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]