High Toynton_. Ashby Puerorum (or
Boys’ Ashby) gets its name from an estate here bequeathed to support the
Lincoln Minster choir boys. At this place, and again close by Somersby,
the hollows in the Wold which this road passes through are among the
prettiest bits of Lincolnshire.
CHAPTER XXXI
SOMERSBY AND THE TENNYSONS
Tennyson’s Poetry descriptive of his home—Bronze Bust of the
Poet—Dedication Festival—A Long-lived Family—Dialect poems.
This little quiet village, tucked away in a fold of the hills, with
the eastern ridge of the Wolds at its back and the broad meadow valley
stretching away in front of it and disappearing eastwards in the
direction of the sea, had no history till now. It was only in 1808 that
Dr. George Clayton Tennyson came to Somersby as rector of Somersby and
Bag Enderby, incumbent of Beniworth and Vicar of Great Grimsby. He came
as a disappointed man, for his father, not approving, it is said, of his
marriage with Miss ffytche of Louth (a reason most unreasonable if it
was so) had disinherited him in favour of his younger brother Charles,
who became accordingly Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt of Bayons Manor near
Tealby.
Dr. Tennyson’s eldest son George was born in the parsonage at Tealby,
in 1806, but died an infant. Frederick was born at Louth in 1807, and
the other ten children at Somersby. Of these, the first two were Charles
(1808) and Alfred (1809).
They were a family of poets; their father wrote good verse, and their
grandmother, once Mary Turner of Caister, always claimed that Alfred got
all his poetry through her. Her husband George was a member of Parliament
and lived in the _old_ house at Bayons Manor.
[Sidenote: THE TENNYSONS]
From the fourteenth century the Tennysons, like their neighbours the
Rawnsleys, had lived in Yorkshire; but Dr. Tennyson’s great-grandfather,
Ralph, had come south of the Humber about 1700 to Barton and Wrawby
near Brigg, and each succeeding generation moved south again. Thus,
Michael, who married Elizabeth Clayton, lived at Lincoln, and was the
father of George, the first Tennyson occupant of Bayons Manor. He had
four children: George Clayton, the poet’s father; Charles, who took the
name of Tennyson d’Eyncourt; Elizabeth, the “Aunt Russell” that the poet
and his brothers and sisters were so fond of; and Mary, the wife of John
Bourne of Dalby, of whom, though she lived so near to them, the Somersby
children were content to see very little, for she was a rigid Calvinist,
and once said to her nephew, “Alfred, when I look at you I think of the
words of Holy Scripture, ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
fire.’” At Somersby, then, the poet and all the children after Frederick
were born in this order: Charles, Alfred, Mary, Emilia, Edward, Arthur,
Septimus, Matilda, Cecilia, Horatio. They were a singularly fine family,
tall and handsome, taking after their father in stature (he was six feet
two inches) and after their mother (a small and gentle person, whose
good looks had secured her no less than twenty-five offers of marriage)
in their dark eyes and Spanish colouring. She was idolised by her eight
tall sons and her three handsome daughters, of whom Mary, who became Mrs.
Ker, was a wonderfully beautiful woman. Frederick, who outlived all his
brothers, dying at the age of ninety-one after publishing a volume of
poems in his ninetieth year, alone of the family had fair hair and blue
eyes. Matilda is alive still at the age of ninety-eight.
[Sidenote: DR. KEATE AND WELLINGTON]
The three elder sons all went to the Grammar School at Louth in 1813,
when Alfred was but seven. Frederick went thence to Eton in 1817, and to
St. John’s, Cambridge, in 1826; Charles and Alfred stayed at Louth till
1820, and they left it with pleasure for home teaching. Few could have
been better qualified to teach than the Doctor. He had a good library
and he was a classical scholar; could read Hebrew and was not without
a knowledge of mathematics, natural science and modern languages; also
he was a rigid disciplinarian, and, like all good schoolmasters, was
held in considerable awe by his pupils. I should like to have heard him
had anyone in his day outlined to him as the method of the future the
Montessori system. This power of terrifying a whole class and causing
each one of a set of ordinarily plucky English lads to feel for the space
of half an hour that his heart was either in his mouth or in his shoes,
would be incredible, were it not that there are so many English gentlemen
now living who have experience of it. How well I remember the terrible,
if irrational, state of funk which the whole of any class below the
upper sixth was always in, when going up for their weekly lesson to that
really most genial of men, Edward Thring, and it was the same elsewhere,
and given the same sort of circumstances, the grown-up man could feel as
frightened as the boy; witness this delightful story of the Iron Duke.
No one could call him a coward, but on his return from Waterloo he went
down on the fourth of June to Eton, and first told some one in his club
that he meant to confess to Keate that he was the boy who had painted the
Founder’s Statue or some such iniquity, the perpetrator of which Keate
had been unable to discover. His friend extracted a promise that after
his interview he would come and report at the club. He came, and being
questioned by a group of deeply interested old Etonians, he said, “Well,
it was all different, not at all like what I expected. I seized the
opportunity when Keate came to speak with me by the window and said, “You
remember the Founder’s Statue being defaced, sir?” “Certainly. Do you
know anything about it?” he said sharply. “_No, sir._” “You don’t mean
to say you said that?” “Certainly I do, and what is more, every one of
you would, in the circumstances, have said just the same,” and then and
there they all admitted it; so difficult is it to shake off the feelings
of earlier days. And yet he was not naturally terrible, and I who write
this, never having been under him, have, as a small boy, spoken to Keate
without a shadow of fear.
This reminds me of a remark of Gladstone’s, who was giving us
some delightful reminiscences of his days at Eton, and, speaking
enthusiastically of Alfred Tennyson’s friend, Arthur Hallam, when on my
saying that I had spoken with Keate, he turned half round in his chair
and said, “Well, if you say you have seen Keate I must believe you, but
I should not have thought it possible.” He had forgotten for the moment
that Keate, after retiring from Eton, lived thirteen years at Hartley
Westpall (near Strathfieldsaye), where my father was curate.
To return to Somersby. We read in the memoir of the poet an amusing
account, by Arthur Tennyson, of how the Doctor’s approach when they were
skylarking would make the boys scatter.
[Sidenote: EARLY VOLUMES]
In 1828 Charles and Alfred went up to Trinity, Cambridge. Frederick was
already a University prize-winner, having got the gold medal for the
Greek ode, and Charles subsequently got the Bell Scholarship, and Alfred
the English Verse prize. The boys’ first poetical venture was the volume
“Poems by Two Brothers,” published in 1826 by Jackson of Louth, who
gave them £20, more than half to be taken out in books. To this volume
Frederick contributed four pieces, the rest were by Charles and Alfred.
The latter used very properly to speak with impatience of it in later
years as his “early rot.” And it is quite remarkable how comparatively
superior is the work done by Alfred as a boy of fourteen, and how little
one can trace in the two brothers’ volume of that lyrical ability which
in 1830 produced _Mariana_ and _The Arabian Nights_, _The Merman_, _The
Dying Swan_ and the _Ode to Memory_. The majority of these poems were
written at Cambridge, but there is much reference to Somersby in at least
two of them, and the song, “A Spirit haunts the year’s last hours,” was,
we know, written in the garden there with its border of hollyhocks and
tiger-lilies. In the _Ode to Memory_ he invokes her to arise and come,
not from vineyards, waterfalls, or purple cliffs, but to
“Come from the Woods that belt the grey hill side,
The seven elms, the poplars four
That stand beside my father’s door,
And chiefly from the brook that loves
To purl o’er matted cress and ribbèd sand.
...
O! hither lead thy feet!
Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat
Of the thick fleecèd sheep from wattled folds,
Upon the ridgèd wolds.”
This is reminiscent of Somersby.
Then again, Memory calls up the pictures of “the sand-built ridge of
heaped hills that mound the sea” at Mablethorpe, and the view over “the
waste enormous marsh.”
In 1831 Dr. Tennyson died, aged fifty-two, and his sons left Cambridge.
His widow lived on for thirty-four years, dying at the age of
eighty-four, in 1865. They stayed on in the Somersby home till 1837,
and a new volume came out in 1832, with a whole array of poems of rare
merit, showing how much the poet’s mind had matured in that last year
at Cambridge. This volume, like the Louth volume, is dated for the year
after that in which it was really published. It carried Alfred to the
front rank at once, for in it was _The Lady of Shalott_, _The Palace of
Art_, _The Miller’s Daughter_, _Œnone_, _The May Queen_, _New Year’s
Eve_, _The Lotus Eaters_, _A Dream of Fair Women_, and the _Lines to
James Spedding_, on the death of his brother Edward. Only think of all
these wonderful poems in a thin book of 162 pages written before he was
twenty-three.
[Sidenote: THE LINCOLNSHIRE COAST]
To Mablethorpe and Skegness on the Lincolnshire coast we find frequent
allusions in many poems, _e.g._, he speaks in _The Last Tournament_ of
“the wide-winged sunset of the misty marsh,” and when the Red Knight in
drunken passion, trying to strike the King overbalances himself, he falls—
“As the crest of some slow arching wave,
Heard in dead night along that table shore,
Drops flat, and after, the great waters break
Whitening for half-a-league, and thin themselves,
Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud,
From less and less to nothing.”
A most accurate picture of that flat Lincolnshire coast with its
“league-long rollers,” and hard, wet sands shining in the moonlight. In
another place he speaks of “The long low dune and lazy-plunging sea.”
In his volume of 1832 there are many pictures drawn from this familiar
coast, _e.g._, in _The Lotus Eaters_, _The Palace of Art_, _The Dream of
Fair Women_; and in his 1842 volumes he speaks of
“Locksley Hall that in the distance overlooks the sandy flats And the
hollow ocean ridges roaring into cataracts.”
A relative of mine was once reading this poem to the family of one
of those Marsh farmers who had known “Mr. Alfred” when a youth, and
who lived in the remotest part of that coast near the sandy dunes and
far-spread flats between Skegness and “Gibraltar Point”; but she had not
got far when at the line—
“Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime,
With the fairy tales of science——”
she was stopped by the farmer’s wife. “Don’t you believe him, Miss,
there’s nothing hereabouts to nourish onybody, ’cepting it be an owd
rabbit, and it ain’t oftens you can get howd of them.”
[Sidenote: IN MEMORIAM]
_In Memoriam_ has many cantos descriptive of Somersby, both of the happy
summer evenings on the lawn, when Mary
“brought the harp and flung
A ballad to the bright’ning moon,”
or of the walks about home with Arthur Hallam—
by “Gray old grange or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple stile from mead to mead,
Or sheepwalk up the windy wold.”
Or the winter nights when
“The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.”
And nothing could be more full of tender feeling than this farewell to
the old home in Canto CI., beginning—
“Unwatched, the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away.”
And in Canto CII.—
“We leave the well-beloved place
Where first we gazed upon the sky;
The roofs that heard our earliest cry
Will shelter one of stranger race.
We go, but ere we go from home
As down the garden walks I move,
Two spirits of a diverse love
Contend for loving masterdom.
One whispers ‘here thy boyhood sung
Long since its matin song, and heard
The low love-language of the bird
In native hazels tassel-hung.’
The other answers, ‘yea, but here
Thy feet have strayed in after hours
With thy lost friend among the bowers,
And this hath made them trebly dear.’
These two have striven half the day,
And each prefers his separate claim,
Poor rivals in a loving game,
That will not yield each other way.
I turn to go: my feet are set
To leave the pleasant fields and farms;
They mix in one another’s arms
To one pure image of regret.”
[Sidenote: ARTHUR HALLAM]
Other sections speak of Arthur Hallam, and as each Christmas comes round,
or each birthday of his friend, the poet’s feelings are voiced in such a
way that, if we read it with care, the poem gives us a good deal of the
author’s own life history.
Arthur Hallam died on September 15, 1833, at Vienna, and his remains
were brought home at the end of the year and interred at Clevedon in
Somersetshire on January 4, 1834.
“The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken’d heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore
And in the hearing of the wave.”
Immediately after his death Tennyson had turned to work as the one solace
in his overwhelming grief, although, but for those dependent on his aid,
such as his sister Emily who was betrothed to Hallam, he said that he
himself would have gladly died. He wrote the fine classic poem _Ulysses_,
in which he voiced the need he felt of going forward and braving the
struggle of life, and then, before it had reached England, he wrote the
first section of _In Memoriam_ No. 9 addressed to the ship with its sad
burden.
“Fair ship that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean plains
With my lost Arthur’s loved remains,
Spread thy full wings and waft him o’er.”
At some later time, possibly many years later, for _In Memoriam_ was
sixteen years in the making, he added section 10—“I hear the noise about
thy keel”—which carries on the subject, and also alludes to Somersby
church
“where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God.”
For the time he wrote no more sections, but busied himself with _The
Two Voices_, only towards the end of 1834 he wrote section 30, which
he afterwards prefaced by sections 28 and 29, all describing the sad
first Christmas of 1833, the first since Arthur’s death. In 28 he hears
the bells of four village steeples near Somersby rising and sinking on
the wind. He had more than once wished that he might never hear the
Christmas bells again, but the sound of church bells had always touched
him from boyhood, just as the words “far, far away” which always set him
dreaming. In section 29 he bids his sisters, after decorating the church,
make one more wreath for old sake’s sake, to hang within the house.
Then section 30 tells how they wove it.
“With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;”
After this we hear how they made a “vain pretence”
“Of gladness with an awful sense
Of one mute Shadow watching all.”
They attempt the usual Christmas games, but they have no heart for them,
and all pause and listen to the wind in the tree-tops and the rain
beating on the window panes. Afterwards they sit in a circle and think of
Arthur, they try to sing, but the carols only bring tears to their eyes,
for only last year he, too, was singing with them. After this Alfred sits
alone and watches for the dawn which rises, bringing light and hope.
[Sidenote: LEAVING SOMERSBY]
Section 104 brings us to another Christmas. Four years have elapsed
since that last described. The Tennysons have left Somersby, with what
regret they did so is beautifully told in the four sections immediately
preceding this. And now, listening as of old for the Christmas bells, he
hears not “four voices of four hamlets round,” but only
“A single peal of bells below,
That wakens at this hour of rest
A single murmur in the breast,
That these are not the bells I know.”
The following section continues the subject. They are living at High
Beech in Essex “within the stranger’s land.” He thinks of the old home
and garden and his father’s grave. The flowers will bloom as usual, but
there, too, are strangers,
“And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.”
The change of place
“Has broke the bond of dying use.”
They put up no Christmas evergreens, they attempt no games and no
charades. His sister Mary does not touch the harp and they indulge in no
dancing, though it was a pastime of which they were extremely fond. But
as of old Alfred looks out into the night and sees the stars rise, “The
rising worlds by yonder wood,” and receives comfort. All this points to
the sad year 1837, when they left the well-beloved place of his birth.
And now in section 106 we have a New Year’s hymn of a very different
character. It has a jubilant sound, and was certainly written some years
after its predecessors. In 1837 he was in no mood to say “Ring happy
bells across the snow.” But there is no allusion in this splendid hymn
to Arthur Hallam at all, and in the following section they keep Arthur’s
birthday, not any more in sadness, but
“We keep the day, with festal cheer,
With books and music, surely we
Will drink to him, whate’er he be
And sing the songs he loved to hear.”
But to return to Somersby.
[Illustration: _Tennyson’s Home, Somersby._]
[Sidenote: THE OLD HOME]
The quaint house with its narrow passages and many tiny rooms, the
brothers’ own particular little western attic with its small window
from which they could see the ‘golden globes’ in the dewy grass which
had “dropped in the silent autumn night,” the dining-room and its tall
gothic windows with carved heads and graceful gables, the low grey tower
patched with brick, just across the road, (for the “noble tall towered
churches” spoken of in _The Memoir_ are not in this part of the county,)
and the pre-Reformation (not “Norman”) cross near the porch, all these
may still be seen much as they were one hundred years ago.
[Sidenote: THE CHURCH RE-OPENED]
True, the church has been lately put in good repair, and a fine bronze
bust of the poet placed in the chancel. This was unveiled, and the
church re-opened on Sunday, April 6, 1911, being the fulfilment of the
plan projected on the occasion of the centenary celebration two years
previously. On that Sunday the little church was more than filled with
neighbours and relatives who listened to sermons from the Bishop of
Lincoln and the Rev. Canon Rawnsley. Next day was Bank Holiday, and
in a field near the rectory hundreds of Lincolnshire folk of every
kind—farmers, tradespeople, gentry, holiday makers—assembled to do honour
to their own Lincolnshire poet, and for a couple of hours listened
intently to speeches about him and laughed with a will at the humours of
the “Northern Farmer” read in their own native dialect, just as the poet
intended; whilst the relatives of the poet and those who were familiar
with his works looked with glad interest upon a scene of rural beauty
which brought to the mind the descriptions in _The Lady of Shalott_,
seeing on the slopes before them the promise of crops soon to “clothe
the wold and meet the sky,” while far away to the left stretched the
valley which pointed to Horncastle, the home of the poet’s bride, and
on the right was the churchyard where the stern “owd Doctor” rests, and
the church where for five and twenty years he ministered. The whole
was a remarkable assemblage and a remarkable tribute, and the setting
was a picture of quiet English rural life, one which the poet himself
must often have actually looked out upon, and such as he has himself
beautifully described in _The Palace of Art_:—
“And one an English home—gray twilight pour’d
On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep—all things in order stored,
A haunt of ancient Peace.”
[Sidenote: A LONG-LIVED FAMILY]
The spirit of the poet seemed still to be a haunting presence in the
place, and as then, so now and for all time his works speak to us. But
three-quarters of a century have passed since a Tennyson has had his
home in Somersby. They left in 1837, and though Mary went back at times
to see the “beloved place,” Alfred never set eyes on it again. Charles
married in that year Louisa Sellwood, whose mother was a sister of Sir
John Franklin, and thirteen years later Alfred married her sister Emily.
They left Somersby; but Lincolnshire still kept possession of Charles,
who took the name of Turner in addition to his own, and ministered
happily at Grasby near Caistor, being both vicar and patron of the
living; and he and his wife both died there in the spring of 1879, at the
comparatively early age, for a Tennyson, of seventy-one, for the family
have been a remarkably long-lived one.
The Mother died in 1865, aged 84
Charles ” ” 1879 ” 71
Mary ” ” 1884 ” 74
Emilia ” ” 1889 ” 78
Alfred died on October 6, 1892 ” 83
Emily Lady Tennyson died in 1896 ” 83
Frederick ” ” 1898 ” 91
Arthur died in June, 1899 ” 85
Horatio died in October, 1899 ” 80
Cecilia died in 1909 ” 92
Matilda, who was born before Cecilia and Horatio, still survives. I
went to see her in the summer of 1913. I found her well and full of
early memories. She was a girl in the schoolroom when she first saw
Arthur Hallam, an event of which she had a vivid recollection. I said,
“I suppose you get out every fine day for a drive.” “Oh,” she said, “I
go out for a walk every day and take the dog.” I thought that rather
wonderful at her age. “Yes, I am ninety-seven,” she said, “and I mean
to live to be 105.” I told her how Queen Victoria, who was always
looking forward to reunion with the dear departed—but ever a ceaseless
worker—used to say, “my dear, you should always act as if you were going
to live for ever.”
[Sidenote: THE MASTER’S OPINION]
Alfred, who succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850, was raised to
the Upper House in 1884. He is buried in Westminster Abbey side by side
with his great contemporary, Robert Browning, and on his grave was laid
a wreath of bay-leaves from a tree derived from the bay which flourishes
over Virgil’s tomb near Naples, and on the wreath were Tennyson’s
own magnificent lines, written at the request of the Mantuans for the
nineteenth centenary of their poet’s death (1881).
“I salute thee, Mantovano,
I that loved thee since my day began,
Wielder of the stateliest measure
Ever moulded by the lips of man.”
[Sidenote: THE POET’S RANGE OF KNOWLEDGE]
The recent appearance (October, 1913) of a notable volume of Tennyson’s
poems, introduced by a Memoir and concluding with the poet’s own notes,
may well serve as the text for some remarks on his poems generally. The
volume bound in green cloth is priced at 10_s._ 6_d._ The Memoir is
somewhat abbreviated from the two interesting volumes published by his
son in 1897, which appeared again as the first four volumes of Messrs.
Macmillan’s fine twelve-volume edition of 1898. There are, however, a
few additions, notably a letter from the Master of Trinity, Cambridge,
telling how he once, years ago, asked Dr. Thompson, the Master, whether
he could say, not from later evidence, but from his recollection of
what he thought at the time, which of the two friends had the greater
intellect, Hallam or Tennyson. “Oh, Tennyson,” he said at once, with
strong emphasis, as if the matter was not open to doubt. This is very
high praise indeed, for Gladstone said that Hallam was far ahead of
anyone at Eton in his day, and Monckton Milnes thought him the only man
at Cambridge to whom he “bowed in conscious inferiority in all things.”
The Notes first appeared in the very pleasant “Annotated Edition”
edited also by Hallam Lord Tennyson within the last five years. The
present generation can never know the delight of getting each of those
little green volumes which came out between ’32 and ’55, and sequels to
which kept following till ’92. But for general purposes it is far more
convenient to have a one-volume edition, such as we have had for some
time now. This new edition, however, with its Memoir, gives us what,
as the years go by, is more and more valuable, enabling us to read
the poet in his verses and to know what manner of man he was, and how
his environment affected him at the different stages of his life. The
Notes add an interest, and though it is seldom that in any but the _In
Memoriam_ Cantos any explanation is needed to poems that are so clear
and so easily intelligible, one gains information and finds oneself here
and there let into the author’s secrets, which is always pleasant. The
book runs to over a thousand pages, and is so beautifully bound that it
lies open at any page you choose. There is an interesting appendix to the
Notes, giving the music to “The Silent Voices,” composed by Lady Tennyson
and arranged for four voices by Dr. Bridge for Lord Tennyson’s funeral
at the Abbey, October 12, 1892. Also a previously unpublished poem of
his later years, entitled “Reticence.” She is called the half-sister of
Silence, and is thus beautifully described:—
“Not like Silence shall she stand,
Finger-lipt, but with right hand
Moving toward her lip, and there
Hovering, thoughtful, poised in air.”
Then comes a facsimile of the poet’s MS. of “Crossing the Bar,” finally,
besides the usual index of first lines, the book ends with an index to
_In Memoriam_, and, what we have always wanted, an index to the songs.
Undoubtedly in the future this new edition will be the Tennyson for the
library shelf, and a very complete and compact volume it is. Personally,
I like the little old green volumes, but if I were now recommending an
edition not in one volume, I would say, “Have the Eversley or Annotated
Edition in nine volumes, which exactly reproduces the page and type of
those old original volumes with the added advantage of the Notes.” It
is hardly to be expected that the spell with which Tennyson bound all
English-speaking people for three generations should not in a measure be
relaxed, but though we have a fuller chorus of singers than ever before,
and an unusually appreciative public, the attempt so constantly made to
decry Tennyson has no effect on those who have for years found in him a
charm which no poet has surpassed, and, indeed, it will be long before a
poet arises who has, as Sir Norman Lockyer observes, “such a wide range
of knowledge and so unceasing an interest in the causes of things and the
working out of Nature’s laws, combined with such accuracy of observation
and exquisite felicity of language.” Let me give one more criticism, and
this time by a noted scholar, Mr. A. Sidgwick, who speaks of his “inborn
instinct for the subtle power of language and for musical sound; that
feeling for beauty in phrase and thought, and that perfection of form
which, taken all together, we call poetry.” That perfection was the
result of labour as well as of instinct. He had an ear which never played
him false, hence he was a master of melody and metre, and he was never
in a hurry to publish until he had got each line and each word right. “I
think it wisest,” he wrote to one of his American admirers, “for a man
to do his work in the world as quietly and as well as he can, without
much heeding the praise or dispraise.” He was a lover of the classics,
and in addressing Virgil on the nineteenth centenary of his death, as
quoted above, he himself alludes to this. Without being what we call a
great scholar, in his classic poems he is hard to beat, while in his
translations of Homer he certainly has no equal. Then in his experiments
in classic metres, whether in the “Metre of Catullus” or in the Alcaics
in praise of Milton, his perfect accuracy is best understood if we turn
to the similar experiments by living poets, who never go far without a
blunder, at least none that I have ever read do.
[Sidenote: THE DIALECT POEMS]
To the Lincolnshire folk, his dialect poems, written in the dialect
which was current in his youth at Spilsby and in the country about it
(and still used there, I am glad to say, though not so universally or
so markedly as of yore), give genuine pleasure, and are full of humour
and of character, and it is a tribute to his accurate ear and memory
that, after an absence of some twenty-seven years, he should have got
the Lincolnshire so correct. He did it all right, but for fear he might
have forgotten and got wrong, he asked a friend to look at it and
criticise; unfortunately the friend lived in the north of the county and
knew not the dialect of “Spilsbyshire,” so he altered it all to that
which was spoken about Brigg, which is more like Yorkshire, and it had
to be put back again. But some of the northern dialect has stuck, and
in “The Northern Farmer Old Style” the ‘o’ is seen in ‘moind,’ ‘doy,’
‘almoighty,’ etc., where the Spilsby sound would be better rendered by
using an ‘a.’ This ‘o’ is never found in any of his subsequent dialect
poems, and in a note to the text in the “Northern Cobbler” the poet
points out that the proper sound is given by ‘ai.’
[Sidenote: FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS]
One sign of the remarkable way in which our Lincolnshire poet has made
himself the poet of the English-speaking race is the extraordinary number
of familiar quotations which he has given us. For the last fifty years in
book and newspaper, in speech and sermon, some line or some phrase of his
has constantly occurred which the user felt certain that his hearer or
readers would recognise, until our literature has become tessellated with
Tennysonian expressions, and they have always given that satisfaction
which results from feeling that in using his words we have said the thing
we wished to say in a form which could not be improved upon. In this
respect of “daily popularity and application,” I think Shakespeare alone
excels him, though Pope and Wordsworth may run him close.
[Illustration: _Little Steeping._]
CHAPTER XXXII
ROADS FROM SPILSBY
Road to Louth—Partney—Dr. Johnson—His letter on Death of
Peregrine Langton—Dalby—Langton and Saucethorpe—View from Keal
Hill with Boston Stump—“Stickfoot Stickknee and Stickneck”—The
Hundleby Miracle—Raithby—Mavis Enderby—Lusby—Hameringham—The
Hourglass Stand—Winceby—Horncastle—The Horse Fair—The
Sleaford Road—Hagnaby—East Kirkby—Miningsby—Revesby
Abbey—Moorby—Wood Enderby—Haltham—Tumby
Wood—Coningsby—Tattershall—Billinghay—Haverholme Priory.
The four roads from Spilsby go north to Louth, and south to Boston, each
sixteen miles; east to Wainfleet, eight miles; and west to Horncastle,
ten miles. The Wainfleet one we have already described and two-thirds
of that from Louth. The remaining third, starting from Spilsby, only
goes through two villages—Partney and Dalby. _Partney_ lies low in the
valley of Tennyson’s “Cold rivulet,” and those who have driven across
the flat meadows between the village and the mill after sundown know how
piercingly cold it always seems.
The place has a very long history. Bede, who died in 725, writing twelve
hundred years ago and speaking of the Christianising of Northumbria by
Paulinus, who was consecrated Bishop of York in 625, and his visit to
the province of Lindissi, _i.e._, “the parts of Lindsey” and Lincoln in
particular, says that the Abbot of Peartaney (= Partney, near Spilsby,
which was a cell of Bardney) spoke to him once of a man called Deda,
who was afterwards, in 730, Abbot of Bardney and a very truthful man,
“presbyter veracissimus,” and said that Deda told him that he had talked
with an aged man who had been baptised by Bishop Paulinus in the presence
of King Ædwin, in the middle of the day, and with him a multitude of
people, in the River Treenta, near a city called in the language of the
Angles, Tiovulfingaceaster; this was in 627. Many have taken the place to
be Torksey, though that in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle is Turcesig. Green
suggested it was at the ford of Farndon beyond Newark, but it was far
more likely to be at Littleborough Ferry, two miles north of Torksey,
where the Roman road (“Till bridge Lane”) from Lincoln crossed the river.
But certainly Torksey is the nearest point of the river to Lincoln, and
the Fossdyke went to it, as well as a road, so that communication was
easy and inexpensive, and on the whole I should be inclined to say that
Torksey was the place of baptism.
[Sidenote: PARTNEY]
But to return to Partney. In addition to its being a ‘cell’ of Bardney
Abbey, we know there was a very fine hospital at Partney, dedicated to
St. Mary Magdalene, before 1138, and among the tombs recently uncovered
at Bardney is one of Thomas Clark, rector of Partney, 1505. It appears
to have been a market town when Domesday Book was compiled, at a time
when Spilsby was of no account; but the Black Death in 1349 or the plague
in 1631, when Louth registered 500 deaths in two months, and in the
Alford neighbourhood Willoughby also suffered, severely decimated the
place, and tradition has it that some clothing dug up eighty years after
burial caused a fresh and violent outbreak. Whenever it happened, for
no records exist, the consequence was that the glory of Partney as the
next market town to Bolingbroke departed, and Spilsby grew as Partney
dwindled. Of course the healthy situation of Spilsby had much to do with
it. Yet Partney still retains the two sheep fairs on August 1 for fat
lambs and September 19 for sheep, and they are the biggest sheep fairs
in the neighbourhood. Two other fairs take place, on August 25 and at
Michaelmas, and it is noticeable that three of the four are held on the
eve of the festivals of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen. In 1437 we
find that Matilda, wife of Thomas Chaucer, the eldest son of the poet,
had a share of an eighteenth part of the Partney market tolls. Fine
brasses to her and her husband exist in Ewelme church, near Oxford. On
fair days sheep are penned all along the streets and in adjoining fields,
and “Beast” on the second day are standing for half a mile down the
Scremby road.
The church is dedicated to St. Nicolas, the most popular of all church
patrons, who was Bishop of Myra in Lycia in the fourth century. As patron
of fishermen he has many sea coast churches, and he is also the peculiar
saint of children, who know him by his Dutch name of Santa Klaus. One
of the oldest oaks in England is in the churchyard. The chiming church
clock, put in in 1869, is a monument to the skill of a clever amateur,
Sidney Maddison, Esq., who fitted it with “Dennison’s three-legged
escapement,” which was then a new and ingenious invention of the late
Lord Grimthorpe.
[Sidenote: DR. JOHNSON]
In 1764 Dr. Johnson walked over from _Langton_ with his friend, Bennet
Langton, to see Bennet’s Uncle Peregrine. He died two years later aged
eighty-four, and the doctor wrote to his friend: “In supposing that I
should be more than commonly affected by the death of Peregrine Langton
you were not mistaken: he was one of those I loved at once by instinct
and by reason. I have seldom indulged more hope of anything than of being
able to improve our acquaintance to friendship. Many a time have I placed
myself again at Langton, and imagined the pleasure with which I should
walk to Partney in a summer morning, but this is no longer possible. We
must now endeavour to preserve what is left us, his example of piety and
economy. I hope you make what enquiries you can and write down what is
told you. The little things which distinguish domestic character are soon
forgotten: if you delay to enquire you will have no information: if you
neglect to write, information will be in vain. His art of life certainly
deserves to be known and studied. He lived in plenty and elegance upon an
income which to many would appear indigent, and to most, scanty. How he
lived, therefore, every man has an interest in knowing. His death I hope
was peaceful: it was surely happy.”
After Partney the road goes up the hill to _Dalby_. Here the old house
where Tennyson’s aunt, Mrs. Bourne, lived, was burnt down in 1841, and
the thatched barn-like church swept away in 1862. The charm of the
present house lies in its beautiful garden.
Having got on to the chalk wold a fine view opens over the wide vale
to the left as far as the next ridge, which stretches from Spilsby to
Hagworthingham. About a mile further on, a road goes sharply down to the
left into Langton, and across a watersplash to Colonel Swan’s residence
at _Sausthorpe_, where again we find cross-roads near the pretty little
church built by Gilbert Scott, with a crocketed spire, the only spire in
the neighbourhood. The roads lead back to Partney, on to Raithby over the
stream, to Horncastle and to Harrington, all by-ways. But to return to
our Spilsby and Louth highway. From the turn to Langton we keep rising
and see some tumuli on our left, and then another left turn to Brinkhill,
where, from a steep and curiously scarped hillside, roads descend right
and left to Ormsby and Harrington; but we will keep on the highway for
another mile till we find that the Louth road by Haugh goes off to the
left, and the Roman road to Burgh to the right, and the way straight
forward comes to Well Vale and Milecross hill, and so drops into Alford.
The rest of the road to Louth we have described in the Louth chapter.
[Sidenote: KEAL HILL]
The other roads from Spilsby are, south to Boston and west to Horncastle.
The Boston road is noticeable for the wonderful view of the fen, with the
“Stump” standing far up into the sky, which you get from Keal Hill, where
the green-sand ends and the road drops into a plain which is without a
hill or even a rise for the next fifty or sixty miles. After Keal the
road passes by _Stickford_, _Stickney_ and _Sibsey_—the last having a
very handsome transition Norman tower, and a ring of eight bells—and
comes into Boston by Wide Bargate. The road is uninteresting throughout,
and so monotonous that a story is told of someone driving in a coach in
years gone by, when roads were deep and miry, who put his head out and
asked the name of each place they came to. “What is this?” “Stickford,
sir.” “And this?” “Stickney, sir.” “Stick-foot! Stick-knee! we shall come
to Stick-neck next; you had better turn back.”
[Illustration: _Sibsey._]
[Sidenote: WESLEY’S CHAPEL]
[Sidenote: LUSBY]
The Horncastle road from Spilsby goes out along the green-sand by
_Hundleby_, from the tower of which I remember a man falling to the
ground and receiving no hurt at all, the nearest approach to a miracle
any one need wish to experience. Much of the money for the re-building of
the church was raised by the untiring industry and beautiful needlework
of Mrs. Ed. Rawnsley of Raithby; for _Raithby_, with its pretty broken
ground and ornamental water and its beautifully kept church filled with
good modern glass, was for half a century the home of the Rev. Edward
Rawnsley. The old stable adjoins the churchyard, and by an anomalous
arrangement the loft over the stable is fitted up as a Wesleyan chapel,
the use of it for that purpose having been granted _in perpetuo_ to John
Wesley by his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Carr Brackenbury. The road
goes on straight from here by _Hagworthingham_ or turns to the left to
_Mavis Enderby_, and so strikes a parallel route, both of them unite at
the top of the hill which runs down by High Toynton into Horncastle. The
name _Mavis_ was originally Malbyse, a name more characteristic than
complimentary, for it means evil beast. The word byse, or bys, exists in
Bison, and the name of the unpleasant one is found again in the village
of Acaster Malbis, near York. There is nothing of special interest on the
“Hag” road, but the Mavis Enderby road leads us to Lusby and Winceby;
of these _Lusby_ has a most interesting little church, thoroughly well
restored, with a good deal of Norman work and some unmistakable Saxon
work in it. There are two blocked doorways on the north-west, one with
Norman zigzag moulding in green-sand showing how durable a material it
is when properly laid and not exposed to wet. Some singular arcading
of a very early type is seen on the west of the walls on either side
of the round-headed chancel arch, which is not in the centre of the
wall. It has been renewed in green-sand of various colours. This work
may have been Saxon, for there was a church here when Domesday Book was
written, and there is certainly a definite bit of “Long and Short” work
on the right hand side of the blocked south doorway, and a fragment of
a Saxon stone inside, closely resembling the Miningsby Stone, but it
is difficult to speak with certainty, as the early Normans made use of
Saxon ornamentation. Outside there are two courses of big basement stones
running on both sides of the nave—one bevelled and set back a little.
Inside is a low-side window, two or three aumbreys, two arched recesses
for tombs, a niche near the chancel arch, and a very good stone head
of a queen projecting from the south-east window in the nave. There is
also a remarkable little “Keyhole” window high up in the north wall of
the chancel. The masonry is rough and amorphous, but very solid. The
old rood-screen of three arches is very handsome. Under the Communion
table is a sepulchral slab with an inscription in old lettering, mostly
obliterated, from which the brass tablet has been removed and put up on
the wall. It is singular, being a dialogue between a deceased wife and
her husband:—
[SHE] My fleshe in hope doth rest and slepe
In earth here to remain;
My spirit to Christ I give to kepe
Till I do rise againe.
[HE] And I with you in hope agre
Though I yet here abide;
In full purpose if Goddes will be
To ly doune by your side.
Going on two miles along the Roman road to Horncastle we come to
_Hameringham_. Here, as at _Lusby_, there is no tower, but a little
slated bell-turret. Two large arches and one beautiful little pointed
arch at the west end on small octagonal pillars divide the nave from the
aisle. The western pillar is of the local green-sand, and dates from
the thirteenth century. The other pillar is of whitish stone, and the
small eastern respond is of the same. These date from the fourteenth
century, and have boldly foliaged capitals. Close together on the abacus
are two distinct marks of bullets which must have come in through
the aisle window. There is a good fifteenth century font, and on the
Jacobean pulpit is the original hour-glass stand, and with an old church
hour-glass in it. These stands are still to be seen at Bracebridge,
Leasingham, Sapperton and Belton in the Isle of Axholme. The traces of
a blocked priest’s door are visible on the north side. Oddly enough the
dressings of the porch, etc., are of red sandstone from Dumfries. It is
a good hard stone, but there is much to be said for always, if possible,
using the stone of the country.
[Sidenote: WINCEBY FIGHT]
[Sidenote: HORNCASTLE]
The next village is _Winceby_, where “Slash Lane” commemorates the place
of Cromwell’s cavalry-battle in 1643. In the south chapel of _Horncastle_
church, some four miles on, we shall see a goodly array of scythes on
long straight handles, which are said to have been used with deadly
effect in this fight. This church has five three-light clerestory windows
on each side of the nave, but in the chancel, six on the south and only
five on the north side, the eastmost one being larger than the rest.
There is an outside belfry staircase with a cone to it built against
the middle of the south wall of the tower. Inside, the pilasters of the
tower arch die away into the arch moulding without capitals. The brass
in the north wall, to Lionel Dymoke, is remarkable (date 1519); and
in the north chapel a tomb to Sir Ingram Hopton “who paid his debt to
Nature and duty to his King and Country in the attempt of seizing the
arch rebel in the bloody skirmish near Winceby, October 6, 1643.” This
should be October 11. The arch rebel was Cromwell, who was unhorsed and
nearly taken prisoner by Sir Ingram. He afterwards slept at Horncastle
in a house in West Street. This battle secured Lindsey and the Wolds
for Cromwell, Boston and the Fens were never Royalist. The River Bain,
which rises in Kelston near the Louth and Rasen road, gave its name
to the Roman station of Banovallum. It flows through Gayton-le-Wold,
Biscathorpe, Donington-on-Bain and Goulceby to Horncastle, and out by
Coningsby and Tattershall to the River Witham, and it makes a peninsula
at Horncastle, whence the name of Hyrn-ceaster, = the camp at the horn or
bend. Portions of a Roman wall still exist near the market-place, and at
the south-west corner of the churchyard. The manor was sold in 1230 to
the Bishop of Carlisle for the use of the see; it served as a refuge when
border invasions made the diocese of Carlisle undesirable as a peaceful
home, and during the fourteenth century was the usual episcopal residence.
The celebrated horse fair is not what it used to be. Lincoln fair is
more accessible, and is now the more important of the two. But it still
affords two or three days of wild excitement, with horses tearing about
the streets. At one time the fair lasted three weeks. August was a
thirsty month, and the number of beer-houses had to be increased _pro.
tem._ to meet the need of both buyers and sellers; so five-shilling
licenses were issued called bush or bough licenses, a bush being hung
out for a sign, a custom once common in England and still prevalent on
the Continent. Hence, the proverb, “Good wine needs no bush,” _i.e._, no
advertisement. The Hon. Edward Stanhope of Revesby, who was Minister for
War in 1868, has a statue in the market-place, near the house in which
the Sellwoods lived, two of whom, Louisa and Emily, married Charles and
Alfred Tennyson.
Leaving the market-place for the Lincoln road you pass what is an unusual
feature in a town—an elm tree overhanging the street, and having in it
several rooks’ nests. It is near the “Fighting Cocks” inn. There is a
similar tree loaded with nests in the town of Staines.
When the river was used for navigation there was a high arched bridge
with a towing-path under it, and the bridge, though now flat, is still
called “the bow bridge.”
At that time the church was filled with box pews and lofts, and the front
row of pews in the lofts were sold to different families by auction and
would fetch as much as £80, the second row reaching £40. But though
there were ardent churchgoers in the town, the villages around were very
indifferently served, having in quite a dozen instances in that one
neighbourhood no parsonage house and consequently no resident parson.
It is interesting to know that a good deal of the carving in the church
was done less than fifty years ago by a carpentry class of young men who
took lessons for the purpose from a clever carver called Thomas Scrivener.
But we have one other road to speak of, which is the way from Spilsby to
Sleaford.
The Boston road from Spilsby, after it reaches the edge of the
green-sand, where it suddenly breaks down at West Keal into the level
fen, divides at the foot of the hill, and the right-hand road goes
westwards by Hagnaby, East Kirkby, Revesby, Coningsby, Tattershall and
Billinghay to Sleaford. This is all a level road. _Hagnaby Priory_, two
miles from West Keal, is the residence of Mrs. Pocklington Coltman. The
house is modern, in fact, there never was a priory here, but near Alford
there was once an abbey of Hagnaby, so the name is suggestive of Priors.
[Sidenote: EAST KIRKBY]
Another two miles brings us to _East Kirkby_; the turn to the right takes
us to the church which, having been entrusted to the capable hands of
Mr. W. D. Caröe, is a model of what church restoration should be. He has
put square-headed clerestory windows in the chancel with good effect.
The tower has a beautiful two-light early Decorated window. The piers
of the nave are remarkably slender. There is a good font, and the early
Perpendicular rood screen is a very graceful one. In the north wall of
the chancel is a two-light low-side window and a curious recess, possibly
an Easter Sepulchre. It is covered with diaper work, and with wild
geranium, oak leaves and acorns excellently carved in stone, and below
this, some half-figures of the three Maries, each holding a heart-shaped
casket, of spices perhaps for embalming. A basin projecting from the
front is thought to have been a receptacle for the Easter offerings. A
similar basin, as Mr. Jeans in Murray’s Guide points out, is attached
to the tomb of Edward II. at Gloucester. A little further on is the
tiny church of _Miningsby_, only to be approached by footpaths over
grass fields. It has in it a pre-Norman slab of very uncommon character
with figure-of-eight intertwined knot work and a herring-bone border. A
fragment with similar figure-of-eight work is in Mavis Enderby church,
on a coped stone which has been cut to make a door-step, and a smaller
bit like it is in Lusby church—probably all the work of the same Saxon
mason. In a house near the church is a stone with the initials “L. G.,
1544,” which must refer to the Goodrich family; for East Kirkby was the
birthplace of Thomas Goodrich, Bishop of Ely, 1534, Lord Chancellor,
1550, and coadjutor in the first Communion Office with Cranmer.
[Sidenote: REVESBY]
The next place on the Spilsby and Sleaford road is _Revesby Abbey_
(Hon. R. Stanhope), a fine deer park with a modern house, built by J.
Banks-Stanhope, Esq., 1848. The previous house had been the residence
of the great naturalist, Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S., who died in 1820,
and took part with Rennie in devising and carrying out the drainage
of the East Fen. The abbey, founded in 1143 by W. de Romara, Earl of
Lincoln, was colonised from Rievaulx, and was itself the parent of Cleeve
Abbey in Somerset. The abbey was a quarter of a mile south-east of the
present church, in which are preserved the few fragments now extant of
a building which was once 120 feet long and sixty feet wide. The Hon.
Edward Stanhope in 1870 discovered the tombs and bodies of the founder
and his two sons. The founder, who had become a monk, had requested to
be buried “before the high Altar,” and his tomb was inscribed, “Hic
jacet in tumba Wiellielmus de Romare, comes Lincolniae, Fundator istius
Monasterii Sancti Laurentii de Reivisbye.” The site of his re-burial is
marked by a granite stone. Among the abbey deeds is one by which the
Lady Lucia’s second husband, Ranulph Earl of Chester, gives to the abbey
“his servant Roger son of Thorewood of Sibsey with all his property and
chatells.” I don’t suppose that Roger found the abbey folk bad to work
for; they certainly did much for the good of the neighbourhood, notably
in keeping up the roads and bridges, which was one of the recognised
duties of religious houses; but all this came to an end when in 1539,
like so many other Lincolnshire estates, it was granted by Henry VIII. to
his brother-in-law the Duke of Suffolk. The Duke died in 1545, and was
buried at Windsor; his two sons both died in one day, July 16, 1551, in
the Bishop of Lincoln’s house at Buckden.
The road past the park gates is very wide, with broad grass borders on
either side, and a fine row of wych elms bordering the park, at each end
of which are some model farm buildings of the best Lincolnshire kind;
and, to take us more than a thousand years back, we have two large tumuli
quite close to the road. There were three, but one, after being examined
by Sir Joseph Banks in 1780, was levelled in 1892; later the existing two
were explored and one was found to contain a clay sarcophagus, which
possibly once contained the remains of a British king.
[Sidenote: MOORBY]
Just past the tumuli is the inn, at the four cross-roads. That to the
left runs absolutely straight for eleven miles to Boston; to the right
is the Horncastle road through Moorby and Scrivelsby, with the barn-like
church of _Wilksby_ in a grass field behind Moorby. Both these churches
have good fonts; that at _Moorby_ is the later of the two, having
two crowned and two mitred heads at the four corners, and with very
remarkable figures of the Virgin and Child learning, with open book
and scourge; the sun and moon being depicted on either side looking on
complacently, evidently they had never heard of the Montessori system,
also there are six kneeling figures and two angels watching the dead
body of the donor. A stone in the vestry, about fourteen inches by
eight, exhibits two women and a man vigorously dancing hand in hand to
the bagpipes, all in fifteenth century head-dresses and costumes. Moorby
is in the gift of the Bishop of Manchester, it having been assigned
presumably by Carlisle when the new see was carved out of parts of older
ones. How Carlisle came to have patronage here may be briefly told.
On St. George’s Day, April 23—a day memorable as the birth and death
day of Shakespeare, and the death day of Wordsworth—in the year 1292,
John-de-Halton, who may well have come of the family who gave the name to
Halton Holgate near Spilsby, being then Canon of Carlisle, was elected
bishop. Within a month, a fire having destroyed the cathedral and all the
town, he set to work and rebuilt the cathedral, and encouraged others
to rebuild the town; and by the year 1297 Robert Bruce swore fealty to
the king in his presence in the newly risen pile. He was a man of mark,
and was mediator between Edward I. and John of Balliol in the claim to
the Scottish throne. He planned Rose Castle, the palace of the Bishops
of Carlisle. In 1307 he received at his cathedral, from the sick king’s
hands, the horse-litter which had brought him to the north; and within
a few days saw the king, who had bravely mounted his charger at the
cathedral door, borne back a dead man on the shoulders of his knights
from Burgh Marsh (pronounced Berg) on the Solway shore. In 1318 he was
driven from his diocese by Robert the Bruce, and came to the manor of
Horncastle, which, as mentioned above, had belonged to the see since
1230, and got the Pope to attach the living of Horncastle and with it
that of Moorby and probably some others to his see as a means of support
for him whilst in exile and poverty, and up to the middle of last century
Horncastle so remained, whilst Moorby is now in the gift of the Bishop of
Manchester. John de Halton died in the year 1324.
[Illustration: _Coningsby._]
[Sidenote: WOOD ENDERBY AND HALTHAM]
[Sidenote: CONINGSBY]
If we went west from Moorby we should pass by _Wood Enderby_, the only
church in this neighbourhood with a spire, as Sausthorpe is in the
Spilsby neighbourhood, and should reach _Haltham_ on the road from
Horncastle to Coningsby. Here the small church with its old oak seats
has an early Norman doorway with a quaintly carved tympanum. Going north
from Moorby we should pass Scrivelsby, but this must have a chapter to
itself, so we will get back to the main road at Revesby and go through
_Mareham-le-fen_ to _Coningsby_, passing _Tumby_ Wood, the home of the
wild lily-of-the-valley and the rare little smilacina or _Maianthemum
bifolium_, which also grows near Horncastle. Across the entrance to
Coningsby, the Great Northern Railway Company have just built a new line
from Lincoln to Skegness, by which tens of thousands of “trippers” will
be taken for a shilling and turned out to enjoy the sea shore and the
splendid expanse of hard sand. Skegness, once a delightful solitude, is
now disfigured by all that appertains to those who cater for the hungry
multitudes.
[Illustration: _Tattershall and Coningsby._]
[Sidenote: HAVERHOLME PRIORY]
From the bridge over the Bain at the other end of Coningsby village a
pretty picture of water and willows is crowned by the view of Tattershall
church and castle, both of which are described later. _Coningsby_ church,
built, like Tattershall, all of Ancaster stone, has a singular tower
which stands on tall arches and allows free passage under it from three
sides. In the west of this tower is a large circular window. Passing
through _Tattershall_ village with its open space and market cross,
near which three roads meet, and where the Horncastle canal unites the
Bain and Witham, we cross the Lincoln and Boston railway, and also the
River Witham which, from the next station of Dogdyke, was cut straight
by Rennie, and runs like a great dyke to Langrick, and then with only
two bends to Boston. At Dogdyke is a bit of undrained swamp, the home
of several good bog-plants, such as the bladderwort, water-violet,
meadow-rue (Ophelia’s “Herb o’ Grace”) and the bog-stitchwort. The
road on to Sleaford, across the fen for fourteen miles, is quite
uninteresting, except for the very Dutch appearance of the village of
_Billinghay_ on the banks of a large drain called the Billinghay Skirth,
near which, at _North Kyme_, we pass alongside the old Roman Carr Dyke,
and, crossing it, arrive at _Anwick_, which has a pretty church with
broach spire and good Early English doorway. Here, on our left, on the
River Slea, is _Haverholme Priory_ (Countess of Winchelsea), founded 1137
by Bishop Alexander, who afterwards moved the rheumatic Monks to Louth
Park, and gave the priory to his chaplain Gilbert, founder of the order
of Gilbertines, who had also a priory at Alvingham near Louth. There is
nothing left of the priory, in which it is said that Archbishop Thomas
à Becket once took refuge from Henry II. Four more miles bring us to
Sleaford, whose spire has long been visible across the flats.
[Illustration: _Tattershall Church._]
CHAPTER XXXIII
SCRIVELSBY, DRIBY, TUMBY AND TATTERSHALL
The Hereditary Grand Champion of England—History of
the Dymokes—Siward the Saxon—Simon de Dryby—The Abbot
of Kirkstead—Robert de Tateshalle—John and William de
Bernac—Ralph, Baron Cromwell builds the brick Castle and
founds the College and Almshouses at Tattershall—The Carved
Mantelpieces—Bishop Waynflete’s brick buildings—Esher
Place—Tattershall Church—Stained Glass Windows—The Brasses—The
Castle safe at last.
SCRIVELSBY.
The manor which carried with it the title for its possessor of
“Hereditary Grand Champion of England,” was a very interesting old house
till the year of the Coronation of George III., when it was destroyed
by fire. An arched gateway remains near the house, where once a moat,
drawbridge, and portcullis protected the courtyard. The picturesque Lion
Gateway at the entrance to the park from the Horncastle road, opposite
to which under some trees are seen the village stocks, was set up by
Robert Dimoke about 1530. It is built of rough stones but has a fine
stone lion, passant and crowned, above it, and a rebus of an oak tree
(Dim oak) carved at the side of the archway. The manor with this peculiar
privilege attached was given by the Conqueror to his steward “Robert the
Dispenser,” Lord of Fontenaye and ancestor of the De Spencers and the
Marmions.
Sir Walter Scott speaks of the Marmion of his poem, though he was an
imaginary character and of much later date, as—
“Lord of Fontenaye
Of Lutterward and Scrivelbaye
Of Tamworth tower and town.”
[Sidenote: MARMIONS OF SCRIVELSBY]
[Sidenote: DYMOKES OF SCRIVELSBY]
In the Scrivelsby parish church of St. Benedict is a mutilated recumbent
stone figure clad in chain-mail with sword and shield, and by his side
a lady in the severe costume of the time, with muffled chin and plain
head-dress. The warrior is Philip Marmion, the last of the Marmions
of Scrivelsby, who died 1292, the family having acted as champions
from the time of William the Conqueror to Henry III. Together with the
championship, Philip Marmion had the right of free-warren and gallows at
his manor at Scrivelsby.
[Illustration: _The Lion Gate at Scrivelsby._]
Philip having no son, his estates were divided among his four daughters.
His second daughter, Mazera, married a Ralph Cromwell, ancestor of the
Lord Cromwell who built Tattershall Castle, and the Scrivelsby estate
fell to Joan, the youngest, who married Sir Thomas Ludlow. His son,
Thomas, left one daughter, Margaret, who married Sir John Dymoke and
brought the Championship in 1350 into the family, which has held it now
for upwards of 560 years. It was probably their son John who married the
daughter of Sir Thomas Friskney, whence descended the Dymokes of Friskney
and Fulletby.
At the coronation of Edward II., 1307, and Edward III., 1327, the
Championship appears to have been in commission, but at that of Richard
II., 1377, Sir John Dymoke claimed it in right of his wife. Baldwin
Freville counter-claimed as Lord of Tamworth, but the office was awarded
to Sir John.
There are many Dymokes buried both in the church and churchyard, the most
notable monument being an altar tomb in the chancel with a brass on it
of Sir Robert Demoke. Edward IV. had beheaded his father along with Lord
Welles after he had taken them under pledge of safety out of sanctuary
at Westminster, and he tried to make amends by heaping favours on the
son, who lived in five reigns—Edward IV., Edward V., Richard III., Henry
VII., and Henry VIII.; and acted as Champion at the coronation of the
last three, in 1483, 1485, and 1509. The brass presents him in armour and
spurred, but bareheaded and with short neck, long flowing hair, and a
huge beard; he stands on a lion, and the inscription runs thus:—
“Here liethe the body of Sir Robert Demoke of Scrivelsby Knight
and Baronet who departed out of this present lyfe the XV day
of April in ye yere of our Lord God MDXLV upon whose sowle
almighte god have m’ci Amen.”
The words “Knight and Baronet” have puzzled many, but in spite of the
fact that Sir Brien Stapilton at Burton Joice, Notts., and Sir Thomas
Vyner at Gautby, Lincolnshire, 1672, are described as Knight and Baronet,
and though they may have been first Knights and then Baronets, in this
case of Sir Robert Dymoke, of 1545, it can hardly have been so, for the
title baronet was not in use until after 1603, and we must suppose that
the words were originally “Knight Banneret,” a distinction which was
conferred on Sir Robert by Henry VIII., and that the present wording was
probably a correction by an ignorant restorer in the seventeenth century,
after damage done in the civil wars. The eldest son of the Champion who
had been so unjustifiably put to death by Edward IV., was Lionel, who
died before his father, and whose brass in Horncastle church represents
him kneeling on a cushion in full armour, holding a scroll in his hand,
date 1519. The figure is kneeling in a stiff attitude, armed and spurred,
and bareheaded, a scroll from his mouth says:—
“_S’cta Trinitas Unus Deus Miserere nob_:”
The inscription on the brass is:—
“_In honore S’cte et individue Trinita̅s orate p’ ’aia Leonis
Dymoke milit’ q’ obijit xvij die Me’se Augusti ao D’ni
M’cccccxlx: cui ai’e p’ piciet’ DE’ Amen._”
Below on either side were figures of two sons and three daughters. The
sons are now missing.
[Sidenote: THE CHAMPION]
Lionel’s brother Robert was only ten when he obtained the title. He was
succeeded by his son Edward, who performed the office of Champion for the
three children of Henry VIII. His son Robert, though never acting at any
coronation, deserves mention as a martyr, in Elizabeth’s reign, to his
religious convictions. This queen, always dreading a Romish reaction in
favour of her rival, Mary Queen of Scots, allowed a Puritanical bishop
to persecute any Catholic in his diocese, and Robert, though in feeble
health, was stout of heart and kept firm to his faith and died a prisoner
at Lincoln, 1580.
The mother of Edward Dymoke who was Champion to Charles II. was buried
at Leverton in 1640. Sir Edward was summoned in 1660 before the
Parliamentarians at Westminster and accused of “delinquency” because
he bore the Royalist title of King’s Champion. He was fined £7,000,
an enormous sum for the time, and he had to pay between four and five
thousand. Hence the impoverishment of the Dymoke family. He lived to see
the Restoration, and officiated for Charles II. in 1660, dying in 1663.
He was knighted in 1661 “for his loyalty and great sufferings both in
person and estate.”
A brass plate commemorates his son, Sir Charles Dymoke, who died in
1686. He officiated at the coronation of James II. in 1685, and getting
off his horse in order to walk up to kiss the king’s hand he fell full
length. Whereupon the queen said, “See, love, what a weak Champion you
have!” He was buried at Scrivelsby, November, 1686.
[Sidenote: WESTMINSTER HALL]
Of other memorials there is a marble bust to Lewis, the Champion to
George I. and II., in 1714 and 1727, who died in 1760, Ætat. 90. His
widow Jane endowed a school at Hemingby “to teach the children of the
poor of the parish to read, write, spin and card wool.” Finally, there
is a memorial to John, Champion in 1761 to George III. Henry Dymoke who
acted for his father, a clergyman, on the accession of George IV., 1821,
was the last who rode into Westminster Hall in bright armour and flung
down his glove and dared to mortal combat any who disputed the right and
title of the king. Then, having backed a little, he turned his horse and
rode out, holding in his hand the gold cup in which the king had pledged
him and he had in turn drunk to the health of his majesty. Since then the
quaint historic ceremony has fallen into abeyance, but the title of “the
Hon. the King’s Champion” remains, and at the coronation of Edward VII.
he was appointed to carry the royal banners. _Sic transit gloria mundi._
[Sidenote: THE CEREMONY]
The following is a description of the championship ceremony at the
banquet in Westminster Hall written at the time of the coronation of
George IV., 1821, and taken from Allen’s History of the County:—
“Before the second course was brought in the deputy appointed
to officiate as King’s Champion (this was the son of the
champion, who was himself disqualified, being a clerk in holy
orders), in his full suit of bright armour, mounted on a horse
richly caparisoned, appeared under the porch of the triumphal
arch, at the bottom of Westminster Hall. Everything being in
readiness, the procession moved in the following order:—
“Two trumpeters with the Champion’s arms on their banners,
“The Sergeant Trumpeter with his mace on his shoulder,
“Two Sergeants-at-Arms with their maces on their shoulders,
“The Champion’s two Esquires, in half armour, one on the right
hand bearing the Champion’s lance, the other on the left hand
with the Champion’s target and the arms of Dymoke depicted
thereon.
“A Herald, with a paper in his hand, containing the Challenge.
“The Deputy Earl Marshall (Lord Howard of Effingham) on
horseback, in his Robes and Coronet, with the Earl Marshall’s
staff in his hand, attended by a page.
“The Champion (Henry Dymoke, Esq.) on Horseback, in a complete
suit of Bright Armour, with a Gauntlet in his hand, his Helmet
on his head, adorned with a plume of feathers.
“The Lord High Constable (The Duke of Wellington), in his Robes
and Coronet and Collar of his Order, on Horseback, with the
Constable’s Staff, attended by two pages.
“Four Pages richly apparelled, attendants on the Champion.
At the entrance into the Hall, the Trumpets sounded thrice,
and the passage to the King’s table being cleared by the
Knight Marshall, the Herald, with a loud voice proclaimed the
Champion’s Challenge, in the words following:—
“‘If any person of what degree soever, high or low, shall deny
or gainsay our sovereign Lord King George the fourth, of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the
Faith, son and next heir to our Sovereign Lord King George the
third, the last King, deceased, to be the right heir to the
Imperial Crown of this United Kingdom, or that he ought not to
enjoy the same, here is his Champion, who saith that he lieth,
and is a false traitor, being ready in person to combat with
him, and in the quarrel will adventure his life against him on
what day soever he shall be appointed.’
“Whereupon the Champion threw down his gauntlet: which having
lain a short time upon the ground, the Herald took it up, and
delivered it again to the Champion. They then advanced to the
middle of the Hall, where the ceremony was again performed in
the same manner.
“Lastly they advanced to the steps of the throne, where the
Herald with those who preceded him ascended to the middle of
the steps, and proclaimed the challenge in the like manner;
when the Champion having thrown down his gauntlet and received
it again from the Herald, made a low obeisance to the King:
Whereupon the Cupbearer, having received from the officer
of the Jewel-house a Gold Cup and Cover filled with Wine,
presented the same to the King, and his Majesty drank to the
Champion, and sent to him by the Cupbearer the said Cup,
which the Champion (having put on his gauntlet) received, and
having made a low obeisance to the King drank the Wine; after
which, making another low obeisance to his Majesty and being
accompanied as before, he departed out of the Hall, taking with
him the said Cup and Cover as his fee.”
DRIBY, TUMBY, AND TATTERSHALL.
[Sidenote: NORMAN ACTIVITY]
The amount of work done by the Normans in England has always astonished
me. Not only did they build castles and strongholds, but in every county
they set up churches built of stone, and not here and there but literally
everywhere. They apportioned and registered the land, measured it and
settled the rent, and, though hard task masters, they showed themselves
efficient guardians, nor was any title or property too small for the king
and his officers to inquire into. Hence, in quite small out-of-the-way
places in the county we find monuments in little and almost unknown
churches which attest the activity of our Norman forefathers and which,
when examined by the aid of documents from the Public Record Office or
the abbey or manor rolls, old wills and all the early parchments in
which the industrious bookworm revels, often unfold chapters of early
history of extraordinary interest, if not for the general public, at
least for students and for the local gentry who still haunt the places
where once the armed heel of the knight rang and the monastery dispensed
the unstinted doles of a period which would have held up both hands
in astonishment at the luxury of our poor laws, the excellence of our
roads and the enormity of our rates and taxes. Take, for instance, the
little village of _Driby_ in the Lincolnshire wolds, a village the
early denizens of which my old friend, the late W. C. Massingberd, has
taken the trouble to make acquaintance with, and to whose labours I am
indebted for what little I know about it. He tells us how even in Saxon
times a notable man lived at Driby, one Siward, not perhaps the great
Northumbrian Thegn mentioned in _Macbeth_, but a later Siward who helped
Hereward and his fenmen to oppose the Normans at Ely. Whoever he was,
he held Scrivelsby and a large acreage in the Wolds. Next we find the
great Lincolnshire Baron, Gilbert de Gaunt, succeeding Siward at Driby,
holding, as Domesday Book (1086) shows, direct from the king.
[Sidenote: THE ABBOT OF KIRKSTEAD]
Early in the next century Simon de Driby comes before us; and his
son Robert—the eldest son was nearly always alternately Simon or
Robert—grants some lands in _Tumby_ to the abbey of Kirkstead. Robert’s
father is called sometimes Symon de Tumbi and sometimes Simon de Driby,
and it seems that he had obtained disposal of this land in Tumby by a
grant from Robert, son of Hugh de Tattershall, just as his forefather
had held land in Driby by the grant of Gilbert de Gaunt. On February 25,
1216, a Simon de Driby made his submission to King John at Lincoln, and
Ralph de Cromwell, whose descendant of the same name eventually married
the heiress of the Simon de Dribys and held the castle of Tattershall,
also submitted at Stamford on the 28th and gave his own eldest daughter
as a hostage for his good behaviour. The submissive Simon died in 1213,
and his son, the inevitable Robert, made an agreement with Hugh, the
Abbot of Kirkstead, by which the abbot was allowed to have his big cattle
and sheep dogs, mastiffs they were termed, in the warren of Tumby at all
times of the year, but no greyhounds or lurchers (_leporarios vel alios
canes preter mastivos_), and if the latter turned riotous and chased game
they were to be removed and others put in their place.
Robert’s son Simon obtained by marriage additional lands near Driby,
at _Tetford_, _Bag Enderby_, _Stainsby_, and _Ashby Puerorum_ on the
wolds, as well as some of the rich marsh land at _Wainfleet_. Henry III.
granted to Robert Tateshalle license to crenelate his house at Tateshall,
“quod possit kernelare mansum suum” in 1239; and we may here note that
Tattershall Castle in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and half
of the fifteenth was a stone building. Just at the close of the reign of
Edward I. a Robert de Driby married Joan, one of the three co-heiresses
of Robert de Tateshale or Tattershall, the last male representative of
the family, and Joan tried to settle the castle and manor of Tattershall
on her youngest son, Robert, instead of on the rightful heir. Until the
heir was of age Edward had granted them to his wife, Queen Margaret, a
sign that the property was valuable. She, moreover, when a widow, had the
manor of Tumby for her dower house.
When the third Edward was on the throne one of the parsons who served
Driby was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, William Merle by name, who
is worthy to be remembered because he was the first Englishman to keep
a diary of the weather. He was appointed in 1330, and at that time one
Gilbert de Bernak was the parson at Tattershall, whose relative William
de Bernak, Kt., married Alice, the daughter of Robert de Driby and Joan
Tattershall, and, her three brothers dying without issue, Alice came into
possession of the manor of Driby. Their son, Robert de Bernak, presented
a man of the same name to Driby in 1347, who died probably of the Black
Death, for he presented again two years later. Robert in some way made
himself unpopular, and in 1369 we hear of his being spoiled and beaten
at Driby, with many of his men grievously wounded, and his reeve and his
butler both killed.
In 1374 he founded a chantry in Driby church endowed _inter alia_ with
rents from land in Driby and Friskney. His wife is called in his will
Katherine de Friskney. This Robert de Bernak was the only one of the name
who held the manor of Driby, for his elder brother John appears not to
have done so, and to have died in 1346.
[Sidenote: MATILDA DE BERNAK]
The uncle of these de Bernaks, John de Driby, shortly before his death
had granted the castle of Tattershall and the manors of Tattershall and
Tumby away from his sister Alice to John de Kirton, who was knighted by
Edward II., and summoned to Parliament in the sixteenth year of Edward
III., 1343; so none of the de Bernaks ever held Tattershall, and it was
through the direct interposition of the king that the descendants in the
female line of the Driby and Bernak families got the property back. The
way it came into the female line was this: The John de Bernak, eldest son
of William de Bernak and Alice de Driby, had married Joan, the daughter
of John Marmion of Wintringham, and had two sons and a daughter Matilda,
who eventually was his sole heiress. She married Ralph second Baron
Cromwell, and the presentation to her uncle, Robert de Bernak’s, chantry
at Driby was left to her and to her son Robert Cromwell after her.
Then, at her mother’s death in 1360, she succeeded to her mother’s
property in Norfolk, Tumby Manor and Tattershall Manor and Castle
reverted to her on the death of John de Kirton in 1367 and Driby Manor
with Brynkyl on her uncle, Robert De Bernak’s, death in 1387; so she held
Driby, Tumby, and Tattershall, as well as property in Norfolk.
[Sidenote: MARRIES RALPH CROMWELL]
In 1395 and 1399 we find her husband, Ralph Cromwell, presenting to the
chantry of the Holy Trinity in the church at Driby. They were large
landholders, for, in addition to the manor of Cromwell and his other
lands in Notts., he and his wife held the manor of ‘Kirkeby in Bayne’
with what are called the appurtenances to those various manors, _i.e._,
lands in many parts of the wolds and marsh.
[Illustration: _Tattershall Church and the Bain._]
Matilda died in 1419. Her son, Ralph Cromwell, was baptised on July
15, 1414, a day memorable for a very high tide on the Lincolnshire
coast which inundated all the land about Huttoft. He only lived to
be twenty-eight, and was succeeded by his cousin, Ralph third Baron
Cromwell, the grandson of Matilda.
[Sidenote: HER GRANDSON LORD HIGH TREASURER]
This Ralph Lord Cromwell had been appointed Lord High Treasurer of
England under Henry VI. in 1433. He married Margaret, daughter of John
fifth and last Baron d’Eyncourt, but had no issue. He it was who replaced
the old castle by the splendid brick building which was, and is, the
finest in England. He presented to Driby in 1449, and was the founder of
the college and the almshouse at Tattershall, for which he obtained leave
from the Crown to turn the parish church into a collegiate church in
1439, when he rebuilt it from the ground and endowed it with[26] several
manors, Driby being one, so in 1461 and until 1543 the warden of the
college of Tattershall was the patron of Driby. The almshouse has still
an endowment of £30. He died in 1455, as the brass in Tattershall church
records, and his nieces, the daughters of Sir Richard Stanhope, succeeded
to his estates, but Driby remained with the warden of Tattershall. The
nieces were Joan Lady Cromwell (for her husband Humphrey Bourchier,
son of the first Earl of Essex, was summoned to Parliament as Baron
Cromwell _jure uxoris_) and Matilda Lady Willoughby d’Eresby. One of
his executors, William of Waynflete, the famous Bishop of Winchester,
held the manor of Candlesby in 1477 for the use of this Lady Matilda,
and soon afterwards obtained a grant of it to his newly founded college
of Magdalen, Oxford, with whom it remains. Matilda Lady de Willoughby
presented to Candlesby in 1494, eight years after the bishop’s death.
Since then the living has been in the gift of the college.
At the dissolution of the monasteries, in 1545, Driby was granted to
the Duke of Suffolk, then it passed to Sir Henry Sidney of Penshurst,
who sold it to the Prescotts, a Lancashire family, about 1580, with
appurtenances of lands and rents in “Brynkhill, Belchford, Orebye,
Grenwyke, Ingolmells, Bagenderbie, Asbie Puerorum, ffulletsbye, West
Saltfletby alias Sallaby, Sallaby Allsaints, Golderbye, Tathwell, Thorpe
next Waynflet, Sutterbye and Scamlesbye.” There are two small brasses
in the church to James Prescott and his wife, who was a Molineux of
Lancashire. They died in 1581 and 1583. In 1636 Sir W. Prescott sold the
manor of Driby to Sir John Bolles, and in 1715 it was bought by Burrell
Massingberd and still goes with the Ormsby estate of that family.
[Sidenote: BUILDS TATTERSHALL]
[Sidenote: THE CASTLE]
A few words must be added about _Tattershall_. The great brick building
which rises so magnificently out of the flat is one of the most
impressive things in this or any country. I have walked all day partridge
shooting on the estate, and however far you went you never seemed able
to get away from the immediate presence of the magnificent pile; you
only had to look round and it was apparently just at your shoulder all
day long. Then if you enter it and go up, for even the first floor is
several feet above the level of the quadrangle, you are astonished at
the size of the great chambers one above the other, thirty-eight feet
by twenty-two, and seventeen feet high; and finally you come on the
second, third, and fourth story to the most beautiful brick vaulting
and mouldings in the small rooms and galleries running round the big
central rooms in the thickness of the walls. The whole is of exquisite
workmanship, and finished by very deep and handsome machicolations and
battlements. The bricks are apparently Flemish, thinner and of finer
quality than the English bricks; similar ones were used in building
Halstead Hall, Stixwould. The windows are dressed with stone, these
are large and arched, having mullions and the heads filled with stone
tracery like church windows. This shows how the nobleman’s castle was
changing into the nobleman’s palace or mansion. The building is at one
corner of a quadrangle, and is itself a parallelogram, and, including the
turret bases, eighty-seven feet long by sixty-nine wide, and 112 feet
high to the parapet of the angle turret. The walls, which are built on
massive brick vaulting, are immensely thick, being fifteen feet above,
and even more on the ground floor. The windows of the basement chambers
are close on the water of the moat, for several small chambers were made
in the thickness of the walls, in which, too, are the four chimneys.
The spiral staircase is in the south-east turret, and has a continuous
stone handrail let into the brick wall, very cleverly contrived, and
giving a firm and easy grasp. Each turret is octagonal, going up all
the way from the ground and being finished with a cone. In each turret
is a fireplace—a comfort to the warders, and useful at a pinch for
heating the supplies of oil and lead which could be poured down through
the machicolations on the heads of a too assiduous foe. From turret
to turret, and projecting somewhat over these machicolations, runs
a loopholed gallery, and here, too, the vaulting and the rich brick
mouldings are better than anything else of the kind in England, with
the exception of the smaller but elaborately enriched wall surfaces
of Barsham, near Walsingham in Norfolk. There are little rooms in the
turrets, on each floor, and the galleries on the second and third are
divided into rooms, so that in the whole building there were some
forty-eight rooms. The large central rooms would be hung with tapestry,
the lowest being used for an entrance-hall, meals being served in the
fine banqueting hall adjoining, the second for a hall of audience or
withdrawing room, and the third for the state bedroom. The fireplaces
are, in the large rooms, of great width, and the restored mantelpieces,
the barbarous removal of which lately caused such a stir, show a
number of most interesting coats-of-arms of the families who have been
connected with Tattershall down to the time of Henry VI. The treasurer’s
purse figures alternately with the shields, which bear the arms of the
Cromwells, Tattershalls, and d’Eyncourts, of Marmion, Driby, Bernak, and
Clifton; and on the second floor one panel represents the combat between
Hugh de Neville and a lion. Neville and Clifton were the second and third
husbands of Matilda Lady Willoughby, which points to the fact that these
mantelpieces were not carved until after the Lord Treasurer’s death,
1455, when Bishop Waynflete was in charge of the work. Sir Thomas Neville
was killed at the battle of Wakefield, 1460, and Sir Gervasse Clifton at
Tewkesbury in 1471.
[Illustration: _Tattershall Church and Castle._]
[Sidenote: ESHER PLACE]
[Sidenote: TATTERSHALL CHURCH]
There are three other brick buildings, which always strike me as being
worthy to rank along with Tattershall. The first, but following _longo
intervallo_, is the Bishop of Lincoln’s palace at Buckden in Hunts.,
built by Bishop Hugh of Wells about 1225. Another is the beautiful old
Tudor manor-house already alluded to at Barsham, near Walsingham, which
Lord Hastings has just advertised for sale (November, 1913). This has
more exquisite brick diaper work and mouldings on the outside of both
house and gate-house than Tattershall Castle has even in the passages
and vaulted rooms on the upper floor inside, and is a miracle of lovely
brick building. But it is not nearly so big as Tattershall. The other
bit of fine bricklaying which is of the same rather severe character as
Tattershall and Magdalen School at Wainfleet, is the gate-house of Esher
Place, occupied by Cardinal Wolsey October, 1529, to February, 1530. It
belonged to the Bishops of Winchester, and Wolsey then held that see
together with York. Waynflete, who was bishop 1447-1486, and finished
Tattershall about 1456, a year after the Lord Treasurer Cromwell’s death,
had partly re-built Esher Place in his inimitable brickwork, about
seventy years before. He used bricks for the lintels and mouldings, and
even put in the same sunk spiral handrail, which we have noticed as so
clever and remarkable a device in the turret staircase at Tattershall.
Waynflete’s arms, the lilies, so familiar to us at Eton and Magdalen,
were found by the Rev. F. K. Floyer, F.S.A., only last year (1912), when
some plaster was removed, on the keystone of the curiously contrived
vaulting over the porch. It is noticeable that Henry Pelham, who bought
the house in 1729, has introduced also his family badge, the Pelham
buckle, which is cut on the stone capitals of the door. This badge we
have spoken of in the chapter on Brocklesby. So we have two Lincolnshire
families of note, each of which has left his cognisance on the gateway of
the once proud Esher Place, the “Asher House” in that magnificent scene
of Act III. in Shakespeare’s “Henry VIII.”
_Norfolk._ “Hear the king’s pleasure, cardinal; who commands you
To render up the great seal presently
Into our hands: and to confine yourself
To Asher-house, my lord of Winchester’s,
Till you hear farther from his highness.”
Tattershall had a double moat, the outer one reaching to the River Bain.
Over both of them the entrance would probably be, as it certainly was
over the inner one, protected by a drawbridge and portcullis. This was
still to be seen in 1726 at the north-east corner of the quadrangle.
All that is now left is this one great pile of the Lord Treasurer’s
and one guard-house of the fifteenth century. The original castle was
begun 200 years earlier, when Robert, the direct descendant of Hugh
Fitz Eudo—founder in 1138 of the Cistercian abbey of Kirkstead, who had
received the estate from William the Conqueror—obtained leave from Henry
III. to build a castle there. We have seen how the castle became the
property of Joan who married Sir Robert Driby, whose daughter Alice
consigned it at her marriage to Sir W. Bernak, and their daughter Matilda
married Lord Cromwell, whose grandson was the High Treasurer to Henry
VI. He built the brick castle, but died soon after doing so, leaving
his collegiate church to be finished by his executors. The college he
had founded was to consist of a warden, a provost, six priests, six lay
clerks, and six choristers, and the almshouse was for thirteen poor of
either sex. The original building for this still exists, and is of very
humble appearance, having, it is said, been put up to serve first as a
lodgment for the masons engaged on the castle and church. Of these the
latter is singularly well built, as any building supervised by Bishop
William of Waynflete was sure to be, and evidently of very good stone;
and the two buildings being close together are striking specimens of the
secular and ecclesiastical architecture of the period.
[Sidenote: THE BRASSES]
The Treasurer’s wife, who was sister and coheir of William fifth Baron
d’Eyncourt, died a year before her husband. They are buried in the
church, and two very fine brasses once marked the spot. He was a K.G.,
and this shows him with the Garter and Mantle of his Order, but the brass
is sadly mutilated now; while her effigy is, sad to say, lost entirely.
Two other fine brasses of this family are in the church. One, of the
Treasurer’s niece, Joan Stanhope, who married first Sir Humphrey
Bourchier, son of the Earl of Essex, who was made fourth Baron Cromwell
in her right in 1469; and secondly, after her first husband had been
slain at the battle of Barnet, 1471, Sir Robert Ratcliffe. She died in
1479, and was succeeded in the property by her sister Matilda, who had
married Lord Willoughby d’Eresby. Her brass has also been a particularly
fine one. She died in 1497, and ten years before this the Tattershall
estate had passed to the Crown. The inscription on her brass is filled
in by a later and inferior hand, and no mention is made of her two next
husbands.
[Sidenote: THE WINDOWS]
There is a very fine brass also of one of the last provosts or wardens
of the college, probable date between 1510 and 1520. In 1487 Henry VIII.
granted the manor to his mother, Margaret Countess of Richmond, and,
the Duke of Richmond having no issue, Henry VIII., in 1520, granted it
with many other manors in the neighbourhood to Charles Duke of Suffolk.
This grant was confirmed by Edward VI. on his accession in 1547, but the
duke and his two sons having died, he granted it, in 1551, to Edward
Lord Clinton, afterwards Earl of Lincoln. The Clintons held it till
1692, when it passed, through a cousin Bridget, to the Fortescue family
under whom both church and castle have suffered severely. Amongst other
vandalisms, Lord Exeter, when living at Revesby, was allowed to remove
the fine stained glass windows to his church of St. Martin’s in Stamford,
in 1757. He paid £24 2_s._ 6_d._ to his steward for white glass to be
put in in their stead, but the glass was not put in, and for eighty
years the church was open to the wind and rain. The removal at all was
a disgraceful business, and no wonder the Tattershall folk threatened to
kill the glazier who was employed to take the windows out.
[Illustration: _Tattershall Church._]
The castle is now (1912) the property of Lord Curzon, who is putting
it into repair. The story of its sale quite recently to a speculator,
and the ruthless tearing out by his creditors of the fine historic
mantelpieces is one which reflects little credit on any concerned in it.
They are now replaced.
[Sidenote: THE KEEP RESTORED]
But “All’s well that ends well,” and Lincolnshire may congratulate
herself that the finest old brick building in the country is in such
good hands, and that the needed restoration is being carried out so
admirably. It was no easy task to find oak trees to supply the beams
which carry the floors, as each had to be twenty-four feet long and
eighteen inches square.[27] The floors are now in, and the roof, which
had been off for 250 years, reinstated. In the inner ward the ground plan
of the kitchen has been laid bare; this was close outside the south-east
angle of the keep and connected with it by a covered passage leading from
the staircase turret. The turrets and parapets are repaired, and the
floors and roof being again in place and the moat refilled with water,
though not what one would call a comfortable residence, it will be a
most interesting place to visit, and never again, we trust, be likely
to fall into the neglect which it has suffered for the last two hundred
years. Enough pottery and metal has been found to form the nucleus of a
collection which will be preserved for visitors to see. But no collection
will ever be half as interesting as the sight of this magnificent brick
building itself, and the close examination of all its structural details.
[Illustration: _Scrivelsby Stocks._]
CHAPTER XXXIV
BARDNEY ABBEY
The Excavations—The Title
“Dominus”—Barlings—Stainfield—Tupholme—Stixwould—Kirkstead
Abbey—Kirkstead Chapel—Woodhall Spa—Tower-on-the-Moor—Charles
Brandon Duke of Suffolk.
The fens were always a difficulty to the various conquerors of England,
and, probably owing to the security which they gave, they, from the
earliest times, attracted the monastic bodies. Hence we find on the
eastern edge of the Branston, Nocton, and Blankney fens, and just
off the left bank of the Witham river when it turns to the south, an
extraordinary number of abbeys. For Kirkstead, Stixwould, Tupholme and
Bardney, with Stainfield and Barlings just a mile or two north of the
river valley, are all within a ten mile drive. Of these, Kirkstead was
Cistercian, and Stixwould and Stainfield were nunneries. They were
all most ruthlessly and utterly destroyed by Thomas Cromwell at the
dissolution, so it is only the history of them that we can speak about.
[Illustration: _Kirkstead Chapel._]
Stixwould and Kirkstead were originally as much in the fen as Bardney;
but since the “Dales Head Dyke” was cut parallel with the Witham and
about a mile to the west from “Metheringham Delph” to “Billinghay
Skirth,” the land between it and the river is known as the “Dales.”
[Sidenote: ST. OSWALD]
[Sidenote: A ROYAL ABBOT]
By far the oldest and the biggest and most interesting of the group
was the great Benedictine Abbey of Bardney. This was founded not later
than the seventh century. Some of the chronicles say by Æthelred, son
of Penda, the pagan king of Mercia; but it may have been by his brother
Wulfhere, who reigned before him. Æthelred’s Queen Osfrida, niece of
the sainted Oswald, the Northumbrian king who had defeated Cædwalla at
Hevenfield in 635 and was himself killed in battle by Penda at Maserfield
in 642—had before her marriage brought the relics of her uncle in 672
to Bardney, where they became the centre of attraction for pilgrims,
and St. Oswald’s name as patron was added to those of St. Peter and
St. Paul to whom the abbey was dedicated. Osfrida herself having been
murdered by the Danes in 697, was buried here, and Æthelred, who in 701
founded Evesham Abbey, following the example of half-a-dozen Anglian
and Saxon kings, gave up his throne after a reign of thirty years and
entered Bardney as a monk in 704. In the quaint words of the chronicle
he “was shorn a religious,” i.e., adopted the tonsure, and died twelve
years later, after ruling for four years as Abbot of Bardney. One of the
frescoes in Friskney church represents him resigning his crown to become
a monk. St. Oswald’s arm, which had been preserved in St. Peter’s church
at Bamborough, and which never withered, was afterwards transferred to
Peterborough Abbey, according to Gunton, a little before the Conquest. A
monk of the period wrote the following lines about it:—
“Nullo verme perit, nulla putredine tabet
Dextra viri, nullo constringi frigore, nullo
Dissolvi fervore potest, sed semper eodem
Immutata statu persistit, mortua vivit.”
In which the monk, as usual, made a “false quantity.” In 870 Hingvar
and Hubba, the Danes, in spite of its fancied security, utterly
destroyed the abbey and put some 300 monks to death. They also destroyed
Peterborough, Croyland, Ely, Huntingdon, Winchester, and other fine and
wealthy monastic houses in the same barbarous manner. Bardney after
this lay desolate for 200 years; after which, Gilbert De Gaunt, on whom
the Conqueror had bestowed much land in mid-Lincolnshire, with the aid
of the famous Bishop Remigius of Lincoln, restored it, and endowed it
with revenues from at least a dozen different villages, amongst them
Willingham, Southrey, Partney, Steeping, Firsby, Skendleby, Willoughby,
Lusby, Winceby, Hagworthingham, Folkingham, and Heckington. This would
be about 1080. In 1406 we read of Henry IV., our Lincolnshire king,
spending a Saturday-to-Monday there, riding from Horncastle with his two
sons and three captive earls of the Scots, Douglas, Fyfe, and Orkney,
and a goodly company. The Bishop of Lincoln “with 24 horses” and the
“venerable Lord Willoughby” came to do homage in the afternoon. The abbey
stood on slightly rising ground, with a moat and deep ditch lined with
brick, as at Tattershall, and enclosing twenty-four acres. It was half a
mile from the present church. On the east side of the abbey is a large
barrow on which was once a handsome cross in memory of King Æthelred, who
is supposed to have been buried there, and it is quite possible that he
was. The name of a field close by “Coney garth” is no doubt a corruption
of Koenig Garth, which is much the same as the “King’s Mead fields” near
Bath Abbey, immortalised in Sheridan’s “Rivals,” as the place of meeting
between Captain Absolute and Bob Acres, and where Sir Lucius O’Trigger
inhumanly asks Acres “In case of accident ... would you choose to be
pickled and sent home? or would it be the same to you to lie here in the
Abbey? I’m told there is very snug lying in the Abbey.”
[Sidenote: BARDNEY ABBEY]
The site of the abbey when excavations were begun in 1909 was apparently
a grass field with a moat; but since then the whole of the great monastic
church has been laid bare to the floor pavement, which was about four
and a half feet below the surface. The Norman bases of the eight chancel
columns and twenty pillars of the nave are now visible, and also of the
four large piers which supported the tower arches; these must have been
very beautiful, each nave pillar having round a solid core a cluster of
twelve, and the tower piers of sixteen, columns. All down the church,
which is 254 feet long and over sixty-one feet wide, tombs were found
_in situ_, with inscriptions, the earliest being that of Johanna, wife
of John Browne of Bardney, merchant, 1334, and the handsomest that of
Richard Horncastel, abbot, 1508, which measures eight feet by four, is
seven inches thick, and weighs three tons. This had been already moved,
and it is now fixed against the south wall of Bardney church. Adjoining
the south side of the nave is the cloister; and the chapter-house,
parlour, dormitory, dining-hall, cellar, kitchen, well and guest-house
are all contiguous. A little way off are the infirmary-hall and chapel,
with three fireplaces and some tile paving. Not much statuary was found,
but various carved heads and iron tools, pottery, etc., one headless
figure three feet high of St. Laurence and, most interesting of all, the
reverse of the abbey seal which was in use in 1348, showing St. Peter and
St. Paul beneath a canopy and the half figure of an abbot with crozier
below. We know that the obverse had on it a figure of St. Oswald, but
that has not yet been found. It is made of bronze or latten.
The huge extent of the buildings and the beauty of the column bases and
the plan of this, the earliest of English monasteries, with its moat
enclosing the whole twenty-five acres, and its king’s tumulus, make a
visit to the site very interesting, and the vicar, Rev. C. E. Laing, has
worked hard with his four men each year since 1909, and with the help of
kind friends has managed to purchase three acres, but is greatly hampered
by want of funds, which at present only reach one quarter of the sum
required.
[Sidenote: THE TITLE “DOMINUS”]
Mr. Laing has published a little shilling guide to the excavations at
Bardney, with photographs, which explain the work very clearly and show
the tombs with their inscriptions. From this it will be noticed that
Abbot Horncastel is called on his tomb “Dompnus,” _i.e._, Dominus, and
Thomas Clark, rector of Partney, has this title “Dns.,” and also Thomas
Goldburgh, soldier, has the same. This is the same name as that on the
old Grimsby Corporation seal of the princess, who is said to have married
Havelock the Dane (_see_ Chap. XIX.). Dominus is a difficult title to
translate, for if we call it ‘Sir,’ as the old registers often do, it is
misleading, as it has no knightly significance, and it probably meant no
more than “The Rev.,” or in the case of a soldier “Esq.” or “Gent.” It
certainly does not imply here that the owners of the title belonged to
“the lower order of clergy,” and yet that is the recognised meaning of
it in many old church registers, _e.g._, in the list of rectors, vicars,
and chantry priests of Heckington, taken from the episcopal records at
Lincoln. Some of the vicars and most of the chantry priests are called
“Sir,” and this generally implies a non-graduate. So also in the chapter
on the clergy with the list of rectors and curates given in Miss Armitt’s
interesting book, “The Church of Grasmere” (published 1912), pp. 57-60
and p. 81, we find that the tythe-taking rector is termed “Master,”
and bears the suffix “Clerk”; while “Sir” is reserved for the curate,
his deputy, who has not graduated at either university. This view is
upheld in Dr. Cox’s “Parish Registers of England,” p. 251. The Grasmere
book speaks of “_Magister_ George Plumpton,” who was son of Sir William
Plumpton, of Plumpton, Knight, and rector of Grasmere, 1438-9. In 1554
Gabriel Croft is called rector, and his three curates for the outlying
hamlets are put down as—
“Dns. William Jackson, called in his will ‘late Curate of Grasmer.’”
“Dns. John Hunter.
“Dns. Hugo Walters.”
This entry is followed by—
“_Sirre_ Thomas Benson curate” who witnesses a will in 1563; and in 1569
we have “_Master_ John Benson Rector.” In 1645 we have a “Mr. Benson”
doing the duty as rector during the Commonwealth, and in 1646 we have
“Sir Christopher Rawling,” who had probably served as curate for some
years, as he is, at his child’s baptism in 1641, styled “Clericus.”
Clearly this word “Sir” is here the translation of the Latin “Dominus,”
and the previous entries bear out the statement that the prefix ‘Sir’
here betokens the lower order of clergy who had not graduated at either
university. But that this was not a plan universally followed is made
quite clear from the monuments at Bardney, where we find a rector and an
abbot and a soldier all called “Dominus.” Perhaps in neither of these
cases is it necessary to translate the word by ‘Sir,’ why not leave it
at “Dominus”? From a letter in _The Times_, May, 1913, I gather that
this word “Dominus” is responsible for the title “Lord Mayor.” The words
“Dominus Major” are first found among the City of London Records for
1486, in an order issued for the destruction of unlawful nets and coal
sacks of insufficient size. The words only meant “Sir Mayor,” but in
course of time they came to be translated “The Lord The Mayor,” which
easily passed into “The Lord Mayor,” a title which did not come into
general use till 1535.
[Sidenote: BARLINGS ABBEY]
_Barlings Abbey_ stood a mile west of the Benedictine nunnery of
_Stainfield_, which was founded by Henry Percy in the twelfth century.
The abbey was founded about the same time by Ralph de Hoya for
Premonstratensian canons. This term is derived from the “_Premonstratum_”
Abbey in Picardy, _i.e._, built in a place “pointed out” by the Blessed
Virgin to be the headquarters of the Order. This was in 1120, and the
Order first came to England in 1140. At the dissolution they seem to
have had thirty-five houses here, Tupholme Abbey being one of them. The
canons lived according to the rule of St. Augustine, and wore a white
robe. In the revolt against the suppression of the smaller houses, known
as “the Lincolnshire Rebellion,” or “the Pilgrimage of Grace,” in 1537,
the prior of Barlings, Dr. Matthew Makkerell, a D.D. of Cambridge, took a
prominent part, and under the name of Captain Cobbler, for he took that
disguise, he led 20,000 men. They were dispersed by Charles Brandon, Duke
of Suffolk, and the prior was hanged at his own gate.
The abbey is sometimes called Oxeney, because the founders removed the
canons from Barling Grange to a place called Oxeney in another part of
the village, but the name followed them and Oxeney became Barlings.
_Barlings_ and _Stainfield_ are both near Bardney to the north, and
_Tupholme_ and _Stixwould_ just as near on the south. _Tupholme_, like
Barlings, has a Premonstratensian house, founded 1160. A wall of the
refectory with lancet window, and a beautiful stone pulpit for the reader
during meals is all that is left. It is close to the road from Horncastle
to Bardney.
[Illustration: _Remains of Kirkstead Abbey Church._]
[Sidenote: KIRKSTEAD ABBEY]
_Stixwould_ is three miles to the south, and was, like Stainfield, a
nunnery. It was founded by Lucia the first, the wife of Ivo Taillebois.
Nothing is left of it; but in the parish church are some stone coffins,
a good parclose screen, used as a reredos, and a remarkable font, whose
panels, bearing emblems of the Evangelists and of the first four months
of the year, are divided by richly carved pinnacles with figures of
lions and flowers. Near by is _Halstead Hall_ (“Hawstead”), a fifteenth
century moated house of the Welby family, from which Lincoln, Boston, and
Heckington are all visible.
[Sidenote: KIRKSTEAD CHAPEL]
_Kirkstead_ is three miles further south, and here is one of the most
beautiful little thirteenth-century buildings in the county. It is near
the ruin of the abbey, of which only a gaunt fragment remains. This
chapel of St. Leonard is a real gem of Early English architecture. It
is an oblong chamber with vaulted roof adorned with tooth and nail-head
ornament, springing from bosses low down in the wall. The wall is arcaded
all round, and the capitals exquisitely carved. Bishop Trollope speaks
of the western door as “one of the most lovely doorways imaginable, its
jambs being first enriched by an inner pair of pillars having caps from
which spring vigorously and yet most delicately carved foliage, and then,
after a little interval, two more pairs of similar pillars carrying a
beautifully moulded arch, one member of which is worked with the tooth
moulding. Above this lovely doorway, in which still hangs the cöeval
delicately ironed oak door, is an arcade of similar work, in the centre
of which is a pointed oval window of beautiful design. The inside is
still more beautiful than without.”
Inside, part of a rood screen with lancet arcading is earlier than
anything of the kind in England, except the plain Norman screen in the
room above the altar in Compton Church, Surrey. A mutilated effigy of a
knight with a cylindrical saucepan-shaped helmet and a hauberk of banded
mail, shows a rare instance of thirteenth-century armour. It is thought
to be Robert, second Lord of Tattershall, who died about 1212.
The ruinous state of this lovely little building, which was used for
public worship until Bishop Wordsworth prohibited it, as the building
was unsafe, has long been a crying scandal; the owner always refusing
to allow it to be made safe by others, and doing nothing to prevent its
imminent downfall himself. The present Act of 1913 has, it is devoutly
hoped, come in time to enable proper and prompt measures to be taken to
put it into a sound condition.[28]
Quite near to Kirkstead is the newest Lincolnshire
watering-place—_Woodhall Spa_.
[Sidenote: WOODHALL SPA]
A deep boring for coal in 1811 found no coal but struck a spring or
flow of water, which is more highly charged with iodine and bromine
than any known spa. This has been utilised, and a fine range of baths,
on the principle of those at Bath, has been set up, though the water,
unlike that at Bath, or at Acqui near Genoa, does not gush out boiling
hot, but has to be pumped up 400 feet and then heated. All the various
kinds of baths and appliances for the treatment of rheumatism, etc., are
now installed, and quite a town has arisen on what was not long ago a
desolate moor. The air is fine, the soil dry and sandy, the heather is
beautiful around the place, and the Scotch fir woods and the picturesque
“Tower-on-the-Moor”—a watch-tower or part of a hunting-lodge built by the
Cromwells of Tattershall—add a charm to the landscape, though the “greate
ponde or lake brickid about,” mentioned by Leland, is gone.
[Illustration: _Kirkstead Chapel._]
[Sidenote: CHARLES BRANDON DUKE OF SUFFOLK]
The Duke of Suffolk, to whom his sovereign gave so many Lincolnshire
manors, was son of Sir W. Brandon, the king’s standard-bearer who fell
at Bosworth field. Henry VIII. had a great liking for him and made him
Master of the Horse, a viscount, and afterwards a duke. Like his royal
master, he was the husband of several wives, the third of four being Mary
Queen of France, widow of Louis XII. and second sister of Henry VIII. He
resembled the king, too, in being a big man; indeed he was remarkable
for his bodily strength and feats of arms, and was victor in several
tournaments. The pains he took to quell the Lincolnshire Rebellion
greatly pleased the king, who showered rewards on him with lavish hands.
He is said to have somewhat resembled him, his countenance being bluff
and his beard white and cut like the king’s. He was good-tempered and
fortunate in never giving offence. Hence, on his portrait at Woburn Abbey
he is said to have been “Gratiose withe Henry VIII. Voide of Despyte,
moste fortunate to the end, never in displeasure with his Kynge.”
CHAPTER XXXV
THE FENS
Brothertoft or Goosetoft—In Holland Fen—John Taylor’s Poem—Fen
Skating.
Primitive peoples have been always rather prone to establishing
themselves on swampy ground, probably because they felt secure from
attack in such places. They passed in their coracles easily from one
little island of dry ground to another and found plenty of employment
in taking fish and waterfowl, in cutting grass for fodder or hay, reeds
for thatch and bedding, willows to make their wattled huts, and peat for
fuel, all of which were close at hand and free to everyone. It was not
such a bad life after all.
[Sidenote: THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN]
The earliest inhabitants of the Lincolnshire fens came from the mouths of
the Meuse, Rhine, and Scheldt, so they lived by choice in low land and
knew how to make the most of the situation. They clung for habitation to
the islands of higher ground, and the names of many villages in the low
part of the county, though no longer surrounded by water, bear witness
by their termination to their insular origin, _e.g._, Bardney, Gedney,
Friskney, Stickney, Sibsey, _ey_, as in the word ‘eyot’ (pronounced ait,
_e.g._, Chiswick Eyot), meaning _island_. In time the knots of houses
grew to village settlements, and raised causeways were made from one to
another, which served also as banks to keep out the sea at high tides.
And we know that they did this effectually; hence we find the churches
mostly placed for safety on that side of the causeway bank which is
furthest from the sea. You will see this to be the case as you go along
the road from Boston to Wainfleet, where the churches are all west of
the road, or from Spalding to Long Sutton, where they are all south of
the road, and this explains how the Lincolnshire name for a high road is
“ramper,” _i.e._, rampart. There are other sea banks which were thrown
up purposely to keep out the sea, not necessarily as roads. These are
very large and important works, fifty miles in length and at a varying
distance from the sea, girdling the land with but little intermission
from Norfolk to the Humber. Such large undertakings could only have been
carried out by the Romans.
This bank, when made, had to be watched; for both in the earliest ages,
and also in Jacobean times when the fens were drained, all embanking and
draining works were violently opposed by the fen-men who lived by fishing
and fowling, and had no desire to see the land brought into cultivation.
The Romans were great colonisers; they made good roads through the
country wherever they went to stay, and in Lincolnshire they began
the existing system of “Catchwater” drains which has been the means
of converting a marshy waste into the finest agricultural land in the
kingdom. The Roman Carr (or fen) dyke joined the Witham with the Welland,
so making a navigable waterway from Lincoln in the centre to Market
Deeping in the extreme south of the county; and by catching the water
from the hills to the west it prevented the overflowing streams from
flooding the low-lying lands, and discharged them into the sea.
Rennie, at the beginning of last century, used the same method in the
east fen; but modern engineers have this advantage over the Romans that
they are able by pumping stations to raise the water which lies below the
level of the sea to a higher level from which it can run off by natural
gravitation. Still the Romans did wonderfully, and when they had to leave
England, after 400 years of beneficent occupation, England lost its best
friends, for, not only was he a great road and dyke builder but, as the
child’s “Very First History Book” says,
“If he just chose, there could be no man
Nicer and kinder than a Roman.”
The Romans themselves were quite aware of the beneficial nature of their
rule, as far as their colonies were concerned, and were proud of it. Who
can fail to see this feeling if he reads the charming lines on Rome which
Claudian wrote, about 400 A.D., when the Romans were still in Britain.
“Hæc est in gremium victos quae sola recepit,
Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit
Matris non Dominae ritu, civesque vocavit
Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit.”
Alone her captives to her heart she pressed,
Gave to the human race one common name,
And—mother more than sovereign—fondly called
Each son though far away her citizen.
W. F. R.
[Sidenote: THE SAXONS]
The whole country soon became a prey to the freebooters who crossed
the North Sea in search of plunder. Of these, the Saxons under Cedric
besieged Lincoln about 497 and, the Angles from the Elbe joining with
them, made a strong settlement there which became the capital of Mercia
and received a Saxon king. To these invaders, who came as plunderers
but remained as colonists, we also owe much. In east Lincolnshire they
certainly fostered agriculture, and like the Romans made salt-pans for
getting the salt from sea water by evaporation.
[Illustration: _Darlow’s Yard, Sleaford._]
[Sidenote: THE DANES]
[Sidenote: THE NORMANS]
The Saxons dominated the country for about the same time as the Romans,
and were then themselves ousted with much cruelty and bloodshed by the
Danes or Norsemen. But during their time Christianity had been introduced
at the instance of Pope Gregory I., who sent Augustine and forty monks
to Britain at the end of the sixth century to convert the Anglo-Saxons,
and as Bertha, wife of Æthelbert, King of Kent, was a Christian, he met
with considerable success, and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
He was followed early in the seventh century by Paulinus, who came from
York and built the first stone church at Lincoln. When, a hundred and
fifty years later, the Danes made their appearance they found in several
places monasteries and cathedrals or churches which they ruthlessly
pillaged and destroyed; and they too, having come for plunder, remained
as indwellers, settling in the eastern counties, not only near the coast
but far inland, just as the Norsemen settled and introduced industrial
arts on the west coast in Cumberland. Dane and Saxon struggled long and
fiercely, the Danes being beaten in Alfred’s great battle at Ethandune
in Wilts, 878, but only to return in Edmund’s reign and defeat the
Saxons at Assandun in Essex under King Canute, 1016, after which, by
agreement, they divided the country with Edmund Ironsides, and withdrew
from Wessex, the region south-west of _Watling Street_, but the whole
country north-eastwards from the Tees to the Thames was given over to
them and called the Danelagh, or country under Dane law. Thus Lincoln
became a Danish burgh, and in the next year, on Edmund’s death, Canute
became sole King of England. None of the Fenmen of Lincolnshire had been
subdued till in 1013 Swegen, King of Denmark, invaded the county in force
and pillaged and burnt St. Botolph’s town (Boston), and they appear to
have maintained their independence all through the Norman times. For
the dynasty of Danish kings did not last long, and both they and the
kings of the restored Saxon line were effaced by the Norman invaders
who, like all their predecessors, found the Fenmen a hard nut to crack.
Hereward, who was not son of Leofric, but a Lincolnshire man, had many a
fight for liberty, and held the Isle of Ely against the repeated attacks
of the Normans, and, when at last the Fenmen were beaten, they still
maintained a sort of independence, and instead of becoming Normans in
manners and language they are said to have kept their own methods and
their own speech, so that there may well be some truth in the boast that
the ordinary speech of the East Lincolnshire men of “the Fens” and “the
Marsh” is the purest English in the land.
HOLLAND FEN AND FEN SKATING.
In the Fens there were always some tracts of ground raised above the
waters which at times inundated the lower levels there. These are
indicated by such names as Mount Pleasant, or by the termination ‘toft,’
as in Langtoft, Fishtoft, Brothertoft, and Wigtoft in the Fens; and
similarly in the Isle of Axholme, Eastoft, Sandtoft, and Beltoft. Toft
is a Scandinavian word connected with top, and means a knoll of rising
ground. When the staple commodities of the Fens were “feathers, wool,
and wildfowl,” these knolls were centres of industry. Sheep might roam
at large, but in hard weather always liked to have some higher ground
to make for, and human beings have a preference for a dry site, hence
a cottage or two and, if there was room, a collection of houses and
possibly a church would come into existence, and the grassy knoll would
be often white with the flocks of geese which were kept, not so much
for eating as for plucking; and we know that the monasteries always
had ‘vacheries’ or cow-pastures either on these isolated knolls or on
rising ground at the edge of the fen. One of the most notable of these
island villages was called at one time Goosetoft, now Brothertoft, in the
Holland Fen about four miles west of Boston. Here on the 8th of July,
O.S., all sheep “found in their wool,” _i.e._, who had not been clipped
and marked, were driven up to be claimed by their owners, fourpence a
head being exacted from all who had no common rights.
The custom survives in Westmorland, where in November of every year all
stray Herdwick sheep are brought in to the shepherds’ meeting at the
‘Dun Bull’ at Mardale, near Hawes-Water, and after they are claimed, the
men settle down to a strenuous day, or rather two nights and a day, of
enjoyment; a fox hunt on foot, and a hound trail whatever the weather
may be, followed by feasting and songs at night, keep them all “as merry
as grigs.” But where there are ten people at the Dun Bull there were one
hundred or more at Brothertoft, people coming out from Boston for the day
or even for the week, and all being lodged and fed in some thirty large
tents.
[Sidenote: GOOSETOFT]
John Taylor, ‘the water poet,’ wrote in 1640 an account of Goosetoft
which is worth preserving:—
In Lincolnshire an ancient town doth stand
Called Goosetoft, that hath neither fallow’d land
Or woods or any fertile pasture ground,
But is with wat’ry fens incompast round.
The people there have neither horse nor cowe,
Nor sheep, nor oxe, nor asse, nor pig, nor sowe;
Nor cream, curds, whig, whey, buttermilk or cheese,
Nor any other living thing but geese.
The parson of the parish takes great paines,
And tythe-geese only are his labour’s gaines;
If any charges there must be defrayed
Or imposition on the towne is lay’d,
As subsidies or fifteenes[29] for the King,
Or to mend bridges, churches, anything,
Then those that have of geese the greatest store
Must to these taxes pay so much the more.
Nor can a man be raised to dignity
But as his geese increase and multiply;
And as men’s geese do multiply and breed
From office unto office they proceed.
A man that hath but with twelve geese began
In time hath come to be a tythingman;
And with great credit past that office thorough,
His geese increasing he hath been Headborough,
Then, as his flock in number are accounted,
Unto a Constable he hath been mounted;
And so from place to place he doth aspire,
And as his geese grow more hee’s raisèd higher.
’Tis onely geese then that doe men prefer,
And ’tis a rule no geese no officer.
FEN SKATING.
[Sidenote: FEN SKATING]
The Fen skaters of Lincolnshire have been famous for centuries. In the
Peterborough Museum you may see two bone skates made of the shin bones
of an ox and a deer ground to a smooth flat surface on one side and
pierced at either end with holes, or grooved, for attachment thongs.
The regular fen skates, which are only now being ousted by the more
convenient modern form were like the Dutch skates of Teniers’ pictures,
long, projecting blades twice as long as a man’s foot, turned up high
at the end and cut off square at the heel. They were called “Whittlesea
runners,” and were supposed to be the best form of skate for pace
straight ahead; and no man who lived at Ramsey 100 to 200 years ago or
at Peterborough or Croyland was without a pair. The writer has been on
Cowbit Wash (pronounced Cubbit), near Spalding, when the great frozen
plain was in places black with the crowds of Lincolnshire fenmen, mostly
agricultural labourers, all on skates and all thoroughly enjoying
themselves, whilst ever and anon a course was cleared, and with a swish
of the sounding “pattens” a couple of men came racing down the long lane
bordered with spectators with both arms swinging in time to the long
vigorous strokes which is the fenman’s style. The most remarkable thing
about the gathering was the splendid physique of the crowd. Could they
all have been taken and drilled for military service they would have made
a regiment of which Peter the Great would have been proud.
The best ice fields for racing purposes are Littleport in Cambridgeshire,
and Lingay Fen and Cowbit Wash in Lincolnshire. Before it was drained in
1849, Whittlesea Mere in Huntingdonshire was the great meeting ground,
and the Ramsey and Whittlesea men were famous skaters. By dyke or river
one could go from Cambridge to Ramsey on skates all the way. The best
speed skaters—and speed was the only aim of the fen skater—for many years
were the Smarts of Welney, near Littleport. “Turkey” Smart beat Southery,
who won the championship in the last match on Whittlesea Mere from
Watkinson of Ramsey, and after him “Fish” Smart held the record at Cowbit
Wash for a whole generation from 1881 to 1912.
In 1878 and 1879 the frost was long and hard, and the prizes at the
great skating match near Ramsey took the form of food and clothing for
the frozen-out labourers. The course was down a road which a heavy fall
of snow, followed first by a thaw and then by a frost, had made into an
ideal skating course.
[Sidenote: THE CHAMPIONSHIPS]
Whatever year you take you will find that the prize-winners for fen
skating come from the same district and the same villages; Welney,
Whaplode, Gedney, Cowbit, and Croyland are perpetually recurring
names, the last four being all situated in the south-eastern corner of
Lincolnshire which abuts on the Wash between the outfall of the Welland
and the Nene.
In the severe frost of 1912, which lasted from January 29 to February
5, the thermometer on the night of February 3 going down to zero,
Cowbit Wash saw the contest for both the professional and the amateur
championship for Lincolnshire. The Lincolnshire professional race on
Saturday, February 3, over a course of one mile and a half with one
turn in it brought out two Croyland men, H. Slater first and G. Pepper
second, F. Ward of Whaplode being third. The winning time was 4 minutes
50 seconds.
On Monday, February 5, W. W. Pridgeon of Whaplode won the Lincolnshire
amateur championship over a mile course with a turn and a terrific wind
in 3 minutes 40 seconds, two Boston men coming next. On the following
day, February 6, the ice from the thaw, though wet, had a beautiful
surface, and in the great “one mile straightaway” race open to amateurs
and professionals alike, eight men entered, all of whom beat Fish Smart’s
record of 3 minutes. F. W. Dix, the British amateur champion winning
in 2 minutes 27¼ seconds, with S. Greenhall, the British professional
champion, second in 2 minutes 32²⁄₁₅ seconds.
F. W. Dix showed himself to be first-rate at all distances, for besides
this mile race, he won the mile and a half on February 2 at Littleport,
with five turns in 4 minutes 40 seconds, and next day at the Welsh Harp
he secured the prize for 220 yards in 22⅘ seconds. S. Greenhall had won
the British professional championship on the previous day at Lingay Fen
over a course of one and a half miles, coming in first by 170 yards in 4
minutes 44⅘ seconds.
In all these races the wind was blowing a gale, and those who won the
toss, and could run close up under the lee of the line of spectators had
a decided advantage, and as a matter of fact they won in every case.
[Sidenote: A WORLD’S RECORD]
Since this Dix has won in the Swiss skating matches of 1913, and here it
may be of interest to add the following, which appeared in _The Times_ of
February 3, 1913:—
“SPEED-SKATING.
INTERNATIONAL RACE IN CHRISTIANIA.
(From our Correspondent.)
CHRISTIANIA, FEB. 1.
“The International Skating Race held here to-day over a course
of 10,000 metres was won by the Norwegian skater, Oscar
Mathieson. His time was 17 min. 22⁶⁄₁₀ sec., which is a world’s
‘record.’ The Russian, Ipolitow, was second, his time being 17
min. 35⁵⁄₁₀ sec. The previous world’s ‘record’ was 17 min. 36⅗
sec.”
‘Metres’ fairly beat me, but I take it that 10,000 of them would be about
six miles.
But anyone who likes to worry it out can postulate that the length of
a metre is 39·37079 inches. This was originally adopted as a “Natural
unit,” being one ten-millionth of the distance between a pole and the
Equator. But, as an error has been found in the measurement of this
distance, it is no longer a “Natural unit,” but just the length of a
certain rod of platinum kept at Paris, as the yard is the length of a rod
kept at Westminster.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE FEN CHURCHES—NORTHERN DIVISION
Friskney—Frescoes in the Church—Its Decoys—Wrangle—John
Reed’s Epitaph—Leake—Leverton—Benington—Frieston—The
Font-Cover—Frieston Shore—Rare
Flowers—Fishtoft—Skirbeck—Boston—The Church.
The two centres for “The parts of Holland” are Spalding and Boston. From
the latter we go both north and south, from Spalding only eastwards, and
in each case we shall pass few residential places of importance, but many
exceptionally fine churches.
We will take the district north of Boston first.
Friskney, which is but three and a half miles south of Wainfleet, where
we ended our south Lindsey excursion, is really in Lindsey. It stands
between the Marsh and the Fen. The road from Wainfleet to Boston bounds
the inhabited area of the parish on the east, and another from Burgh,
which runs for ten miles without passing a single village till it reaches
Wrangle, does the same on the west. Outside of these roads on the west is
the great “East Fen,” reclaimed little more than 100 years ago, and on
the east is the “Old Marsh,” along which went the Roman Bank, and east
of which again is the “New Marsh,” and beyond it the huge stretch of the
“Friskney flats,” over which the sea ebbs and flows for a distance of
from three to four miles; the haunt of innumerable sea birds, plovers
(locally pyewipes), curlew, redshanks, knots, dunlins, stints, etc., as
well as duck and geese of many kinds and even, at times, the lordly swan.
[Sidenote: FRISKNEY]
Thus surrounded, _Friskney_ stands solitary about half way between
Wainfleet and Wrangle, and if only the northern boundary of Holland had
been made the “Black Dyke” and “Gout” as would have been most natural,
Friskney would have been the north-eastern point of Holland, instead
of being the south-eastern point of Lindsey. Since their discovery by
the late rector, the Rev. H. J. Cheales, the most noticeable thing in
the fine Perpendicular church is the series of wall paintings above the
arcades of the nave, date 1320, most of them are faint and hard to make
out, but there are drawings of them, and an account was published in 1884
and 1905 in the “Archæologia,” vols. 48 and 50. The subjects are the
Annunciation, Nativity, Resurrection, and Ascension, and the Assumption
of the Virgin, on the north arcade; on the south are the Offering of
Melchizedek, the Gathering of the Manna, the Last Supper, one possibly
of Pope Gregory, one of King Æthelred entering Bardney Abbey, and a most
curious one of Jews stabbing the Host. There are two Norman arches in
the aisle wall, and a beautiful tower arch with steps from the nave down
into the tower, the lower part of which is transition Norman, the next
stage Early English, and the next Perpendicular; there are six bells in
it. The nave is very high, the clerestory, on which the paintings are,
having been added early in the fourteenth century. The old roof has
been preserved, and the chancel screen and two chantry screens, which
are unusually high to match the nave. The rood stairs, as at Wrangle
and Leake, are on the south side. The pulpit is dated 1659. The north
chantry is entered by a half arch, and there is a squint and a curious
low-side window placed oddly on the north side of the chancel arch. Some
unusually fine sedilia with diaper work at the back, and a trefoiled
aumbry and piscina are in the chancel, which has been nearly ruined by
bad restoration with a new roof in 1849. It has large handsome windows
and finely canopied niches on each buttress, with ornamentation carved in
Ancaster stone. This chancel was the gift of John Mitchell of Friskney in
1566.
An effigy of a knight of the Freshney family (a local pronunciation of
Friskney), of whom we have seen so many monuments in the Marsh churches
at Somercoats, Saltfleetby and Skidbrooke, is at the west end, and a
restored churchyard cross stands near the south door.
The family of Kyme, who had a manor near Boston and two villages called
after them between Sleaford and Dogdyke, held land in Friskney through
the thirteenth century and until 1339, when it passed by marriage to
Gilbert Umfraville, whose son, the Earl of Angus, married Maud, daughter
of Lord Lucy. She afterwards became the second wife of Henry Percy, first
Earl of Northumberland, father of the famous “Hotspur,” whose wife,
together with her second husband, Baron Camoys, has such a fine monument
in Trotton church near Midhurst, Sussex. Hence, in the east window of the
north aisle of the church at Friskney are the arms, amongst others, of
Northumberland, Lucy, and Umfraville.
The Earl’s grandson, the second Earl of Northumberland, who was killed at
the battle of St. Albans fighting for Henry VI., May 22, 1455, possessed
no less than fifty-seven manors in Lincolnshire, many of them inherited
from the Kymes.
William de Kyme, uncle of Gilbert Umfraville, left a widow Joan who
married Nicolas de Cantelupe. He founded a chantry dedicated to St.
Nicolas in Lincoln Cathedral, and she, one dedicated to St. Paul.
[Sidenote: LOST INDUSTRIES]
It is melancholy to hear of old-fashioned employments fading away, but
it is the penalty paid by civilisation all the world over. Friskney in
particular may be called the home of lost industries. For instance,
“Mossberry or Cranberry Fen,” in this parish, was so named from
the immense quantity of cranberries which grew on it, and of which
the inhabitants made no use until a Westmorland man, knowing their
excellence, taught them; and thence, until the drainage of the fens,
thousands of pecks were picked and sent into Cambridgeshire, Yorkshire,
and Lancashire every year, 5_s._ a peck being paid to the gatherers.
After the drainage they became very scarce and fetched up to 50_s._ a
peck.
Similarly, before the enclosure of the fens there were at least ten _Duck
Decoys_ in this part of the county, of which five were in Friskney, and
they sent to the London market in one season over 31,000 ducks. Eighty
years ago there were still two in Friskney and one in Wainfleet St.
Mary’s, and I remember one in Friskney which still maintained itself, in
the sixties, though each year the wild fowl came to it in diminishing
numbers.
Bryant’s large map of 1828 shows a decoy near Cowbit Wash, no less than
five near the right bank of the River Glen in the angle formed by the
“Horseshoe Drove” and the “Counter Drain,” and two on the left bank
of the Glen, all the seven being within a two-mile square, and two
more further north in the Dowsby Fen, and four in the Sempringham Fen
probably made by the Gilbertines.
[Sidenote: THE DECOY]
The decoy was a piece of water quite hidden by trees, and only to be
approached by a plank across the moat which surrounded it, and with a
large tract of marshy uncultivated ground extending all round it, the
absence of disturbing noises being an essential, for the birds slept
there during the day and only took their flight to the coast at evening
for feeding. The method of taking them was as follows. The pond had
half-a-dozen arms like a star-fish, but all curving to the right, over
which nets were arched on bent rods; and these pipes, leading down each
in a different direction and gradually narrowing, ended in a purse of
netting. All along the pipes were screens, so set that the ducks could
not see the man till they had passed him, and lest they should wind
him he always held a bit of burning turf before his mouth. Decoy birds
enticed by hemp and other floating seed flung to them over the screens
kept swimming up the pipes followed by the wild birds, and a little dog
was trained to enter the water and pass in and out of the reed screens.
The ducks, being curious, would swim up, and the dog, who was rewarded
with little bits of cheese, kept reappearing ahead of them, and so led
them on to follow the decoys. At last the man showed himself, and the
birds—ducks, teal, and widgeon—rushed up the pipe into the purse and were
taken. The decoy was only used in November, December, and January, and it
is not in use now at all. But there are still two of the woods left round
the ponds at Friskney, each about twelve acres, and the water is there
to some extent, but the arms are grown over with weeds and are barely
traceable. Indeed it is a hundred years and rather more since the famous
old decoy man, George Skelton, lived and worked here with his four sons.
His great grandson was the last to follow the occupation, but when the
numbers caught came to be only three and four a day, it was clear that
the business had “given out.” Absolute quiet and freedom from all the
little noises which arise wherever the lowliest and smallest of human
habitations exist was necessary, for at least a mile all round the wood,
and as cultivation spread this could not be obtained. Nothing is so shy
as wild-fowl; and Skelton said that even the smell of a saucepan of burnt
milk would scare all the duck away. The mode of taking birds in “flight
nets” is still practised on the coast, the nets being stretched on poles
at several feet above the ground, and the birds flying into them and
getting entangled. Plover are taken in this way, and the smaller birds
which fly low in companies along by the edge of the sea, or across the
mud flats.
A decoy still exists near Croyland, and another at Ashby west of Brigg,
in the lower reaches of the Trent; and formerly there were many in
Deeping Fen and other parts of Holland. But wild-fowl were not the only
birds the Fenmen had to rely on, and Cooper’s “Tame Villatic Fowl,” and
the goose and turkey in particular, are a steady source of income, as the
Christmas markets in the Fens testify.
[Sidenote: WRANGLE]
[Sidenote: THE REED EPITAPH]
From _Friskney_ we run on about four miles to _Wrangle_. What the road
used to be we may guess from the constable’s accounts for the parish of
Friskney, in which the expenses for a journey to Boston are charged for
two days and a night “being in the winter time.” The distance is thirteen
miles. In the eighteenth century corn was still conveyed to market on
the backs of horses tied in strings, head to tail, like the camels in
eastern caravans. The name of _Wrangle_ is Weranghe, or Werangle, in
Domesday, said to mean the lake or mere of reeds, from “wear,” a lake,
and “hangel,” a reed. A friend of mine passing Old Leake station (which
was first called “Hobhole drain,” but, at the request of the Wrangle
parishioners, because the name deterred visitors, was altered afterwards
to Leake-and-Wrangle), observed that this name reminded him of the
words of Solomon that the beginning of strife is like the letting out
of water.[30] The place used to be a haven on a large sea creek, and
furnished to Edward III. for the invasion of France, in 1359, one ship
and eight men, Liverpool at that time being assessed at one ship and five
men. The church is large, and the rectors have been for over a hundred
years members of the family of Canon Wright of Coningsby, a nephew of
Sir John Franklin. The outer doorway of the south porch has a beautiful
trefoiled arch with tooth moulding, and curious carvings at the angles.
Near this is a fine octagonal font with three steps and a raised stone,
called a ‘stall,’ for the priest to stand on. This is not uncommon in
all these lofty Early English fonts. The tower was once much higher, as
is shown by the fine tower arch with its very singular moulding. The
tracery in the clerestory windows marks a period of transition, being
alternately flowing and Perpendicular. There is a good deal of old
glass of the fourteenth century in the north aisle, quite two-thirds of
the east window of the aisle being old, with the inscription “Thomas
de Weyversty, Abbas de Waltham me fieri fecit.” There is a turret
staircase for the rood-loft stair at the junction of the south aisle and
chancel, hence the door to the rood loft is on that side. The pulpit
is Elizabethan. The Reed family have several monuments here, and it is
probable that the three first known parsons of Wrangle—William (1342),
John (1378), and Nicolas (1387)—were chaplains to that family. On a large
slab in the chancel pavement to “John Reed sum time Marchant of Calys and
Margaret his wyfe,” date 1503, are these lines:—
This for man, when ye winde blows
Make the mill grind,
But ever on thyn oune soul
Have thou in mind,
That thou givys with thy hand
Yt thou shalt finde,
And yt thou levys thy executor
Comys far behynde.
Do thou for thy selfe while ye have space.
To pray Jesu of mercy and grace,
In heaven to have a place.
Sir John Reade, the great-grandson of John and Margaret, who died in
1626, is described as “eques aureus vereque Xianus eirenarcha prudens,”
etc., the last substantive meaning Justice of the Peace.
There is an old Bede-house founded 1555, which we shall pass now on our
way to _Leake_, and we may perhaps trace the old sea-bank just behind
it. There was once one also at Benington, a few miles further on, called
“Benington Bede.” But before leaving so much that is old we may delight
our eyes, if we are lucky enough to find Mr. Barker (the vicar) or his
wife in the church, with a sight of some most exquisite modern church
embroidery in the form of an altar cloth, lately made by the ladies of
the rectory.
[Illustration: _Leake Church._]
[Sidenote: LEAKE]
_Leake_, little more than a mile from Wrangle, has a most massive
Perpendicular tower which was fifty-seven years building and never
completed; here, too, there was a seaway to the coast. The south aisle
of the church and the nave have been restored, but the north aisle is
still in a ruinous condition, and reflects little credit on the patrons
who are, or were, the governors of Oakham and Uppingham schools. There is
a magnificent clerestory of six windows with carved and canopied niches
between each window, giving a very rich effect; and, as at Wrangle, there
is an octagonal rood turret and spirelet at the south-east of the nave.
The wavy parapet of the nave gable reminds one of the similar work round
the eastern chapel at Peterborough Cathedral, and the tall nave pillars
resemble those at Boston. Only a very little Norman work remains from
an earlier church. A knight in alabaster, a good Jacobean pulpit, and a
remarkable old alms-box made out of a solid oak stem are in the church,
and round the churchyard is a moat with a very large lych-gate on the
bridge across it. A mile and a half east of this are the remains of an
old stone building of early date, called the Moat House.
Two of the Conington family were vicars here in the seventeenth century,
and a Thomas Arnold was curate in 1794.
[Sidenote: LEVERTON]
_Leverton_ is but two miles from Leake, and _Benington_ only one mile
further. The churches in this district have no pinnacles. Leverton was
thatched until 1884, when the present clerestory was built. The chancel
has some beautiful canopied sedilia, which are spoken of by Marrat in
his “History of Lincolnshire” as “three stone stalls of most exquisite
workmanship, to describe the beauties of which the pen seems not to
possess an adequate power.” At the back of one of these is an aumbrey, or
locker. The windows are square-headed, the font is tall and handsome, but
the greatest charm of the building is the sacristy or Lady chapel to the
south of the chancel—a perfect gem of architecture, the carved stone work
of which is rich and tasteful. Crucifixes surmount both gables of this,
and also that at the chancel end, this profusion being a consequence of
the church being dedicated to St. Helena. Whether she was the daughter
of a Bithynian innkeeper or a British princess, she was the wife of
Constantius Chlorus and mother of Constantine the Great; and the legend
is that, being admonished in a dream to search for the Cross of Christ,
she journeyed to Jerusalem, and, employing men to dig at Golgotha, found
three crosses, and having applied each of them to a dead person, one of
the crosses raised the dead to life, so she knew that that was the one
she was searching for. The church of North Ormsby is also dedicated to
her. At Leverton the rood-loft steps exist on the south of the chancel
arch, and the churchwarden’s book, which begins in 1535, gives the
bill for putting up the rood loft and also for taking it down. At the
beginning of last century Mrs. A. Skeath, of Boston, made a new sea-bank
three miles long, which effectually reclaimed from the sea 390 acres for
this parish.
The village of _Benington_ has a fine church with a good porch and a
turret stairway to the north-east of the nave. The roof retains its old
timbers with carved angels. In the chancel are the springers for a stone
roof. The pillars of the nave have a very wide circular base, and in the
Early English chancel are sedilia with aumbries and piscina, and also
an arched recess which may have been used for an Easter sepulchre. The
tall red sandstone font is singularly fine, both bowl and pedestal being
richly carved with figures under canopies.
[Illustration: _Leverton Windmill._]
The practice of putting inscriptions into rhyme is exemplified in the
windows of these churches.
[Sidenote: BENINGTON]
Benington has a Latin couplet:—
Ad loca Stellata
Duc me Katherina beata
Leverton one in Norman French:—
Pour l’amour de Jhesu Christ
Priez par luy q moy fatre fist.
(Pray for him who caused me to be made.)
[Sidenote: BUTTERWICK AND FRIESTON]
[Sidenote: FRIESTON SHORE]
A lane here leads eastwards to Benington-Sea-End, which is close on the
Roman bank. And, as the main road to Boston is devoid of interest, we
will bend to the left hand, and pass through Butterwick to Frieston
and so to the shore. An old register records in rhyme the planting of
the fine sycamore tree in _Butterwick_ churchyard, in 1653. The name
Butterwick occurs in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and is derived
probably from the Dane Buthar, as are Buttermere in Cumberland, and
Butterlip-How in Grasmere. At _Frieston_, which, like Friskney and
Firsby, is said to indicate a colony of Frieslanders, the present church
is the nave of a fine old priory church of the twelfth century founded
by Alan de Creon for Benedictines and attached as a cell to Croyland,
where his brother was abbot. It had a central tower adjoining the east of
the present building; the west piers of this tower are visible outside.
Inside there are six Norman and three pointed arches, the latter leading
to a massive western tower with a stone figure in a niche dating from the
fifteenth century. The south aisle is now all of brick, the Norman stone
corbelling being replaced above the eight large three light clerestory
windows. The most remarkable thing in the church is the beautiful carved
wood font-cover, at least twelve feet high, and surmounted by a figure
of the Virgin. This is similar, but superior, to that at Fosdyke, but
in no way equal to the beautiful and richly carved example ten feet in
height at Ufford church in Suffolk. The font itself has carved panels
and two kneeling-steps for priest and sponsor. The churchyard is an
extremely large one. The sea once came close up to Frieston, the coast
bending round to Fishtoft and towards Skirbeck; at the present time the
Frieston shore is two and a half miles off. The road runs close up to the
sea-bank. A long old-fashioned hostelry, with a range of stables telling
of days gone by, stands under the shelter of the bank, on mounting which
you find a bench on a level with the bedroom windows of the inn, whence
you look out towards the sea, which forms a shining line in the far
distance, for it is over two miles to ‘Boston deeps,’ far over a singular
stretch of foreshore channelled with a network of deep clefts by which
the retreating tide drains seaward through the glistening mud. The first
part of this desolate shore is green with sea-grasses, visited daily by
the salt water, and along the fringe of it there are here many rather
uncommon flowers growing just below high-water mark, such as the yellow
variety of the sea aster (_Aster tripolium var. discoideus_), and the
rare _Suæda fruticosa_; and in the ditches leading inland the handsome
marsh-mallow (_Althæa officinalis_) flourishes, as it does on Romney
Marsh, near Rye. At high water all looks quite different; and a sunrise
over the lagoon-like shallow water gives a picture of colour which is not
easily forgotten.
[Illustration: _Frieston Priory Church._]
From Frieston shore one gets by a circuitous three-mile route to
_Fishtoft_. Here once was a Norman church. The present one has two rood
screens; one, at the west end, having been purchased from Frieston,
which, however, retained its two aisle screens. There is a good small
figure of St. Guthlac, the patron saint, over the west window of the
tower, much like that at Frieston. On a tombstone in the churchyard is
the following:—
Interred here lies Anne the wife
Of Bryon Johnson during life
The 25ᵗʰ day of November
In 68 he lost this member.
He only survived her two months, and the next inscription is:—
Now Bryon is laid down by Anne
’Till God does raise them up again.
This rhyme might do for Norfolk or Devonshire, but is not Lincolnshire.
[Sidenote: BOSTON STUMP]
And now two miles more bring us to _Skirbeck_ on the outskirts of Boston.
The only interesting feature of the church here is in the columns of the
nave, which have four cylinders round a massive centre pillar, all four
quite detached except at the bases and capitals, which last are richly
carved. We shall find exactly similar ones at Weston, near Spalding. We
now follow the curving line of the Haven with its grassy banks right
into Boston. The splendid parish church, the sight of whose tower is a
never-failing source of delight and inspiration, stands with its east end
in the market-place, and its tall tower close on the bank of the river.
It has no transepts as the Great Yarmouth church has, but, apart from
its unapproachable steeple, it is longer and higher and greater in cubic
contents than any parish church in the kingdom. The tower, 288 feet, is
taller than Lincoln tower or Grantham spire, and is only exceeded in
height by Louth spire, which is 300 feet. The view of it from across the
river is one of the most entirely satisfying sights in the world.[31]
The extreme height is so well proportioned, and each stage leads up so
beautifully to the next, that one is never tired of gazing on it. Add
to this that it is visible to all the dwellers in the Marsh and Fen for
twenty miles round and from the distant Wolds, and again far out to sea,
and is as familiar to all as their own shadow, and you can guess at the
affection which stirs the hearts of all Lincolnshire men when they think
or speak of the ‘Owd Stump,’ a curious title for a beloved object, but
so slightly does it decrease in size as it soars upwards from basement
to lantern, that in the distance it looks more like a thick mast or the
headless stem of a gigantic tree than a church steeple.
[Illustration: _Boston Church from the N.E._]
[Sidenote: THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH]
[Sidenote: THE INTERIOR]
There was once here a church of the type of Sibsey, said to date from
1150, of which but little has been discovered. The present building was
begun in 1309, when the digging for the foundation of the tower began
“on ye Monday after Palm Sunday in the 3ʳᵈ yr of Ed. II.” They went down
thirty feet to a bed of stone five feet below the level of the river
bed, overlying “a spring of sand,” under which again was a bed of clay
of unknown thickness. The excavation was a very big job, and the “first
stone” was not laid till the feast of St. John the Baptist (Midsummer
Day) by Dame Margaret Tilney, and she and Sir John Truesdale, then parson
of Boston, and Richard Stevenson, a Boston merchant, each laid £5 on the
stone “which was all ye gifts given at that time” towards the expense
which, we are told, was, for the whole tower, under £500 of the money of
those days. Leland, Vol. VIII., 204, says: “Mawde Tilney who layed the
first stone of the goodly steeple of the paroche chirch of Boston lyith
buried under it.” The work of building up the tower was interrupted for
fifty years, and the body of the church was taken in hand, the present
tower arch serving as a west window. Then the tower began to rise, but
it was finished without the lantern. In the middle of the fifteenth
century the chancel was lengthened by two bays, and the parapets and
pinnacles added to the aisles. The parapet at the east end of the north
aisle is very curious and elaborate, being pierced with tracery of nearly
the same design as that on the flying buttresses of Henry VII.’s Chapel
at Westminster. There were several statues round the building on tall
pedestals rising from the lowest coping of the buttresses to about the
height of the nave parapets; one is conspicuous still at the south-east
corner of the tower and above the south porch. The tower has three
stages, arranged as in Louth church, and then the lantern above. In the
first stage a very large west window rises above the west doorway, and
similar ones on the north and south of the tower, and all the surface is
enriched with panelling both on tower and buttresses. The next stage is
lighted by a pair of windows of great height, finely canopied and divided
by a transom, on each side of the tower; this forms the ringing chamber,
and a gallery runs round it in the thickness of the wall communicating
with the two staircases. On the door of one of these is a remarkable
handle, a ring formed by two bronze lizards depending from a lion’s
mouth. The clustered shafts and springers of the stone vault were built
at the beginning, but the handsome groined roof with its enormous central
boss 156 feet from the ground was not completed until 1852. The next
story has large single-arched windows of a decidedly plain type. These
are the only things one can possibly find fault with, but probably when
the tower had no lantern the intention was to exhibit the light from this
story, the bells being hung below and rung from the ground. Eventually
the eight bells were hung in the third story, and the lantern, by far the
finest in England, was added, which gives so queenly an effect to the
tall tower. Before this was done four very high pinnacles finished the
building, subsequently arches were turned diagonally over the angles of
the tower so as to make the base of the octagonal lantern. The roof of
the tower and the gutters round it are of stone and curiously contrived.
The lantern has eight windows like those in the second stage of the
tower, but each one pane longer, and the corners are supported by flying
buttresses springing in pairs from each tower pinnacle. The whole is
crowned with a lofty parapet with pierced tracery and eight pinnacles
with an ornamented gable between each pair of pinnacles. Inside was a
lantern lighted at night for a sea mark. The church of All Saints, York,
has a very similar one, and there the hook for the lantern pulley is
still to be seen.
[Sidenote: BOSTON, U.S.A.]
Inside, one is struck by the ample size and height of the church and its
vast proportions. The choir has five windows on each side. But the nave
is spoilt by a false wooden roof which cuts off half of the clerestory
windows. It is a pity this is not removed and the old open timber roof
replaced. In the chancel are sixty-four stalls of good carved work, and
the old and curiously designed miserere seats, often showing humorous
subjects as at Lincoln, are of exceptional interest. Of the once numerous
brasses most are gone, but two very fine ones are on either side the
altar: one to Walter Peascod, merchant, 1390, and one to a priest in a
cope, _c._ 1400; an incised slab of 1340 is at the west of the north
aisle. The Conington tablet in memory of John Conington, Corpus Professor
of Latin in the University of Oxford, on the south wall of the chancel
is to be noticed, and the Bolles monument in the south aisle, and, near
the south porch, the chapel which was restored by the Bostonians of
the United States as a recognition of their Lincolnshire origin. Close
to this is a curious epitaph painted on a wooden panel, which reads as
follows:—
My corps with Kings and Monarchs sleeps in bedd,
My soul with sight of Christ in heaven is fedd,
This lumpe that lampe shall meet, and shine more bright
Than Phœbus when he streams his clearest light,
Omnes sic ibant sic imus ibitis ibunt.
Rich. Smith obiit
Anno salutis 1626.
[Illustration: _Boston Stump._]
CHAPTER XXXVII
ST. BOTOLPH’S TOWN
The River Witham—Drayton’s Polyolbion—The Steeple at
Boston—Monastic Houses—Merchants’ Guilds—Dykes and Sluices—The
Fens reclaimed—Great Floods—High Tides—The Hussey and Kyme
Towers—John Fox—Hallam and Conington—Jean Ingelow—Lincolnshire
Stories.
A not unapt parallel has been drawn between Boston and Venice for, like
the Campanile, Boston steeple is a sort of Queen of the Waters, and
before the draining of the Fens she often looked down on a waste of
waters which stretched in all directions.
Leland, who wrote in the reign of Henry VIII., in Vol. VII. of his
Itinerary, speaks of “the great Steple of Boston,” and describes the town
thus: “Bosstolpstoune stondeth harde on the river Lindis (Witham). The
greate and chifiest parte of the toune is on the este side of the ryver,
where is a faire market place, and a crosse with a square toure. Al the
buildings of this side of the toune is fayre, and Marchuntes duelle yn
it; and a staple of wulle is used there. There is a bridg of wood to cum
over Lindis, into this parte of the toune, and a pile of stone set yn the
myddle of the ryver. The streame of yt is sumtymes as swifte as it were
an arrow. On the West side of Lindis is one long strete, on the same side
is the White Freies. The mayne sea ys VI miles of Boston. Dyverse good
shipps and other vessells ryde there.”
[Sidenote: THE RIVER WITHAM]
Michael Drayton, who wrote in Elizabeth’s reign, was quite enthusiastic
about the merits of the Witham, which runs out at Boston, and makes her
speak in her own person thus:—
From Witham, mine own town, first water’d with my source,
As to the Eastern sea I hasten on my course,
Who sees so pleasant plains or is of fairer seen?
Whose swains in shepherd’s gray and girls in Lincoln green,
Whilst some the ring of bells, and some the bagpipes play,
Dance many a merry round, and many a hydegy.[32]
I envy, any brook should in my pleasure share,
Yet for my dainty pikes, I am without compare.
No land floods can me force to over proud a height;
Nor am I in my course too crooked or too streight;
My depths fall by descents, too long nor yet too broad,
My fords with pebbles, clear as orient pearls, are strow’d,
My gentle winding banks with sundry flowers are dress’d,
My higher rising heaths hold distance with my breast.
Thus to her proper song the burthen still she bare;
Yet for my dainty pikes I am without compare.
By this to Lincoln town, upon whose lofty scite
Whilst wistly Wytham looks with wonderful delight,
Enamour’d of the state and beauty of the place
That her of all the rest especially doth grace,
Leaving her former course, in which she first set forth,
Which seem’d to have been directly to the North,
She runs her silver front into the muddy fen
Which lies into the east, in the deep journey when
Clear Bane, a pretty brook, from Lindsey, coming down
Delicious Wytham leads to lively Botulph’s town,
Where proudly she puts in, among the great resort
That there appearance make, in Neptune’s Wat’ry Court.
Polyolbion. Song 25.
[Sidenote: SKIRBECK]
We have no definite information of what Boston was in Roman times, but
as the Witham was the river on which their colony at Lincoln stood, it
is more than probable that they had a station at Boston to defend the
river-mouth, and whatever _they_ may have called it, it is certain that
it has got its name of Boston or Botolph’s town from an English saint who
is said to have founded a monastery here in 654, which was destroyed by
the Danes in 870. St. Botolph was buried in his monastery in 680, and his
remains moved in 870, part to Ely and part to Thorney Abbey. The name
as a town does not appear in Domesday Book, though “Skirbec” does, and
Skirbeck covered all the ground that Boston does, and almost surrounded
it. As the old distich declares—
Though Boston be a proud town
Skirbeck compasseth it around.
[Sidenote: BOSTON PORT]
This name for pride or conceit, whether deserved or not, seems to have
stuck to Boston, for a rhyme of later day runs thus:—
Boston Boston Boston!
Thou hast nought to boast on
But a grand sluice, and a high steeple,
And a proud conceited ignorant people,
And a coast which souls get lost on.
And certainly Boston once had some reason to be proud, for though the
town was quite an infant till the beginning of the twelfth century, in
1113 “Fergus, a brazier of St. Botolph’s town” was able, according to
Ingulphus in his “Chronicles of Croyland Abbey,” “to give 2 _Skillets_
(Skilletas) which supplied the loss of their bells and tower.” The gift,
whatever it was (probably small bells), must have been of considerable
value to Croyland, which had been burnt down in 1091, and argues much
prosperity among Boston tradespeople. Indeed, the town and its trade rose
with such rapidity during the next hundred years that when, in the reign
of King John, a tax or tythe of a fifteenth was levied on merchants’
goods, Boston’s contribution was £780, being second only to the £836 of
London. For the next two centuries it was a commercial port of the first
rank, and merchants from Flanders and most of the great Continental towns
had houses there.
[Illustration: _Custom House Quay, Boston._]
When in 1304 Edward I. granted his wife Queen Margaret the castle and
manor of Tattershall to hold till the heir was of age, he added to it
the manor of St. Botolph and the duties levied on the weighing of the
wool there. This was set down as worth £12 a year. A wool sack was very
large—one sees them now at Winchester, each large enough to fill the
whole bed of a Hampshire waggon—but at 6_s._ 8_d._ a sack the duties
must have been often worth more than £12, for there was no other staple
in the county but at Lincoln, and that was afterwards, under Edward III.
in 1370, transferred to Boston, and whether at Boston or Lincoln, when
weighed and sealed by the mayor of the staple, it was from Boston that it
was all exported.
[Sidenote: THE STAPLE]
When a staple of wool, leather, lead, etc., was established at any
town or port it was directed that the commodities should be brought
thither from all the neighbourhood and weighed, marked and sealed.
Then they could be delivered to any other port, where they were again
checked. In 1353, during the long reign of Edward III., the staple was
appointed to be held in Newcastle, York, Lincoln, Norwich, Westminster,
Canterbury, Chichester, Winchester, Exeter and Bristol. Of these, York
and Lincoln sent all the produce when weighed to Hull and Boston, Norwich
to Yarmouth, Westminster to London Port, Canterbury to Sandwich, and
Winchester (by water or road) to Southampton. In 1370 some of the inland
towns—York, Lincoln and Norwich—were deprived of their staple, and
Hull and Queensborough were added to the list; and, though Nottingham,
Leicester and Derby petitioned to have the staple at Lincoln, which was
much more convenient to them, the answer they got was that it should
continue at St. Botolph’s during the king’s pleasure.
[Illustration: _South Square, Boston._]
In Henry VIII.’s time, when the king passed through Lincolnshire after
“the pilgrimage of grace” and the chief towns made submission and paid
a fine, Boston paid £50, while Stamford and Lincoln paid £20 and £40
respectively.
[Sidenote: FRIARIES AND GUILDS]
In 1288 a church of the Dominican or Black Friars which had been recently
built was burnt down, and a few years later a friary was re-established,
which was one of the many Lincolnshire religious houses granted by Henry
VIII. to Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. In 1301, under Edward I., a
Carmelite, or White Friars, monastic house and priory was founded; and in
the next reign, 1307, an Augustinian, or “Austin,” friary; and only a few
years later, under Edward III., a Franciscan, or Grey Friars, friary was
established. All these three were granted by Henry at the dissolution to
the mayor and burgesses of Boston. He also granted the town their charter
under the great Seal of England, to make amends for the losses they
sustained by the destruction of the religious houses. It is a document
with fifty-seven clauses, making the town a free borough with a market
on Wednesday and Saturday, and two fairs annually of three days each, to
which are added two “marts” for horses and cattle. The ground where the
grammar school stands is still called the Mart-yard, and there you may
still see the beautiful iron gate which was once part of a screen in the
church, and is a very notable piece of good seventeenth-century work.
The charter also gave the corporation, among other things, “power to
assess the inhabitants, as well unfree as free, with a tax for making
a safeguard and defence of the borough and church there against the
violence of the waters and rage of the sea.”
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were no less than fifteen
guilds in the town, six of them with charters. The hall of St. Mary’s
guild still exists, the names of St. George’s Lane and Corpus Christi
Lane is all that is left of the others, but the old names indicate the
localities.
[Sidenote: THE WINE-CELLARS]
In 1360 we have mention on the corporation records of William de Spayne,
one of a family of merchants of repute, after whom Spayne’s Place and
what is now Spain Lane were named. William was an alderman of the Corpus
Christi Guild, and sheriff of the county in 1378. Spain Lane had a row of
great cellars, some of which were rented by the abbeys, and a quantity
of wine was shipped from Bordeaux to Boston. King John of France had 140
tuns at one time, the carriage of which to Boston, and some part of it
to the place of his detention at Somerton Castle (_see_ Chap. XIII.),
cost close upon £500. This large supply was sent to him from France,
partly for his own consumption and partly to be sold in order to bring in
money to keep up his royal state, and when we read of the silk curtains
and tapestries, the French furniture for dining-hall and bedrooms which
displaced the benches and trestles of an English castle, the horse
trappings and stable fittings, and the enormous amount of stores and
confectionery used at Somerton, we realise that his daily expenditure
must have been a very large one. The cellars which stowed these large
cargoes of wine were in Spain (or Spayne) Lane, and most of them were,
in 1590, in accordance with Boston’s usual suicidal custom, destroyed,
though the corporation still held two in 1640 which had once belonged to
Kirkstead Abbey.
[Illustration: _Spain Lane, Boston._]
[Sidenote: THE SILTING OF THE RIVER]
In the sixteenth century several trade companies—cordwainers, glovers,
etc.—received charters. In this century Queen Elizabeth gave the mayor
and burgesses a “Charter of Admiralty” over the whole of the “Norman
Deeps” to enable them to repair and maintain the sea marks, and to levy
tolls on all ships entering the port. But trade was then declining owing
to the silting up of the river. This, in 1569, when the town was made
a _Staple_ town, had been in good order, and navigable for seagoing
ships of some size, the tide water running up two miles inland as far
as Dockdyke (now Dogdyke), and then a large trade was done in wool and
woollen goods between Boston and Flanders. Hence it was that when, in the
reign of Henry VII., a council was held to discuss the two great needs
of the town, _viz._, the restraining the sea water from flooding the
land, and the delivery of the inland waters speedily to the sea, it was
to Flanders that the Boston men turned for an engineer, one Mahave Hall,
who built them a dam and sluice in the year 1500. This is called the Old
Sluice, and was effectual for a time. But in Queen Elizabeth’s reign the
river below Boston was getting so silted up again that the waters of
South Holland were brought by means of two “gowts” (go outs), or “clows,”
one into the Witham above Boston at Langrick, and one below into the
harbour at Skirbeck, to scour out the channel. The Kesteven men, from a
sense of being robbed of their waters, opposed, but their objections were
over-ruled by the chief justices. In 1568-9 the “Maud Foster” drain was
cut and named after the owner, who gave easement over her land on very
favourable terms.
In the map to the first volume of the “History of Lincolnshire,”
published by Saunders in 1834, the Langrick Gowt (or gote) finds no
place; but the “Holland Dyke” is probably meant for it. The Skirbeck dyke
is marked very big and called “The South Forty-foot,” which, along with
the North Forty-foot and Hobhole drains, and others of large size, aided
by powerful steam pumps, have made the Fens into a vast agricultural
garden.
[Sidenote: THE GRAND SLUICE]
But the Elizabethan expedient was only successful for a time, and in 1751
a small sloop of forty to fifty tons and drawing about six feet of water
could only get up to Boston on a spring tide. To remedy this and also to
keep the floods down, which, when the cutfall was choked, extended in wet
seasons west of the town as far as eye could see, an Act of Parliament
was passed to empower Boston to cut the Witham channel straight and
set to work on a new sluice. This “Grand Sluice,” designed by Langley
Edwardes, had its foundation carried down twenty feet, on to a bed of
stiff clay. Here, just as, near the old Skirbeck sluice, where Hammond
beck enters the haven, at a depth of sixteen feet sound gravel and soil
was met with, in which trees had grown; and at Skirbeck it is said that a
smith’s forge, with all its tools, horseshoes, etc., complete, was found
at that depth below the surface, showing how much silt had been deposited
within no great number of years. The foundation stone of the present
Grand sluice was laid by Charles Amcotts, then Member of Parliament and
Mayor of Boston, in 1764, and opened two years later in the presence
of a concourse of some ten thousand people. He died in 1777, and the
Amcotts family in the male line died with him. In Jacobean times much
good embankment work under Dutch engineers had been begun, and had met
with fierce opposition from the Fen men, and the same spirit was still
in existence a hundred and fifty years later, for when, in 1767, an Act
was passed for the enclosure of Holland, the works gave rise to the most
determined and fierce riots which were carried to the most unscrupulous
length of murder, cattle maiming, and destruction of valuable property,
and lasted from 1770 to 1773. But at length common sense prevailed,
and a very large and fertile tract of land to the south-east of Boston
was acquired, which helped again to raise the fortunes of the town to
prosperity. Following on this in 1802 a still larger area was reclaimed
on the other side of Boston in the East, West, and Wildmore Fens. But,
as in all low-lying lands near the coast which are below the level of
high-water mark, constant look-out has to be kept even now, both to
prevent the irruption of the sea and the flooding of the land from
storm-water not getting away quickly enough.
[Sidenote: GREAT FLOODS]
The Louth Abbey “Chronicle,” a most interesting document, extending from
1066 to the death of Henry IV., 1413, records disastrous floods in the
Marsh in 1253 and 1315, and a bad outbreak of cattle plague in 1321. From
other sources we have notice of a great flood at Boston in 1285; another
in ‘Holland,’ 1467; and again at Boston in 1571 a violent tempest, with
rain, wind, and high tide combining, did enormous damage. Sixty vessels
were wrecked between Newcastle and Boston, many thousands of sheep and
cattle were drowned in the Marsh, the village of Mumby-Chapel was washed
into the sea and only three cottages and the steeple of the church left
standing. One “Maister Pelham had eleven hundred sheep drowned there.” At
the same time “a shippe” was driven against a house in the village, and
the men, saving themselves by clambering out on to the roof, were just in
time to save a poor woman in the cottage from the death by drowning which
overtook her husband and child. So sudden and violent was the rise of the
flood that at Wansford on the Nene three arches of the bridge were washed
away, and “Maister Smith at the Swanne there hadde his house, being three
stories high, overflowed into the third storie,” while the walls of the
stable were broken down, and the horses tied to the manger were all
drowned.
At the same time the water reached half way up Bourne church tower.
This shows the tremendous extent of the flood, for those two places are
forty-four miles apart. This is the “High tide on the Lincolnshire Coast”
sung by our Lincolnshire poetess, Jean Ingelow. She speaks of the Boston
bells giving the alarm by ringing the tune called “The Brides of Mavis
Enderby.”
The old Mayor climbed the belfry tower,
The ringers ran by two by three;
‘Pull if ye never pulled before,
Good ringers, pull your best,’ quoth he.
Play uppe play uppe, O Boston bells;
Ply all your changes, all your swells,
Play uppe “The Brides of Enderby.”
This tune, which Miss Ingelow only imagined, was subsequently composed,
and is now well known at Boston, for, besides the ring of eight bells,
the tower has a set of carillons like those at Antwerp. They were set
up in 1867, thirty-six in number, by Van Aerschodt, of Louvain, but not
proving to be a success, were changed in 1897 for something less complex,
and now can be heard at 9 a.m., and every third hour of the day playing
“The Brides of Mavis Enderby.”
[Sidenote: AND HIGH TIDES]
A violent gale is recorded on February 16, 1735, which did much damage,
and in 1763-4 there was a great flood, not owing to any high tide but
simply, as in 1912, from continued heavy rains, and we are told that the
flood lasted for many weeks. Just lately, in 1912, this was aggravated
by the bursting of a dyke in the Bedford level which flooded miles
of fenland. In August, 1913, the land was parched by drought, but in
1912 it was a melancholy sight to see, in August, on both sides of the
railway between Huntingdon and Spalding the corn sheaves standing up
out of the water, and the farm buildings entirely surrounded, while the
rain continued to fall daily. Even after three weeks of fine weather in
September, though the drenched sheaves had been got away, water still
covered the fields, stretching sometimes as far as eye could see. In
1779, when the reclamation of the Holland ‘Fens’ had been carried out,
many vessels are said to have been driven by a violent gale nearly two
miles inland on the ‘Marsh.’ This was long spoken of as “The New Year’s
Gale.”
Exceptionally high tides, each four inches higher than its predecessor,
in the streets of Boston are recorded for October 19, 1801, November 30,
1807, and November 10, 1810. This last accompanied by a storm of wind
and rain. On this occasion the water was all over the streets of Boston
and flowed up the nave of the church as far as the chancel step, being
nearly a yard deep at the west end. Since then high-water marks were cut
on the base of the tower showing how deep the nave was flooded in 1883
and 1896. In 1813 another high tide caused the sea-bank assessment to
rise to 13_s._ 8_d._ an acre, the normal rate then, as it is now, for the
drainage tax in the east fen, amounting to 3_s._ an acre. Even that seems
to be pretty stiff, £15 a year on a hundred acre farm! Of course it is an
absolute necessity, and has been recognised from the earliest times. We
know that in the reign of Edward I. an assessment was levied on all who
had land to keep the drains in repair. This was as long ago as 1298.
[Sidenote: PICTURESQUE BOSTON]
[Sidenote: THE GUILDHALL]
The great feature of Boston is the wonderful church tower. But the town
is from many points very picturesque. The deep-cut channel of the tidal
river goes right through it. Passing close up against the western side
of the great steeple, it goes with houses almost overhanging its eastern
bank down to the bridge, a structure of no beauty. After this it runs
alongside the street. From the windows you look across and see the masts
of the small sea-going craft tied up to the bank, which, with all the old
weed-grown timbers of landing-stage and jetty, the natural accompaniments
of a tidal river, make quaint and effective pictures. In another street
the boys in their old-fashioned blue coats and brass buttons let you into
the secret of Boston’s many educational charities. One is in Wormgate
(or Withamsgate), one in White Friars Lane, dating from the beginning of
the sixteenth century, and another in Shodfriars Lane. The very names
of the streets in Boston are full of history, and the recently-restored
“Shod Friars Hall,” to the south-east of the Market Place, helps, with
its abundant timbers and carved gables, to take one right back to the
fourteenth century, though the name was only recently bestowed on this
particular building.
[Illustration: _The Haven, Boston._]
[Illustration: _The Guildhall, Boston._]
But alas, not only all the monastic buildings, but nearly all the
domestic buildings which once made Boston like a medieval Dutch town
are gone, though the fifteenth-century brick Guildhall remains. The
citizens seem to have had a fatal mania for pulling down all that was
most worth preserving of their old buildings. Gone, too, is much else
which Bostonians might well have preserved. Such, for instance, as “the
prodigious clock bell which could be heard many miles round, and was
knocked to pieces in the year 1710.” It is but a few years ago that some
of the Boston Corporation plate was sold in London for immense prices,
and when astonished people asked how it came to the hammer they heard
a miserable tale how the fine collection of civic plate, and it was
unusually fine, had been sold in 1837 for £600, nothing approaching to
its value, by the corporation itself, for the purpose of liquidating some
civic debt. But any sin Boston may commit, such as the crude colouring of
the interior of the much-renovated Guildhall, and painting and graining
of the deal panels only last year, will be forgiven, so long as they have
their uniquely glorious church tower to plead for them.
Lord Hussey’s tower and the Kyme tower are ruins, built about the end of
the fifteenth century, and at the end of the eighteenth century a big
house was still standing which may have been Lord Hussey’s. The brick
tower stands near the school fields, not far from the Public Gardens,
which are a credit to Boston, and have some first-rate salt-water baths
close by, which belong to the corporation.
The Kyme tower is also called the Rochford tower, that family having held
it before the Kymes. It is a massive tower, also of brick, as may be seen
from the illustration. It stands about two miles outside the town to the
east.
[Sidenote: FAMOUS BOSTONIANS]
Of celebrated folk born in Boston we have, to begin with, John Fox,
author of the “Book of Martyrs,” who was born there in 1517. He was sent
to Brasenose, Oxford, and worked very hard, but was expelled as a heretic
when he forsook the Roman Catholic religion. The Warwickshire family of
Sir Thomas Lucie, a name made famous by Shakespeare, gave him shelter
and employment as a tutor; and later he tutored the children of the Earl
of Surrey who, in the reign of Queen Mary, helped him to escape from
Bishop Gardiner’s deadly clutches. Like so many who suffered persecution
for their religion, he made his home at Basle till Elizabeth’s accession
allowed of his return. He then spent eleven years on his “Acts and
Monuments,” and died in 1587.
At about this time the plague raged at Boston, 1585, and broke out again
in 1603. Boston and Frampton had, as the Registers show, suffered an
unusual mortality in 1568-9. The water was not good, and as late as 1783
a boring to a depth of 478 feet was made in a vain search for a better
supply. The town was at that time supplied from the west fen through
wooden pipes.
[Illustration: _Hussey’s Tower, Boston._]
[Sidenote: CROMWELL AT BOSTON]
Hallam, the historian, and Professor John Conington, whose monuments are
in the church, were both of Boston families, as was also Jean Ingelow;
and the statue near the church preserves the memory of John Ingram,
Member of Parliament for the town, and founder of the _Illustrated London
News_. Saunders tells us that Oliver Cromwell lay at Boston the night
before he fought the battle of Winceby, near Horncastle, October 10,
1643. He must have been up betimes, for a crow couldn’t make the distance
less than sixteen miles, and fen roads at that time were a caution.
[Sidenote: “MY OWD SON”]
Boston is a great centre for the fen farmers, and, as at Peterborough,
you may see and hear in the market much that is original. It was at
Peterborough that the “converted” sailor made his famous petition when
asked to do a bit of praying in the open: “O Lord! bless this people!
bless their fathers and mothers! and bless the children! O Lord bless
this place! make it prosperous, send thy blessing upon it and make
it—make it, O Lord! a sea-poort-town!” Boston having the Marsh farmers as
well as the Fen-men meeting in her market, preserves a more racy dialect.
I was once in the Boston Station waiting-room as it was getting dusk on a
winter evening; three people of the sea-faring class were there—a tall,
elderly man standing up, his son asleep on the floor, and the son’s wife
sitting and apparently not much concerned with anything. The father,
seeing me look at the sleeper, said “He’ll be all right after a bit. My
owd son yon is. He’s a bit droonk now, but he’s my owd son. A strange
good hand in a boat he is, I tell ye. They was out lass Friday i’ the
Noorth Sea and it cam on a gale o’ wind, they puts abowt you knooa, an’
runs for poort. The seäs was monstrous high, they was, and the gale was a
rum un, an’ the booat she was gaff-hallyards under. The tother men ‘She’s
gooing!’ they says, ‘She’s gooing!’ But my owd son he hed the tiller.
‘_She’s_ all right,’ he säys, and mind ye she was gaff-hallyards under,
but ‘_She’s_ all right,’ he säys, and he brings her right in. Aye he’s a
rare un wi’ a booat is my owd son, noan to touch him. He’s a bit droonk
now, but he’s my owd son.”
On another occasion at Boston I heard one farmer greet another with
“Well, Mr. Smith, how’s pigs?” a very common inquiry, for in Lincolnshire
pigs fill a large space on the agricultural horizon. Witness the reply
of an aged farmer, probably a little unmanned by market-day potations,
to a vegetarian who, with a cruelty hardly to be suspected in the votary
of so mild a diet, had attacked him with “How will you feel at the day
of Judgment when confronted by a whole row of oxen whose flesh you have
eaten?” “’Taint the beasts I’d be scared on; it’s the pigs; I’ve yetten a
vast o’ pigs.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
SPALDING AND THE CHURCHES NORTH OF IT
Potato Trade—Bulb-growing—The Welland—Ayscough Fee
Hall—The Gentleman’s Society—The Church—Pinchbeck—Heraldic
Tombs—The Custs—Surfleet—Leaning Tower—Gosberton—Churchyard
Sheep—Cressy Hall—Quadring—Donington—Hemp and
Flax—Swineshead—Bicker—Sutterton—Algarkirk.
Three main roads enter the town of _Spalding_, the last town on the
Welland before it runs out into Fosdyke Wash. They come from the north,
south, and east. The west has none, being one huge fen which, till
comparatively recent times, admitted of locomotion only by boat. The
southern road comes from Peterborough and enters the county by the bridge
over the Welland at Market Deeping, a pleasant-looking little town
with wide market-like streets and its four-armed signpost pointing to
Peterborough and Spalding ten miles, and Bourne and Stamford seven miles.
[Sidenote: THE WELLAND]
From Deeping to Spalding the road is a typical fen road—three little inns
and a few farm cottages and the occasional line of white smoke on the
perfectly straight Peterborough and Boston railway is all there is to see
save the crops or the long potato graves which are mostly by the road
side.
[Illustration: _The Welland at Cowbit Road, Spalding._]
[Illustration: _The Welland at High Street, Spalding._]
[Sidenote: BULB-GROWING]
The potato trade is a very large one. Every cart or waggon we passed at
Easter-time on the roads between Deeping and Kirton-in-Holland was loaded
with sacks of potatoes, and all the farm hands were busy uncovering
the pits and sorting the tubers. Donington and Kirton seemed to be the
centres of the trade, Kirton being the home of the man who is known as
the potato king, and has many thousands of acres of fenland used for this
crop alone. Spalding itself is the centre of the daffodil market, and
quantities of bulbs are grown here and annually exported to Holland,
it is said, to find their way back to England in the autumn as Dutch
bulbs. I do not vouch for the truth of this, but certainly the business,
which has been for years a speciality of Holland, where the lie of the
land and the soil are much the same as in the South Lincolnshire and
Cambridgeshire Fens, is now a large and lucrative industry here, and is
each year expanding. The Channel and Scilly Islands and Cornwall can, of
course, owing to their climate, get their narcissus into bloom earlier,
but the conditions of soil are better in the Fens. Still, a liberal
supply of manure is needed to insure fine blooms, and sixty or seventy
tons to the acre is none too much, a crop of mustard or potatoes being
taken off after its application before planting the bulbs. Hyacinths are
still left to Holland, in one part of which, at Hillegom, near Haarlem,
the soil has just that amount of sand and lime which that particular
bulb demands. Tulips, however, are grown in England with great success;
crocuses are seldom planted as they make such a small return on the
outlay. For this outlay is very considerable, nine or ten women are
needed to each plough for planting, which alone costs 45_s._ an acre,
and then there is the constant weeding and cleaning of the ground, the
picking, bunching and packing, which needs many hands at once; also
there is the heavy cost of the bulbs themselves for planting, Narcissus
poeticus will cost £50 an acre of 400,000 bulbs, but 270,000 of Golden
Spur will cost £300 and fill the same space; others will cost prices
halfway between these two. Tulips want more room, and at 180,000 to the
acre some will cost as much as £500. Growers like to advertise big
bulbs, but the harder and smaller English-grown bulb will often give
as fine a bloom as the larger imported article. The whole industry is
comparatively new, and a very pleasant one for the many women who are
employed.
[Sidenote: A DISTRIBUTING CENTRE]
The town is a very old one, and the Welland going through it with trees
along its banks and the shipping close to the roadway gives it rather
a Dutch appearance. It is noteworthy as being the centre from which we
shall be able to see more fine churches, all within easy distance, than
we can in any other part of the county or kingdom. As early as 860 the
fisheries of the Welland, together with a wooden chapel of St. Mary
here, which became the site afterwards of the priory, were given by Earl
Alfgar to Croyland. Ivo Taillebois, the Conqueror’s nephew, with his
wife Lucia the first, lived here in the castle in some magnificence as
Lord of Holland. They were both buried in the priory church, founded
by Lady Godiva’s brother, Thorold of Bokenhale, and over possession of
which Spalding and Croyland had frequent disputes. One of the priors
subsequently built Wykeham chapel. The Kings Edward I. and II. stayed
at the priory, and from Bolingbroke, John of Gaunt and Chaucer were
not infrequent visitors. The building was on the south side of the
Market-place, and a shop there with a vaulted roof to one of its rooms
had probably some connection with it. At the dissolution it was valued
at £878, a very large sum, and next only to Croyland, which was by far
the richest house in the county and valued at £1,100 or £1,200. Thornton
Abbey was only set at £730.
The river is navigable for small sea-going vessels, and many large
barges may generally be found tied up along its course through the town,
discharging oil cake and cotton cake, and taking in cargoes of potatoes,
both being transhipped at Fosdyke from or into coasting steamers running
between Hull and London.
But water carriage though cheap is limited in that it only goes between
two points, whereas Spalding is the meeting-place of at least three
railways, making six exits for Spalding goods to come and go to and from
all the main big towns in Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire or Norfolk, as
well as to all those in our own county. Thus there are twice as many ways
out of Spalding by rail as there are by road.
[Illustration: _Ayscough Fee Hall Gardens, Spalding._]
[Sidenote: AYSCOUGH FEE HALL]
The Welland, carefully banked by the Romans, is now bridged for one
railway after another, and runs with a street on either side of it and
rows of trees along it right through the town. On your right as you
enter from the south you see across the river, looking over the top of
a picturesque old brick wall, the well-clipped masses of ancient yew
trees which form the shaded walks in the pretty grounds of _Ayscough Fee
Hall_. The house, built in 1429, but terribly modernised, is now used as
a museum, and the grounds form a public garden for the town. Murray tells
us that Maurice Johnson once lived in it, who helped to found the Society
of Antiquaries in 1717, and founded in 1710 the “Gentleman’s Society of
Spalding,” which still flourishes. Among its many distinguished members
it numbered Newton, Bentley, Pope, Gay, Addison, Stukeley, and Sir Hans
Sloane, and Captain Perry, engineer to the Czar, Peter the Great, who was
engaged in the drainage of Deeping Fen.
[Sidenote: SPALDING CHURCH]
Close to it is the fine old church, the body of which is as wide as it
is long owing to its having double aisles on either side of the nave.
It was founded to take the place of an earlier one which was falling to
ruins, in the market-place. It dates from 1284, and was once cruciform in
plan, with a tower at the north-west corner of the nave. The transepts,
which now do not project beyond the double north and south aisles, had
each two narrow transept aisles, but the western ones have been thrown
into the aisles of the nave. The inner nave aisles are the same length
as the nave, but the outer ones only go as far west as the north and
south porches, the tower filling up the angle beyond the south porch.
The chancel is so large that it was used by Bishop Fleming (1420-30) for
episcopal ordinations.
[Illustration: _Spalding Church from the S.E._]
[Sidenote: THE “HOLE IN THE WALL”]
The east end wall is not rectangular, but the south chancel wall runs out
two feet further east than the north wall, as it does also in the church
of Coulsdon, near Reigate, in Surrey. The reason of this is that it is
built on the foundation of an older chapel. The flat Norman buttresses
are still to be seen outside the east end. The tower leans to the east,
and when examined it was found to have been built flat on the surface
of the ground with no foundation whatever. It seems incredible, but
the intelligent verger was positive about it. The spire has beautiful
canopied openings in three tiers, the lower ones having two lights and
being unusually graceful. Standing inside the south porch and near the
tower, and looking up the church, you get a most picturesque effect, for
the church has so many aisles that you can see no less than twenty-three
different arches. The north porch is handsome, and had three canopied
niches over both the outer and the inner doorway, and a vaulted roof
supporting a room over the entrance. A five-light window over the chancel
arch is curious. There is a rood-loft and a staircase leading to it, and
going on up to the roof. The Perpendicular west window is very large
and has seven lights. This dates from the fifteenth century, when the
nave was lengthened and the pillars of the nave considerably heightened
and the old caps used again, and what had previously been an “early
Decorated” church with only a nave and transepts, had Perpendicular
aisles added. The large south-east chapel which, until 1874 was used
as a school, was founded in 1311. An erect life-size marble figure
commemorates Elizabeth Johnson, 1843. There are no other important
monuments. The tower has eight bells and a Sanctus bell-cot at the east
end of the nave. There are stone steps to enable people to get over the
brick churchyard wall, as there are also at Kirton and Friskney. Some
stone coffin-lids curiously out of place are let into one of the boundary
walls of the churchyard. Close by is the White Horse, a picturesque old
thatched and gabled inn. There is another inn here called “The Hole in
the Wall.” I wonder if this title is derived from Shakespeare’s play,
“The tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and Thisbe,” who, says the
story, “did talk through the chink of a wall,” or does it refer to some
breach in the sea wall? To come from fancy to fact, the real name seems
to have been Holy Trinity Wall, the house having been built up against a
wall of that church which, with half a score of others in Spalding, has
been dismantled and utterly swept away. Another puzzling sign I passed
lately was “The New Found out.” The writer of an article in _The Times_
of April 8, on the fire at Little Chesterford, thinks the sign of one of
the burnt public-houses, “The Bushel and Strike,” a very singular one,
not knowing that the strike, like the bushel, is a measure of corn.
_St. Paul’s, Fulney_, to the north of the town, is a handsome new
brick-and-stone church, by Sir Gilbert Scott, who also restored the old
church and removed every sort of hideous inside fitting, where galleries
all round the nave came within four feet of the heads of the worshippers
in the box pews. At that time £11,000 was spent on the restoration. This
was in 1866, in which year the vicar, the Rev. William Moore, died, and
he and his wife are buried in the nave; his parents, who had done so much
for the church, are buried at Weston.
About two miles from Fulney is Wykeham chapel,[33] built in 1310 and
attached to a country residence of the priors of Spalding; it is now only
a ruin.
[Illustration: _N. Side, Spalding Church._]
[Sidenote: PAINTED PILLARS]
[Sidenote: PINCHBECK]
Going out of Spalding northwards, three miles bring us to _Pinchbeck_,
which was an important village in Saxon times, and attached to Croyland
Abbey, where a fine tower with six bells leans to the north-west. It is
approached by a lime avenue. There are two rows of diaper carved work
round the base of the tower, and large canopied niches on either side
of the west door. The old roof on the north aisle is good, the pillars
of the nave are spoilt by a hideous coat of purple paint. A delightful
old brass weathercock is preserved in the church, and over the south
porch is a dial. The high narrow tower-arch is a pleasure to look on.
The altar tomb of Sir Thomas Pinchbeck (1500) has heraldic shields all
round it, but is quite outdone by a brass of Margaret Lambert, a very
ugly one, but adorned with twenty-seven heraldic coats of arms of her
husband and fifteen of her own. The ten fine Perpendicular clerestory
windows of three lights give the church a handsome appearance, and show
the large wooden angels in the roof, who used to hold shields bearing the
achievements of the house of “Pynchebek.”
[Illustration: _Pinchbeck._]
THE CUSTS.
[Sidenote: THE CUST FAMILY]
There is another name connected with this place, for one of the oldest
Lincolnshire families is that of the Custs, or Costes, who have held land
in Pinchbeck and near Bicker Haven for fourteen generations: though the
first known mention of the name is not in the fens but at Navenby, where
one Osbert Coste had held land in King John’s reign.
The neighbourhood of Croyland Abbey, of Spalding Priory, and of
Boston Haven, with its large wool trade, made “Holland” a district of
considerable importance, and led some of the more enterprising mercantile
families to settle in the neighbourhood.
The same causes occasioned the building of the fine fen churches, which
still remain, though the great houses have disappeared. Custs settled in
Gosberton and Boston as well as at Pinchbeck. At the latter place, what
is now the River Glen was in the fifteenth century called the “Bourne
Ee,” or Eau, and the road by it was the “Ee Gate.” Here Robert Cust in
1479 lived in “The Great House at Croswithand,” in which was a large
hall open to the roof and strewed with rushes, with hangings in it to
partition off sleeping places for the guests or the sons of the house,
the daughters sharing the parlour with their parents. Robert is called a
“Flaxman,” that being the crop by which men began to make their fortunes
in Pinchbeck Fen. He continually added small holdings to his modest
property as opportunity arose, and his son Hugh, succeeding in 1492, did
the same; buying two acres from “Thomas Sykylbrys Franklin” for 50_s._
and one and a half from Robert Sparowe for £5, and so on. Hugh is styled
in 1494 “flax chapman,” in 1500 he had advanced to “Yeoman.” He then had
three farms of sixty-nine acres, and by economy and industry he not only
lived, but lived comfortably, and had money to buy fresh land, though his
will shows that things were on a small scale still, so that individual
mention is made of his “black colt with two white feet behind.” After the
death of his two sons, Hugh’s grandson Richard succeeded in 1554, and
married the juvenile widow, Milicent Slefurth _née_ Beele, who brought
him the lands of R. Pereson, the wealthy vicar of Quadring, with a house
at Moneybridge on the Glen, which she left eventually to her second
son, Richard. His grandson Samuel took to the legal profession, and,
disdaining the parts of Holland after life in London, left the house
there to his brother Joshua, who was the last Cust to live at Pinchbeck.
The family were by this time wealthy, and had a good deal of land round
Boston and elsewhere. Samuel’s son, Richard, married in 1641 Beatrice
Pury, and had a son called Pury, whence spring the Purey Custs. The
Pury family then lived at Kirton, near Boston. He left the law for a
soldier’s life, and was “captain of a Trained Band in the Wapentake of
Skirbeck in the parts of Holland.” He succeeded his father in 1663 and
lived, after the Restoration, at Stamford. In 1677, by interest and the
payment of £1,000, he obtained a baronetcy. His son, Sir Pury Cust, who
had been knighted by William III. in 1690, after the battle of the Boyne,
in which he commanded a troop of horse under the Duke of Schomberg, died
in 1698, two years before his father. His wife, Ursula, the heiress of
the Woodcock family of Newtimber, had died at the age of twenty-four
in 1683. Her monument is in St. George’s church, Stamford. She traced
back her family to Joan, “the fair maid of Kent,” through Joan’s second
husband, John Lord Holland, if we are to take it that she was really
married first, and not simply engaged when a girl to Lord Salisbury. At
all events, her last husband was the Black Prince, by whom she was mother
of Richard II. Her father was Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, the
sixth son of Edward I.
In 1768 Sir John Cust was Speaker of the House of Commons. The present
head of the Cust family is the Earl of Brownlow.
[Illustration: _Surfleet._]
[Sidenote: GOSBERTON]
[Sidenote: THE LEANING TOWER]
Close to Pinchbeck, on whose already sinking tower the builders had not
dared to place their intended spire, is _Surfleet_, where the tower
and spire lean in a most threatening manner. Arches have been built
up to support it, and by the well-known power of old buildings known
as “Sticktion,” it may last for many generations, but it presents a
very uncomfortable appearance. For the next twenty miles we shall be
constantly crossing the great dykes which drain the fens, all running
eastwards. The road which divides after crossing the Hammond Beck and
the Rise-Gate-Eau passes through _Gosberton_, once called Gosberdekirk,
a large village with a very fine Perpendicular church. You enter by a
richly moulded doorway from a very wide porch, over the entrance to which
is a figure. To the right of the porch, arched recesses are seen under
each south aisle window. There is a central tower with large transepts
and a lofty crocketed spire. A Lady chapel adjoins the south transept.
The clerestory is a later addition, and the ground has been filled up
so that the beautifully carved bases of the nave pillars are two feet
below the present paving. A trap-door is lifted to show one of them.
The rood staircase is on the south side, and in the south transept is a
particularly fine window, with two carved cross-mullions. The moulding
of the nave arches is carried right down the pillars, which deprives them
of capitals and gives them a very feeble appearance. A similar absence
of capitals is found in the tower arches at Horncastle. The roof under
the belfry is groined, and a fine screen separates the chapel of St.
Katherine from the body of the church. In this, there is an old plain
chest with three iron bands. An elegant recumbent stone effigy of a lady
and another of a knight in armour, with a shield bearing a Red Cross, are
the only monuments of interest. As early as 1409, in the reign of Henry
IV., Gosberton was a fat living, for in that year we find that the warden
of the hospital of St. Nicholas at Pontefract exchanged the manor of
Methley in Yorkshire for the advowsons of Gosberkirk, Lincolnshire, and
Wathe, Yorkshire. This manor, before the end of that century, became the
property of Sir Thomas Dymoke.
[Sidenote: SHEEP IN CHURCHYARDS]
The church is very well cared for, and I was glad to see sheep in the
churchyard, the only way of keeping the grass tidy without going to an
unwarrantable expense.
[Illustration: _Surfleet Windmill._]
I know quite well the objections which can reasonably be urged to this
plan, that the sheep make the paths and the porch dirty and may damage
the tombstones; but the porch can have wire netting doors, and the
paths can be cleaned up and the sheep excluded for Sunday; and in those
churchyards which are worst cared for there are generally no tombstones
which would be liable to any hurt.
Certainly in one churchyard where I have seen sheep for many years I
never knew of any damage, and they did keep the grass neat where it would
have cost much to keep it trimmed up by hand.
Not far from Gosberton station is Cressy Hall, a modern red brick house,
built on the site of a very ancient one. It had been a manor of the Creci
family from Norman times, and passed from them to Sir John Markham, who
entertained there the Lady Margaret, mother of Henry VII.
Dr. Stukeley, towards the end of the eighteenth century, saw the old
oak bedstead on which she slept. It was then in a farm-house, called
Wrigbolt, in the parish of Gosberton, and was very large and shut in all
round with oak panels carved outside, two holes being left at the foot
big enough to admit a full-grown person—a sort of hutch in fact. The
property subsequently came to the Heron family, who lived there for three
centuries. They kept up a large heronry there, and we read of as many as
eighty nests in one tree, but since the family left the manor, at the
beginning of last century, the birds have been dispersed.
[Sidenote: QUADRING]
The next village to Gosberton is _Quadring_, a curious name, said to be
derived from the Celtic Coed (= wood). The western tower and spire are
well proportioned, and the tower is quite remarkable for the way in which
it draws in, narrowing all the way up from the ground to the spire. The
rich embattled nave parapet and the rood turrets and staircase are also
noticeable, and, as usual with these Lincolnshire churches, a fine row of
large clerestory windows gives a very handsome appearance. This church
has in it a fine chest; as have Gosberton and Sutterton. The latter very
plain, and both with three iron straps and locks, while at Swineshead is
a good iron chest of the Nuremberg pattern.
Four miles will bring us to _Donington_, once a market town and the
centre of the local hemp and flax trade, of which considerable quantities
were grown both here and round Pinchbeck. It was the flax trade that
attracted the Custs to Pinchbeck in the fifteenth century.
[Sidenote: DONINGTON]
Up to the last century Donington had three hemp fairs in the year, in
May, September, and October, and the land being mostly wet fen, the
villagers kept large flocks of geese, one man owning as many as 1,000
“old geese.” These, besides goslings, yielded a crop of quills and
feathers, and the poor birds were plucked five times a year. The sea
shells in the soil indicate that before the sea banks were made the land
was just a salt-water fen, and it is probable that the men of Donington
had a navigable cut to the sea near Bicker or Wigtoft, for the Roman
sea-bank from Frieston curved inland to Wigtoft and thence ran to
Fossdyke, and the sea water no doubt came up to the bank.
The Romans did much for this village, which lies between their sea-bank
and the Carr Dyke. The former kept out the sea water, and the latter
intercepted the flood water from the hills. This was more effectually
done later by the Hammond Beck, which, coming from Spalding, ran
northwards a parallel course to the Roman Dyke, and with the same
purpose, but some four or five miles nearer to Donington, after passing
which place it bends round to the east and goes out at Boston. Thus
farming was made possible, and potatoes now have taken the place of flax
and hemp.
[Sidenote: FLINDERS AND FRANKLIN]
A large green, bordered by big school buildings, now fills the Market
Square. The church, dedicated to St. Mary and the Holy Rood, is late
Decorated and Perpendicular, and has a splendid tower and spire 240
feet high, which stands in a semi-detached way at the south-east of the
south aisle and is surmounted by a very fine ball and weathercock. The
lower stage forms a groined south porch, over which as well as on each
buttress are large canopied niches for statues, and over the inner door
is a figure of our Lord. The pillars in the nave are octagonal. There
is a large rood bracket, and the rood staircase starts, not from behind
the pulpit, but from the top of the chancel step. The walls of the
Early English chancel are of rough stone, with no windows on the north,
but the east window is a grand five-light Perpendicular one, and three
large windows of the same style are at the west end. In all of these the
tracery is unusually good. A doorway at each side of the altar shows
that the chancel once extended further, and there is a curious arched
recess at the north-east corner with high steps, the meaning of which is
a puzzle. A little kneeling stone figure is seen in the wall of the north
aisle. The responds of the nave arcades, both east and west, have very
large carved bosses. The roof is old and quite plain. In the church are
many memorial slabs to members of the Flinders family, among them one to
Captain Matthew Flinders,[34] 1814, one of the early explorers, who, in
the beginning of last century, was sent to map the coast of Australia,
and having been captured by the French, was kept for some years in prison
in Mauritius.
The Blacksmith’s epitaph, mentioned in the account of Bourne Abbey,
is also found in the churchyard here, with bellows, forge, and anvil
engraved on the stone.
[Sidenote: SWINESHEAD]
_Swineshead_ is but four miles further on, with _Bicker_ half way. The
latter has a far older church than any in the neighbourhood. It is
dedicated to St. Swithun. It is a twelfth-century cruciform building with
massive piers and cushion capitals and fine moulding to its Norman arches
over the two western bays of the nave. The clerestory has Norman arcading
in triplets with glass in the centre light. The east window consists of
three tall Early English lancets. A turret staircase in the south aisle
gives access to another in the tower. The north aisle oak seats have been
made out of portions of the rood screen. The Early English font, being
supported on four short feet, is interesting, as is a holy water stoup in
the porch. This church has been well restored by the Rev. H. T. Fletcher,
now ninety-three years of age, who has been rector for half a century.
In the last half of the thirteenth century a Christopher Massingberd
was the incumbent. It is kept locked on account of recent thefts in the
neighbourhood. As you go to _Swineshead_ you pass a roadside pond with a
notice, “Beware of the Swans.” The village, like Donington, was once a
market town, and has still the remains of its market cross and stocks.
The low spire of the church rises from a beautiful battlemented octagon
which crowns the tower and is _the_ feature of the building. There is a
similar one at the base of the spire of the grand church of Patrington in
Holderness. The tower is at the west end of the nave, and at each of its
corners are very high pinnacles. The belfry is lighted by unusually large
three-light Perpendicular windows, and the clerestory by large windows
with Decorated tracery. The south aisle windows, too, are Decorated,
those in the north aisle Perpendicular. The roof is old, and though
plain in the nave, is richer in the north aisle. The clustered columns
in the nave are slender, and the long pointed chancel arch, having
no shoulders, is curiously ugly. The old iron chest has been already
mentioned.
[Illustration: _The Welland at Marsh Road, Spalding._]
[Sidenote: SUTTERTON]
At Swineshead the road goes east to Boston and west to Sleaford. This we
will speak of when we describe the six roads out of Sleaford, of which
the Swineshead road is by far the most interesting. But we must go back
by _Bicker_, to which the sea once came close up, as testified by the
remains of the Roman sea-bank only two miles off; and perhaps, too,
by the name “Fishmere End,” near the neighbouring village of Wigton.
After seeing _Bicker_ we will retrace our steps through Donington by
Quadring and Gosberton, till we reach the “Gate Eau,” then turning to the
left, strike the direct Spalding and Boston road. This, after crossing
“Quadring Eau-Dyke”—a name which tells a fenny tale—passes over the Roman
bank as it leaves Bicker, and making eastwards after its long inland
curve from Frieston, proceeds to _Sutterton_ and _Algarkirk_. The names
go together as a station on the Great Northern Railway loop line, and
the villages are not far apart. They were both endowed as early as 868,
as mentioned in the Arundel MSS. The churches of both are cruciform.
_Sutterton_ has a tall spire thickly crocketed, and a charming Transition
doorway in the south porch. That of the north is of the same date. The
Early English arcades have rich bands of carving under the capitals
of their round pillars; the two eastern pillars, from the thrust of
the tower, lean considerably to the west; and, showing how much of the
building was done in the Transition Norman time, the pointed arch of the
chancel is enriched with Norman moulding. The large Perpendicular windows
are very good, but the tracery of the Decorated west window is not
attractive. The level of the floor has been so filled up that the narrow
transept-arch pillars are now buried as much as three feet. The fittings
are all pinewood, which gives one a kind of shock in so fine an old
church. There are eight bells and a thirteenth-century Sanctus bell with
inscription in Lombardic letters. The wood of the massive old iron-bound
chest is sadly decayed.
[Illustration: _Algarkirk._]
[Sidenote: THE MAGNIFICENT WINDOWS]
_Algarkirk_, the church of Earl Alfgar, stands within half a mile of
Sutterton, in a park. The parish is a huge one, and the living was,
till recently, worth £2,000 a year, but having been purchased from the
Berridge family and presented to the Bishop of Lincoln, its revenues
have gone largely to endow new churches in Grimsby, and the present
incumbent has only one quarter of what his predecessors had. Like
Spalding, Algarkirk had double aisles to the transepts, but the eastern
aisle on the south side has been thrown into the transept. The Decorated
windows of each transept are very fine ones, and those at the east and
west ends of the nave are extremely large and good, that at the west
filling the whole of the wall space. The clerestory has ten three-light
windows, and the transepts have similar ones. Outside, the nave, aisles
and transepts are all battlemented, which gives a very rich appearance.
The fittings are all of oak, and there are six bells. Every window below
the clerestory has good modern stained glass, and, taken as a whole, the
church is one of the most beautiful in the county.
[Sidenote: AT ALGARKIRK]
It was Easter time when we visited Algarkirk, and the rookery in the park
at the edge of the churchyard was giving abundant signs of busy life.
The delightful cawing of the rooks is always associated in my mind with
the bright spring time in villages of the Lincolnshire wolds. In the
churchyard I noticed the name of Phœbe more than once, but I doubt if the
parents, when bestowing this pretty classic name on their infant daughter
at the font, ever thought of her adding to it, as the tombstone says she
did, the prosaic name of Weatherbogg.
At Sutterton two main roads cross, one from Swineshead to Holbeach,
crossing the Welland near Fosdyke; the other from Boston to Spalding,
crossing the Glen at Surfleet.
From Swineshead two very dull roads run west to Sleaford, and north to
Coningsby and Tattershall, to join the Sleaford and Horncastle road.
This, after crossing the old Hammond Beck, sends an off-shoot eastwards
to Boston, whose tower is seen about four miles off. It then crosses the
great South-Forty-foot drain at Hubbert’s bridge, named after Hubba the
Dane, and the North-Forty-foot less than a mile further on, and, passing
by Brothertoft to the Witham, which it crosses at Langrick, runs in a
perfectly straight line through Thornton-le-Fen to Coningsby. An equally
straight road goes parallel to, but four miles east of it, from Boston by
New Bolingbroke to Revesby.
From what we have said it will be seen that the road from Spalding
northwards is thickly set with fine churches; but that which goes
eastwards boasts another group which are grander still. They are all
figured in the volume of “Lincolnshire Churches,” which deals with the
division of Holland. This was published in 1843 by T. N. Morton of
Boston, the excellent drawings being by Stephen Lewin. His drawing of
Kirton Old Church shows what an extremely handsome building it was before
Hayward destroyed it in 1804.
[Sidenote: MEANING OF ‘PINCHBECK’]
One ought not to close this Chapter without some reference to the term
“pinchbeck,” meaning _sham_, literally base metal, looking like gold, and
used for watchcases.[35] Some Pinchbeck natives still have it that it
was a yellow metal found rather more than a century ago near Pinchbeck,
and now exhausted. But fen soil has no minerals, and really it was a
London watchmaker, who was either a native of Pinchbeck or else called
Pinchbeck, who invented the alloy of 80 parts copper to 20 of zinc. I
remember hearing of a case at Spilsby sessions, where a man was accused
of stealing a watch. The robbed man was asked, “What was your watch? a
gold one?” “Nöa, it wëant gowd.” “Silver then?” “Näay, it wëant silver,
nither.” “Then what was it?” “Why, it wor pinchbeck.”
On a later occasion the thief, asking the same “lawyer feller” to defend
him, said, by way of introduction, “You remember you got me off before
for stealing a watch.” “For the _alleged_ stealing of a watch, you mean.”
“Alleged be blowed! I’ve got the watch at home now.”
[Illustration: _At Fulney._]
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHURCHES OF HOLLAND, EAST OF SPALDING
Weston—The Font—Fertile Country—Colman’s Factory—The
Woad Plant—’Twixt Marsh and Fen—Moulton—The Spire—The
Elloe Stone—Whaplode—Holbeach—Fleet—Gedney—The Mustard
Fields—Long Sutton—Groups of Churches—Fossdyke Old
Bridge—Kirton—Frampton—Wyberton—A Storm—Agricultural
Statistics, 1913—A Legend of Holbeach.
The road which runs east from Spalding passes out of the county to reach
King’s Lynn. But before it does so, it goes through a line of villages
along which, within a distance of ten miles, are six of the finest
churches which even Lincolnshire can show. Going out through Fulney we
begin, less than four miles from Spalding, with _Weston_, where we find
an unusually fine south porch with arcading and stone seats on either
side. At the east end are three lancet lights of perfect Early English
work and four slender buttresses. The nave dates from the middle of the
twelfth century, and has stout round pillars in the south and octagonal
in the north arcades, each set round with slender detached shafts as
at Skirbeck, united under capitals carved with good stiff foliage. The
aisles and transepts are later, and the tower later again.
The Early English font is a splendid specimen and stands on its original
octagonal steps with half of the circle occupied by a broad platform for
the priest. Two good old oak chests stand on either side of the tower
arch, and near the south door two curious musical instruments of the oboe
type are hanging, and seem to be worthy of more careful preservation.
[Sidenote: ‘MARSH’ AND ‘FEN’]
The whole of our route to-day lies through a perfectly flat land, mostly
arable and of extraordinary fertility. The corn crops at the end of May
were standing nearly two feet high, and all around bright squares of
yellow made the air heavy with the scent of the mustard flower. I lately
went all over the great mustard factory of Messrs. Colman at Norwich, in
which the beauty and ingenuity of the machinery for making and labelling
the tins, for filling bags and boxes, or for sorting and folding up
in their proper papers the cubes of blue (of which there is a factory
contiguous) were a perfect marvel. The works cover thirty-two acres, and
everything needed for the business is made on the premises. The mustard
of commerce is a mixture of the brown and the white, both of which, and
especially the best brown, are grown in the greatest perfection in the
fields round Holbeach. It is a valuable crop. In October, 1912, I saw a
quotation of 10_s._ 6_d._ to 13_s._ 6_d._ a bushel for brown, and 8_s._
to 8_s._ 6_d._ for white; 1913 was a much better year, and so I suppose
prices ruled higher. But to return.
Here and there we passed a field with an unfamiliar crop of stiff
purplish plants which showed where the cultivation of the _Isatis
tinctoria_, the woad plant, which added so much to the attractiveness of
our earliest British ancestors, was still kept going. This flat country
is not without its trees, and near the villages park-like meadows, the
remains of ancient manors, showed a beautiful wealth of chestnut bloom,
whilst the cottage gardens were gay with laburnum and pink May. This
was especially the case with the most easterly villages of Holbeach,
Gedney and Long Sutton, but all along this line of road from Weston to
Sutton there were, at one time, manors of the Irby, Welby, Littlebury,
and other families, of which nothing now remains but this heritage of
trees. The line of road is a very remarkable one, for it divides what
once might have been described as the waters that were above from the
waters that were below; in other words the Fen from the Marsh. If you
look at a good map you will see to the north of the road, from west
to east successively, Pinchbeck Marsh, Spalding Marsh, Weston Marsh,
Moulton Marsh, Whaplode Marsh, Holbeach Marsh, Gedney Marsh, Sutton
Marsh, and Wingland Marsh. The last of these lies between Sutton Bridge
and Cross-Keys, on the county boundary; and since the new outfall of the
river Nene was cut, a rich tract has been gained for cultivation where
once the sea had possession, and just where King John lost his baggage
and treasure in his disastrous crossing of the Cross-Keys Wash, at low
tide, shortly before his death in 1216. There is now a good road there.
Now look at the map again and you will see to the south of this Holbeach
road the same names, but with _Fen_ instead of _Marsh_—Moulton, Whaplode,
Holbeach, and Gedney _Fen_.
[Sidenote: RETIREMENT OF THE WASH]
The Marsh country is far the most interesting, and it is clear both from
the nature of the land and from the names of the places that the Wash
used to come several miles further inland than it does now, running up
between Algarkirk and Gosberton as far as Bicker, and penetrating up
the Welland estuary to “Surfleet seas end,” and up the Moulton river to
“Moulton seas end,” to Holbeach Clough, to Lutton Gowt, which is north
of Long Sutton on the Leam, and to the Roman bank which is still visible
at Fleet and again further east between Cross-Keys and Walpole. This
bank probably came by _Tydd St. Mary_, through which a Roman road from
Cowbit also passed. But this was long ago, and many centuries elapsed
before this Spalding and Lynn road, passing between Marsh and Fen, came
into being, with its many magnificent churches, mostly the work of great
monastic institutions between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and
therefore built with exceptional magnificence.
[Sidenote: MOULTON]
After _Weston_ less than two miles, through a country brightened by the
many red and white chestnut trees in bloom, brings us to _Moulton_,
lying a little to the south of the main road. Here we have a beautiful
Perpendicular tower and crocketed spire, reminding one, by its graceful
proportions, of Louth, though not much more than half the height. The
nave has six bays of Transition Norman work with pillars both round and
clustered, resting on large millstone-like bases, the two western piers
having tall responds built into them, which probably supported the arch
of an earlier tower. The Early English carved foliage on the capitals is
like that at Skirbeck, or in the Galilee Porch at Ely and the transept
of York Cathedral. Some most graceful old work has been restored in the
lower part of the rood-screen, and a new and well-designed canopy added.
The doorway to this rood-loft is on the south side. A curious old oak
alms-box is near the south door, and against the western pier of the
north arcade is a singular font which has been displaced by a modern
square one of no particular merit. In the older one the bowl stands on
the trunk of a tree carved in stone, on either side of which are figures
about three feet high of Adam and Eve, and the Serpent is curling round
the tree.[36] The wooden cover with the figure of a stout Rubens angel
flying and grasping the top has fallen into disrepair. A list of the
vicars from 1237 is in the north aisle.
The clerestory windows are handsomely arcaded outside, with round Norman
arcading on the south and pointed arcades on the north side, and ugly
Perpendicular windows inserted at intervals which occupy the space of two
arcades.
The great beauty of the church is the Perpendicular tower and spire,
built about 1380. It has four stages, and over the great west window
are some canopied niches, two of which still contain their statues. The
buttresses have also niches and canopies, and the tower finishes with
a rich battlement and pinnacles which are connected with the spire by
light flying-buttresses; the whole is beautifully proportioned, and as it
stands in a very wide street one can get a satisfactory view of it.
The dividing of each side by set-off string courses, three on the west
and four on the north and south sides, the canopy work of the buttresses
at each stage, the pleasing varieties in the size of the windows, the
canopied arcading on the west front, the panelled parapet and deep
cornice, the elegant pinnacles at the corners of the coped battlements
from which the light flying-buttresses spring up to the richly ornamented
spire, all help to delight and satisfy the eye in a manner which few
churches in any county can hope to rival.
In a bridge half a mile from the church on the south side of a lane
called ‘Old Spalding Gate,’ or ‘Elloe Stone lane,’ at the fifth milestone
from Spalding, still stands _the Elloe Stone_.
The Shire Mote or hundred court of the Elloe Wapentake, which is a huge
one embracing the whole of Holland between the Welland and the Nene, used
to be held at the four cross-roads near this stone, in pre-Norman times.
The manor courts were introduced by the Normans.
Boy Scouts were very much in evidence when we were in Moulton; they
number over thirty there alone, and I never saw a smarter lot.
[Sidenote: WHAPLODE]
From Moulton we get back to the main road and go on two short miles
to _Whaplode_. In Domesday Book this is spelt Quappelode, the cape on
the lode or creek, the village being built on a spit of land elevated
above the fens and encircled by drains, or lodes, to keep it free from
inundation.
[Illustration: _Whaplode Church._]
The church here was built by the abbot of Croyland in rivalry with
Moulton, which was the work of the prior of Spalding. The nave, of no
less than seven bays, is narrow and 110 feet long, and exhibits in the
low chancel arch and four adjoining arcades quite the most interesting
Norman work in ‘Holland.’ The massive Norman pillars are built in pairs
of different patterns. The three western arches are Transitional and
pointed; of this period the chief feature is the west door with a fine
series of mouldings and a double row of eight detached shafts on either
side, set one behind the other.
The tower is very fine and is in a most unusual position, being south
of the eastmost bay of the south aisle and almost detached, though
once joined by a transept. We quite agree with Mr. Jeans when he says
“Probably it was intended to have two transeptal towers like Exeter
and Ottery, the only two churches in England with them, but a late
Perpendicular transept occupies the place of the North one.” The lower
Transition stage is richly arcaded, the next two Early English stages
have lancet arcading, and the belfry stage, which is early Decorated,
has coupled lights and a parapet above them. The choir-screen stood,
curiously, a bay in front of the rood loft, the stairs to which are on
the south side. The pulpit is Jacobean, the font a copy of a Norman one,
the chancel is of the meanest, and all the windows except one at the east
of the north aisle are incredibly ugly. Some stone coffins are placed in
the west end, where also is the fine canopied monument of Sir Anthony and
Lady Elizabeth Irby with large figures of their children kneeling at the
side. See _Ashby-cum-Fenby_, p. 267.
[Sidenote: HOLBEACH]
Another three miles along this wonderful line of grand churches brings
us to the church of All Saints, _Holbeach_, a magnificent building all
in the latest Decorated style throughout. The spire without crockets,
though higher than Moulton, is rather dwarfed by the large tower
without pinnacles. The nave is very spacious and light, having large
aisle windows with no stained glass, and no less than fourteen pairs
of clerestory windows. The flamboyant tracery in the east window is
very good. The nave has seven very lofty bays on tall, light, clustered
pillars, and the eastern bay does not reach the chancel arch, but leaves
a wall space of six feet to accommodate the requirements of the rood
loft. There is a very large north porch of singular construction, with
heavy, round battlemented turrets like the flanking bastions of a castle
gateway. Above is a parvise. In the north aisle is a well-preserved altar
tomb to Sir Humphrey Littlebury, _c._ 1400, and two brasses; one of
Joanna Welbye, 1458, for both these families once had manors at Holbeach.
[Illustration: _Fleet Church._]
The approach to the town is through a well-wooded country, and a row of
pink chestnuts in bloom lined the churchyard, as we saw it early in June.
Like Moulton, the parish is a very large one, containing, according to
Murray, 21,000 acres of land and 14,000 of water. Somewhere in this huge
parish was born, in 1687, William Stukeley, the antiquarian, who became
in his later years the rector of Somerby, near Grantham.
The “Legend of Holbeach” was probably unknown to him, but it is of some
antiquity, and it is printed at the end of the chapter in the rhyming
form which was given to it more than a hundred years ago by Thomas
Rawnsley of Bourne, D.L.
[Sidenote: A DETACHED SPIRE]
A mile off the road to the right, is seen the spire of _Fleet_ church.
This, too, is mainly in the Decorated style with Early English arcades
and a Perpendicular west window. The tower stands apart from the rest of
the church at an interval of fifteen feet. Other instances of detached
towers are at Evesham in Worcestershire, at Elstow near Bedford, and, I
think, at Terrington in Norfolk; but a detached spire is very rarely seen.
All the churches on the main road are at intervals of three miles,
and that distance will bring us to the tall slender Giotto-like tower
of _Gedney_, ninety feet high with very small buttresses. This, like
Whaplode, was built, by the abbots of Croyland. The spacious nave has
twelve Perpendicular three-light clerestory windows of unusual beauty,
divided by pinnacles rising above the parapet. There are six lofty bays
and a fine Early English tower arch. As at Holbeach and Sutton, there
is a parvise over the south porch. The tower was to have had a spire
instead of its present little spirelet, but only the base of it was
built. Possibly this was because the foundations were not trustworthy,
and, indeed, it may be said to have no foundations but to be built on
a raft in the peat bog on which it floats securely, as did Winchester
Cathedral before the deep drainage trench was cut along the north side
of the close. At Gedney, if you jump on the floor of the porch you will
distinctly perceive the vibration of the ground.
It is enriched at the first stage by lancet windows, then by an arcading
with pointed arches, above which come beautiful twin windows, each with
two lights; and the upper, Decorated, stage of the tower—above the line
where the Black Death so obviously and effectually stopped the work,
as described in the next chapter—has two lofty canopied and transomed
windows in each face, which give a very handsome appearance. There is no
west door.
[Illustration: _Gedney Church._]
[Sidenote: GEDNEY]
Within is a ‘low-side’ window at the south-west end of the chancel which
is sometimes called an ‘Ichnoscope,’ and in the vestry is a ‘squint.’
A thirteenth-century cross-legged knight, the fine brass of a lady
(1390), recently discovered, and the richly coloured alabaster monument
of Adlard and Cassandra Welby (1590) are all worthy of notice; while the
abbots’ inscription over the door, “Pax Xti sit huic domui et omnibus
habitantibus in ea, hic requies nostra,” is to be contrasted with the
worldly-wise motto of John Petty on the old bell-metal door lock, “Be
Ware before, avyseth Johannes Pette.” Let into the door is a very
remarkable crucifixion in ivory.
[Sidenote: THE MUSTARD FIELDS]
As we left Gedney and looked back over the fields the tall and
Italian-looking campanile, whose bells, however, cannot vie with the
eight bells of Holbeach, made a unique and memorable picture. I doubt
if there is anything quite like it in England. We passed on eastwards
another three miles by Gedney Marsh, with its “Cock and Magpie” inn,
while the strong summer scent of the brilliant mustard fields recalled
the apt description of our great Lincolnshire poet:
“All the land in flowery squares,
Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,
Smelt of the coming Summer.”
As with Shakespeare, once let anything be described by Tennyson, and no
other form of words can ever again seem so fit and inevitable. How often
does one notice this!
[Sidenote: GROUPS OF FINE CHURCHES]
But now we are at _Long Sutton_, or Sutton St. Mary’s, and find there
perhaps the most interesting of this wonderful sequence of exceptional
churches.
Again we have a long nave of seven bays, with Norman pillars, both round
and octagonal. A flat Norman arch to the chancel, and on each side of
the chancel a slender column and two tall arches leading to chancel
transepts. The rood staircase goes up from the pulpit on the north side,
and above the nave arcades is a Transitional clerestory with arcading,
which now serves as a triforium, being surmounted by another clerestory
of the Perpendicular period; indeed the outside of the church, from its
aisle and clerestory windows, has just the appearance of a Perpendicular
building, so that when on entering one finds oneself in a fine Norman
nave, the sight, as Mr. Jeans says, is quite startling.
[Illustration: _Long Sutton Church._]
At the north-east angle is a curious two-storied octagonal vestry,
or sacristy, with a winding stair of fourteenth century date, having
a small window into the chancel. The tower is Early English and is
curiously placed at the south-west angle of the south aisle. That at
Whaplode is at the south-east angle. Both tower and spire are in their
original condition (the latter of timber covered with lead) and are the
best and earliest specimens of their period. The tower stands on four
magnificent arches now blocked, above which outside is a rich arcading
like that in the north transept of Wells Cathedral. Above this the belfry
windows are double, having a three-light window inside, with a two-light
window outside, the mullion coming down to the outer edge of the splay;
a very unusual arrangement. The spire is clasped at each corner by a
spirelet, and rises to the height of 162 feet. Altogether this church
is the fitting crown to our long string of stately churches. There are
larger single churches with twelve to even twenty clerestory windows in
Norfolk and Suffolk, but I doubt if any group in the kingdom can rival
these, though the Sleaford group runs them hard. And certainly the Marsh
churches between Boston and Wainfleet, and the still more characteristic
group round Burgh-le-Marsh and Theddlethorpe have a charm—owing a
good deal to their old oak fittings—which “can only be described in
superlatives.” Next to these for interest I would put the Pinchbeck group
in the triangle formed by Boston, Spalding, and Donington, and the group
of old pre-Norman towers like Clee which are found near together to the
south and west of Grimsby. Of course, Lincoln Minster with Stow, Grantham
with Hough-on-the-Hill, Boston Stump, and Louth spire, stand outside
every group in unapproachable greatness. Long Sutton is not without
neighbours. Two miles to the north is _Lutton_, where Dr. Busby, the
famous headmaster of Westminster, was born. He died in 1695. The large
inlaid Italian pulpit with elegant canopy, put up in 1702, was probably
his gift.
Three miles east is _Sutton bridge_, only separated from Norfolk by the
uninhabited Wingland Marsh, while three miles to the south is the village
of _Tydd-St.-Mary_, the last village on the Wisbech road which is in
Lincolnshire, _Tydd-St.-Giles_ being over the border in Cambridgeshire;
for both Norfolk and Cambridge here touch the county; Wisbech, which
is itself the centre of a grand group of churches, being in the latter
county.
[Sidenote: OLD FOSDYKE BRIDGE]
To finish our day and get into “the parts of Lindsey,” we take the
north road from Holbeach over Fosdyke bridge to Boston. In the church
at _Fosdyke_ we may see a remarkable font with a tall Perpendicular oak
cover similar, but not equal in beauty, to that at Frieston.
Before 1814, people who wished to go from Boston into the eastern half of
Holland and on to Cambridge and Norfolk had to cross the Welland estuary
by ferry or go round by Spalding, but in 1811 an Act was passed for
erecting a bridge at Fosdyke Wash and making a causeway to it over the
sands. The work was designed by Rennie, who had an excellent patron in
Sir Joseph Banks. The account of it, written at the time, is curious. The
bridge was 300 feet long and had eight openings, the three in mid-stream
being thirty feet wide, and the centre one opened with two leaves,
which, having a counterpoise, were easily moved from a horizontal to a
perpendicular position by means of a large rack-wheel and pinion wound by
a common hand-winch. The nine piers were each made of oak trees driven
in whole in clusters of six. These trees were none of them less than
thirty feet long and eighteen inches in diameter, rather larger than the
beams used to carry the floors in Tattershall Castle.[37] Those in the
four central piers were enormous, being forty-two feet long and nineteen
inches in diameter. They were driven in twenty to twenty-two feet below
the bottom of the river and bolted together with timbers a foot thick.
All was carried out in oak, the roadway planks being three inches thick.
I went to see this stout old timber bridge and was disgusted to find that
a grey-painted iron structure had taken its place.
From Fosdyke the road passes Algarkirk and strikes the Spalding and
Boston main road at Sutterton, where it turns north to _Kirton_. After
passing Kirton—the magnificent church of which place was so strangely
altered and mutilated by a ruthless architect called Hayward, in 1804,
who pulled down its noble central tower and its double-aisled transept
and built of the old materials a handsome but new tower at the west
end—we soon see on the right, first Frampton and then Wyberton, the
latter only about a mile south of Boston.
[Sidenote: FRAMPTON AND WYBERTON]
_Frampton_, once cruciform with a good tower and spire, has lost its
north transept, its tall Early English pillars now support arches of a
later style, but a fine oak roof and tall screen remain. There is an
odd monument of ecclesiastical power on a buttress outside at the angle
of the transept. A figurehead grotesquely carved, with the inscription,
“Wot ye whi I sta̅d her [know ye, why I stand here] for I forswor my
Savior ego Ricardus in Angulo,” probably a lasting reference to some
ecclesiastical penance.
Frampton Hall, a good Queen Anne house, is close to the church. Here, as
in several of the Marsh churches, rings to tie horses to during service
may be seen in the wall. Not a mile away northwards is _Wyberton_, which,
if built as planned, would have been a very fine edifice. When it was
restored by G. Scott, Jun., in 1881, the floor of the chancel being
lowered brought to light two magnificent pillar bases. These, with the
grand chancel arch, are indications that a fine cruciform church was
projected but apparently never carried out. Tall arcades with clustered
and octagonal columns and a good Perpendicular roof with carved bosses
and angels are there now, and signs that an earlier building existed are
visible in stones either lying loose or built into the walls. A slab to
Adam Frampton is dated 1325.
The font is a very rich one of the same period as those to the north-east
of Boston, at Benington and Leverton. _The registers begin as early as
1538._ We pass now through Boston, and crossing the sluice bridge, get a
fine view of the tall tower by the water-side and soon strike the Sibsey
and Spilsby road.
A grand black thunder-cloud rolls up across the fen, and having
discharged a tempest of hailstones on the Wolds, descends upon us between
Sibsey and Stickney in torrents of rain. It passes, and the bright
sunshine—the “clear shining after rain” of the Hebrew prophet—contrasted
with the darkness of the moving thunder-clouds as they roll seawards,
makes a fine picture, and one which in that flat land you can watch for
miles as it moves.
[Sidenote: AGRICULTURAL RETURNS]
The agricultural statistics for Lincolnshire in 1913 show that there were
in Lindsey about 860,000, in Kesteven 419,560, and in Holland 243,200
acres under cultivation. The various crops in each were in thousands of
acres as follows:—
+-----------+-------------------------------------------------------+
| |Wheat. |
| | +------------------------------------------------+
| | |Oats. |
| | | +-----------------------------------------+
| | | |Barley. |
| | | | +----------------------------------+
| | | | |Beans and Peas. |
| | | | | +---------------------------+
| | | | | |“Roots.” |
| | | | | | +--------------------+
| | | | | | |Potatoes. |
| | | | | | | +-------------+
| | | | | | | |Clover, |
| | | | | | | |Vetches &c. |
| | | | | | | | +------+
| | | | | | | | |Other |
| | | | | | | | |crops.|
+-----------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
|In Lindsey | 79 | 69½ | 125½ | 24 | 83¼ | 27 | 109 | 7 |
| ” Kesteven| 44½ | 24 | 67½ | 17½ | 34½ | 8½ | 46¼ | 3¾ |
| ” Holland | 35 | 23 | 18 | 17¼ | 7 | 40⅓ | 15 | 12¾ |
+-----------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
The table shows that Holland grows a good deal of wheat and oats, but not
much barley compared with the two other divisions, and very few “roots.”
But in 1913 it grew 40,370 acres of potatoes, which is 5,000 acres more
than all the rest of the county; and this was a decrease on the previous
year’s crop of 2,479 acres. Then the big item in Holland under “other
crops” shows the mustard, while 2,500 acres in that column for Lindsey
are taken up with “rape.” The amount of bare fallow last year was, in
Lindsey, 22,940 acres; in Kesteven, 15,385; and in Holland, 5,311. This,
and the number of horses employed on the land—Lindsey, 26,930; Kesteven,
12,412; Holland, 10,892—when it is remembered that the acreage of the
three divisions is in the proportion of 4, 2, and 1, shows how highly
cultivated the Lincolnshire fen-land in Holland is. The arable land in
that division is more than two-thirds of the whole acreage.
Another thing this report brings out is the marked decrease in 1913 in
the number of cattle, sheep and pigs, and especially of sheep in every
part of the county. This decrease was—
+--------------+---------+---------+-------+
| | Cattle. | Sheep. | Pigs. |
+--------------+---------+---------+-------+
| In Lindsey | 8,672 | 35,516 | 1,002 |
| ” Kesteven | 5,675 | 10,462 | 2,801 |
| ” Holland | 3,664 | 9,587 | 4,638 |
+--------------+---------+---------+-------+
| Total | 18,011 | 55,565 | 8,441 |
+--------------+---------+---------+-------+
This shows that Holland suffered more decrease in proportion than the
other two divisions in all respects, and especially in the number of
pigs. Of course the season must always be answerable for a good deal,
and the numbers may all go up this year. But the enormous drop in the
number of cattle and sheep, telling a tale of the absence of “roots” and
“feed,” will hardly be made good in one year.
[Sidenote: THE REVELLERS]
[Sidenote: “A LEGEND OF HOLBECH”]
“A LEGEND OF HOLBECH”
a true story.
Made into this rhyme by Mr. Rawnsley of Bourne, about the year 1800.
In the bleak noxious Fen that to Lincoln pertains
Where agues assert their fell sway,
There the Bittern hoarse moans and the seamew complains
As she flits o’er the watery way.
While with strains thus discordant, the natives of air
With screams and with shrieks the ear strike,
The toad and the frog croaking notes of despair
Join the din, from the bog and the dyke.
Mid scenes that the senses annoy and appal
Sad and sullen old Holbech appears,
As if doomed to bewail her hard fate from the Fall,
Like a Niobe washed with her tears.
From fogs pestilential that hovered around,
To ward off despair and disease,
The juice of the grape was most generous found,
Source of comfort, of joy, and of ease.
At the “Chequers” long famed to quaff then did delight
The Burghers both ancient and young,
With smoking and cards, passed the dull winter night,
They joked and they laughed and they sung.
Three revellers left, when the midnight was come,
Unable their game to pursue,
Repaired, most unhallowed, to visit the tomb
Where enshrouded lay one of their crew.
For _he_, late-departed, renowned was at whist,
The marsh-men still tell of his fame,
Till Death with a spade struck the cards from his fist
And spoiled both his hand and his game.
Cold and damp was the night; thro’ the churchyard they prowled,
As wolves by fierce hunger subdued,
’Gainst the doors they huge gravestones impetuous rolled
Which recoiled at such violence rude.
From the sepulchre’s jaws their old comrade uncased,
(How chilling the tale to relate),
Upreared ’gainst the wall on the table was placed
A corpse, in funereal state.
By a taper’s faint blaze and with Luna’s faint light
That would sometimes emit them a ray,
The cards were produced, and they cut with delight
To know who with “_Dumby_” should play.
Exalted on basses the bravoes kneeled round
Exulting and proud of the deed,
To Dumby they bent with respect most profound
And said “Sir! it is _your_ turn to lead.”
The game then commenced, when one offered him aid,
And affected to guide his cold hand
While another cried out, “Bravo! Dumby, well played,
I see you’ve the cards at command.”
Thus impious, they jokèd devoid of all grace,
When dread sounds shook the walls of the church,
And lo! Dumby sank down, and a ghost in his place
Shrieked dismal “Haste! haste! save your lurch!”
Astounded they stared; but the fiend disappeared
And Dumby again took his seat,
So they deemed ’twas but fancy, nor longer they feared
But swore that “Old Dumb should be beat.”
Eight to nine was the game, Dumby’s partner called loud
“Speak once, my old friend, or we’re done
Remember our stake ’tis my coat or your shroud
Now answer and win—_can you one?_”[38]
“What silent, my Dumby, when most I you need
Dame Fortune our wishes has crossed,”
When a voice from beneath, howled, “your fate is decreed
The game and the gamesters are lost.”
Then strange! most terrific and horrid to view!
Three Demons thro’ earth burst their way:
Each one chose his partner, his arms round him threw
And vanished in smoke with his prey.
CHAPTER XL
THE BLACK DEATH
Mention being made in the last chapter of the Black Death, the disastrous
effects of which were so visible in the tower of Gedney, it will be not
inappropriate to give some short account of it here.
Edward the Third had been twenty years on the throne when a great change
came over the country. The introduction of leases of lands and houses by
the lord of the manor had created a class of “farmers”—the word was a
new one—by which the old feudal system of land-tenure was disturbed, the
old tie of personal dependence of the serf on his lord being broken, and
the lord of the manor reduced to the position of a modern landlord. And
not only was an independent class of tenants coming into existence who
were able to rise to a position of apparent equality with their former
masters, but among the labourers, too, a greater freedom was growing,
which was gradually loosing them from their local bondage to the soil,
and giving them power to choose what place of employment and what master
they pleased. This rise of the free labourer following naturally on the
enfranchisement of the serf had made it necessary for the landlord to
rely on hired labour, and just when it was most essential for them to
have an abundant supply of hands seeking employment, all at once the
supply absolutely and entirely failed.
The cause of this was the Black Death, which, starting in Asia, swept
over the whole of Europe and speedily reached these shores in the autumn
of 1348. No such swift and universally devastating plague had ever been
known. One half of the population of every European country perished,
and in England more than half. In one London burying-place above 50,000
corpses were interred.
[Sidenote: THE BLACK DEATH]
In Norwich, then the chief east-coast port north of the Thames, we hear
of 60,000 deaths. We hear, too, of whole villages being wiped out, and
nowhere were sufficient hands left to cultivate the soil.
Crops were ungathered, cattle roamed at will. The pestilence lasted
through the whole of 1349, after which, though occasionally recurring, it
died away.
In Lincolnshire it was very bad, and some knowledge of it can be
gathered from the memoranda of the Bishop of Lincoln, John Gynewell, who
held office from September 23, 1347, to August 5, 1362; the appalling
frequency of the institutions to the various benefices in his diocese
give some measure of the severity of this dreadful visitation.
It began at Melcombe Regis in Dorset in the month of July, 1348, but did
not reach Lincoln until May, 1349. It got to London in January of that
year, and was at its height there in March, April, and May. In May, in
the town of Newark, we read that “it waxes day by day more and more,
insomuch that the Churchyard will not suffice for the men that die in
that place.”
From his palace at Liddington, in Rutland, Bishop Gynewell went in May to
consecrate a burial ground at Great Easton, which, being only a chapelry
to the parish of Bringhurst, had no burial ground of its own. The licence
was granted only during the duration of the pestilence. The bishop in
his preamble says: “There increases among you, as in other places of our
Diocese, a mortality of men such as has not been seen or heard aforetime
from the beginning of the world, so that the old grave-yard of your
church [Bringhurst] is not sufficient to receive the bodies of the dead.”
The enormous number of clergy who died in the Diocese of Lincoln is
attested by the fact that in July alone 250 institutions were made and
all but fifteen owing to deaths, a number which is considerably more than
the whole for the first eighteen months of Bishop Gynewell’s episcopate.
The average is over eight a day.
The most singular thing which the statistics point to, is that, on the
high ground round Lincoln and in the parts of Lindsey the mortality
among the clergy was far higher than in other parts of the diocese,
whilst in the low lands and fens round Peterborough, and in the parts of
Holland, the percentage of deaths was almost invariably low, twenty-seven
and twenty-four per cent. as compared with fifty-seven for Stamford
and sixty for Lincoln. The worst months in Lincolnshire were July and
August, yet even then, in spite of the severity of the plague and the
disorganisation which it occasioned in all the social and religious life
of the age, ordinary business, we are told, went on, and the bishop never
ceased his constant journeys and visitations to all parts of his enormous
diocese, reaching as it did from Henley on the Thames to the Humber,
and including besides Lincoln, the counties of Northampton, Rutland,
Leicester, Huntingdon, Bedford, Hertford, Buckingham, and Oxford.
That the nation was not more depressed by this state of things was
doubtless due to the feeling of national exaltation occasioned by the
battle of Cressy in 1346, and the capture of Calais in the next year and
the subsequent truce with France.
[Sidenote: ITS EFFECT ON BUILDING]
One of the results of this plague was the absolute cessation of work for
want of hands, which threw land out of cultivation and suspended all
building operations. At Gedney, as the architect who restored the church
in 1898, Mr. W. D. Caröe, pointed out to me, the history of the Black
Death is distinctly written on the tower, and you may plainly see where
the fourteenth-century builders ceased and how, above the present clock,
the work was recommenced by different hands, with altered design and
quite other materials.
[Illustration: _Gedney, from Fleet._]
CHAPTER XLI
CROYLAND
St. Guthlac—Abbot Joffrid—Boundary Crosses—The Triangular
Bridge—Figure with Sceptre and Ball—Lincolnshire swan-marks.
As you pass in the train along the line from Peterborough to Spalding,
and have got a mile or two north of Deeping St. James station, you can
see to the east in a cluster of trees a broad tower with a short, thick
spire standing out as the only feature in a wide, flat landscape. This,
for all who know it, has a mysterious attraction, for it is the sorrowful
ruin of a once magnificent building, a far-famed centre of light and
learning from whence came the brains, the piety, and the wealth which,
issuing over the fens of south-east Lincolnshire, not only supplied the
first lecturers to Cambridge, but planted those splendid churches for
which the “parts of Holland” are famous to this day. For this is the
great Abbey of Crowland, or Croyland, the home of the good St. Guthlac,
to whose memory this and many another church was dedicated, and to whose
shrine pilgrimage was made for several centuries. It stands alone on a
once desolate and still sparsely inhabited and seemingly endless fen,
and past it the Welland flows down to the long serpentine lake beloved
of skaters, which is spelt Cowbit, but called by all Lincolnshire folk
“Cubbit Wash.”
Croyland is an older name than Crowland, and the fine church and
monastery to which it owes its fame was set up in the eighth century,
by King Æthelbald, in grateful memory of St. Guthlac. Now St. Guthlac
is no legendary saint; he was a member of the Mercian royal house, who,
tired of soldiering, sought a retirement from the world; and certainly
few better places could be found than what was then a desolate, reedy
waste of waters at the point where Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and
Lincolnshire meet by the edge of Deeping Fen. No road led to it, and the
fenmen’s boats were the only means of passage.
[Illustration: _Cowbit Church._]
[Sidenote: ST. GUTHLAC]
Guthlac was, we are told, the son of Penwald, a Mercian nobleman,
and he was very likely born not far from Croyland. After nine years’
military service he entered the monastery of Hrypadon, or Repton, and
after two years’ study resolved to take up the life of an Anchorite.
So, in defiance of the evil spirits who were reputed to have their
abode there, and who were probably nothing but the shrieking sea-gulls
and the melancholy cries of the bittern and curlew, he landed on a
bit of dry ground two miles to the north-east of Croyland, now called
Anchor-Church-Hill, just east of the Spalding road. Here were some
British or Saxon burial mounds, on one of which he set up his hut and
chapel, while his sister Pega established herself a few miles to the
south-west, at Peakirk. He had landed on his island on St. Bartholomew’s
Day, August 24, 699, a young man of twenty-six, and here he was visited
by Bishop Hædda, who ordained him in 705. In 709 Æthelbald being outlawed
by his cousin King Coelred, took sanctuary with St. Guthlac, who
prophesied to him that he would one day be king, and without bloodshed.
St. Guthlac died in 713 or 714, but Æthelbald, who had vowed to build
a monastery for Guthlac if ever he could, did become king in 716, and
in gratitude built the first stone church and endowed a monastery for
Benedictines at Croyland. Naturally St. Guthlac was the patron saint,
and to him was joined St. Bartholomew, on whose day he had first come to
Croyland.
[Sidenote: FOUNDATIONS OF THE ABBEY]
[Sidenote: ABBOTS OF CROYLAND]
_St. Guthlac_ is represented in his statue as bearing the scourge of St.
Bartholomew, on whose feast day each year little knives were given away
emblematic of his martyrdom by flaying. The custom was not abolished
till 1476. Pictures of the scourge and knives are found in the stained
glass of old windows; for instance, at Bag-Enderby, near Somersby. In
866 the Danes burnt the monastery. Eighty years later the chancellor of
King Edred, whose name is variously given as Turketyl, or _Thurcytel_,
restored the church and monastery, and became the first abbot in 946,
about which time he founded the Croyland library. The first church was
built on a peat bog; oak piles five and a half feet long being driven
through the peat on to gravel, and above the piles recent digging has
shown alternate layers of loose stone and quarry-dust, above which the
stone foundations of the tower were found to go down fifteen inches below
the surface, and to rest on a mixture of rubble and stiff soil which was
brought in boats a distance of nine miles. Thurcytel’s church, which was
cruciform and of considerable size and held one large bell, has almost,
if not entirely, disappeared. The monastery was finished after his death
by his successor, _Egelric_, who added six other bells in 976. The Danes,
by cruel and repeated exactions, ruined the abbey which Thurcytel had
left so richly endowed, in the time of Egelric’s successor, _Godric_,
about 1010. This Egelric must not be confused with the Peterborough abbot
of the same name, who became Bishop of Durham and made the great causeway
from Deeping to Spalding in 1052, probably to give work to the peasantry
in the year of the dreadful famine, 1051.
On so treacherous a foundation the monks wisely built in wood rather
than stone when possible, but they had no preservatives for wood in
those days, hence, in 1061, Abbot _Ulfcytel_ had to rebuild the wooden
erections which were attached to the monastery. He was greatly helped
by the famous Waltheof, Earl of Northampton and Huntingdon, and when,
on the false accusation of his infamous wife Judith, sister of William
I., Waltheof was beheaded at Winchester, the monks got leave from the
Conqueror to have his body buried at Croyland. In 1076 _Ingulphus_
became abbot, and, owing to the carelessness of some plumbers—an old and
ever-recurring story—the whole of the buildings were again burnt down and
the library of 700 MSS. destroyed. It is to the Chronicle of Ingulphus
that we owe most of our knowledge of the early history of Croyland, and
even if the Chronicle were written three centuries after his death, it
still contains much sound and reliable information. Certainly after the
fire his building was patched up for a generation, and the Abbot Joffrid,
a man of extraordinary learning, zeal, and skill, built in 1109 what
may well be called the third abbey. Most of Thurcytel’s work which had
escaped the fire was taken down, and the foundations carried down to
the gravel bed below the peat. Of this building, which was carried out
by Arnold, a lay monk and a very skilful mason, the two western piers
and arch of the central tower remain, but an earthquake in 1113 damaged
the nave, and when in 1143 it was partly burnt down again, for the
third time, Abbot Edward restored it. King Henry had sent for Joffrid
(or Geoffrey) from Normandy. Among other remarkable deeds he sent four
learned monks to give a course of lectures on grammar, logic, rhetoric
and philosophy in a barn which they hired in Cambridge, or Grantbridge as
it was then called. Sermons were also preached there in French and Latin,
both by the monk Gilbert and by the abbot himself, of whom we are told
that, though his numerous hearers understood neither language, the force
of his subject and his comely person excited them to give amply towards
his building fund. The account of the laying of the first stones of his
new abbey is very remarkable. Five thousand persons were assembled and
feasted on the spot, and many distinguished people took part, each laying
one stone and placing on it a handsome offering of money, or titles to
property, or patronage, or land, or possession of yearly tithes of sheep,
gifts of corn or malt or stone, or the service for so many years of
quarriers at the stone pits, with carriage of stone in boats.
Croyland lost a good friend by the death of Queen Maud, wife of Henry
I., in 1118. She had been the especial patroness of the abbot Joffrid,
and had founded the first Austin priory in England in 1108. Twenty
years later King Stephen gave a fresh charter to the abbey, in the time
of Abbot _Edward_, who commenced to re-build the abbey in 1145. The
beautiful west front of the nave, some of which remains, was possibly
planned by _Henry de Longchamp_ in 1190, but was not finished till the
time of _Richard de Upton_, 1417-1427. His predecessor, _Thomas de
Overton_, had rebuilt the nave in 1405, and it was during his abbacy that
Croyland became a mitred abbey.
[Sidenote: THE MASTER MASON]
The architect and master mason under Richard de Upton was one William
de Wernington, or William de Croyland, whose monument is in the tower
now. The effigy wears a monk’s cowl and long robe, and holds a builder’s
square and compasses and has this inscription: “ICI : GIST : MESTRE :
WILLM : DE : WERMIGTON : LE : MASON : A : LALME : DE : KY : DEVY : P″SA :
GRACE : DOVNEZ : ABSOLVTION.”
The noble west window, which has lost all its mullions and tracery, must
have been one of the very finest in England.
In the days of Henry II. a dispute arose between the Abbot of Croyland
and the Prior of Spalding, the prior going so far as to claim Croyland as
a cell to Spalding. This quarrel continued through the reigns of Richard
I. and John, when the Abbot of Peterborough joined the fray with a fresh
dispute about the rights of common and pasture, and the payment of tolls
at Croyland bridge. In these controversies Croyland generally was worsted.
[Illustration: _Croyland Abbey._]
[Sidenote: THE RUINS]
_John de Lytlyngton_ succeeded Abbot Upton and ruled for forty years.
In his time Henry VI. and Edward IV. both visited Croyland, the latter
being on his way to Fotheringay. A three months’ frost, followed by two
years of famine, and later a great flood, followed by a pestilence and
a fire which destroyed nearly all the village, but spared the abbey, are
among the records of his abbacy. He vaulted the roofs of the aisles,
glazed the windows, had the bells recast, and gave the choir an organ;
also he built the great west tower for the bells and the porch with its
parvise. He died in 1469. The short steeple was added to the tower later.
The last abbot was _John Welles_, _alias_ Bridges. Another campanile had
been built beyond the east end of the choir by Abbot _Ralph Marshe_,
1260, which gave the abbey two separate peals, as once at Lincoln. After
these many vicissitudes the greater part of the beautiful building was
destroyed at the dissolution in 1539, the nave, of nine bays, being
preserved for a parish church. The north aisle had been used for the
purpose before, and is so still. Besides this there is left now the
west front, consisting of a tower with short spire and a very fine
Perpendicular window, and all but the gable and window tracery of the
beautiful ornate west end of the nave. This had originally no less than
twenty-nine statues under canopies, in seven tiers, covering the wall on
either side of the doorway and window, and also above the window. The
handsome doorway is entered by a deeply moulded single arch enclosing
two smaller ones, and in the tympanum is a large quatrefoil illustrating
the life of St. Guthlac. The tower has a western porch under a six-light
window. Much has been done by the rector, the Rev. T. H. Le Bœuf, to
preserve this magnificent ruin, and since 1860, under Sir G. Scott and
Mr. J. L. Pearson, sound restoration has been carried out. Besides the
west front and the western tower and spire, one of the most remarkable
parts of the abbey still existing is the stone screen which, contrary to
usual custom, filled the west arch of the central tower, and is pierced
by two doors, one on either side of the altar. Of this the side looking
west is plain and probably had wooden panelling, but the eastern side is
handsomely carved and panelled in stone. The north aisle has Lytlyngton’s
groined roof, five large Perpendicular windows, and a rood-screen. Of St.
Guthlac’s Shrine, which was destroyed in 870 and newly erected in 1136,
and moved in 1196, nothing remains.
Of the old glass fragments have lately been found buried in the
churchyard.
An epitaph on the north wall, dated 1715, has the following apt lines:—
Man’s life is like unto a winter’s day,
Some brake their fast and so departs away;
Others stay dinner then departs full fed,
The longest age but supps and goes to bed.
[Illustration: _Croyland Bridge._]
[Sidenote: THE BOUNDARY CROSSES]
[Sidenote: TRIANGULAR BRIDGE]
The boundaries of Croyland, which in Æthelbald’s Charter were rivers,
were staked out more definitely when disputes between this abbey and
Peterborough arose, by stone crosses; and though these are in part
destroyed or broken down, six crosses, or parts of them, are still
standing in fields or hedges, which are all mentioned by name, in later
charters. One of them, “Turketyls or Thurcytels Cross,” is placed at
the junction of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire. In this, as in all the
others, the cross is missing. The shaft is of obelisk form, on a shapely
base, and has been restored. Parts of other crosses are “Guthlac’s
Stone,” near the Assendyke, four miles from Croyland; “Finestone,” or
“Fynset,” “Greynes,” “Folwardstaking,” and “Kenulph’s Stone.” One of the
boundaries mentioned as early as the charter of Edred, A.D. 943, is “The
Triangular Bridge.” The present is an extremely curious thirteenth- or
fourteenth-century structure, doubtless replacing an earlier one. Like
the triangular lodge near Rothwell, in Northamptonshire, it was probably
intended to be emblematic of the Trinity. It has three pointed arches,
with a way for a stream to flow under each, and three roadways over the
arches, but the arches are too low, and the roadways too narrow for
vehicles and too steep for any convenient traffic. Hence it may have
been the basement of a large cross approached by three flights of steps,
where now we have the steep inclines. The parapet walls are perhaps a
later addition. Still it served as a bridge too. Roads from Stamford,
Peterborough and Spalding meet at the bridge, and tributaries of the
Welland and Nene, now covered in, flow under it. The height of the arches
is nine feet, and their span sixteen and a half. It would not require
that span now, but the streams were bigger when this bridge was built,
for we are told that Henry VI. came to Croyland by water in 1460, and
that Edward IV. embarked at the wharf just below the bridge, in 1468, for
Fotheringay Castle, which is on the banks of the Nene, a distance of some
two and twenty miles by water.
[Sidenote: FIGURE ON THE BRIDGE]
There is a stone bench along the left side of the bridge parapet, as you
approach from Peterborough, and on this you find an ancient stone figure
seated: it is often called Æthelbald holding a globe in his hand or a
loaf of bread; but it is far more likely that it is the figure of our
Lord, from the centre of the gable above the great west window of the
nave, holding in his hands what Shakespeare in the lines below calls “the
sceptre and the ball.” The shallowness of the statue and its height—six
feet when seated but even the knees only projecting ten inches—make it
certain that it was only meant to be seen from the front and at a good
height. Moreover, the workmanship of the statue corresponds with that of
the other statues on the west front of the abbey.
The rector states as a fact that the west gable of this west front was
taken down in 1720, and the statue placed on the bridge, where it must
be admitted that it looks very much out of place and uncomfortable. The
bridge is said to be in three counties—Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and
Northamptonshire—so, though the abbey is entirely in Lincolnshire, we can
in a few steps leave the county of which Croyland is the last place we
have to describe.
The “ball,” or orb, is carried by the monarch at the coronation service
in one hand and the sceptre in the other as symbols of imperial power.
There is no finer passage in English literature than the soliloquy of
King Henry V. on the eve of the battle of Agincourt, the last part of
which runs thus:—
’Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running ’fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body fill’d and vacant mind
Gets him to rest, cramm’d with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phœbus, and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
And follows so the ever-running year,
With profitable labour, to his grave:
And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.
The slave, a member of the country’s peace,
Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
_Henry V._, Act IV. Scene 1.
[Sidenote: LINCOLNSHIRE SWAN-MARKS]
In the Museum of the Record-office is a long brown-paper roll with a
double column of swans’ heads, the bills painted red and showing in black
the marks of the different owners in two counties, of which Lincolnshire
is one. These marks were in use in the years 1497-1504, a few being added
for the year 1515.
One of the plainest to read is the name of Carolus Stanefeld de
Bolyngbroke; among others are the marks of the parsons of Leek and
Leverton, the vicars of Waynflete, Frekeney and Sybsa, the Bayly of
Croft, the abbot of Revysbye and Philip abbas de Croyland.
CHAPTER XLII
LINCOLNSHIRE FOX-HOUNDS
BY E. P. RAWNSLEY, ESQ., M.F.H.
Brocklesby—Burton—Blankney and Southwold—Note by Author.
[Sidenote: THE BROCKLESBY]
Except the fen country and a small corner in the extreme north-west,
the whole of Lincolnshire is hunted by fox-hounds. Four packs, namely,
the _Brocklesby_ (Lord Yarborough’s), the _Burton_, _Blankney_ and
_Southwold_ hunt entirely in Lincolnshire; while the Belvoir and
Cottesmore hunt partly in Lincolnshire. Premier position must be given
to the _Brocklesby_. It is one of the very few packs maintained entirely
by the master, and for over 150 years the Earls of Yarborough have done
this for the benefit of the residents and farmers in the large tract of
country they hunt over. The country hunted extends from the Humber on
the north to a line drawn from Louth to Market-Rasen on the south, and
from the sea on the east to the river Ancholme on the west. The country
is mostly wold, and consequently plough, but very open, the only big
woods being those that surround Brocklesby itself. The hounds having
been so long in one family are of the best, and there are few kennels
in England but have a large infusion of the Brocklesby blood, famous
for nose, tongue, and stoutness. For upwards of 100 years the family
of Smith carried the horn and did much to establish the notoriety of
the pack, while in more recent years Will Dale, a great huntsman and
houndman, and Jem Smith, no relation of the former huntsman, have kept it
up. Possibly sport in the country was never better than when W. Dale and
Mr. Maunsell-Richardson each hunted one pack; when one was hunting the
other was always out to render assistance, and as both knew the country
perfectly, the result was more good runs and more foxes caught at the
end of them than was ever done in the country before or since.
With the exception of Brocklesby there are not many residences in the
country, though the Upplebys of Barrow, the Alingtons of Swinhope, the
Nelthorpes of Scawby in old days joined the chase; and it is related of
the first, grandfather of the present owner of Barrow, that after a good
run he was found riding on his pillow shouting at the top of his voice,
“Mind you keep your eye on Blossom,” a noted bitch at that time in the
pack. At the present time a great supporter is Mr. Haigh of Grainsby, who
cannot have too many foxes, though he does all his hunting on foot. Mr.
Pretyman’s covers at Riby are equally well stocked; while Bradley Wood,
the property of Mr. Sutton-Nelthorpe, is the key of all that side of the
country. Probably hunting will continue longer over cultivated country,
such as the Brocklesby, than in most parts of England. There are few
railways, the country is not adapted to small holdings, the farmers are
all sportsmen, and occupy large farms, delighted to have a litter of cubs
reared on their land and to see a couple of fox-hound puppies playing in
their yards, while such a thing as a complaint about hounds and field
crossing their land is unknown.
[Sidenote: THE BURTON AND THE BLANKNEY]
_The Burton_ comes next in point of antiquity, and takes its name from
Burton, Lord Monson’s place near Lincoln, where Lord Monson first started
the hounds in 1774. Many notable sportsmen have held the mastership.
The old Burton country was of very wide extent, stretching from Brigg
on the north to Sleaford on the south, and from Stourton by Horncastle
on the east to the Trent on the west. It is now divided into _Burton_
and _Blankney_, the present southern boundary of the Burton being the
river Witham and the Fossdyke. The most notable Masters of the country
when undivided were Mr. Assheton-Smith, Sir Richard Sutton, Lord Henry
Bentinck, who bred a pack of hounds which for work were unequalled, and
their blood is still treasured in many kennels, and Mr. Henry Chaplin,
to whom Lord Henry gave his hounds, and when the old Burton country was
divided Mr. Chaplin took this pack with him. The Burton country as it
is now was established in 1871; Mr. F. Foljambe being the first master,
a great houndman with a thorough knowledge of the science of hunting,
he very soon established a pack, and with Will Dale as huntsman, sport
of the highest order was the result. Mr. Foljambe was succeeded by Mr.
Wemyss, Mr. Shrubb and again Mr. Wemyss for short periods; then Mr. T.
Wilson came, and for twenty-four years presided over the country. He bred
an excellent pack of hounds, and sport, especially during the latter part
of his reign, was very good; the country, when he gave up, being better
off for foxes than it had ever been; this was in 1912. Sir M. Cholmeley
succeeded Mr. Wilson. The Burton country is a fair mixture of grass and
plough, with some very fine woodlands on the east side of it, known as
the Wragby woods. It is far the best scenting country in Lincolnshire,
and being little cut up with railways or rivers, is the best hunting
country in all the shire. There are not many residences in the country,
but excellent support in the way of foxes is given by the landowners.
The Bacons of Thonock have ever assisted; then the Amcotts family of
Hackthorn and Kettlethorpe, the Wrights of Brattleby, the owners of most
of the Wragby woods, and of Toft, Newton and Nevile’s gorses are perhaps
most conspicuous; but the whole country is well provided.
_The Blankney_ was first formed as a separate country in 1871, when Mr.
Henry Chaplin took command, and as he brought the pack given to him by
Lord H. Bentinck, and H. Dawkins as huntsman, very good sport was shown.
On Mr. Chaplin giving up he was succeeded by Major Tempest. Then followed
Mr. Cockburn, and for a short time Lord Londesborough joined him; Mr.
Lubbock followed, then an old name in Lord Charles Bentinck; Mr. R. Swan
came next and is still in command. Changes have been rather frequent, as
in many countries.
The Blankney country is now a good deal intersected by railways, and the
vale towards the Trent has two rivers, the Brant and Witham, which cut
it up further. The Wellingore vale is looked on as the best part, having
a large proportion of grass, “the heath,” in the centre, is all light
plough and very bad scenting country, while on the east there is a strip
of country bordering on the fen of good hunting character, and a portion
of the Belvoir country towards Sleaford, which is lent to the Blankney,
is also very fair.
[Sidenote: THE SOUTHWOLD]
_The Southwold_ was the last part of Lincolnshire to be established as
a separate country (later, that is, than either the Brocklesby or the
Burton); it was not till 1823 that it was hunted regularly. It has a
wide range, extending from the sea on the east to the river Witham on
the west, and from Market-Rasen and Louth on the north to the fens on
the south. It is probably more varied than any part of Lincolnshire.
The marsh with its wide ditches comes on the east; the wolds, mostly
light plough, in the centre; while on the west they dip into a mixed
country of grass and plough. The fen country, all ditches and plough,
is in the south; hounds, however, only occasionally get into it, as
there are hardly any covers. Very short masterships have been the rule,
but a committee ruled for nearly twenty years (1857-76), at the end of
which time foxes were very scarce in the country. Mr. Crowder then came
for four years, and in 1880 Mr. E. P. Rawnsley took the country, and is
still master. With latterly the aid of Mr. J. S. V. Fox, and now of Sir
W. Cooke, so great an alteration has taken place that whereas formerly
four days a week sufficed to hunt the country, now it is always hunted
six days, Sir W. Cooke taking the north side and Mr. Rawnsley the south.
Sir W. Cooke has a pack of his own, while Mr. Rawnsley hunts the pack
which belongs to the country and has been bred from all the best working
strains of blood obtainable. Though there are some very big woods on the
edges of the country, the centre is all open; there are few railways
and no rivers, the scenting conditions are fair, and it is probably the
second best hunting country in Lincolnshire.
Conspicuous supporters of the hunt are the Heneages of Hainton, and the
large extent of covers and country owned by them has always been open to
hounds. The Foxes of Girsby and Mr. Walter Rawnsley of Well Vale have
been the same. The late Captain J. W. Fox was for many years chairman
of the committee when it ruled the affairs of the hunt, and his son was
for seven years joint master with Mr. Rawnsley, during which time the
sport was of higher average merit than it had ever attained. Many more
residents now come out than was formerly the case, and everywhere the
stock of foxes is far better than thirty years ago.
Somersby, the birthplace of Tennyson, is situated in the centre of
the hunt, but we never heard of the Poet Laureate joining the chase
in his young days. Then Spilsby, the birthplace of Sir John Franklin,
and Tattershall Castle, noted as one of the finest brick buildings in
England, are both of them in the Southwold country.
NOTE BY AUTHOR
[Sidenote: MASTERS OF THE SOUTHWOLD]
It appears that Mr. Charles Pelham, who was the last of the Brocklesby
Pelhams, was the first M.F.H. of _The Brocklesby_, at first as joint and
then as sole master, till his death in 1763. Also that Lord Yarborough
hunted what is now the Southwold country for a month at a time in spring
and autumn, having kennels at Ketsby until 1795, by which time his gorse
covers round Brocklesby had grown up and he was able to dispense with the
country south of Louth. Then till 1820 a pack of trencher-fed harriers
hunted fox and hare indiscriminately. These from 1820 to 1822 were called
“_The Gillingham_” and were hunted by Mr. Brackenbury from Scremby, after
which the kennels were transferred to Hundleby and the name changed to
“_The Southwold_.” They now kept to fox entirely, and the Hon. George
Pelham, then living at Legbourne, was the first master.
The following is a complete list of the masters of the Southwold up to
the present date, 1914:—
Hon. G. Pelham 1823-6
Lord Kintore 1826
Mr. Joseph Brackenbury 1827-9
Sir Richard Sutton, combining it with the Burton 1829-30
Captain Freeman, who brought hounds from “The Vine” 1830-32
Mr. Parker 1832-35
Mr. Heanley, who brought his own hounds 1835-41
Mr. Musters, who brought his own hounds 1841-43
Mr. Hellier 1843-52
Mr. Henley Greaves 1852-53
Mr. Cooke 1853-57
A Committee, presided over part of the time by Captain
Dallas York 1857-76
Mr. F. Crowder 1876-80
Mr. E. Preston Rawnsley 1880
From this it will be seen that until the days of the committee no one
hunted the pack for even five years, with the exception of Mr. Heanley
and Mr. Hellier, until the present master, Mr. E. P. Rawnsley.
[Sidenote: BELCHFORD KENNELS]
With the reign of the committee central kennels were established for the
hunt at Belchford in 1857. Previously each master fixed his kennels as it
suited him, either at Louth, Horncastle, Hundleby or Harrington.
Now, April 1914, Sir William Cooke having given up, Lord Charles Bentinck
has succeeded him. He brings his own pack with him, and the country no
longer is divided into north and south, but hunted as a whole again.
APPENDIX I
The altar tombstone from which John preached is near the chancel door.
Epworth people will tell you that the mark of his heels is still visible
on the stone. Really they are segments of two ironstone nodules in the
sandstone slab. The inscription is a remarkable one:
“Here lieth all that was mortal of Samuel Wesley, A.M., who was
Rector of Epworth for 39 years and departed this life 15th of
April, 1735, aged 72.
As he lived so he died, in the true Catholic faith of the Holy
Trinity in Unity, and that Jesus Christ is God incarnate and
the only Saviour of mankind.—Acts 4, 12.
Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: yea, saith the
Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works
do follow them.—Rev. 14, 13.”
APPENDIX II
Dr. Wm. Stukeley, 1687-1765, was a famous Lincolnshire antiquarian. He
practised medicine, first at Boston and then at Grantham from 1710 to
1726. He was made an F.R.S. in 1717, and in that or the following year
he helped to establish the Society of Antiquaries in London, and was for
the first nine years secretary to that Society. In 1719 he became an M.D.
of Cambridge and was made a member of the “Spalding Gentlemen’s Society”
in 1722. In 1727 he took Holy Orders and from 1730 to 1748 officiated
as Vicar of All Saints at Stamford, where he founded the short-lived
“Brazenose Society.” He was a great friend of Sir Isaac Newton and kept
up his interest in scientific matters to the end, inasmuch as he put off
his service on one occasion in order that his congregation might watch
an eclipse of the sun. Whilst still Vicar of Stamford he was made Rector
of Somerby near Grantham, 1739-1747, but he retired from both livings
in 1748, and spent the rest of his life in London, where at the age of
75 he preached his first sermon in spectacles, taking as his text “Now
we see through a glass darkly.” He wrote five volumes of Notes of the
proceedings of the “Royal Society,” which are now in the library of
the “Spalding Gentlemen’s Society,” and he dedicated his “_Itinerarium
curiosum_” to Maurice Johnson, the founder of that society. He took, for
many years, antiquarian tours all over England; writing at some length
on Stonehenge and the Roman Wall, and often illustrating his articles,
for he was a skilful draughtsman. He died in London in his seventy-ninth
year.
APPENDIX III
A LOWLAND PEASANT POET
I had not long ago a couple of poems put into my hands by one who,
knowing the author, told me something of his life and circumstances.
Being much struck by the poems I set to work to make inquiries in the
hope of getting something further. But he seems to have written very
little. His nephew copied out and sent _The Auld Blasted Tree_ and added
“I made inquiry of my aunt if she had any more; she says those you have
seen along with this one I now enclose were all he wrote, at least the
best of them.” The relatives allowed me to see the account of his funeral
with an appreciation of the man as it appeared in the local newspaper. It
ran as follows, and was published in _The Peebleshire Advertiser_, July
7, 1906.
THE LATE MR. FARQUHARSON, LONELYBIELD.
Our obituary of Saturday last contained the name of one whose
memory will be for long in this district. We refer to the
late Alexander Forrester Farquharson. His “mid name” takes us
back to the first baptismal scene of by-gone long occupants
of Linton Manse, viz., the Rev. Alexander Forrester, whose
father, too, was minister before. Born in Carlops sixty-nine
years ago, there are but few now amongst us who were children
then. When six years old, his father, of the same vocation as
himself, removed to the picturesque hamlet at the foot of the
“Howe,” and here his lifetime was spent. Married to one of a
family of long pastoral connection with our district, who still
survives to cherish the happy memories of their long sojourn
together, in this, their quiet and peaceful home, they reared
their family. By his departure, there has gone from amongst us
one of the finest types of Scotchmen that our country districts
develop, both, it may be said, in lineaments of feature and
character. But, added to the possession generally of the
best features of our race, there was in him truly a special
element, which seemed to be gathered from the classic scenes in
which he was reared. It is not too much to say that his manner
and language (quaint to a degree) were a living, embodied
personification of the genius of the place, as pictured in
the pages of the immortal Pastoral of Ramsay. Gifted with
musical powers and some inspiration from the Muses—which,
however, not often saw the light—these were fostered in his
wanderings amid the lovely scenes, o’er moor and fell, whither
his daily vocations led. And with such characteristics, added
to his stores of local lore and story, and knowledge of bird,
beast, and fossil, it may be gathered how entertaining were
the “cracks” in the homesteads he visited, and how much these
would be looked forward to and welcomed. And not less so were
those in the cosy home in the “Bield,”[39] to which many a
one of kindred spirit specially pilgrimaged. Evidence of this
was ample from the large gathering from all parts to his
resting-place with his “forbears” in Linton’s “auld kirkyaird.”
Thus far the newspaper of 1906; and a correspondent who knew the family
writes under date March 18, 1912, “Alexander Forrester Farquharson (the
subject of the foregoing notice) was born on Sept. 26, 1836, and was
named Forrester after the minister of West Linton Parish. He was the
son of Andrew Farquharson, mole catcher and small Farmer, and Isabella
Cairns, both natives of the Carlops district who lived there at a house
called Lonely Bield. Alexander lived in the same house, and followed his
father’s occupation. His son died lately and the mother has now left the
House.” From this somewhat meagre account we may gather that the whole of
his life was spent in Nature’s lonely places
“up on the mountains, in among the hills”
and in this respect he resembles Allan Ramsay who drank in the poetry
of Nature when a boy at Leadhills high up on the Crawford moor in
Lanarkshire, where hills, glens, and burns, with birds and flowers and
ever-changing skies were his to watch and study and take delight in, at
the impressionable season of boyhood; whereby Nature herself laid the
foundations of his poetic fancies. And this opportunity to walk with
Nature came also to Farquharson, in even a greater measure than it did
to Ramsay; for he, like Burns, lived and laboured in the country after
he had grown to manhood. But Farquharson had not so good an education
as the other two, nor did it fall to him, as it did to them, to have
at the outset of his career books put into his hands which directed
his attention more especially to poetry. Thus, what the selection of
English Songs, which he called his _Vade mecum_, did for Burns, Watson’s
collection of Scottish poems did for Ramsay, and among these, notably,
one by Robt. Semphill called “The life and death of the Piper of
Kilbarchan” and another by Hamilton of Gilbertfield, “The last dying
words of Bonnie Heck.” Later, Hamilton, who by this poem first inspired
Ramsay with the desire to write in verse, heartily recognised his merit
and himself wrote of him
“O fam’d and celebrated Allan!
Renowned Ramsay! canty callan!
There’s nouther Hieland man nor Lawlan
In poetrie,
But may as soon ding doun Tantallan
As match wi’ thee.”
This source of inspiration from books of poetry never, as far as we
know, fell to the lot of Farquharson, whose education was altogether on
a lower plane. He was born and died just a Scottish peasant; but his
communing with Nature gave him the power of observation, whilst the love
of reading, which has for generations been the heritage of the Scots even
in the humblest walks of life, taught him how to express the thoughts
which came to him, and he had undoubtedly a gift for verse. His poems
on his old “Hardie” fiddle, and on the Sundew are so good that they
might have been written by Burns. But, like Burns and Ramsay too, he is
best when he sticks to the vernacular. When he begins to write English
he is less convincing. It is well to remember that Ramsay could owe
nothing to Burns, as he died in 1758, the year before Burns was born; but
Farquharson, whose widow is still alive, died only the other day, and was
acquainted with the works certainly of one and probably of both of them.
This does not, however, make him less deserving of notice; for little
as he wrote, the two poems just mentioned show, I cannot help thinking,
a high degree of poetic merit, being not merely surprising as the work
of a peasant, but—extremely good _per se_, and serve to show how the
true poetic gift may lurk unsuspected in a country village. In his poems
_Fair Habbies Howe_ (or hollow) and _Monk’s Burn_ he refers to the fact
that the descriptions of Nature in Allan Ramsay’s pastoral _The Gentle
Shepherd_ are taken from the Carlops district, about twelve miles from
Edinburgh, in which he himself lived. The second scene of the first act
of _The Gentle Shepherd_ begins thus:
_Jenny._ Come, Meg, let’s fa’ to wark upon this green,
This shining day will bleach our linen clean;
The waters clear, the lift’s unclouded blue
Will make them like a lily wet wi’ dew.
_Peggy._ Gae farer up the burn to Habbie’s Howe,
Where a’ the sweets o’ spring an’ simmer grow:
Between two birks, out o’er a little lin,[40]
The water fa’s an’ maks a singan din:
A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass,
Kisses wi’ easy whirls the bord’ring grass.
We’ll end our washing while the morning’s cool;
An’ when the day grows het, we’ll to the pool,
There wash oursells—’tis healthfu’ now as May,
An sweetly cauler on sae warm a day.
_The Gentle Shepherd_, the poem on which Allan Ramsay’s reputation is
mainly founded, is a pastoral of great beauty and charm. The original MS.
was presented by the author to the Countess of Eglinton. It is a folio
Vol. of 105 pages, clearly written by his own hand, and has a few comic
pen-and-ink sketches added at the beginning or end of the acts, and at
the close is this note:
“Finished the 29ᵗʰ of April, 1725, just as eleven o’clock
strikes, by Allan Ramsay.
All glory be to God. Amen.”
We will now turn to the seven bits of verse we have been able to collect
by the Shepherd of Lonely Bield.
FAIR HABBIE’S HOWE.
(May be sung to the tune “Craigielea,” with first verse as the Chorus).
O Habbie’s Howe! Fair Habbie’s Howe,
Where wimplin’ burnies[41] sweetly row;
Where aft I’ve tasted nature’s joys,
O Habbie’s Howe! Fair Habbie’s Howe.
Roond thee my youthfu’ days I spent,
Amang thy cliffs aft ha’e I speil’d.
Thou theme o’ Ramsay’s pastoral lay;
O hoary, moss-clad Craigy Bield.
The auld oak bower, wi’ ivy twined,
Adorns thy weather-furrowed brow,
A trysting-place where lovers met
When tenting flocks in Habbie’s Howe.
When April’s suns glint through the trees,
The mavis lilts his mellow lay;
And, deep amid thy sombre shades
The owlet screams at close of day.
Amang thy cosy, mossy chinks,
The fern now shows its gentle form
And through thy caves the ousel darts,
To build his nest in early morn.
The scented birk, and glossy beech,
Hang o’er thee for thy simmer veil;
And gowany haughs[42] aroond thee bloom,
Where shepherds tauld love’s tender tale.
Sweet Esk, glide o’er thy rocky path,
And echo through thy classic glen;
Where can we match, in flowery May,
Fair Habbie’s Howe, and Hawthornden?
ALEX. FARQUHARSON.
Lanely Bield. Carlops, 1885.
MONK’S BURN.
Doon in Monk’s bonnie verdant glen
A sparklin’ birnie murmurs through
Dark waving pines, ’mang hazel shaws
Decked with the hawk-weed’s golden hue.
It ripples aft ’neath ferny banks
With fragrant birks and briers spread
Till o’er the linn its echo sings,
Deep cradled in a rocky bed.
Here Auld Dame Nature gaily haps
Frae ilka side her crystal streams;
And soaring high o’er leafy bowers,
On hovering wing, the falcon screams.
Aboon Glaud’s yaird the burnie meets
Esk dancing to the morning sun,
An’ glintin’ bonnie through Monk’s Haugh,[43]
Where Pate and Peggie[44] aft hae run;
Noo joined wi’ silv’ry limpid Esk,
Gangs merrily singing tae the sea.
Ilk bird and flower the chorus join
Till wilds and braes resound wi’ glee.
Sing on, ye warblers ’mang the trees,
Bloom fair, ye blue-bells on the plains,
And deck the banks of infant rills
That wander through my native glens.
ALEX. FARQUHARSON.
Lanely Bield, _16th January 1886_.
THE AULD BLASTED TREE.
The blasted ash tree that langsyne grew its lane,
Whilk Ramsay has pictured in his pawky strain,
Wi’ Bauldy aboon’t on the tap o’ the knowe,
Glowrin’ doon at auld Mause[45] in aneath, spinnin’ tow,
Is noo whommilt doon ower the Back Buckie Brae,
Baith helpless, an’ lifeless, an’ sair crummilt away,
’Mang the bonnie blue speedwell that coortit its beild,
Tho’ its scant tap e’en growin’ but little could yield.
For years—nigh twa hunner—it markit the spot
Whaur Mause the witch dwalt in her lanely wee cot;
But dour Eichty-sax sent a drivin’ snaw blast,
An’ the storied link brak ’tween the present an’ past.
Tho’ in summer ’twas bare, an’ had lang tint its charms,
Scarce a leaf e’er was seen on’t to hap its grey arms,
Yet it clang to the brae,[46] rockit sair, sair, I ween,
Wi’ the loud howlin’ winds that blaw doon the Linn Dean.
An’ mony a squall warsled at the deid ’oor o’ nicht.
When Mause took in her noddle to raise ane for a flicht,
On her auld besom shank, lowin’ at the ae en’,[47]
That she played sic pranks on when she dwalt i’ the glen;
Some alloo she could loup on’t clean ower Carlops toon,
Gawn as heich i’ the air as Dale wi’ his balloon,
Wi’ nocht on but her sark an’ a white squiny much—
A dress greatly in vogue in thae days wi’ a wutch.
But thae fashions, like wutches, hae gane oot o’ date
E’en the black bandit squiny has shared the same fate,
The lint-wheels they span on are just keepit for fun,
Or tae let lasses see the wey hand-cloots were spun.
Feint a trace o’ the carlin’ there’s noo left ava—
Her wee hoosie’s doon, an’ the auld tree an’ a’,
That waggit ayont it for mony a year
Ere anither bit timmer took thocht to grow here.
A. FARQUHARSON.
Lanely Bield (1887?).
EPISTAL TO ALAN REID. EDINBURGH. 1888.
Gin August wiles oot wi’ her smile
Auld Reekie’s sons when freed frae toil,
There ane’ comes here tae bide awhile,
A clever chield;
Ilk place he’s paintit in grand style,
E’en oor wee bield.
He’s craigs an’ castles, cots an’ ha’s,
Lint mills, auld brigs, an’ water fa’s,
Auld stumps o’ trees an’ cowpit wa’s[48]
A treat to see’t.
O’er vera hills he’s gi’en a ca’,
Frae Rullion Green yont ta’ Mentma’;
An’ brawer pictures I ne’er saw,
They’re fair perfection:
They’d even mense[49] a baron’s ha’
That rare collection.
Thanks tae ye, noo, for paintin’ bonnie
The “Lanely Bield,” whaur dwells a cronie,
Wha likes a nicht wi’ ane sae funny
An’ fu’ o’ glee:
I trow Auld Reekie has nae mony
Tae match wi’ thee.
It mak’s me dowie the news I hear
That ye’re no comin’ oot this year;
They tell me that ye’re gaun tae steer
For Lunnon toon:
Losh, man, I’ll miss ye sair I fear
No’ comin’ doon.
But gif I’m spared wi’ health ava,
A holiday, or may be twa,
I’ll tak’ an’ come tae see ye a’,
An’ bide a’ nicht;
An’ faith we’ll sing tae the cock’s craw
At “grey daylicht.”
ALEX. FARQUHARSON.
Lanely Bield.
ADDRESS TO THE SUNDEW.
(One of the insect-eating plants).
Wha e’er wad think sae fair a flow’r
Wad be sae pawky[50] as to lure
A midge intae its genty bow’r
O’ bristles bricht,
An’ syne at leisure clean devour
It oot o’ sicht?
Your crimson colour’s sae enticin’
In simmer gin the sun be risin’
I daursay they’ll need nae advisin’
Tae step in ow’r
Tae view an’ find the plan surprisin’
O sic a bow’r.
For oot again they canna wun;
Tho’ wee an’ gleg,[51] they’re fairly done,
I wad they’ll get an awfu’ stun
Gin its deteckit
They’ve death tae face an’ no’ the fun
That they expeckit.
It serves them richt, the wicked crew,
De’il gin the lave were in your mou’!
For oh! they’re ill tae thole the noo
When bitin’ keen,
Dingin’ their beaks intae ane’s broo
Up tae the een!
Ilk foggy[52] sheugh aroond ye scan,
An’ nip as mony as ye can,
’Twill help a wee tae gar ye stan’
The winter weather,
For fient a midge ye’ll pree[53] gin than
Amang the heather.
I kenna hoo ye’ll fend ava
Gin a’ the muirs are clad wi’ snaw.
I doot ye’ll hae tae snooze awa’
Sax months at least,
An’ aiblins then your chance is sma’
Tae get a feast.
But gin I happen ere tae stray
Neist August roond by Jenny’s Brae,
I hope tae see ye fresh an’ gay,
Wee muirlan’ plantie!
Wi’ routh[54] o’ midges then tae slay
Tae keep ye cantie.
A. F.
Lanely Bield.
ADDRESS TAE A MATTHEW HARDIE FIDDLE.
Ae blink at you an’ ane could tell
That ye’re nae foreign factory shell,
But a Scotch mak’, an’, like mysel’,
Made gey and sturdy;
An’ as for tone, there’ll few excel
Ma guid auld Hardie.
Ye’ve been ma hobbie late and sune,
Noo sax an’ twenty years come June,
An’ noo and than I tak’ a tune;
Yet gin I weary.
Altho’ it’s but a kin’ o’ croon,
It keeps ane cheery.
Gin ower ye’re thairms[55] I jink the bow,
Bright notions bizz intae ma pow,
For worl’y cares ye them can cow,
An’ a’ gangs richt,
When ower I stump[56] ‘Nathaniel Gow,’
Or ‘Grey daylicht.’
Wi’ reek an’ rozet noo ye’re black
An scarted sair aboot the back,
But what tho’ tawdry ye’re ne’er slack
Tae lilt a spring[57]
Wi’ ony far fecht fancy crack
They e’er will bring.
In silk-lined cases ower the seas
Scrawled oot an’ in wi’ foreign lees
Aboot their S’s, scrolls, an’ C’s,[58]
An’ eke a name
Wad tak’ a child that’s ta’en degrees
Tae read that same.
An’ nocht but bum-clocks[59] at the best
Wi’ shinin’ coats o’ amber drest;
Och! what o’ that? their tones but test!
Sic dandie dummies!
Lyin’ in braw boxes at their rest,
Row’d up like mummies.
For a’ the sprees ye hae been at,
Haech! nae sic guide-ship e’er ye gat,
But took your chance tho’ it was wat,
Ay, e’en wat snaw
I’ve seen or noo a denty brat[60]
Oot ower ye a’.
I never kent ye tak’ the gee,[61]
But aye sang sweet at ilka spree,
Tho’ I played wild at times a wee
Gin I gat fou.
The fau’t lay wi’ the wee drap bree,[62]
An’ no’ wi’ you.
Sae noo I trust gin I’m nae mair,
Some fiddlin’ frien’ will tak’ guid care,
And see that ye’re nae dauded[63] sair,
When frail an’ auld;
For Hardies noo are unco rare
Sae that I’m tauld.
A. F.
Lanely Bield.
SONNET IN MEMORY OF ELEANORA BROWN.
Gone! noble spirit, from our mortal view,
The still form shaded by the sombre yew
In Mary’s Bower, a spot remote from din,
Save when in flood the shrill gush of the linn
From wailing waves is wafted o’er her tomb,
Retiring soft round her parental home,
Where trained with pious care to womanhood,
Henceforth her motto, Ever doing good;
Gentle with youth, and comforting the old,
In faith and hope to gain the promised Fold.
Alas! the link has snapped in Friendship’s chain.
Kind Ora’s call we’ll sigh for now in vain,
Amid her native flora laid to rest,
The modest speedwell a remembrance on her breast.
A. FARQUHARSON.
Lanely Bield.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Or Medeshamstede = Meadow homestead.
[2] He claimed the Earldom of Oxford and the Great Chamberlainship of
England in right of his mother, Lady Mary Vere, sister and heiress of
Edward, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, but succeeded in establishing his
claim to the Chamberlainship only.
[3] Defeated and slain at Flodden Field, 1513.
[4] The others are Riby, Sutton St. Edmund, and one in Lincoln, now
destroyed.
[5] The Hermitage which dated from 1323 was absorbed into the Hospital.
[6] Originally “Glanford briggs.”
[7] At Mellor in Derbyshire is a pulpit of very early date, hollowed out
of the trunk of a tree and carved in panels.
[8] Nearly five hundred years later his tombstone was discovered in the
pavement of St. Mark’s and brought to England.
[9] The coal output in the United Kingdom in 1913 was 287,411,869 tons,
an increase of 27 millions on the previous year.
[10] As at Grantham.
[11] Where there were no osiers they took to the reeds. A Ramsay man, now
in his 95th year (1914), remembers the reed-harvest at Whittlesey Mere
being frequently injured by the clouds of starlings who roosted in them.
[12] Figured in Lyson’s Cumberland p. ccvii.
[13] She saved Smith’s life, subsequently married an Englishman, John
Rolfe, and died at Gravesend, where two windows have just—July, 1914—been
put up to her memory. Her most distinguished descendant is Sir R. S.
Baden-Powell.
[14] Near Boston Haven.
[15] The ‘shout’ was a sort of flat-bottomed canoe, sometimes covered
fore and aft with canvas painted grey in which one man lay with his hands
over the sides so that by using short paddles he could approach the ducks
unseen. It is not likely that Hall _made_ the gun, but no doubt he fitted
it to the shout.
[16] On the outer side of Boston Deeps opposite Friskney Flats.
[17] The gift of a late parish clerk.
[18] _Wytteworde_ may have meant the warning notice of a funeral.
[19] _Yereday_ = the anniversary of a death.
[20] Corporaxys is the plural of corporax = a linen cloth for the
consecrated elements. (_See_ Chap. XXIII.)
[21] Spelt indifferently Reseuyd, Receuyd, Reseauyd, reseueade, Resauyd,
resevyd, Recevyd.
[22] This is Gunby St. Peter; Gunby St. Nicholas is between N. Witham and
the Leicestershire border.
[23] The corporax or corporal was the linen cloth to go under or over the
vessel containing the consecrated elements.
[24] Wong = field. In Horncastle there is a street called “The Wong.”
[25] The most notable instance of this is on the Gosforth Cross in
Cumberland, where the same figure represents both Odin and Christ. Here
too was a permanent Norse settlement.
[26] The astounding list of Manors and advowsons handed over to “the
Master or custodian and the Chaplains of the College and almshouse
of the Holy Trinity of Tattershall and to their successors” was the
following:—“The Manors of Wasshyngburgh, Ledenham, ffulbeck, and Driby,
and the advowsons of the Churches of the same Manors, and the Manors of
Brinkyll, ffoletby, Boston, Ashby Puerorum, Withcall Souche, Withcall
Skypwyth, Bynbroke, called Northall, Woodenderby, Moreby, Wylkesby,
Conyngesbye, Holtham, the moiety of the Manors of Swynhope, Willughton,
Billingey and Walcote and the advowson of the Church of Swynhope.”
[27] They all came from Lord Middleton’s park in Nottinghamshire.
[28] This is now being done.
[29] A tax of a fifteenth levied on merchants’ goods in King John’s reign.
[30] Prov. 17. 14.
[31] See Frontispiece.
[32] _Hydegy_ Hay-de-guy or guise lit. Hay of Guy or Guise, a
particular kind of hay or dance in the 16th and early 17th century.
Spenser, Shepherd’s Calendar “Heydeguyes”; Drayton, Polyolbion, “dance
hy-day-gies” among the hills. Robin Goodfellow in “Percy Reliques,” &c.
English Dictionary, Murray. _Hay_ (of uncertain origin) a country dance
with winding movement of the nature of a reel.
[33] See Illustration, page 180.
[34] This Matthew Flinders, of Donington, was a notable hydrographer. He
was sent as lieutenant in command of an old ship the _Xenophon_, renamed
the _Investigator_, to explore and chart the coast of S. Australia in
1801-3. And he took with him his young cousin John Franklin who had just
returned from the battle of Copenhagen where he distinguished himself as
a midshipman on the _Polyphemus_,—Captain John Lawford. Under Flinders he
showed great aptitude for Nautical and Astronomical observations and was
made assistant at the Sydney observatory, the Governor, Mr. King, usually
addressing him as “Mr. Tycho Brahe.” These two natives of Lincolnshire,
Flinders and Franklin, are of course responsible for such names on the
Australian Coast as _Franklin Isles_, _Spilsby Island_ in the _Sir
Joseph Banks_ group, _Port Lincoln_, _Boston Island_, _Cape Donington_,
_Spalding Cove_, _Grantham Island_, _Flinders Bay_, _&c._
The _Investigator_ proving unseaworthy, Flinders, with part of his crew,
sailed homewards on the _Cumberland_; and touching at St. Mauritius was
detained by the French Governor because his passport was made out for the
_Investigator_. He was set free after seven tedious years on the island,
1803-1810, and died at Donington 1814.
[35] The _Times_, alluding to the Ulster Plot, spoke of “The Pinchbeck
Napoleons of the Cabinet.”
[36] See Chap. XXII.
[37] These were cut in Nottinghamshire; but I see that Sussex is to
supply the oak for the roof timbers of Westminster Hall.
[38] An expression used in “Long whist.”
[39] Or “Shelter,” which, from its name, “Lonely Bield,” was probably far
from any other human habitation.
[40] Waterfall.
[41] “A trotting burnie wimpling thro’ the ground,” Allan Ramsay’s
_Gentle Shepherd_, Act I., Sc. 2.
[42] Daisied slopes.
[43] Vale.
[44] Characters in _The Gentle Shepherd_.
[45] Characters in _The Gentle Shepherd_.
[46] Brow.
[47] Flaming at one end.
[48] Ruinous walls.
[49] Grace.
[50] Cunning.
[51] Quick.
[52] Hollow.
[53] Taste.
[54] Plenty.
[55] Catgut, fiddlestrings.
[56] Play.
[57] A tune.
[58] Stradivariuses and Cremonas.
[59] Chafers.
[60] Thick covering (of snow).
[61] Offence.
[62] Brew = whisky.
[63] Knocked about.
INDEX
Compiled mainly by Miss Rotha Clay, author of _Mediæval Hospitals of
England_ and _Hermits and Anchorites of England._
A
Addlethorpe, 307-12
Ædwin, King, 93, 114, 354
Agricultural returns, 477
Alexander, Bp., 76, 95, 371
Alford, 305
Algarkirk, 32, 459-61
Alkborough, 196-7
Allington, E. and W., 70
Alms-box, 69
Almshouses, 13-14, 16, 186, 206, 267, 414.
_See also_ Hospitals
Altar stone, 41, 142, 200, 257
Alton church fight, 287
Alvingham, 280, 371
Anatomy of Melancholy, 274
Ancaster, 88-9
Ancholme, R., 183
Anderson, Sir Charles, 205-6, 207
Angel Hotel, Grantham, 56
Anglo-Saxon ornaments, 254-5
Anglo-Saxon remains, 168-9.
_See also_ Architecture
Anwick, 371
Aragon, Katherine of, 31
Architecture, Different Styles, 6.
Saxon and Early Romanesque, 19, 29, 43, 46, 71-2, 85, 90, 126, 139,
148, 164, 188-9, 196, 230, 251-5, 252-4.
Norman Domestic, 51, 122, 124, 255
Armada picture of Bratoft Church, 321
Arras and Cambray, St. Vedast, Bp. of, 276
Ashby near Spilsby, 335
Ashby-cum-Fenby, 267
Ashby Puerorum, 342, 379
Askew (Ayscoughe), family of, 223-4
Axholme, Isle of, 4, 5, 198, 208-12
Ayscoughe Fee Hall, Spalding, 445
B
Baden-Powell, Sir R. S., 278, note
Bain, R., 274, 364-5, 371, 385
Bacon, Sir Hickman, of Thonock, 204, 405
Baptists in Lincolnshire, 325
Bardney, 390-3
Barholm, 19
Barkston, 65-6
Barkwith, East and West, 268
Barlings Abbey, 143, 395
Barnadiston, family of, 225
Barnetby-le-Wold, 234, 259
Barnoldby-le-Beck, 283
Barrow-on-Humber, 216-7
Barrowby, 70
Barton-on-Humber, 7, 188-93
Barsham, Norfolk, 384
Bassingham Saxon font, 148
Bassingthorpe, 40
Baston, 29
Baumber, 144
Bayons Manor, 273
Beacon, 48, 167, 423
Beaufort, Lady Margaret, 12, 49
Bec, Sir Walter’s grave, Halton, 330
Thomas and Antony, Bishops, 97, 160
Belchford, S. W. H. Kennels, 275, 283
Belleau, 247-48, 249
Bells, 19-20, 60, 99, 126, 197, 311, 313, 318, 434, 438, 459
Belton, 64-5, 210
Belvoir Castle, 69-70
Benington, 416-7
Benniworth, 268
Bertie, family of, 19, 30-1, 335
Bicker, 457, 459
Bigby, 183, 235
Bigby font and Tyrwhit Monuments, 235-6
Billingborough, 35
Bilsby, 305
Bitchfield, 40
Binbrook, 274
Black Death, 480-2
Blankney, 149
Bloody Oaks, battle of, 11, 18
Blow wells, 232, 267
Boat, ancient, 184-5
Bolingbroke, Old, 339, 359
Bolles, family of, 284-8
Bond family monuments at Croft, 318
Books, chained, 60
Boothby Graffoe, 162
Boothby Pagnell, 51
Bore, the, 201-2
Boston, 420-40
“stump,” 60, 108, 420-3
guilds, 430
religious houses, 430
silting of the river, 432-3
Bottesford, 200
Botolph, St., 426
Boucherett, family, 273
Bourne Town and Abbey, 23, 27;
manor, 21-4, 32
Braceborough Spa, 22
Bracebridge, 164
Braceby, 42
Bramfield, Sub-dean, Murder of, 104
Brandon, Chas., Duke of Suffolk, 399
Brant, Broughton, 90, 148, 151-4
Brasenose Coll., Stamford, 14
Brasses, 171-2, 225, 235, 294-5, 317, 334, 387
Brasses, earliest in County, 146, 317
Brasses twice used, 200, 322
Bratoft, 321
Bridges, ancient, 129, 270, 490
Brigg, old boat at, 184-5
Brigsley, 274
Brocklesby, 236-8
Bromhead and Chard, 131
Brothertoft, 404
Broughton near Brigg, 71, 183-4
Browne family, Monuments at Croft, 317
Browne, William, 12, 13
Brownlow family, 64-5
Buckden, 109, 117, 384
Buckland, 283
Bulb trade, Spalding, 441-4
Bull-running, 11
Bully Hill, 276
Burgh-le-Marsh, 320
Burgh-on-Bain, 268
Burghley House, 12
Burleigh, Lord of, 16-17
Burton Coggles, 40
Burton Pedwardine, 85
Burton Stather, 4, 198
Buslingthorpe, early brass, 146
Butterwick, 418
Bytham, Castle, 44-5
maypole ladder, 44
Bytham, Little, 40, 44, 46
Bytham farmers’ motto, 46
Byways, 245-7
C
Cabourn Hill, 231
Caenby, 269-270
Caistor, 7, 228-30, 236
Callis, (Almshouse), 13
Candlesby, 283, 382
Canwick, 149
Careby and Carlby, 40
Carlton Scroop, 67
Carlton Gt. and Little, 278
Carr, use of word, 183-4
Carr Dyke, 23, 28-9, 34, 40, 44, 87, 165, 183, 371, 401, 456
Carre Family, 77
Casewick Hall, 19
Casterton, Great, 7
Cathedrals Compared, 98-9
Cawdron Monuments, 85
Cawkwell, 276
Cawthorpe, 245-7
Caythorpe, 67-8
Ceremony of Championship, 376-8
Chalice, Priest’s, 83
Champion of England, Grand, 334, 372-8
Chantries, 63
Chaplin, Jane, aged 102, 277
Cartulary, Alvingham, 281
Charterhouse, Founder of, 206
Chaucer, 199, 339, 359, 444
Cherry Willingham, 143
Church Clock at Rowston, 150
Churchwardens’ Books, 83-4, 137, 240, 257, 260, 309-10, 318-19, 325-7
Claxby, near Alford, 248
Claxby, near Rasen, 232
Claypole, 71, 74-75
Clee, 264-6
Cleethorpes, 227, 265
“Cliff,” 159, 183, 198, 232-3
Clixby, 234
Cockerington, (North, South), 279-81
Coifi, Chief Priest, 113
Coleby, 141, 162-3
Colsterworth, Newton Chapel, 46-47, 66
Compton Church, Surrey, 397
Coningsby, 370-1
Conington, Prof., 423
Corby, 31, 40
Corringham, 200-1
Cotes-by-Stow, 141-2
Cotes, Great, and Barnadiston Brasses, 224-5
Cotes, Little, 267
Cotes, North, 295
Country Seats near Grantham, 64
Covenham, St. M. and St. B., 281
Cowbit, 406, 483-4
Cowpaddle, The, 149
Crabbe, Rector of Allington, 70
Cranwell, 90
Cressy Hall, 71, 454-5
Creeton, Stone coffins at, 40
Cripple, Memorial Brass to, 310
Croft, 316-19
Cromwell, Oliver, 201, 364, 439
his letters, 54-55, 364, 439
Cromwell, Ralph, 380-382, 384-385
Crosses, Stone, 33, 57, 71, 74, 79, 80, 134, 139, 150, 196, 342
Queen Eleanor, 9, 62, 134, 174
Boundary, 489-90
Crowle, 212, 261
Croxby Pond, 267, 274
Croyland Abbey, 5, 342, 483-9
Bridge, 490-1
Curfew, 149
Cust, Family of, 64-5, 450-2
Cuthbert Bede, 40
Cuthbert, St., 213-14
Cuxwold, 231
D
Dalby, 360
Danegelt, 7
Danish occupation, 8-9, 20, 32, 140, 201, 204, 263-5, 276, 402-3, 485
Dashwoods and Batemans at Well, 249
Deeping Fen, 21-2
St. James, 20, 29
Denton, 69
Devil’s door, the, 331
Devil looking over Lincoln, 101
Dictionary, Elliott’s, 327
Digby, 150
Disney, family of, 171-3
Doddington Hall, 173-6
Dog-whipping in church, 83, 319
_Dominus_, use of word, 394-5
Donington, 455-6
on Bain, 276
Dorchester (Oxon), bishopric of, 93, 140
Drainage and embankments in fen and marsh, 28, 209, 314, 432-5, 446,
456.
_See also_ Roman Works
Drainage opposed by Fenmen, 433
Drayton, M., quoted, 426
Driby, 378-83
“Droves,” all E. and W., 44
Duck-decoys, 200, 411-13
Dunham Bridge, 137-8
Dunsby and Dowsby, 34
Dunston pillar, 148, 167
Durham priory, 8
Durobrivæ Roman station, 7
Dymoke, family of, 80, 334, 372-7
E
Eagle, 173
“Eagre” or bore in R. Trent, 201-2
Early church towers, group of, 198-9, 230, 252, 262
Easter Sepulchre, 21, 41, 75, 82, 106, 162
Easton, 48, 50
Eden, R., 40, 41, 43
Edenham, 29-30
Eleanor, Queen, 9, 103, 116, 174
Elkington, South, 274, 284
North, 284
Elloe stone, 466
Elsham, 3, 185-6
Empingham, battle at, 11, 18
Enderby, Bag, 258, 340, 379
Enderby, Mavis, 362, 434
Enderby Wood, 369
Epworth, 210
Eresby, 335
Ermine Street, High Dyke, 3-4, 7, 18, 50, 88, 90, 92, 122, 129, 149,
151, 154, 157, 159, 178, 182-4, 190, 230, 269
Ewerby, 60, 78-9, 85, 259
F
Farquharson, A. F., 501-10
Fens, 2, 5, 23, 34-35, 400-8, 464-5
Ferriby, South and North, 186-7, 196
Ferries over the Trent, 138
Ferry at Hull, 217-8
Fillingham, 199
Firsby, 325
Fishtoft, 419-20
Fiskerton, 143, 168-9
Fleet, 470
Flinders, Matthew, 456-7, note
Flodden Field, 240
Floods, in the fen, 433-5
Floss, mill on, 201
Flowers in June, 262-3, 464
Rare, 370-1, 419
Folkingham, 32
Folk-song, Lincolnshire, 296-303
Font covers, 257-8, 419, 475
Fonts, 64-5, 69, 108, 215, 234-5, 257-61, 291, 305, 306, 340-1, 368,
417, 463, 465-6
Football, a family team, 207
Fosdyke, Rennie’s Bridge at, 475
Foss Dyke, 134, 137
Foss Way, 92, 148, 173
Fotherby Top, 284
Fox, John, born at Boston, 438
Fox-hounds, 493-8
Frampton, 476
Franklin, family of, 336, 457
Friaries, 124, 430
Frieston, 257, 418-9
Friskney, 380, 409-11
duck decoy, 411-12
Frodingham, 198
Fulbeck, 68
Fulney, 448
Fulston, 281, 295
G
Gainsborough, 138, 201-4
Gautby, 144
Gaynisburgh, Richard de, 204
Gayton-le-Marsh, 278
Gayton-le-Wold, 268
Gedney, 470-2
Gelston Cross, 74
Gentleman’s Soc. of Spalding, 445-6
Giantess, Lincolnshire, 34
Gibbets, 270-1
Gibraltar Point, 298, 315
Gilbert de Gaunt, 32
Gilbert of Sempringham, St., 35-8, 371
Girsby, 268
Glass, ancient, 12, 33, 43
Glen, R., 19, 29, 39-41, 43-4, 51
Glentham, 269-70
Glentworth, 199-200
Gobaud family, 34
Godiva, Lady, 444
Gonerby Hill, 71
Goosetoft, 404-5
Gosberton, 452-4
Gowts, 126, 432
Goxhill, 218-19
Grainsby, 263
Grainthorpe, 294-5
Grandiloquent writing, 109
Grantham, 5, 52-63, 73
Grantham, Thomas, of Halton Baptist, 325
Grasby, 233-4
Great Humby, 34
Grebby, 282
Green lady, the, 286, 289
Greetham, 342
Gretford, 19-20
Grey friars at Grantham and Lincoln, 62, 128
Grimblethorpe, 268
Grimoldby, 216, 242, 279, 281
Grimsby, 225-7
Corporation seals, 227
Grimsthorpe, 30-1
Grinling Gibbons, 65
Guilds and charters, 430, 432
Gunby, Dan, 296
Gulls breeding at Manton, 198
Gunby St. Peter, 283, 322
Guthlac, St., 483-5
Gynewell, Bishop, 481
H
Habrough, 222
Hacconby, 31
Haceby, 42
Hagnaby, 306, 366
Hagworthingham, 362
Hainton, 268
Hale, Great, 71, 84-5
Hallam, historian, 439
Halstead Hall, 396
Haltham, 369
Halton, East, 221
Halton, West, 195
Halton Holgate, 329-32
Halton, John de, Bp. of Carlisle, 368-9
Hameringham, 363-4
Harlaxton, 68-9
Harmston, 164
Harpswell, 198
Harrington, 340
Hatcliffe, 267
Haugh, 285
Haugham, 245, 277
Havelock, The Dane, Story of, 227, 394
Haverholme, 37, 78, 243, 371
Hawysia, de Trikingham, 42
Haydor, good stained glass, 33
Heapham, 206
Heckington, 80-3
Helpringham, 85-6
Heneage, family of, 268
Henry VIII., 76, 109, 157, 240
Hereward the Wake, 23-4, 40
Hermits, 178, 219
Hexham, 80
Hibaldstow, 183
High Dyke, alias Ermine St., 159
From Caistor, 230
Hogsthorpe, 307
Holbeach, 468-70
Legend of, 478-9
Holdingham, 89
Holland Fen, 404
Holton-le-Clay, 263
Holywell, 22
Honington, 67
Horbling, 35
Horkstow, 186-7
Horncastle, 91, 364-5
Hospitals and Almshouses, 9, 12-14, 53, 134, 178-81, 186
Hough-on-the-Hill, 71-4, 149, 162, 184
Hour-Glasses, 41, 90, 164, 210, 364
Houses, beautiful, 40
Howell, 79-80
Howorth, Sir Henry’s interesting book, 112
Hubbert’s Bridge, why so called, 46
Hugh of Lincoln, St., 96-117
Hugh of Wells, 96-7
Hugh, “Little St. Hugh,” 118-9
Humber, R., 187
Humberstone, 266
Hundleby, 361
Hundon, Tombs, Caistor, 229-30
Hussey, Ld., 76, 242, 438
Huttoft, 306
I
Iconoclasm, 256-7
Immingham, 222-3
Imp, The Lincoln, 106
Ingelow, Jean, 434, 439
Ingoldmells, 310, 315
Ingoldsby, 40
Inscriptions in Churches, 19, 21, 42, 43, 46, 49, 51, 67, 108, 201,
216, 224, 225, 234, 235, 267, 280, 286, 288, 307, 318, 321,
363, 375, 414, 417, 424, 476, 487, 489
On Jubilee Memorial, 186
On Bells, 511, 313
Irby, 324
Irby-on-Humber, 231-2
Irby family monuments, 468
Irnham, 40-1
Ithamar, first English Bp., 114
J
Jesus Coll. Chapel bench ends, 332
Jews, persecution of, 117-9, 123
Joffrid, Abbot of Croyland, 486-7
sends Lecturers to Cambridge, 486
lays first stone of the third abbey, 487
John, King of England, at Kingscliffe, 9, 56, 71, 76
John, King of France, 53, 160, 238
Johnson, Archdeacon, 16
Johnson, Dr., 360
Jump, famous, of Dr. Trought, 246
K
Katherine Howard, 76, 109, 157
Keate, Dr., 345
Keddington, 244
Keelby, 283
Kelstern, 274
Kettleby, 235-6
Kettlethorpe Hall, 176-7
Killingholme, North, South, 222
King’s Street, 23, 31-4
Kirkby-Underwood, 40
Kirkby, East, 366
Kirkstead, Abbey and Chapel, 396-8
Kirmington, Green Spire, 236
Kirmond-le-mire, 274
Kirton, 475
Kirton-in-Lindsey, 182
Knaith, 206
Knights Hospitallers, alias of Jerusalem and of St. John, 155-9
Knights Templars, 155-9, 173, 198.
_See also_ Temple Belwood, Temple Bruer
Koh-i-noor (mt. of light), diamond, 237.
Kyme, North and South, 87-9, 371
tower, 438
L
Laceby, 232, 267
Lady Lucia, 339
Lambert, Daniel, 16
Langton, 360
Langtoft, 20-1
Laughton, 200
Lea, 201, 204-5
Leadenham, 68, 151
Leake, 413-6
Leasingham, 89-90
Lenton or Lavington, 40
Leverton, 416-7
Liddington, 481
Lincoln—
Lindum Colonia, 91
Afternoon tea at, A.D. 1762, 136
Bishop’s palaces, 109, 117, 384, 481
Cathedral, 91-111
Chancery, 109-10
Chapter-house, 110
Churches, 126-7
Corporation, 129-31
Conduits, 128-9
Friaries, 123-4, 128, 135
Gates, 91-2, 120-2, 129, 131
Guild, 124-5, 255
High bridge, 129
Hospitals, 134
Jews’ houses, 118, 121-3, 255
Library, 131
Stonebow, 129-30
Lincoln, Bishops of, 95-8, 103-8, 117, 481
Parliaments of, 110-11
Heath, 148-9, 157
Lincoln Stuff ball, 134
Lincolnshire flocks, 232
Lincolnshire, divisions of, 4-5, 22, 73-4
Lincolnshire Rebellion, 240-2
Lincolnshire Roads, 207
Slope of the land, 34, 39
Lincolnshire stories, 337-8, 339-40, 462
Linwood, 146-7
Littleborough, 90, 138
Lock-up house, 150
“Long and short” work, 2, 253
Long Bennington, 71
Lord High Treasurer Cromwell, Chapter XXXIII
Louth, 60, 239-45
Grammar School, 242
Louth Park Abbey, 37, 242-4
Chronicle, 244, 433
Roads, 244
Lud, R., 3
Ludford Magna, 274
Lusby, 363
“Lyttyl clause,” the, 240-2
M
Mablethorpe, 292, 347
Maddison, Canon, 103
Maltby-le-Marsh, 291
Manby, 278-9
Mappa Mundi, 76
Mareham-le-fen, 370
Markby, 306
Markham, Mrs., 102
Marquis of Granby, 70
Marsh, the, 2-3, 464-5
Marsh Chapel, 295
Marton, 139
Marston, 149
Martyrs, Clerical, 242
Masquerade at Nocton, 169-70
Massingberd family, 322
Mausoleum at Brocklesby, 236
Mavis Enderby, 362, 366, 434
Maypole, use of, 44
Mazes, 196-7
Melton Ross, 234
Mercia, kings of, 7-8, 114
Messingham, 107, 200
Miningsby, 366
Miserere seats, 104, 423
“Molly Grime,” 270
Monksthorpe, 324
Monumental effigies, &c., 30, 31, 34, 49, 67, 69, 77, 79, 80, 83,
103, 104, 145-7, 149, 171-3, 184, 192, 195, 200, 210, 223-6,
229-30, 232, 235-6, 238, 267-9, 271, 278, 280-1, 292-5, 310,
312, 317, 322-4, 330, 334, 340, 364, 372-5, 423, 453, 468,
471-2, 487
Monumental epitaphs, 26-7, 420, 457.
_See also_ Inscriptions in Churches.
Moorby, 368
Morton, 31, 204
Moulton, 260, 465-6
Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, 209
Muckton, 247
Mustard, cultivation of, 463-4, 472, 477
Colman’s factory, Norwich, 464
Muston, 70
“My owd Son,” 440
N
Names ending in ‘by,’ 185, 341
Nature’s poets, 303-4
Navenby, 161-3
Nettleton, 231
Nettleship, R. L., 297
Newsham Abbey, 238
Newton Church Tower, 42
Newton, Isaac, 31, 46-8, 55, 57, 62
Newton-by-Toft, 270
Noblemen not Saints, 257
Nocton, 166-9
Nonconformists, 324-5
Normanby-le-Wold, 230
Norman buildings, 255
North Country humour, 303
Northorpe, 200
North Wytham, 46
Norton Disney, 148, 170-3
O
Octave of E.E. Churches, 42
Orgarth Hill, Danish Camp, 276
Ormsby, North, 284
Ormsby, South, 361
Osbournby, 33
Oswald, St., 212-4
Oswy, King of Northumbria, 8
P
Pagnell, Boothby, 51
Palmer, effigy of, 34
Parish Clerks, Stories of, 319-20
Partney, 358-60
Paulinus, St., 93, 112-14
Peasant poets, 303-4, 501
Pelham buckle, the, 238, 385
Pelham pillar, 231, 233, 236
Penda and Pæda, Kings of Mercia, 8, 114
Penrose, Rev. Trevenen, 163
Peterborough, cathedral, 49-50, 52
Pickworth, 41
Pilgrimage of Grace, 240, 242
Pinchbeck, 448-50
metal called, 461-2
Plague, 290-1, 439
Plague-stone, 290-1
Ponton, Great, 50
Ponton, Little, 51
Pope Gregory, 112-13
Potter Hanworth, 165
Potteries, Pre-Roman, 315-6
Premonstratensian, meaning of, 395
Pulpit, early, note, 192
Q
Quadring, 455
Queen Margaret (Ed. I.), 428
Queen Eleanor’s heart buried at Lincoln A.D. 1290, 103
R
Raithby, 361-2
Rasen, Market, 272
Middle, 271
West, 270
Ravendale, 267, 274
Rawnsley, 27, 43, 249, 328, 330, 332, 336, 340, 352, 361, 493, 496
Read’s Island, 187
Rebellion, Lincolnshire, 240-2, 243
Registers, Early, 306, 476
Remigius, Bishop, 76, 93, 140
Revesby Abbey, 367
Riby Grove, 232
Richard III. at Grantham, 56
Ridge, the, 4, 159
Rigsby, 247
Rippingale, 34
Riseholme, 269
Roads, few going E. and W., 33
in the marsh, 280, 316
without villages, 151
Roadway streams, 246-7
Robert de Brunne, 25-6
Rochford, Stoke, 48
Romanus, Bp., 113-114
Romans, our benefactors, 401
Roman works:
embankments, etc., 2, 295, 310-12, 315, 401, 409, 417, 456, 459,
464-5;
_see_ Carr Dyke, Foss Dyke
gateways, 91
roads, 23, 34, 89, 91-3, 137, 144,183, 230, 328, 465.
_See_ Ermine Street, Foss Way, King’s Street
stations, 32, 50, 67, 87, 88, 91, 138, 140, 184, 228-9, 248, 315-6,
364-5
remains, 91, 104, 120, 122, 125-6, 149, 184, 196
Rood lofts and screens, 256
Roof covering both nave and aisles, 87, 225
Rooks in towns, 365
Ropsley, 43
Rothwell, long and short work, 230
Rowston, 150
Rulos, Richard de, father of Lincolnshire farmers, 21-22
S
St. Denis, 76
St. John, family of, 49-50
St. John, Oliver, 49-50
St. Poll, family of, 145
St. Thomas of Canterbury, Church Dedicated to, 40
Saleby, 278
Salinas, Mary de, 31
Salisbury, Connection of Grantham with, 62-3
Saltfleetby, All Saints, 293
St. Clements, 294
Samplers, 168
Sandbank, “The Old Warp,” 187
Sandtoft, 209
Sapperton, Pulpit Hour-glass at, 41
Sausthorpe, 360
Saxby, All Saints, 186
Saxilby, 137
Saxon Churchyard, 29
Scamblesby, 276
Scartho, 264
Scawby, 183, 198
Sutton Nelthorpe of, 198, 494
Schools, 13, 16, 27, 43, 57, 206, 242, 272
Scopwick, 149
Scremby, 282
Scrivelsby, 372-4
Scunthorpe, 198, 207
Sea-dyke, 2, 416-7,
_see_ Draining, Roman Embankment
Seals, Ancient, 227
Sedgebrook, 69, 70
Sempringham, 35-38
Sempringham Hall, Stamford, 14
Sempringham, Order of, 25-6
Sheep in Churchyard, 267, 454
Sibsey, 361
Silk Willoughby Wayside Cross, 33
Sixhills, 146, 273, 277
Shakespeare Quotations, 63, 209, 491-2
Skating in Fens, 405-7
International, 408
Skegness, 314-5
Roman Castrum at, 316
Skendleby, 282
Skidbroke, 294
Skirbeck, 420, 427
“Skirth” Billinghay, 371
Slash Lane, 364
Sleaford, 4, 76-8, 169
Slope of Church W. to E., 66, 186
Smith, Capt. John, 278
Snarford, 144-5
Snelland Register, 144
St. Poll Tombs, 145-6
Somerby, 42-3
Somercotes, South, 294
Somersby, 340-343, 345-353
Somersby Brook, 298, 322, 342
Somersby Church Opening, 352
Somerton Castle, 160-1
South Thoresby, 247, 290
Spalding, 441-8
Spectacles, Use of, 51
Spelling, a clear gift, 49
Spilsby, 233, 333-7
Spital-on-the-Street, 178-81
Springs, Mineral, 22, 69, 70
Springthorpe, 206
Stainfield, 395
Stainsby, 379
Stainton-le-Vale, 274
Stallingborough, 223
The Ayscoughe Tombs, 223-4
Stamford, 4, 7-17
bedehouse, 13-14
churches, 7, 9, 12-14
college, 14
St. Leonard’s Priory, 8
“Stamford Baron,” 12
Stanley, Dean, on Wesley, 211
“Staple,” the meaning of, 428
Starlings, flocks of, 250
Steeping, Little and Great, 323-4
Stephen King, 76
Stickford and Stickney, 361
Stixwould, 395-6
Stocks, 372, 389, 457
Stoke Rochford, 48
Stones, sculptured, 139, 150, 212, 269, 281, 366, 368
Stonebow, the, 129
Stone Coffin, use for, 80
Stow, 140-2
Stow Green, 32
Stragglethorpe, 90
Strubby, 291
Stubton, 71
Stukeley, Dr. W., 43, 500
Sturton, 207
Suffolk, Duke of, 398-9
Duchess of, 31
Surfleet, 452-3
Sutterton, 459
Sutton, Long, 472-4
Sutton, Thomas, 206
Swallow, 231
Swan, St. Hugh’s, 116
Swan-marks, 492
Swan, ballad of the, 299
Swaton, 86-7
Swineshead, 457-9
Swinstead, 31
Sword called “Fox,” 131
Syston Hall, 64
T
Tallington, 7, 19
Tathwell, St. Vedast’s, 276-7
Tattershall, 12, 235, 370-1, 379-80, 382-9
Mantelpieces, 384, 388
Taylor, John, poet, 405
Tealby, 273, 343
Temple Belwood, 210
Bruer, 76, 151, 154-9
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 131-4, 340, 346-357
Tennyson, Dr., 342-344, 346
Tennyson Centenary, 131-2
Tennyson, family of, 343-57
Tennyson-Turner, C., 233-4
Tennyson poems in the Lincolnshire dialect, 356
Tennyson, Matilda, last of the family, 353
Tetford, 379
Tetney, 3, 266-7
Theddlethorpe, West, 293, 313
Theodore, Archbp. of Canterbury, 193
Thorganby, 274
Thonock Hall, 204, 495
Thornton Abbey, 219-21, 238
Thornton Curtis, 108, 215-16
Thorpe, 325-7
Thorpe Hall, 284-9
Thorpe St. Peter’s, 259
Threckingham, 32
Thurcytel, first Abbot of Croyland, 485
Thurlby, 29, 259
Tickencote, 18
Toft-next-Newton, 270
Top, Cliff and Wold, 232
Torrington, East and West, 263
Tothby, 290
Tournai fonts, 108, 215, 259
Tournays, or Tourneys, family of, 269-70
Tower-on-the-Moor, 398
Toynton, High, 342
Trent, R., 4, 114, 137-8, 200-2, 207
Tumby, 370, 379-80
Tupholme, Abbey, 284, 395
Two churches in one churchyard, 280
Tydd St. Mary, 465, 474
U
Uffington Hall, 19
Ulceby, 213, 282
Uppingham, founder of, 16, 206
Upton, 206
Usselby, 231
Utterby, 260, 267, 284
V
Vyner, F. G., 144
W
Waddington, 164
Wainfleet, 91, 327-9, 379
Wainfleet, St. Mary’s, 329
Wainfleet, William of, Bishop, 327-8
Waith, 263
Wake, de, family of, 20-1, 23, 40
Walcot, double “squint” at, 41
Walesby, 274
Walks, Uppingham to Boston, 35;
Horncastle to Mablethorpe, 249
Wall-painting, 141, 182, 410
Walmsgate, 283
Waltham, 264, 274
Wapentake, meaning of, 73-74
“Warping,” process of, 212
Wars, Civil, 19, 53-5, 201, 232, 286, 364
Wars of the Roses, 10-11, 18
Watts, G. F., and Tennyson, 134
“Wedercoke” at Louth, 240
Weir dyke, 144, 183, 186
Welbourn, John de, treasurer, 98, 151
Well, 247-251
Welland, R., 7
Wellbourn, 154
Wellingore, 161
Wellington and Dr. Keate, 345
Wells, blow-, 232, 267
Welton-le-Wold, 268
Wernington, William de, Master Mason, 487
Wesley, Samuel and John, 210-12, 499
Westmoreland Stories, 303, 338-9
Weston, 463
Whitgift, John, Archbp. of Canterbury, 225, 232
Wickenby, 260
Wilfrid, Bishop, 8-10
Wilksby, 368
Willingham, North, 146, 230, 244, 272, 277
South, 244, 268
Cherry, 143
by Stow, 206
Wilsthorpe, 40, 41
Whaplode, 466-8
Willoughby, 248, 278
Willoughby d’Eresby, family of, 30-1, 86, 248-9, 333-5
Willoughton, 157
Winceby, 364-5
Wine-cellars in Boston, 430-1
Winteringham, 3, 184, 195
Winterton, 184, 195-6
Winthorpe, 312-14
Witham-on-hill, inscription on Bells, 20
Witham, R., 39, 44, 46, 51, 90, 91, 126, 129, 134, 137, 149, 371,
425-6, 432-3
Withern, 278
Woad, cultivation of, 464
Wolds, the, 2-5, 146, 148, 232
Wood, Enderby, 369
Woodhall Spa, 397-8
Woodcarving by Wallis, of Louth, 237
Wood-work, church, 255-6
Wool, staple, 13, 147, 309, 428-9, 432
Woolsthorpe, 31, 47-8
Wordsworth, Bishop, Christopher, 103, 265, 269
Wordsworth, W., Sonnet _Persuasion_, 113
Wragby, 269
Wrangle, 413-4
Wrawby, 183, 185, 206
Wray, Sir Christopher, 145, 200
Wright family, 289, 413
Wulfhere, King of Mercia, 7
Wyberton, 476
Wyclif, John, 199
Wykeham Chapel, 448
Y
Yarborough, Earls of, 236-7
Church, 281
Z
Zucchero, 289
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