“The crownéd head that enters Lincoln walls,

His reign is stormy and his Kingdom falls,”

made the monarch take it off on passing from Wickford to the city,

and certainly of all the kings who were crowned in the cathedral none

wore the crown outside except Stephen, and he, as we have seen, soon

had cause to repent it. It has been supposed that both these early

Lincoln churches were built by a Danish citizen called “Coleswegen,”

who is mentioned in Domesday Book as having thirty-six houses and two

churches outside the city. But though Lincoln has not lost nearly so

many churches and religious houses as Winchester has, yet, where she now

has a dozen she once had fifty, so it must be extremely doubtful whether

these two old ones that remain were those of Coleswegen. St. Mary’s now

has a Perpendicular parapet, and, besides the curious tower arch, some

interesting Early English work, and both churches have some good modern

ironwork in pulpit, screen and rails from the Brant Broughton forge.

[Illustration: _St. Benedict’s Church, Lincoln._]

[Illustration: _St. Mary-le-Wigford, Lincoln._]

[Sidenote: THE “CONDUIT”]

[Sidenote: THE BRIDGE AND THE STONEBOW]

The woodwork in St. Peter’s was done by the parish clerk, a pleasant

feature not nearly so common now as it used to be. At the road side,

and close to the churchyard rails of St. Mary’s, is a handsome carved

drinking fountain, here called a “conduit,” partly made of stones from

the demolished Whitefriars monastery founded 1269. Leland speaks of it

as new in 1540, and it was repaired in 1672. The Grey Friars conduit and

the High bridge conduit are supplied from the same chalybeate spring,

which once sufficed to turn the mill at the monks’ house, now standing in

ruins a mile to the east of the city. This was one of the good deeds of

the Franciscans, to bring good drinking water within reach of the poor.

A similar system of “conduits” also due to them, existed at Grantham.

A serious epidemic, traced to the drinking water, which broke out in

Lincoln a few years ago, caused the town to go to great expense in laying

on a new supply which comes twenty miles in iron pipes from Elkesley,

Notts, between Retford and Clumber, and crosses the Trent at Dunham on a

little bridge of its own.

The “High bridge” marks the spot where the Ermine Street forded the

Witham. It is the only bridge left in England out of many which still

carries houses on it. The ribbed arch is a very old one, twenty-two feet

wide. The houses are now only on one side, they are quaintly timbered,

and their backs, seen from below by the waterside, are very picturesque.

On the other side is an obelisk, set up 150 years ago, to mark the site

of a bridge chapel dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury. From here you

get the most magnificent view that any town can boast, as you look up the

steep street to the splendid pile which crowns the height, and see the

cathedral in all its beauty.

The length of the High Street is relieved by the “Stonebow.” There was

always a gate here from Roman times onward, for when the Roman town was

extended southward to a good deal more than twice its original size,

it was here that the new wall crossed the Ermine Street. The road had

crossed the swampy ground and forded the river, and was now about to

enter the city and climb the hill. The mediæval gate which succeeded the

Roman ‘porta’ was removed in the fourteenth century, and the present one

dates from the sixteenth, and was repaired in 1887, at Queen Victoria’s

Jubilee. It has one central and two side arches, with slender towers

between, carried up to a battlemented parapet. On the east tower is a

tall figure of the Archangel Gabriel, and in a niche on the other tower

the Virgin Mary. The patroness of the city and cathedral is represented

treading on a dragon. A long room above the arch with timbered roof is

used as a Guildhall; in it are portraits of Queen Anne and Thomas Sutton

of Knaith, founder of the Charterhouse. The corporation, to whom they

belong, has had a long and distinguished existence, for municipal life in

Lincoln began in Roman times; and when they left, and Saxons, Danes or

Normans ruled, and the counties and towns had to adopt new names under

each successive conqueror, Lincoln retained throughout her Roman name

and her right of self-government. The corporation, besides their fine

Restoration mace, have three civic swords, one apparently made up out of

two, but said to have been presented by Richard II. when he visited the

city in 1386, to be carried point uppermost, except in presence of the

sovereign.

[Illustration: _The Stonebow, Lincoln._]

[Sidenote: THE CIVIC SWORDS]

[Sidenote: THE “FOX”]

The facts about the swords are these: the Charles I. sword, supposed to

have been presented to the city at the beginning of the Civil War, in

1642, has been mutilated to supply a new blade to the Richard II. sword.

This was done by order of the mayor in 1734. The blade has on it the orb

and cross mark and also the running wolf—a fourteenth century German

mark—but so common was it on the foreign blades used in England in the

sixteenth century that, the figure being taken for a fox—as wolves were

not then common in England—the term “Fox” was transformed to the sword;

hence in Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” act iv., scene 4, we have Pistol saying

to his French prisoner on the field of battle:—

“O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox.”

and in one of Webster’s plays we have—

“Of what a blade is’t?

A Toledo or an English fox?”

The two finest churches in Lincoln were at one time St. Swithun’s and

St. Botolph’s. The former was burnt down, but, after a century, was

rebuilt badly, but has now been restored by the munificence of Messrs.

Clayton and Shuttleworth to its former grandeur, and has a really fine

tower and spire, designed by Fowler, of Louth. St. Botolph’s, near the

south “Bargate,” had to endure a similar period of decay, but was at last

resuscitated, the south aisle being the last gift to the town of Bishop

Christopher Wordsworth.

Lincoln’s last new building, the Carnegie Library, designed by Mr.

Reginald Blomfield, stands in St. Swithun’s Square. It was opened on

February 24th, 1914.

[Illustration: _Old Inland Revenue Office, Lincoln._]

Two other houses are interesting because of their inmates in the

eighteenth century; one the old Jacobean mansion of the Bromheads of

Thurlby, whose descendant, Captain Gonville Bromhead, won with Lieutenant

Chard undying fame by the defence of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu War, 1879.

The other is a house called Deloraine House, in which once lived George

Tennyson, grandfather of the poet; and we cannot quit Lincoln without

going to see the fine bronze statue of the poet by G. F. Watts, which

stands in the close at the east end of the cathedral.

[Sidenote: THE TENNYSON STATUE]

[Sidenote: THE POET’S WOLFHOUND]

In the autumn of 1909 the centenary of the poet’s birth was celebrated at

Lincoln. Dean Wickham preached an eloquent sermon to a large congregation

in the cathedral nave, after which, the choir, leaving the cathedral,

grouped themselves round the statue and sang “Crossing the Bar,” and

Bishop King gave a short and memorable address. In the evening the

writer read a paper on Tennyson to an intently listening audience of

twelve hundred people, which is now published by Routledge & Co., in

a little book called “Introductions to the Poets, by W. F. Rawnsley.”

Lincoln that day showed how fully she appreciated the great Lincolnshire

poet. The statue, a colossal one, represents him looking at a flower,

as described in his poem, “Flower in the crannied wall,” and his grand

wolf-hound is looking up into his face. This hound was a Russian, whose

grandfather had belonged to the Czar Alexander II., he who freed the

serfs in 1861, and was so basely assassinated twenty years later. The

wolf-hound was a very handsome light brindle, with a curious black

patch near the collar. She had a litter of thirteen, and one of these

with the mother, “Lufra,” was given to the writer when living at Park

Hill, Lyndhurst, in the New Forest. The puppy, “Cossack,” was Mrs.

Rawnsley’s constant companion till he died of old age in his sleep; the

mother went to Farringford to replace an old favourite that Tennyson had

lately lost. Her new owner changed her name to Karenina, and she was his

constant companion to the end. Once again, if not twice, she had a litter

of thirteen, and the cares of her large family not unnaturally were at

times too much for her temper. She is now immortalised with her master

in bronze, executed with loving care by his own old friend and quondam

neighbour in the Isle of Wight. The inscription at the back of the

pedestal is: “Alfred Lord Tennyson, born 1809, died 1892”; and below it

is “George Frederick Watts, born 1817, died 1904.”

[Illustration: _James Street, Lincoln_]

Another monument which once adorned Lincoln was the first and one of the

very best in the list of Queen Eleanor’s crosses, designed by the famous

“Richard of Stowe,” who carved the figures in the angel choir. Only a

fragment of this survived what Precentor Venables calls “the fierce

religious storm of 1645.” Before starting on its long funeral procession

to Westminster, the Queen’s body was embalmed by the Gilbertine nuns of

St. Catherine’s Priory, close to which, at the junction of the Ermine

Street and Foss Way, the cross was set up, near the leper hospital of

Remigius, called the Malandery (Fr. Maladerie) hospital.

[Sidenote: THE “STUFF BALL”]

Two railway stations and the many large iron and agricultural implement

works, which have given Lincoln a name all over the world, occupy the

lower part of the town, with buildings more useful than beautiful; for

this industry has taken the place of the woollen factories which were

once the mainstay of Lincoln. But a tall building with small windows,

known as “The Old Factory,” still indicates the place in which the

“Lincoln Stuff” was made, from which the Lincoln “Stuff Ball” took its

name. In order to increase the production and popularise the wear of

woollen material for ladies’ dresses, it was arranged to have balls

at which no lady should be admitted who did not wear a dress of the

Lincolnshire stuff. The first of these was held at the Windmill Inn,

Alford, in 1785. The colour selected was orange; but, the room not being

large enough for the number of dancers, in 1789 it was moved to Lincoln,

where it has been held ever since, the lady patroness choosing the colour

each year. In 1803 the wearing of this hot material was commuted to an

obligation to take so many yards of the stuff. The manufacture has long

ago come to an end, but the “Stuff Ball” survives, and the colours are

still selected.

The swamps of the Wigford suburb have also disappeared, but _Brayford

Pool_, beloved of artists, where the Foss Dyke joins the Witham, still

makes a beautiful picture with the boats and barges and swans in front

below, and the Minster towers looking down into it from above. This Foss

Dyke was a Crown property, until James I., finding it to be nothing

but an expense, with economic liberality presented it to the mayor and

corporation.

[Illustration: _Thorngate, Lincoln._]

[Sidenote: THE “GREY FRIARS”]

The river was always outside of the Roman town, for the south wall,

running east and west from the Stonebow, where are now Guildhall Street

and Saltergate, turned up by Broadgate Street, and here, just inside its

south-east angle, is now the interesting “Grey Friars,” a thirteenth

century building consisting of a vaulted undercroft and long upper room,

now used as a museum.

[Sidenote: AFTERNOON TEA]

I have no Lincoln notes of the eighteenth century of any special

interest, but from this little extract it looks as if the institution of

afternoon tea had been anticipated by a hundred years in Lincoln. The

extract is from “A Sketch wrote Aug. 4, 1762, at Lincoln,” and deals with

housekeeping expenses. The entries are:—

“Three guineas a year for tea £3 3 0

“Loave sugar 3 0 0

“Tea, a quarter of an ounce each morning.

“Sugar, half of a quarter of a pound each morning.

“Also an allowance for sometimes in the afternoon.”

CHAPTER XII

ROADS FROM LINCOLN, WEST AND EAST.—MARTON, STOW, COTES-BY-STOW, SNARFORD,

AND BUSLINGTHORPE

West—The Foss-Dyke—Marton—Stow—Cotes-by-Stow.

East—Fiskerton—Barlings Abbey—Gautby—Baumber—Snelland—Snarford

and the St. Poll Tombs—Buslingthorpe—Early Brass—Linwood.

[Sidenote: PASSAGES OF THE TRENT]

Of the eight roads from Lincoln one goes west, and, passing over the Foss

Dyke by a swing bridge at Saxilby, crosses the Trent between Newton and

Dunham into Nottinghamshire. The view of Lincoln Minster from Saxilby,

with the sails of the barges in the foreground as they slowly make their

way to the wharves at the foot of the hill, is most picturesque. Saxilby

preserves some interesting churchwarden’s accounts from 1551 to 1569,

and, after a gap of fifty-five years, from 1624 to 1790. The “Foss Dyke”

is a canal made by the Romans to connect the Witham with the Trent and

deepened by Henry I. The road runs alongside of it from Saxilby for two

miles. Consequently we get glimpses now and again of the low round-nosed

barges with widespread canvas sailing slowly past trees and hedgerows;

then we turn north and pass by Kettlethorpe Lodge and Fenton village,

through lanes lined with oak trees or edged with gorse, and amidst fields

brilliant with corn-marigold, and poppy, till we come, all at once, on

a little fleet of barges waiting with their picturesque unfurled sails

for a passage through the lock near Torksey, a place of some importance

in Saxon times, having two monastic houses. Two miles beyond Torksey is

_Marton_. This place is also approached by the old Roman road, now called

“Till bridge Lane,” which branched off from the Ermine Street ten miles

above Lincoln, and went to Doncaster and York, crossing both arms of

the river Till near _Thorpe-in-the-fallows_. One mile from Marton this

road passes out of the county at Littleborough ferry, the “Segelocum” of

the Romans. The ferry is the main means of crossing the Trent where it

touches Lincolnshire, as there are but two bridges in twenty miles, one

at Gainsborough, and one between Dunham and _Newton-on-Trent_, where the

view from the cliff with the bridge below is very picturesque.

[Illustration: _Lincoln from the Witham._]

There is a ferry at Laneham, between Newton and Torksey; and below

Gainsborough are half a dozen, at _Stockwith_, _Ouston_, _Althorpe_,

_Keadby_, where a bridge is now being built, _Flixborough_, and _Burton

Stather_, but the latter only takes foot passengers, and the others are

all, I believe, of the same calibre. It is just the same on the Ouse,

across which Yokefleet and Ousefleet look at each other about a mile

apart, but to drive from one to the other is a matter of more than thirty

miles.

[Sidenote: MARTON]

[Sidenote: HISTORY OF THE DIOCESE]

_Marton_ is a tiny place, but has a very interesting church, with

unbuttressed tower and heavily embattled parapet to both nave and

chancel. The tower up to the upper stringcourse is entirely built in

Norman “Herringbone” work, this is now plastered over outside, but you

can trace the herring-bone through the plaster, and inside the tower it

is plain to see, and shows courses of thin stone laid horizontally at

frequent intervals. Above the stringcourse is the usual two light window

with mid-wall jamb, which, like the Long-and-Short work at the angles

of the tower, we generally describe as Saxon. Several Saxon stones with

interlaced work, parts of a cross probably, are built into the west end

of the south aisle at about two feet from the ground outside. I always

want to see these very old stones inside, for their better preservation.

Above the present nave roof, but below the mark of the earlier and

high-pitched roof, is a door which once opened from the tower into the

church. The chancel arch is Norman, as are the two lofty bays of the

north arcade. The rest of the church is Early English. In the chancel

south wall is a large niche with a pedestal, evidently intended for a

figure, perhaps of St. Margaret, the patron saint, and there is also a

low-side window of one light with a two-light window above it. But the

most interesting thing in the chancel is a little stone, nine inches by

eleven, now in the north wall, which was lately found in part of the wall

where it had been used as building material; this has on it a very early

attenuated figure of the crucified Saviour, clothed in long drapery. It

might have been part of a cross-head; certainly it is a very remarkable

figure, and of very early date. There is a tall cross-shaft and pedestal,

now in the churchyard, but this is said to have been a market cross

originally. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings were

called in to do the work of repairing and, as usual, their work has been

done in an inexpensive manner and on conservative lines. They found that

the foundation of the old walls, only two feet below the surface, was

just a trench filled with loose pebbles and sand. Three miles to the east

of Marton stands the church which, next to the Minster, we may put at the

head of the list of all the churches in the county. This is what Murray

rightly speaks of as “The venerable church of St. Mary at Stow, the

mother church of the great Minster.”

[Sidenote: STOW]

_Stow_ is thought to be identical with the Roman _Sidnacester_, and the

first church was built there in 678 by the Saxon King Egfrith, husband

of Etheldred, the foundress of Ely, at the time when Wilfrid’s huge

Northumbrian diocese was divided. From 627, when Paulinus, Bishop of

York, preached at Lincoln, baptized in the Trent and built the first

stone church in Lincolnshire, to 656, the province of Lindisse, or

Lindsey, was under the Bishop of York. From 656 to 678 it was under the

Bishops of Mercia, whose “Bishop-stool” was at Repton, and after 669 at

Lichfield. In 678 King Egfrith of Northumbria established the diocese

of Lindsey, with Eadred as first bishop, with its “Bishop-stool,” and a

church of stone built for the See at Sidnacester or Stow. This lasted

for 192 years; then, in 870, the Danes overran Mercia and burnt Stow

church and murdered Bishop Berktred. Then from 876, when England was

divided between Edmund Ironside and Canute, Lincoln became an important

Danish borough. This period is marked by the number of streets in Lincoln

called ‘gates,’ and by the enormous number of villages in the county

ending in the Danish ‘by,’ which we find side by side with the Saxon

terminations ‘ton’ and ‘ham.’ The Danes held Lincoln certainly till 940,

during which time the province had no bishop. In 958 Lindsey was united

with Leicester, and the “Bishop-stool” was fixed at Dorchester-on-Thames

till, in 1072, it was transferred to Lincoln, and the province of Lindsey

became part of the diocese of Lincoln under Remigius, the first Bishop

of Lincoln. _Stow_ being burnt in 870, remained in ruins till about

1040, when Eadnoth, seventh Bishop of Dorchester, rebuilt it, using the

materials of the older church as far as they would go, as may be seen

in the lower part of the transept walls. He probably built the massive

round-headed tower arches. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife, Godiva,

helped liberally both with the building and the endowment. The Early

Norman nave, and the upper parts of the transepts are probably the

work of Bishop Remigius (1067-1093) who, we are told, “re-edified the

Minster at Stow.” The chancel is late Norman, of the best kind, and,

together with the rich doorways in the nave, may be assigned to Bishop

Alexander (1123-1147) whose great west doorway at Lincoln is of similar

workmanship. A few Early English windows, and the Perpendicular central

tower, are all that has been added later, so that the church is of the

eleventh and twelfth centuries. The tower rests on pointed arches, whose

piers come down inside the angles formed by the old Norman arches, which

remain, and are visible below and outside the pointed arches, and give

the very remarkable appearance of double arches supporting the central

tower.

[Sidenote: COTES BY STOW]

A curious loop-moulding goes round the western Norman arch, and is used

also on a window in the south transept, and a similar moulding is found

at _Coleby_. The chancel is surrounded by an arcade, and a stone seat

runs all round. In restoring the church in 1864 Mr. Pearson left part

of the north-west pier of the tower untouched, in order to show the red

traces of the fire of 870, and in the north transept a mass of burnt

stone is visible behind the organ. This is close to a fine and very

early doorway which opens into the north aisle from the west side of

the transept, while on the opposite side, in an altar recess, remains,

fast fading, are seen of a fresco depicting scenes from the life of

St. Thomas à Becket. The steep rood-loft steps start four feet above

the pavement from the angle of the north-east pier close by. The stone

groining of the chancel has been renewed on the old pattern obtained from

several of the old stones which were found built into the walls; and in

underpinning the walls in order to replace the groining, the bases of

pillars were discovered, showing that a previous chancel with aisles had

been either built or else begun and abandoned. The small windows and

lack of buttresses give the outside a plain appearance, but the three

Norman doorways are rich, and there is a great majesty about the Norman

work of the spacious and lofty interior. The font, a very early one, is

octagonal, and rests on eight circular shafts. It was late in the evening

when we left this wonderful church, but we had only two miles to go to

see the beautiful old rood screen at _Cotes-by-Stow_, which is half way

between _Stow_ and the Ermine Street. It is approached by a field road,

and stands at the entrance to a farm, but the little chapel, built of

small, rough stones, is so shut in by trees that the top of its double

bell-turret is the only part of it visible. Inside is a round tub font,

with a square base, some old oak benches, four on one side and three on

the other; and, what no one would expect in such a tiny remote chapel,

the most beautiful of old Perpendicular rood screens, with exquisite

carving, and with the overhang complete. Moreover, the gallery is still

approachable by the ancient rood loft staircase. The loft is about three

feet wide, and there is a tiny pair of keyhole windows, each about ten

inches by two, set close together, in the south wall to light it. Of

ordinary windows the whole south side has but two, though there are four

of different sizes with old leaded panes on the north side. The doorway

is Early English. The building was restored in an excellent manner in

1884 by Mr. J. L. Pearson, who put back the original altar slab with its

unusual number of six crosses.

[Illustration: _Stow Church._]

We recrossed the field, and passing between _Ingham_ and _Cammeringham_,

climbed the hill, and, getting on to the ridge, turned to the right for

Lincoln, distant about eight miles. As we went along we looked down on

_Brattleby_ and _Aisthorpe_, on _Scampton_ and the _Carltons_, and passed

through _Burton_ to the minster city.

The mists were rising in the flat country westwards, and the ripening

corn gave a colour to the fields below us, and, as the sun set at the

edge of the horizon, it seemed to us that it would be extremely difficult

to find any road in England more striking, or from which so fine a view

could be seen for so many miles on end.

[Sidenote: FISKERTON]

Of the three eastern roads one goes by _Greetwell_ and _Fiskerton_ to

_Gautby_ and _Baumber_. _Cherry Willingham_ lies just to the north where,

till 1820, the vicarage was a small thatched house at the end of the

village.

_Fiskerton_ was given by Edward the Confessor to Peterborough, and the

gift still holds. The charter was copied by Symon Gunton in his famous

history of Peterborough, of which he was prebendary from 1646 to 1676,

and at the same time rector of Fiskerton, where Dean Kipling was also

rector in 1806. Only a few years ago what is either the original charter

of the Confessor or an early copy was discovered in the cathedral

library. The unique chronicle of the abbey and monastery called

‘Swapham,’ and written in MS., was saved from Cromwell’s soldiers who

were burning all the books, etc., by Gunton’s son, who tucked it under

his arm, saying that it was exempt from destruction being a Bible, as any

fool could see. That, too, is now one of the treasures of the cathedral

library. The Fiskerton Register is one of the earliest, beginning in

1559. In that book is the following entry for 1826:—

“The driest summer known for the last 20 years. Conduit water taken from

Lincoln to Boston. No rain from April Fair 20th to the 26th of June.

The river was deepened this summer, packet went to Boston by the drain;

prayers for rain during Hay harvest.”

_Barlings Abbey_ lies three miles to the north-east, across Fiskerton

Moor. It was founded in 1054 for Premonstratensian canons by Ralph de

Hoya, and a grand tower, 180 feet high, was still standing in 1710.

Half-way to Gautby we reach _Stainfield_, founded by Henry Percy at about

the same time for Benedictine nuns.

At _Gautby_ was once a hall belonging to the Vyner family, and in the

church are monuments dated 1672 and 1673. Here, too, is a slab in memory

of F. G. Vyner, who was one of the party so infamously murdered by Greek

brigands in 1870.

From here _Baumber_ is quickly reached. This church, whose massive tower

base is Norman, is the burial place of the Duke of Newcastle’s family.

Here, too, an old hall once stood, close by, in Sturton Park, just below

a spur of the South Wold.

[Sidenote: THE SNELLAND SHREW]

From Baumber, going four miles south, we reach Horncastle. The

main eastern road from Lincoln to Wragby is described later in the

Louth-to-Lincoln route. It is the Roman road to Horncastle. At the

seventh milestone, shortly after passing Sudbrooke Holme, the house of

Mr. C. Sibthorpe, where the garden is one of the most beautifully kept

and tastefully planted of any garden in the county, the road divides to

the left for Market Rasen, by _Snelland_, _Wickenby_, _Lissington_, and

_Linwood_; and to the right for Wragby, where it again divides for Louth

on the left, and on the right for Baumber and Horncastle. The third of

the roads takes a north-easterly direction by Dunholme to Market Rasen.

All this route between Nettleham and Linwood lies in the flat strip of

country some eight miles wide, which runs up from the Fens to the Humber,

narrowing in width after reaching Brigg, from whence it is drained by

the river Ancholme and the Wear dyke, which discharge into the Humber

opposite Read’s Island, between South Ferriby and Winteringham. Half way

across this flat-land, on the way to Market Rasen, and two miles to the

left of the Wragby road, is _Snelland_. This place is called in Domesday

Book Esnelent, and also Sneleslunt; and we find that land was held here

by Thomas of Bayeux, Archbishop of York and chaplain to the Conqueror,

while another land-holder was William de Percy, founder of Whitby Abbey

and commander of the fleet which brought the Conqueror over. It is now

the property of the Cust family. The following rhymed marriage entry is

in the Snelland register for the year 1671, Mr. R. S. having presumably

married a well-known scold:—

“The first day of November

Robert Sherriffe may remember

That he was marryed for all the days of his life

If God be not merciful to him and take his wife.”

[Sidenote: THE ST. POLL TOMBS]

North of _Snelland_ is _Snarford_, which we should visit, not so much to

see the four inner arches of the church tower, which are Norman, as to

inspect the wonderful tombs of the St. Poll family. The earliest is in

the chancel, where Sir Thomas lies on an altar tomb in plate armour, with

helmet under his head, bearing as crest an elephant and castle; he wears

both sword and dagger, and holds in his hand a book. They seem to have

been a literary family, for his wife, in a long flowing robe with girdle

and a peculiar head-dress, also holds a book, and the side panels have a

projection on each face also supporting a book. A son and a daughter are

kneeling below; and a canopy supported on pillars and having a richly

moulded cornice bears, over each pillar and between the pillars, kneeling

figures—ten in all. Shields of arms enclosed in wreaths form further

decorations, but both this, which is dated 1582, and the other large

monument in the north chantry are much defaced, and the heavy canopies

look as if they might fall and destroy the figures beneath them at any

moment. It is no good shouting “police!” but where is the archdeacon?

This north chantry has been boarded off from the church, which has an

ugly effect. The monuments in it are first to Sir George St. Poll, 1613,

and his wife Frances, daughter of Chief Justice Sir Christopher Wray of

Glentworth, whom he married in 1583. This is very large, being eleven and

a half feet in height and width. Sir George reclines on his elbow; he,

also, is in armour, his wife is by his side; and below is their little

daughter Mattathia, with cherubs weeping and resting their inverted

torches on skulls. The wife, after putting up this monument, took for

a second husband Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick; and opposite to the

monument of herself and her first husband she re-appears as the Countess

of Warwick, on a round tablet, with medallions of herself and the earl,

her second husband, who died in 1618. His first wife was Lady Penelope

Devereux, by whom he had two sons, Robert and Henry, and two daughters,

Lettice and Essex. A brass on the south side of the chancel has a quaint

Latin inscription, by the Snarford parson, telling us that Frances Wray,

after marriage, was twelve years without issue, and then had a daughter

who died before reaching her second birthday, “cut off while on her way

to Bath.” This was a terrible loss of a most precious treasure, and he

mentions that he had christened her Mattathia, and goes on to tell us

that the “mother passes no day without tears of poignant anguish,” and

ends with “How I wished, alas in vain, that I the writer, instead of

thee, had been the subject of a funeral elegy. John Chadwick, Sept. 9th,

1597.”

“Hos tibi jam posui versus Mattathia Sct. Poll,

Qui primum in sacro nomina fonte dedi.

Quam vellem (at frustra), te nempe superstite, scriptor

Essem funerei carminis ipse mihi.”

[Sidenote: THE BUSLINGTHORPE BRASS]

Close to the St. Poll monument in the chantry is a stone in memory of

George Brownlow Doughty, 1743, who married a Tichborne heiress, and took

the name in addition to his own. From Snarford, less than four miles

brings us to _Buslingthorpe_, where is a Crusader’s effigy, which, like

the priest at Little Steeping, had been turned upside down and used as

a paving-stone, possibly for the sake of saving it from destruction.

This may be Sir John de Buslingthorpe, _c._ 1250. But the great treasure

of the church is a brass half-effigy on a coffin-lid, which also had

been buried, and was only recovered in 1707. This represents a knight

in armour, holding a heart and wearing remarkable scaled gauntlets. The

inscription in Norman French is without date, but reads: “Issy gyt Sire

Richard le fiz sire John de Boselyngthorp,” and is probably not later

than 1290. This is earlier than the somewhat similar brass in Croft

Church, which is assigned to 1300 or 1310, but is not so early as the

fine brass of Sir John d’Abernoun at Stoke d’Abernon in Surrey, which is

dated 1277. Anyhow, it is the earliest in Lincolnshire. From here, less

than four miles brings us back on to the Market Rasen road at Linwood,

only two miles from Rasen.

[Sidenote: LINWOOD]

Instead of going by _Snarford_ and _Buslingthorpe_ we might have reached

Rasen by a more direct route from _Snelland_ through _Wickenby_ to

_Lissington_. Here the road divides, the right hand going to _Legsby_

and _Sixhills_, and then turning left-handed to join the Louth and Rasen

road at _North Willingham_; or, if the day is clear, the traveller can

go straight on from _Sixhills_ and climb the Wold, which with a rise of

one hundred feet will give him a view and bring him to the crown of the

same road at _Ludford_. The left-hand road from _Lissington_ will bring

us to Rasen viâ _Linwood_. This is a pretty road just elevated above the

flat, whence the church spire is visible for a long way. This interesting

church, dedicated to St. Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, A.D. 251, is of the

Early English period with Perpendicular tower. The brasses, which are

good, have been removed from the south chantry to the north aisle and

placed at the west end. We have John Lyndewode, wool stapler, and his

wife, under a double canopy, date 1419. In his shield are three Linden

leaves, which shows the name of the village to mean ‘the Linden (or

Limetree) wood.’ There is also one to their son John, a wool stapler,

dated 1421, and a figure of a bishop in the south chancel window,

probably commemorates another son William, who became Bishop of St.

David’s. A cross-legged effigy of a knight has been torn from its matrix.

The old Lyndewode Manor once stood close to the church.

Continuing northwards for two miles we find ourselves at Market Rasen.

CHAPTER XIII

ROADS SOUTH FROM LINCOLN

The Foss Way—The Sleaford Road and Dunston Pillar on “The

Heath”—The Ermine Street and the Grantham Road on “The

Ridge”—Canwick—Blankney—Digby—Rowston—Brant-Broughton—Temple

Bruer and the Knights Templars and Hospitallers—Somerton Castle

and King John of France—Navenby—Coleby—Bracebridge.

Besides these three roads going east from Lincoln, there are three great

roads which run along “the ridged wold” northwards, and two going south;

but these two, as soon as they are clear of Lincoln, branch into a dozen,

which, augmented by five lines of railway, all radiating from one centre

and all linked by innumerable small roads which cross them, form, on the

map, an exact pattern of a gigantic spider’s web. Of this dozen the three

trunk roads southwards are the Foss Way to Newark in the flat country,

and the Sleaford road over “the heath,” both of which roads avoid all

villages (though the Sleaford road passes through Leasingham, described

in Chap. VIII., about two miles north of Sleaford, and has that curious

erection, _the Dunston pillar_, at the roadside about eight miles out

from Lincoln, described in the chapter on Nocton); and thirdly, the

Grantham road, on the ridge between the two, which has a village at every

mile. Others run, one to _Skellingthorpe_, one to _Doddington_ with its

interesting old Hall, which we will revert to shortly; one all down the

Witham valley to Beckingham on the border, going by _Basingham_ with

its ninth-century Saxon font, and _Norton Disney_ with its fine Disney

tombs and remarkable brass, also to be described later; and one to _Brant

Broughton_.

[Sidenote: CANWICK]

[Sidenote: ROWSTON]

A sign-post in Lincoln points to this village, because, though twelve

miles distant, there is nothing on the way; indeed you may follow up

the valley of the Brant River another six miles to its source near

_Hough-on-the-Hill_, and then go on another six as it curves round

into _Grantham_, and not pass through anything but _Marston_, and

there is nothing to see there but the old seat of the Thorold family,

Marston Hall, now a farmhouse. All these are on the low ground to the

west. Then on the ridge itself is “the Ermine Street,” and east of the

Sleaford highway is a desolate road over “Lincoln Heath” to _Scopwick_,

where a stream, crossed by several single planks, runs right through

the village. East of this, another somewhat important road goes across

the low and once swampy ground south of Lincoln, where the Witham gets

through the gap in the cliff ridge to _Canwick_. Here the church, which

has a rich Norman chancel arch and arcade, and an Early English arcaded

reredos in the vestry, once a chantry chapel, rises, without any other

footing, from a Roman pavement; here, too, from the grounds of Mr. Waldo

Sibthorp’s house, Canwick Hall, where the cliff begins again, you get

a most beautiful view of the minster about two miles distant; indeed,

those who live near Lincoln and can see the minster may boast of a view

which for grandeur has few equals in the land. This walk from Lincoln

is a favourite one, and passes a well-planted cemetery of twenty-five

acres, part of which was taken from the common, which rejoices in the

delightfully bucolic name of “the Cowpaddle.” The road is really the

continuation of the Wragby road, and, curving down Lindum road passes

into Broadgate, then crossing the Witham and the Sincel dyke and the

intersection of the Midland and Great Northern Railways, crosses yet

two more lines before it reaches the cemetery. After Canwick the road

goes through _Branston_ and passes, near _Nocton_, _Dunston_, and

_Metheringham_, to _Blankney_. The hall here, the home of Mr. Henry

Chaplin, than whom no Lincolnshire man is better known or more popular,

is now occupied by Lord Londesborough. The church has a curious tomb-slab

to John de Glori, with a bearded head looking out of a cusped opening,

and a beautiful sculpture by Boehm of Lady Florence Chaplin. This is

one of the few churches in which the ringing of the Curfew-bell still

obtains. After _Blankney_ the road passes Scopwick and curves round

through _Digby_, _Donnington_ and _Rushington_ to Sleaford. Of these

villages _Digby_ is worth seeing, and so is _Rowston_, lying one mile

north of it. At _Digby_ the village cross has been restored, but with a

very indifferent top, and at the other end of the village is a curious

stone lock-up, like a covered well-head, and hardly capable of holding

more than one man at a time. Lingfield in Surrey has a larger one called

‘Ye Village Cage’; it has two steps up inside, and is capable of holding

a dozen people. The tower has three stages, Early English, Decorated and

Perpendicular. The south door is transition Norman, the north arcade

aisle and chancel Early English, the south arcade and aisle Decorated,

and the font, screen and clerestory Perpendicular. In this the six tall

two-light windows are distributed in pairs. _Rowston_, which is dedicated

to St. Clement, has a spire rising from a tall tower, so little wider

than itself that it may safely be said to cover less ground than any

tower in England, for it measures only five and a-half feet inside; it

is blank except for a rather heavy window in the upper stage. The first

thing that strikes you on entering is the extraordinary loud ticking of

the clock. It has to be stopped during service, as no one can compete

with it. The next thing is that the thirteen windows are all filled

with painted glass and of the same type, striking in design, though not

of quite first-rate excellence. One window has figures of the three

Lincolnshire saints—St. Guthlac, St. Hugh, and St. Gilbert. The church

is in very good order, having been recently restored, and some Saxon

stones with interlaced work have been built into the outside wall of

the chancel. It would have been better to have put these inside. But

there is inside a very good head of a churchyard or village cross, and

the base and broken shaft of one, possibly the same, is just outside

the churchyard. This head is of the usual penthouse form, with a carved

figure on either side; it was found quite recently built into a cowshed.

In the nave the pillars are all different. The vestry was over the burial

chapel of the Foster family; later it was, as was so often the case, used

for a school. A beautiful bit of an old carved oak screen separates it

now from the north aisle. A heavy timber floor cuts across the top of the

tall tower arch, and below a very curious pillar stands against one side

of the arch. An Early English priest’s door, with a flat-arched lintel,

is in the south wall of the chancel. It is impossible to walk round the

slender tower, as a garden wall runs into it on both the north and south

sides, leaving part of the tower in a neighbouring garden, the owner of

which once claimed half the tower as his property, and considered that

he had a right to pierce a door through it for easier access to his pew.

[Sidenote: GRANTHAM ROAD]

We have now but one road south of Lincoln to describe—for what we have

to say about Norton Disney and Nocton can come afterwards; this is the

Grantham road, a road curiously full of villages mostly perched on the

western edge of the ridge, whilst the Ermine Street running so near it

on the east has no villages at all on it, and the Sleaford road over

“the Heath,” a little to the east of the Ermine Street, is, as we have

said, just as bare. The number of roads in Lincolnshire which have no

villages on them is very remarkable, though not hard to explain. We have

already, in treating of the roads from Grantham, through the villages

of _Manthorpe_, _Belton_, _Syston_, _Barkstone_, _Honington_, _Carlton

Scroop_, _Normanton_, _Caythorpe_ and _Fulbeck_, brought the account

of this road northwards as far as _Leadenham_. Here the Sleaford and

Newark main road crosses it, and _Leadenham_ spire is a fine landmark

for all the neighbourhood. It is to be noted that, common as the Danish

termination ‘by’ is in all parts of the county, the Saxon ‘ton’ just

about here and on the west side generally, is even more frequent.

This spire is crocketed, but has no flying buttresses. The nave and

arcades are lofty, with bold clustered columns, and the doorways, which

are quite different in style, are both very good. There is some good

Flemish glass, and a stone monument of the Beresford family has long been

in use as an altar. _Wellbourn_, on an Early English tower, has one of

those ugly, Perpendicular “sugar loaf” spires, with a sort of bulge in

the middle, and that to a worse degree than at Caythorpe. The nave and

aisles are the work of John of Wellbourn, the munificent treasurer of

Lincoln in the middle of the fourteenth century.

[Illustration: _Brant Broughton._]

[Sidenote: BRANT BROUGHTON]

[Sidenote: THE VILLAGE SMITH]

To the right and left of Wellbourn are two places which should not be

missed. _Brant Broughton_, with its beautiful spire, and _Temple Bruer_,

where are the remains of a preceptory of the Knights Templars. The church

of _Brant Broughton_ (pronounced Bruton) is a beautiful structure, and

all in perfect order, the magnificent lofty chancel having been built

to match the rest of the church by Bodley and Garner in 1876. To take

the woodwork first, the tall handsome screen and the chancel stalls

are in memory of the late rector, Canon E. H. Sutton, as is also the

lofty carved font cover, whose doors open and display three carved and

coloured figures, one being St. Nicholas, the patron saint, with the

three children in a pickling tub, whom he is said to have raised to life

after their murder by a butcher, as is so quaintly represented in the

famous black font in Winchester Cathedral. The roof, which in the first

instance was of a higher pitch, as seen by the string course, is an exact

reproduction, both in shape and colour, of the old Perpendicular one

which it replaced, and is in appearance upborne by figures of angels with

outspread wings. The three tall arches of the aisle arcades and chancel

are Early English, two of the pillars are octagonal. These arches are

very high, though not so high as those in _Hough-on-the-Hill_, which

are of about the same date. The three-light clerestory windows, five on

each side, and the roof to the nave, were added with the upper stages

of the tower in 1460, and the Perpendicular aisle windows are large and

handsome, and have a transom running across the tracery in the head of

each. They are filled with most interesting glass, good in design, and

mostly good in colour, all of which was made in the village by the late

Canon Sutton, who also filled several windows in Lincoln Minster. The

ironwork in the church was also made by Mr. F. Coldron and Son at the

village forge, where excellent work is always being done and sent to all

parts of the country. All the work inside the church, and the chancel

in particular, is beautifully finished in every detail, and bears the

impress of being all the work of one mind, and as that mind was Bodley’s,

and he took the utmost pains with it, it need hardly be said that it

comes very near perfection.

Among the things to notice are the long stone responds of light clustered

pillars between each clerestory window, which support the roof timbers.

This is seen in other churches in this part of the county, but is

otherwise by no means common. Another is that at intervals on the outer

moulding of some of the doors and windows are carved rosettes which give

a very rich effect and are, I believe, unique. The excellent lectern

eagle is a copy of one at Oxborough in Norfolk, and a similar one is in

the neighbouring church of Navenby. Thus far I have spoken of the inside,

but it is the outside of the church which gives the greatest delight,

for it is a very perfect specimen, built of good stone, of the finest

proportions, and richly ornamented. The nave and chancel have each an

ornate parapet, while the nave is also embattled and pinnacled. The tower

has the most glorious base-mouldings, and the pinnacled and crocketed

spire soars up 175 feet. Both tower and spire date from about 1320, the

period of the Flowing Decorated style. But the two porches, which are

a little later, are absolute gems of architecture. They have groined

roofs, their parapets are pierced and ornamented, thickly set with

gargoyles, and supported by canopied buttresses. Over the entrance of the

south porch is a figure of Christ seated, and in the north porch is an

ornamental roof ridge of carved stone. These porches are as beautiful as

anything can well be; altogether it would be hard to find in a country

village anything architectural, more pleasing than _Brant Broughton_

Church.

[Illustration: _The Ermine Street at Temple Bruer._]

[Sidenote: THE ERMINE STREET]

We passed through the village, visited the Coldron forge, and then by a

road constantly turning first right then left, with fields of scarlet

poppy or brilliant yellow corn-marigold on either hand, and with a stormy

sky which ever and anon brought us a squall of rain, we drove across

the flat country eastwards till we crossed the railway and reached the

ridge. Climbing this, we come to _Wellbourn_, on the Grantham road, and

going on eastwards over Wellbourn Heath we reach the Ermine Street,

here only a wide grassy track. This we cross and go forwards through a

well-cultivated, but almost uninhabited plain, till we see on the left

a farm road leading over a field to a big farmyard, in the middle of

which stands a solitary square-built Early English tower, with windows

irregularly placed, and steps on one side. This is all that is left of

a Preceptory of the Knights Templars, founded early in the thirteenth

century in the reign of Henry II. by the Lady Elizabeth de Canz at

_Temple Bruer_.

[Sidenote: THE TEMPLARS]

One does not always like to confess one’s ignorance, but I am sure many

people may read that word “preceptory” without at all knowing what

it may mean, or what the difference is between a _Preceptory_ and a

_Commandery_. So we may as well say something about the Templars, and the

kindred order of the Hospitallers. And here I may say that I am indebted

for my facts to a paper read at Lincoln by Bishop Trollope in 1857.

The first, then, of these, in point of time, were the Hospitallers.

But as they long outlived the Templars we will take the history of the

Templars first. This famous order, half-religious and half military, was

founded in 1118, during the first Crusade, by nine French knights, whose

object was to protect pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. At

first they were bound by laws of poverty, and were termed “Poor Knights,”

but Baldwin II., having given them lodging in a part of his palace at

Jerusalem, the abbot of the Temple Convent, which adjoined the palace,

gave them further rooms to live in, and from this they got the name

“Templars.” In 1128 they adopted a white distinctive mantle, to which a

red cross on the breast and on their banner was added in 1166. The fame

of their feats of arms and chivalry induced many members of noble houses

to join the society, and land and treasure were so freely offered them

that they became known for their wealth, as at first for their poverty.

Their head was termed “Grand Master,” and their headquarters were in

Palestine, until they moved, in 1192, to Cyprus. In other countries each

section or “Province” was governed by a “Grand Preceptor.” They first

came to England in the early part of Stephen’s reign, and had a church

in London, near Southampton Buildings, called “The Old Temple,” from

which they migrated in 1185 to the spot where the circular Temple Church

still stands. Their wealth was the cause of their downfall, morally

and physically; and the monarchs, both of France and England, becoming

jealous, Philip IV., in 1307, seized and imprisoned every Templar in his

dominion, 200 in number, on the vague charges of infidelity, sorcery,

and apostasy, and eventually confiscated all their property and burnt

more than fifty of them alive, relegating the rest to perpetual seclusion

in some monastic house. Edward II. did much the same here, except that

there were no burnings or executions. Old Fuller, the historian, was

probably thinking of those in France when he says in his inimitable way:

“Their lives would not have been taken if their lands could have been

got without; but the mischief was, the honey could not be got without

burning the bees.” In 1312 the Pope, Clement V., who was under Philip’s

thumb at Avignon, and had helped him to coerce Edward II., abolished the

order, which was found to be possessed of no less than 9,000 manors and

16,000 lordships, besides lands abroad. Grants were made to favourites,

and also to those who had claims for some benefaction to any Templar’s

estate. Thus Robert de Swines (Sweyne’s)-thorp was to receive 3_d._ a

day for food, and another 3_d._ for himself and 2_d._ for his groom; and

his daughter, Alice Swinesthorpe was to have for life (and she drew it

for thirty years) “7 white loaves, 3 squire’s loaves, 5 gals of better

ale, 7 dishes of meat and fish on Saturday for the week following, and an

extra dish (interferculum) of the better course of the brethren, at Xmas,

Easter, Whitsuntide, Midsummer, The Assumption, and Feast of All Saints,

and 3 stone of cheese yearly and an old gown of the brethren.”

[Sidenote: THE HOSPITALLERS]

Twelve years later Edward granted the whole of their property to the

similar society of “Knights Hospitallers.”

This society came into existence some fifty years before the Templars,

and originated in a band of traders from Amalfi, who got leave from the

Caliph of Egypt to build a church and monastery for the Latins near the

Holy Sepulchre, in order to look after the sick and poor pilgrims who

used to come in large numbers to Jerusalem. Soon a hospital, or guest

house, was added, and a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist; but

the society did not take the distinctive name of Hospitallers, or guest

receivers, until 1099, when Jerusalem was in the hands of the Christians.

They then assumed a white cross as their badge, and were termed Knights

of the Hospital, Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John.

In 1154 they procured a Papal bull, relieving them from payment of

tithes, and exempting them from all interdicts and excommunications,

and giving them other privileges, but binding them never to leave the

order. These marks of Papal favour seem to have made them presumptuous,

and great complaints soon arose of their insolence. They were accused

before the Pope, but they managed to clear themselves and to keep their

privileges. Hence we find that _Temple Bruer_, which came to them after

the destruction of the Knights Templars, still remains exempt from

the payment of tithe, and from episcopal jurisdiction, as being extra

parochial.

[Sidenote: KNIGHTS OF MALTA]

The head of the order had the title of “Grand Prior,” and when the

Christians were expelled from Palestine, the Knights retreated to Cyprus,

after which they took from the Turks the island of Rhodes, which they

held against the Sultan until 1522, when Solyman II., after a long siege,

forced them to capitulate. A few years after that, the Emperor Charles

V. gave them a home in Malta, and they thenceforth were commonly called

Knights of Malta. They fortified the island, and imported soil to make

it productive, and putting to sea with their galleys they made constant

war upon all Turkish vessels. Solyman at length determined to drive them

out of Malta. He despatched a fleet of 180 galleys, carrying 30,000 men.

The Turks took the fort of St. Elmo, but with a loss of 8,000 men; and

when the Emperor sent an army to assist the Knights, La Valette, the

Grand Prior, a famous leader, drove the Moslems off. After this they

remained in Malta until the order was dissolved at the close of the

eighteenth century by order of Napoleon, when most of the Knights took

service in the French army. Whilst the society existed it had branch

establishments in England, where the chief or Prior took precedence of

all the barons, and had a seat in Parliament. Their establishments were

called “commanderies”—while those of the Templars, who were ruled by

“Grand Preceptors,” were called “preceptories.” Of these there were three

in Lincolnshire: at _Willoughton_, four miles south of Kirton in Lindsey;

at _Aslackby_, two miles south of Falkingham; and at _Temple Bruer_; all

three situated close to the Ermine Street or “High Dyke” as they call

it, on Lincoln Heath, and it is from the heath that one of them gets its

name _Templum de la bruère_, or the temple on the heath, shortened into

_Temple Bruer_.

[Sidenote: TEMPLE BRUER]

The lands of these Knights Templars, which were handed over by Edward II.

in 1324 to the Knights Hospitallers, were all sequestrated in England

at the time of the dissolution of the monastic and religious houses in

1538, and, like so many other Lincolnshire estates, granted by Henry

VIII. to his relative, Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. Henry, with his

wife, Katherine Howard, dined at Temple Bruer when on his way to Lincoln

in 1541. The buildings then were of considerable size, and the circular

church, whose pillar bases have been laid bare, a little to the west of

the existing tower, was fifty feet in diameter. It is modelled on the

plan of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, having, as may still be seen in

London, Cambridge, and Northampton, a corridor running round between the

circular arcade of the church and the outer wall. The existing tower is

of the Early English period, fifty feet high, and having three storeys;

the walls of the lower storey are decorated by arcading on two sides, and

the rising levels of the floor indicate that an altar was placed at the

east end, so that it was probably the domestic chapel of the Grand Prior.

The roof of this and the next storey is vaulted, and above the third

storey was a parapet. The rooms were reached by a winding staircase in

the north-west angle. A well nine feet in diameter, and never dry, was

in the precincts, and another, discovered in the eighteenth century, was

found to have in it three large bells. The Earl of Dorset, who owned this

interesting property in 1628, sold it to Richard Brownlow of Belton,

whose daughter and co-heiress carried it to the family of Lord Guildford,

and he sold it to the ancestors of Mr. Chaplin of Blankney.

[Illustration: _Temple Bruer Tower._]

[Sidenote: KNIGHTS AT RHODES]

It shows that the interest in the Order of the Knights of Jerusalem is

not yet extinct when we read the following, which appeared in _The Times_

of December 21, 1913:—

“HOUSE OF THE KNIGHTS AT RHODES.

“(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

ROME, _Dec. 23_.

“The _Tribuna_ announces that the House of the Knights at

Rhodes has been acquired for France by the French Ambassador at

Constantinople, M. Bompard. The house, which is one of the most

beautiful in the island, is a Gothic edifice dating from the

15th century, and was originally the residence of the French

Priors of the Order of Jerusalem.

“⁂ This appears to refer to the Auberge of the “Langue” of

France, with its shield-adorned façade in the famous street

of the Knights in Rhodes, which is still preserved in fair

condition. Under the Ottoman regime no Christian was allowed

to own a house or to sleep within the walled town of Rhodes,

and before the revival of the Constitution foreigners were

jealously excluded from the majority of the medieval buildings

of the city. It is probably due to this suspicious and

exclusive attitude that no such step as that just taken by

France has been attempted before. It is to be hoped that the

palace of the Grand Masters of the Order of the Hospital, which

ruled the island from 1309 until 1522, is now no longer to be

used as a common prison.”

[Sidenote: SOMERTON CASTLE]

From _Temple Bruer_ we return to the “High Dyke,” and, crossing it, make

westward for the Grantham road; but before we go along it, by _Boothby

Graffoe_ to _Navenby_, we must pause on the Ridge, or “Cliff,” as they

call it there, and look down on a solitary round tower on a slight

elevation about a mile across the flat plain which extends westward

from the Wolds to the Trent. This tower and its grassy mounds are all

that is left of a once fine stronghold, built, about 1281, by Antony

Bec, Archdeacon of Durham, second son of Walter Bec, Baron d’Eresby.

He was consecrated Bishop of Durham in the presence of Edward I., on

January 9, 1284, and he was wise enough, a few years later, when his

growing magnificence excited the jealousy of his sovereign, to present

_Somerton_ to Edward I., and it remained a royal castle for some three

centuries, passing afterwards through several families, among whom were

the Disneys of Norton and Carlton. Edward, son of Thomas Disney of

Carlton-le-Moorland having purchased it from Sir George Bromley, and

being succeeded in 1595 by his son Thomas, who having lost both his sons,

sold it to Sir Ed. Hussey. Hence we find that his son Charles, afterwards

Sir Charles Hussey of Caythorpe, is described in his marriage licence,

April 10, 1649, as Charles Hussey, Esq., of Somerton.

After the battle of Poictiers, in 1356, John, son of Philip of Valois,

King of France, was brought captive to London, together with his third

son Philip. Hence, after a short residence at the Savoy Palace, they

went to Windsor as guests of the King and Queen Philippa, and were

subsequently sent to Hertford Castle. Edward III. soon thought it wiser

to transfer them to Somerton, where they were placed under the custody

of William, Baron d’Eyncourt of Blankney, during the years 1359 and

1360. The expensive furnishing of the castle (_see_ Chap. XXXVII.) and

the provision made for the maintenance of the large number of the king’s

French suite, and of the officers and men who were appointed to guard the

prisoners, and the style of life there, the tuns of French claret, and

the enormous amount of sugar to make French bon-bons, together with the

subsequent history of King John, who, on being set at liberty, returned

in the most honourable way to England in 1363, because his son Louis, Duc

d’Anjou, had broken his parole as a hostage and left England for France,

is fully related by Bishop Trollope. King John died in 1364, at the

palace of the Savoy.

_Somerton Castle_, which we must now visit, was a fortified

dwelling-place with outer and inner moats, and with round towers at

each corner of an irregular parallelogram, only one remains now at the

south-west angle. This is forty-five feet high, and has three storeys—the

lower one vaulted, the highest covered with a conical roof and having two

chimneys, rising well above the plain parapet, which is still perfect,

and springs from a bold and effective moulding. Each floor is lit by

small lancet windows, the middle one much enlarged of late years, for

it is still inhabited, together with some building adjoining it on the

east, as a farm house. The large earthworks around the castle, which are

especially noticeable on the south, are very remarkable, and must be much

earlier than the castle, which seems to have been planted inside these

rectangular embankments, of which the northern side has been levelled,

probably at the time of the building. The earthworks are not Roman in

character, and are probably of very great antiquity. Outside these are at

least two round artificial hills, which have not been as yet explained

with certainty.

[Sidenote: NAVENBY]

Leaving the castle, and driving over the rough field road which leads to

it, we regain a highway which takes us up “the cliff” to the village of

_Navenby_. This is situated on a spur jutting out from the edge of the

cliff, with a deep little valley sweeping round on the south side and

breaking down into the plain. Nestling in the curve of the hill are some

picturesque farm buildings and stacks, and above is an old windmill;

whilst over the horizon peeps through the trees the spire of _Wellingore_

Church. The chancel of Navenby Church, as at Heckington, is as long

as the nave, and almost as high; indeed, this Decorated chancel is as

fine as any to be found, no other being built on at all so magnificent

a scale, except Hawton in Notts, and Heckington and perhaps Merton at

Oxford. The tower, which probably had a spire, fell in the eighteenth

century, and the whole church was restored about forty years ago, by

Kirk of Sleaford, who made the chancel roof of too high a pitch, and

kept the nave roof too low. The pillars in the nave, of which there are

two on each side, have shafts clustered round a central column, four

shafts of coursed masonry alternating with four light detached monolithic

shafts, all united under a circular capital. But the north-west pillar is

thicker than the others, and belongs to the latter part of the twelfth

century. The tower arch is a low one; the fine Decorated east window

of six lights, restored in 1876, has superb tracery, and is nearly as

fine as that at Heckington. There are four large chancel windows, and a

good Early English window in the south aisle. There is also a rood-loft

staircase, and a rood-loft with canopy, or ‘hang over,’ and a modern

rood-beam above bearing a large crucifix and two almost life-size figures

carved and painted. An octagon panelled font stands on a pedestal

of slender columns. The roof of both nave and aisles is painted. The

clerestory, added later, has five three-light windows. The east window is

filled with white glass, slightly toned, and is half hidden by a tapestry

screen used as a reredos, by no means beautiful, and twice as high as

it need be. The Jacobean pulpit and the fine copy of an old brass eagle

lectern, as at Brant Broughton, are to be noticed; but the main glories

of the church are in the chancel, where, besides the splendid windows,

there are, on the south side, three rich sedilia and a piscina; and on

the north, just east of the canopied arch for the founder’s tomb, in

which is now placed a trefoiled stone with Lombardic lettering of Richard

Dewe, priest, is a priest’s door and a very beautiful Easter Sepulchre.

This is only surpassed by those at Heckington, Lincoln, and Hawton, near

Newark. It has only one compartment, with three Roman soldiers, with

mutilated heads, below the opening, and above it, amongst the delicately

carved foliage of the canopy, are two figures of women. Few churches can

give more pleasure to the lover of church architecture than this; and its

fine position on the edge of the cliff, with the wide view over the plain

westward, makes a visit to Navenby very memorable.

[Sidenote: COLEBY]

Going on northwards along the cliff road we pass _Boothby Graffoe_, where

the old church was actually blown down, or, as the Wellingore register

has it, “extirpated in a hurricane,” in 1666—and come to _Coleby_. Here

is an early unbuttressed tower with a rude original arch over the door of

the tower staircase, and with two keyhole windows in the south side, as

in the early Lincoln towers or those at Hough-on-the-Hill, and Clee. Part

of the original tower arch is visible inside the tower, which is entered

from the nave through a very tall narrow arch supported by two very small

pilasters with plain rectangular caps.

[Sidenote: TREVENEN PENROSE]

The two arches of the north arcade are Transition Norman; those on the

south Early English, with good stiff foliage. The tall, plain porch had

once a room over it, and retains its richly moulded Transition doorway.

The font is of the same date, being a massive cylinder with Norman

arcading cut on it, and with four equidistant pillars which give it a

square appearance. The crocketed spire is a good one, Perpendicular in

style, and of better stone than the tower. The three lancet windows at

the east end are filled with good glass, and the seats are of oak with

poppy-heads throughout. The fellows of Oriel College, Oxford, to whom

the living belongs, helped in its restoration by Bodley and Garner in

1901. The wall at the west end of the south aisle, which runs up to the

tower and also forms the west side of the porch, as the aisle has no

window, is one long blank face, which has a singularly ugly look outside.

Inside, there are some good bench-ends, and there is an inscription by

Sir John Coleridge to the Rev. Trevenen Penrose, who spent the greater

part of a long life as vicar of the parish.

[Illustration: _Navenby._]

The Hall is a gabled house of 1628, built by Sir W. Lester, now the

property of the Tempest family, and having classic temples in the

grounds, one of them adapted from the Rotunda in the baths of Diocletian

at Rome.

_Harmston_, the next village, has a tower of the pre-Norman type, with a

mid-wall shaft to the window of the belfry in which are eight bells. A

brass plate commemorates Margaret Thorold who had a family of eight sons

and eleven daughters, and lived to be eighty.

[Sidenote: BRACEBRIDGE]

_Waddington_ has some very good Early English work in its clustered

columns and carved capitals. Here the string of villages, one at every

milestone, ceases, and we go on for three miles seeing the beautiful

minster tower in front of us on the height, and arrive at _Bracebridge_,

a very dark church, but with some most interesting Long-and-Short work

in the tower, in the angles of the nave, and in the south porch, and a

Norman west door to the tower, which is a very early one with mid-wall

shaft to the belfry window. The Norman north door is now blocked. There

is a curious rectangular opening, twice as wide as its height, in the

south aisle, near the porch, which allows a view between the pillars and

through the hagioscope or “squint” on the right of the chancel arch to

the altar. Another squint is on the left side of the chancel arch, which

is a very narrow and early one, through a thick wall.

The nave pillars, two on each side, are cylindrical with four banded

shafts attached. The north aisle and transept are modern. A fine

Transition Norman font is mounted on a new base, and on the pulpit is

still to be seen the old hour-glass stand, as at _Leasingham_; though

there and at _Belton_ in the Isle of Axholme it is attached to a pillar,

at _Sapperton_ and _Hammeringham_ it is on the pulpit. There is also an

old cracked Sanctus bell.

The road over the heath unites with the Grantham road near _Bracebridge_,

and runs into Lincoln by the Stonebow, and on up to the Minster Hill.

So much for the roads east, west, and south. The roads north of Lincoln

demand another chapter. But a few words about Nocton and Norton Disney

shall come first.

CHAPTER XIV

PLACES OF INTEREST NEAR LINCOLN

Nocton—Norton Disney—Doddington—Kettlethorpe.

NOCTON

As an instance of what the great Roman catch-water drain the “Carr-dyke”

effected, we may take the little village of Nocton, six miles south-east

of Lincoln. Here is a little string of villages—_Potter Hanworth_,

_Nocton_, _Dunston_ and _Metheringham_—running north and south on the

edge of a moor which drops quickly on the east to an uninhabited stretch

of fen once all water, but now rich cornland cut into long strips by the

drains which, aided by pumps, send the superfluous water down the Nocton

“Delph” into the Witham River. Along the extreme edge of the moorland

runs the “Carr-dyke” and intercepts all the water which would otherwise

discharge into the already water-logged lowlands, and so makes the task

of dealing with the fen water a possible one.

At _Potter Hanworth_ the Romans had a pottery. The church was rebuilt

in 1857, one of the bells was re-cast in memory of the Diamond Jubilee

of Queen Victoria, and on it were placed Tennyson’s lines from “Morte

d’Arthur.”

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils Himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”

On the same occasion the ringing of the Curfew bell, which had been

continued till 1890, was given up, and a clock with four faces put up

instead, which strikes the hours, but is not at all the same thing. Thus

one more interesting and historic custom has disappeared, which is much

to be regretted in this utilitarian and unimaginative age.

[Sidenote: THE D’ARCY FAMILY]

Domesday Book tells us that _Nocton_ was divided in unequal shares

between two landlords, Ulf and Osulf; on the land of the former there

was already a church with a priest in 1086. These owners had given place

to one Norman de Ardreci, written later de Aresci, and finally D’Arcy, a

companion of the Conqueror. Norman D’Arcy’s son granted the churches of

Nocton and Dunston to the Benedictines of St. Mary’s Abbey, York, also

some land to the Carthusians of Kirkstead Abbey, and himself founded a

priory at Nocton for canons of the Orders of St. Augustine, who first

settled in England in 1108. The buildings are quite gone, but the site

is still called the Abbey Field, and the vicarage is called the Priory;

the Priory well, whose water was said to be “remarkably good,” in 1727,

was only filled up about fifty years ago. Why couldn’t they have let it

alone, one wonders. To follow up the history of Nocton: in 1541 Henry

VIII. and Katharine Howard slept there.

The D’Arcy family and their descendants in the female line, whose married

names were Lymbury, Pedwardine, Wymbishe and Towneley, held the property

for three and twenty generations till the middle of the seventeenth

century—a good innings of 600 years. But the losses which the Civil War

brought about made it necessary for Robert Towneley, at the Restoration

in 1660, to sell the estate to Lord Stanhope, from whom it soon passed

by sale to Sir William Ellys, about 1676, and in 1726—by the marriage

of Sir Richard Ellys’ widow—to Sir Francis Dashwood; after whom, in

1767, it descended to a cousin, George Hobart, eventually third Earl of

Buckinghamshire. He altered Nocton considerably, pulled down the church,

which was too near the house, and set up a poor structure further off,

where the present church stands. He also spent much in draining Nocton

fen, and erected a windmill pump which raised the water and sent it into

the Witham, and worked well for forty years till it was superseded in

Frederick Robinson’s time (1834) by a forty-horse-power steam engine

which was found to pump the water faster than the fens could supply it.

The earl died in 1804; ten years later his daughter, Lady Sarah Albinia,

carried the estate to Frederick John Robinson, second son of Lord

Grantham, who became Prime Minister and was created Viscount Goodrich in

1827, and Earl of Ripon in 1833; and, as a member of Sir Robert Peel’s

cabinet, moved in the House of Lords the second reading of the Bill for

the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. In 1834 the house at Nocton was

burnt down, and the earl’s young son, afterwards Marquis of Ripon, laid

the foundation stone of the present house in 1841. The earl died in 1859,

and his widow, who survived him eight years, built in his memory the

present fine church, which was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. In 1889

Lord Ripon sold the estate to Mr. G. Hodgson of Bradford.

It is interesting to hear of a school being set up in 1793 at Nocton;

first as a private school by John Brackenbury of Gedney, grandson of

Edward Brackenbury of Raithby, near Spilsby, which was continued for

forty-six years after her father’s death in 1813, by his daughter

Justinia, who became Mrs. Scholey. In her time it was an elementary

school which Lady Sarah financed and managed, the children paying a penny

a week.

[Sidenote: DUNSTON PILLAR]

Another thing that was set up was a land lighthouse on Dunston Heath.

This was a lonely tract where inhabitants had not only been murdered

by highwaymen, but had even been lost in the storms and snow-drifts on

the desolate and roadless moor. Here then Sir Francis Dashwood set up

the Dunston Pillar, ninety-two feet high with a lantern over fifteen

feet high on the top. The date on it is 1751. The fourth Earl of

Buckinghamshire, who as Lord Hobart was Governor of Madras, took down the

lantern on July 18, 1810, and set up in its place a colossal statue of

George III. to commemorate the king’s jubilee.

[Sidenote: NOCTON HALL]

The granddaughter of the third earl, whose father (The Very Rev. H.

L. Hobart) lived at the Priory, being, _inter alia_, vicar of Nocton

and Dean of Windsor, and also of Wolverhampton, tells me that the mail

coaches used to pass the pillar and leave all the letters for the

neighbourhood at one of the four little lodges close by. She has several

interesting specimens of the work done by the Nocton School of Needlework

under the guidance of Justinia, whose family were remarkable for their

Scriptural as well as “heathen Christian names,” _e.g._, Ceres and

Damaris. Justinia herself always, as they say in Westmorland, used to

“get” Justina. These specimens include a very clever and faithful copy in

black silk needlework of an engraving by Hoylett from a picture by Thos.

Espin of old Nocton Hall, which was burnt down in 1834. The needlework

artist has done one of the trees in the picture most beautifully, but has

given the rein to her imagination by working in two fine palm trees in

place of the oaks of the picture. There is a sampler done at the vicarage

by the dean’s daughter, and inscribed:—

“Nocton Priory, 1839.

Louisa C. Hobart.”

And two large samplers with the usual pretty floral borders worked by

Justinia’s daughters, signed “Alice Scholey, 1832, and Betsey Scholey,

1848.” The latter has some rather primitive representations of the

old Hall and its two lodges; also the Vicarage and the School, and a

libellous portrait of Lincoln Minster. Alice Scholey was of a more

Scriptural turn of mind and apparently fond of birds, for she has owls

in the centre of green bushes, and pheasants or peacocks among her

flowers; but her central picture is the temptation, where Adam and Eve,

worked in pink silk, _au naturel_, stand on either side of a goodly tree

covered with fruit, a gorgeous serpent twining round the trunk, and one

remarkably fine plum-coloured apple temptingly within reach of Eve’s hand.

Certainly Justinia’s school was in advance of the time, but the art

needlework doubtless owed much to the interest taken in it by Sarah

Albinia, Countess of Ripon.

Samplers of the eighteenth century are now much sought after. I saw

one lately of 1791, on which a little mite of seven, in days when the

“three R’s” were taught along with the use of the needle in the good old

sensible way, had stitched in black silk letters:—

The days were long

The weather hot

Sometimes I worked

And sometimes not.

Seven years my age

Thoughtless and gay

And often much

Too fond of play.

The first stanza with its pathetic little picture is genuine enough, but

the second was manifestly dictated by her elders.

[Sidenote: SAXON ORNAMENT]

Among the treasures long preserved at Nocton was an Anglo-Saxon ornament

of great beauty (see illustration, Chap. XXII) in which three discs of

silver with a raised pattern of dragons, &c., and with pins four inches

long are connected by silver links so as to form a cloak-chain to fasten

the garment across the breast. The pins have shoulders an inch from

the sharp points to prevent their shaking loose. This for a time was in

a museum at Lincoln, and on the dispersal of the collection was bought

and presented to the British Museum, and is in the Anglo-Saxon room. In

the same room are kept the very interesting finds from the Anglo-Saxon

cemetery at _Sleaford_, consisting mainly of bronze ornaments and

coloured beads. The cloak-chain was found in the Witham at _Fiskerton_,

four miles from Lincoln, when the river was deepened in 1826.

[Sidenote: THE MASQUERADE]

Sir Charles Anderson, in his excellent Lincoln pocket guide, gives some

notion of the gaiety which distinguished Nocton in the eighteenth century

by quoting an account of a masquerade held there on December 29, 1767,

which begins:—

“Met at the door by a Turk, in a white Bearskin, who took our tickets.”

It is curious to note the use of the word Turk for any dark-skinned

person in a turban, for later in the list of dresses we have: “Mr.

Amcotts, a Turk, his turban ornamented with diamonds. Mr. Cust, a Turk;

scarlet and ermine; turban and collar very rich with diamonds. He

represented the Great Mogul,” who would have been little pleased to be

called a Turk, I imagine. Amongst more than seventy other dresses which

are described we find: “Lady Betty Chaplin: a Chinese Lady, in a long

robe of yellow taffety; the petticoat painted taffety. Her neck and hair

richly ornamented with diamonds.”

But rich jewellery was the order of the night whether it was proper to

the costume or not, so we find “Lady Buck: a Grecian Lady, scarlet satin

and silver gauze; her neck and head adorned with diamonds and pearls.”

The host and hostess are thus described:—

“Mr. Hobart: ‘Pan.’ His dress dark brown satin, made quite close to his

shape, shag breeches, cloven feet, a round shock wig, and a mask that

beggars all description, a leopard skin over his back fastened to his

shoulder by a leopard’s claw. In his hand a shepherd’s pipe.”

“Mrs. Hobart; First “Imoinda,” a muslin petticoat, puffed very small,

spotted with spangles. The arms muslin puffed like a dancer. Her second

dress “Nysa” or “Daphne.” She came in footing it, and singing a song in

“Midas.” Muslin and blue ornaments; a white chip hat and blue ribbons.”

Several dancers had two costumes. Thus “Lord George Sutton. First a

Pilgrim; next a Peasant Dancer; pink and white.

Miss Molly Peart: a Peasant Dancer; same colours as Lord George.

Miss Peart: ‘Aurora’ Blue and White. The Moon setting on one side of her

head; the Sun rising on the other.

Miss A. Peart: a Dancer; pink and silver.”

Mr. and Miss Hales went as a Dutchman and “a Dutchwoman, brown and pink,”

and Mrs. Ellis as “a Polish Lady; pink and silver; a white cloak and a

great many diamonds.”

Another classic lady to match ‘Aurora’ was “Miss Manners: ‘Diana’ her

vest white satin and silver; her robe purple lute-string; a silver bow

and quiver: her hair in loose curls, flowing behind, and a diamond

crescent on her forehead.”

I should judge that the “Eyewitness” who wrote the account was a Mr.

Glover because of the minute particularity with which his own costume is

set forth, thus: “Mr. Glover: a Cherokee Chief; a shirt and breeches in

one, puffed and tied at the knees; a scarlet mantle, trimmed with gold,

one corner across his breast; scarlet cloth stockings; brown leather

shoes, worked with porcupine quills and deer’s sinews; a gold belt; gold

leather about his neck, and before like a stomacher, and over that a long

necklace and gorget; head-dress of long black horsehair, tied in locks of

coloured ribbons, a single lock hanging over his forehead; ear-rings red

and blue; plumes of black and scarlet feathers on his head; a scalping

knife tucked into his girdle; a tomahawk in his hand, and a pipe to smoke

tea with.”

Mrs. Glover went in black and yellow as a Spanish lady.

Then we have Henry the Eighth, a shepherdess, “a Witch with blue gown,

red petticoat and high crowned hat,” a friar in a mask, a Sardinian

knight, a Puritan, a sailor, “Lord Vere Bertie a very good Falstaff,” and

many Spaniards, among them “Dr. Willis: a Spaniard with a prodigious good

mask.”

THE NORTON DISNEY BRASS

[Sidenote: NORTON DISNEY]

_Norton Disney_ (= de Isigny, a place near Bayeux) was the home of a

family who lived here from the thirteenth century to nearly the end of

the seventeenth.

[Sidenote: THE BRASS]

The castle was in the field near the church, just across the road to the

west, but has quite disappeared, as has also the seventeenth century

manor-house. The church, which is well worth a visit, belonged to the

Gilbertines of Sempringham (_see_ Chap. IV.). The manor is now the

property of Lord St. Vincent, a title bestowed on Admiral Sir John Jervis

when he so handsomely defeated the Spaniards near the cape of that name

on the coast of Portugal in 1797. On opening the door you find that you

have to descend three steps into the church. Here the arcade consists

of two Norman arches, and one next the chancel smaller and of later

date. There are old carved benches without poppy-heads, and a very plain

old oak screen with rood stairs on the south side. The east window is

filled with stained glass in memory of the Lord St. Vincent who fell at

Tel-el-Kebir. The aisle has an old roof with carved bosses, and there is

a very deeply carved font. Outside, the look of the church is spoilt by

some very inharmonious additions, among these is the north chapel to the

chancel, inside which, on a rough brick floor, are the monuments which

give the church its interest; these are six in number, three to ladies.

One of them is a recumbent effigy in coif and wimple of “Joan d’Iseney,”

1300. One a curious sepulchral slab with the half-effigy of a lady at one

end and her feet showing at the other, with Norman French inscription

to “Joan Disney.” Another is the recumbent effigy of Hantascia Disney,

a name of frequent use in the family. Close to this on the ground is a

slab with the matrix of a fine brass of a knight under a canopy, while

another knight is on an altar tomb in the chancel. These are all of the

fourteenth century. But the most important is a brass of the sixteenth

century. This is a thick brass plate three feet by two, now set in an

oak frame and hinged so that one may see the reverse side on which is

engraved a long inscription in Dutch recording the foundation of a

chantry in Holland in 1518 by Adrian Ardenses and the Lady Josephine

Van de Steine. The face of this brass is divided horizontally into five

compartments, at the top is a pediment with a shield bearing the Disney

arms impaling those of Joiner in the centre, and on either side are

crests of the Disney and Hussey family—a lion passant regardant and a

stag couchant under a tree. The next compartment shows the half-length

figures with their names below of “Willm Disney Esquier” in armour

and helmeted, and “Margaret Joiner” his wife; he in profile, she

three-quarters face, they are kneeling at a faldstool with open books,

their hands joined in prayer, and between them on a scroll: “Sufferance

dothe Ease.” Behind him are four sons and behind her five daughters, all

with hands joined in prayer and with their names engraved on labels above

them. The next compartment shows three shields with the arms of Hussey,

Disney and Ayscough, in which Hussey has three squirrels sitting up,

Disney has three fleurs de lys, and Ayscough three asses coughing. In the

compartment below these are the half-length figures of Richard Disney,

full face in armour with very high shoulder-pieces, and his two wives who

are three-quarter face; and below are their names engraved thus: “Nele

daughter of Sr Wilton Husey Knyght, Richard Disney, Janne daughʳ of Sʳ

Wilton Ayscoughe Kᵗ.” Behind the first wife are ranged in two tiers her

seven sons and five daughters and their names were engraved above them.

“Sara, Ester, Judeth, Judet and Susan” are still there, but the sons’

names are gone; a bit of the brass which held them, about six inches by

one and a half, having been cut out, in connection, it is said, with a

lawsuit arising out of Richard Disney’s will. They can be supplied from

Gervase Holles’ MS. as William, Humphrey, John, Daniel, Ciriac, Zachariah

and Isaac.

The lowest compartment has this inscription:—

“The lyfe, conversacion and seruice, of the first above named Willm

Disney and of Richard Disney his Sonne were comendable amongest their

Neigbours trewe and fathefull to ther prince and cutree and acceptable to

Thallmighty of Whome we trust they are receved to Saluation accordinge to

the Stedfast faythe which they had in and throughe the mercy and merit

of Christ oʳ Savior. Thes truthes are thus sette forthe that in all ages

God may be thankfully Glorified for thes and suche lyke his gracious

benefites.”

[Sidenote: THE DISNEYS]

No dates are given, but William Disney’s will was proved in 1540; Richard

Disney’s in 1578; and that of Jane, the second wife of Richard, in 1591.

She was the younger sister of Anne Askew, who was so cruelly burnt for

heresy at Smithfield in 1546, because she had read the Bible to some

poor folk in the cathedral. She had previously been married to George

St. Poll of Snarford, by whom she had a son. Canon Cole, in his “Notes

on the Ecclesiastical History of the Deanery of Graffoe during the 15th

and 16th centuries,” says that “such demi figures as these are rare in

the 16th century, and helmets are seldom seen on the heads of knights

at this date,” and he shows an engraving of the brass, which, of course,

cannot be earlier than 1578. Richard Disney was one of those who profited

most largely by the dissolution of the monasteries. His first wife, Nele

Hussey, was grand-daughter of the unfortunate John Lord Hussey, who was

beheaded in 1537. Early in the next century one branch of the Disneys

removed from Norton to the next parish of Carlton-le-Moorland, where

Ursula Disney’s burial on August 22, 1615, is in the register; and her

husband, Thomas, removed to Somerton Castle, three miles to the east, the

lease of which he bought from Sir George Bromley, but, having no issue,

he sold it again to Sir Edward Hussey. Canon Cole also notices that it

was while the Disneys were at Carlton that the very unusual event in

Elizabethan times, the rebuilding of a great part of the parish church,

took place. Churches, as a rule, were getting dilapidated, and the

archdeacon’s visitations, preserved in the bishop’s registry at Lincoln,

some of which go back to the time of Henry VII., show many presentments

for absence of service-books, decay of walls and roofs, or churchyard

fences. For instance, at Bassingham in 1601 the churchwardens are cited

“for that their churchyard fences toward the street are in manie places

downe, by reason whereof their churchyard is abused by swyne and such

unseemlie cattell.”

The smiling youthful faces of the figures in this most remarkable brass,

and the modern-looking whiskers and beard and moustache, combined

with the helmet, give a singularly unancient look to the wearers, and

irresistibly call to mind what one has so often seen of late in the

twentieth-century pageants.

DODDINGTON HALL

Between the road which runs west from Lincoln to Saxilby, and the old

Roman Foss Way from Lincoln to Newark, which went on by Leicester,

Cirencester, and Bath to Axminster, a tongue of Nottinghamshire runs

deep into the county. South of this and north of the Foss Way are a few

villages of no particular importance, amongst them _Eagle_, which was

once a preceptory of the Knights Templars. But here also, within six

miles of Lincoln, is _Doddington_. This deserves especial mention for its

fine Elizabethan hall, which is still very much as it was three hundred

years ago.

[Sidenote: DODDINGTON HALL]

The station of Doddington and Harby is just over the border, and Harby

village is in Nottinghamshire. A statue over the doorway in the church

tower commemorates the fact that Here Queen Eleanor died. Edward I. was

holding a council at Clipston in Sherwood Forest in 1290 when the queen

was taken ill and was removed to the house of one of her gentlemen in

attendance who lived at Harby. After her death her heart was buried in

Lincoln Minster and her embalmed body was taken by stages to Westminster,

a beautiful cross being subsequently ordered to be set up at each resting

place, ten of the thirteen were either not completed or subsequently

destroyed, all those in the county being among the number. These were

at Lincoln, Grantham, and Stamford. The only three Eleanor crosses that

have survived the abominable destruction of all beautiful things from

which the country suffered, first at the hands of Henry VIII.’s minister

Cromwell, and then from the acts of Parliament passed by the iconoclasts

of the Reformation, and finally by the soldiery of the Civil War, are at

Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham.

[Sidenote: AND ITS OWNERS]

The first owner of Doddington Manor that we know of was one Ailric, in

Edward the Confessor’s time, who gave it as an endowment to the newly

built Abbey of Westminster. The family of Pigot held it under the abbot,

paying a rent of £12, and the estate remained with them till 1486, after

which Sir John Pigot, having no heir, his widow sold it to Sir Thomas

Burgh of the Old Hall, Gainsborough, and his family 100 years later sold

it, in 1586, to John Savile, M.P. for Lincoln; but when, seven years

later, he ceased to represent the town, he sold it to Thomas Taylor, for

many years registrar to the Bishops of Lincoln. He was a wealthy man,

and at once set to work to build the present hall, which was finished in

1600. It is built of red and black brick with stone quoins and mullions,

and is approached by a stone gateway with two brick storeys above it and

three gables. It stands between two quadrangles, with gardens in that on

the west, and with a cedar-planted lawn on the east, and the E-shaped

house is surmounted by three octagonal brick turrets with leaden cupolas.

It is 160 feet long and seventy-five feet deep on the wings. There is no

superfluous ornament, all being solidly plain but harmonious outside,

and with fine stately rooms inside. The hall is fifty-three feet by

twenty-two, and the long gallery on the third floor ninety-six feet by

twenty-two, the house being all one room thick. A good deal of internal

decoration—oak panels, a staircase, and marble chimney-pieces, and heavy

architraves over the doors—was the work of Lord Delaval about 1760. The

pictures are numerous, mostly family portraits, one being of Lord Hussey

of Sleaford, beheaded after the Lincolnshire rebellion, 1536. At the

south end of the long gallery is a group by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Thomas Taylor died in 1607, and his son in 1652, when the estate devolved

on his niece, Lady Hussey of Honington. Her husband, whose great uncle

was the man beheaded by order of Henry VIII., was fined as a Royalist

in 1646 in the enormous sum of £10,200, of which £8,759 was actually

paid—half of it in his lifetime, and the rest by his widow and his

eldest son’s widow, Rhoda, who had for her second husband married Lord

Fairfax. The accession to her uncle’s estate at Doddington just two years

after she had cleared this huge debt on Honington must have been truly

welcome to Lady Hussey, but she only lived to enjoy it for six years,

and was succeeded by her grandson, Sir Thomas Hussey, who lived till

1706. Then his title passed to Sir Edward Hussey of Caythorpe and his

estate to his three daughters, the last of whom, Mrs. Sarah Apreece, by

will dated 1747, settled it on her daughter, Rhoda, the wife of Captain

Francis Blake-Delaval, R.N., who had large estates in Northumberland,

Seaton Delaval, Ford Castle near Flodden Field, and Dissington. The

estate remained with the Delavals till 1814, when Edward Hussey Delaval,

a learned man of science and an F.R.S., died, and was buried in the nave

of Westminster Abbey. Lord Delaval held the property for nearly forty

years and spent much on the house, but to spite his brother Edward he

had the meanness to cut down all the timber of any value. His youngest

daughter was the beautiful Countess of Tyrconnel who died in 1800, and to

her daughter he left Ford Castle. He himself died at the age of eighty at

Seaton Delaval, and was buried in the family vault in St. Paul’s Chapel,

Westminster Abbey.

His brother Edward was only one year younger, but lived to the age of

eighty-five. Then, in 1814, Seaton Delaval went to his nephew, Sir Jacob

Astley, but Doddington to his widow and daughter, the latter of whom

became Mrs. Gunman. The mother survived the daughter, and in 1829 it was

found that they had left all their property to a friend, Colonel George

Ralph Payne Jarvis, who had served in the Peninsular War, and whose

grandson, Mr. G. Eden Jarvis, is the present owner.

KETTLETHORPE

[Sidenote: KETTLETHORPE]

The tongue of Nottinghamshire, mentioned above, runs into the county as

far as Broadholme, near Skellingthorpe, within five miles of the city.

The northern boundary of this tongue is the Saxilby road, between which

and the Trent is _Kettlethorpe_, which has an interesting history, though

the present hall was reconstructed in 1857 by Colonel Weston Cracroft

Amcotts, father of the present Squire of Hackthorn, who dropped the

name of Amcotts after his father’s death in 1883, and handed over the

Kettlethorpe estate to his brother Frederick, whose widow is now lady of

the Manors of Kettlethorpe and Stow.

The name takes us back to the invasions of Ketil the Dane, and the old

spelling of Ketilthorp is therefore the correct one.

In 1283 Sir John de Kewn was the owner. Later it passed to the De Cruce

or De Sancta Cruce or De la Croix or De Seynte Croix family.

In 1356 John De Seynte Croix, son of William de la Croix, conveyed the

manor and advowson to Sir Thomas Swynford, Knight, one of a family who

had held land of the Darcys at Nocton in the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries.

Sir Hugh de Swynford was employed in his wars by John of Gaunt, son of

Edward III., and he died in 1371. His widow, Katharine, being placed in

charge of John of Gaunt’s children, became his mistress and had four

children by him who were afterwards legitimised, she took the name of

Beaufort, and of her sons one became Earl of Somerset, one Duke of

Exeter, one Bishop of Lincoln and of Winchester, and then Cardinal

Beaufort, whilst Joan became Countess of Westmorland. Katherine Swynford

was called “Lady of Ketilthorpe.” In 1394 John of Gaunt’s second wife,

Constance of Carlisle, died, and in 1396 he married Katherine at Lincoln,

and her title in Deeds of that time is “The Lady Katherine, Duchess of

Lancaster, Lady of Ketilthorpe.” Her father was Sir Payne (Lat. Paganus)

Roelt, and her sister Philippa is said to have been the wife of Geoffrey

Chaucer.

John of Gaunt died in 1399 at Lincoln, and Katherine, dying four years

later, was buried on the south side of the Angel Choir, her son Henry

being at that time Bishop of Lincoln. Later, the tomb of her daughter,

who died in 1440, was placed near her. The tombs were defaced in the

Civil War. The Swynfords remained owners of Kettlethorpe for 150 years;

now only a fourteenth century gateway and a portion of the moat remain.

[Sidenote: THE AMCOTTS FAMILY]

Sir William Meryng was the next owner, and in 1564 it passed from the

Meryngs to John Elwes, who in 1588 conveyed it to W. Meekley, whose

successor sold it to Gervase Bellamy, of Luneham. He died in 1626, and

his heirs were his two daughters, _Mary_, who married Gervase Sibthorp

of Luneham, ancestor of the Sibthorps of Canwick, and _Abigail_, whose

husband, Charles Hall, became owner of Kettlethorpe. His son, Thomas,

married for his second wife the widow of Vincent Amcotts, of Harrington,

who had died in 1686, and their son left the property to his nephew

Charles Amcotts, of Amcotts, in the Isle of Axholme. He, in 1762,

purchased from Lord Abingdon the manor of Stow, once the property of the

Bishops of Lincoln. He enclosed the lordship, and, dying in 1777, his

two sisters inherited. The husband of the survivor of these sisters,

Wharton Emerson, of Retford, had assumed the name of Amcotts, and in

1797 was created a baronet. He died in 1807, and his daughter Elizabeth

married Sir John Ingilby, and their son, known as Sir William Ingilby

Amcotts, held both the Amcotts and Ingilby baronetcies inherited from his

grandfather Sir Wharton Amcotts, and from his father Sir John Ingilby.

He died in 1854 and the baronetcies died with him, but the estate passed

to his sister Augusta, wife of Robert Cracroft of Hackthorn, who took

the name of Amcotts. His son, Weston Cracroft Amcotts, was Member of

Parliament for Mid-Lincolnshire 1866-1874. He it was who reconstructed

the hall which Sir William Ingilby Amcotts had allowed to get into

disrepair, and rebuilt the tower of West Keal church, which had fallen.

He died in 1883, and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son Edward

Weston Cracroft of Hackthorn.

For most of my facts about Kettlethorpe and Doddington I am indebted

to the exhaustive papers by Rev. Canon Cole, Prebendary of Lincoln,

contributed to the Lincoln Architectural Society’s Journal, to whom also

I owe valuable information about the brass at Norton Disney, which we

visited together, and also a pleasant and profitable hour in the minster.

CHAPTER XV

HERMITAGES AND HOSPITALS

SPITAL-ON-THE-STREET

A little lonely hermitage it was,

Down in a dale, hard by a Forest’s side,

Far from resort of people that did pass

In travel to and froe: a little wyde

There was a holy chappell edifyde,

Wherein the hermite duly went to say

His holy things each morne and eventyde.

SPENSER, _Faerie Queene_. I. I. 34.

_Spital-on-the-Street_ is an ancient hospital situated twelve miles

north of Lincoln on the Roman Ermine Street, which had its origin in

a Hermitage. The Hermits or “Eremites,” dwellers in the Eremos or

wilderness, commonly placed their habitats in remote spots, though some

stationed themselves near the gates of a town where they could assist

wayfarers with advice and gather contributions at the same time for

their own support; others dwelt by lonely highways in order to extend

hospitality to benighted wayfarers. A hermitage on the “Ermine Street”

between Lincoln and the Humber would be of the latter sort. For the

Street runs in a bee line for two-and-thirty miles through an absolutely

tenantless country. Villages lie pretty continuously a few miles distant

on either side, but with the exception of Spital itself the Street passes

through nothing till it arrives within five miles of its termination.

The hermitage would therefore be a welcome asylum to a belated traveller

on a stormy night and the sound of the chapel bell, or the gleam of the

hermit’s rushlight through the darkness would be just salvation to him.

Probably such a picture was in Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote:—

How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

The chapel attached to the hermitage was one of four churches in

Lincolnshire dedicated to St. Edmund King and Martyr.[4] A licence was

granted by Edward II. for land and rent to be appropriated by the Vicar

of Tealby for the payment of the chaplain; and, by a document signed

at Tealby in the year 1323 and witnessed by nearly all the dignitaries

of the Cathedral of Lincoln, the foundation was placed under the

jurisdiction of the Lincoln Dean and Chapter. Ten years later we find

the hermitage called “_Spital_-on-the-Street,” so that its uses had

already been enlarged, though we have no documentary evidence of this.

All we know of, is the building of a house for the chaplain by John of

Harrington in 1333.

[Sidenote: THOMAS DE ASTON]

In 1396 Richard II., “at the request of his dear cousin John de

Bellomonte, grants to Master Thomas de Aston, Canon of Lincoln, leave

to newly build a house adjoining the west side of the chapel of St.

Edmund the King and Martyr at Spitell o’ the Street, for the residence

of William Wyhom the Chaplain and of certain poor persons there resident

and their successors,” and before the end of the fourteenth century it

had buildings sufficient for the maintenance of these poor persons. As

such it escaped in Henry VIII.’s time, but in the sixteenth century the

property was seized by Elizabeth for her own use in the most barefaced

manner and sold by her. The Sessions for the Kirton division of Lindsey

were for many years held in the chapel, but subsequently it fell into

disrepair and was pulled down by Sir William Wray in 1594, and a new

sessions house built close by, on which was this Latin couplet,

Hæc domus odit amat punit conservat honorat

Nequitiam pacem crimina jura bonos.

In 1660 Dr. Mapletoft, of Pembroke College, Cambridge, being appointed

Sub-Dean of Lincoln and also Master of the Spital Hospital, at once

rebuilt the chapel and set to work to improve the revenue, and when he

became Dean of Ely in 1668, he retained his Mastership of Spital, and

so well did he and his next-but-one successor, Chancellor Mandeville do

their work, that, whereas it had sunk to a master and two poor persons to

whom he paid 2_s._ each, they restored it to its complement of seven poor

people and bought land for it, which so increased in value that, when

the Charity Commissioners took the Spital in hand in the reign of Queen

Victoria, the revenues were estimated at £959, which was nearly all of it

being misappropriated.

[Illustration: _Wykeham Chapel, near Spalding._]

[Sidenote: THE NEW SCHEME]

[Sidenote: MAPLETOFT’S INSCRIPTION]

In 1858 a new scheme was drawn up, and now seven alms-people of each sex

receive £20 a year, and besides other annual payments £5,500 has been

spent out of the Spital funds on the Grammar School at Lincoln and on

founding and maintaining a middle-class school at Market-Rasen called

after the Spital’s founder _The De Aston School_. Of the old hospital

at Spital only the chapel built by Mapletoft in 1662 remains; a plain

structure with its east end to the road where the entrance door is, the

altar being at the west end. Below the small square bell-cot is a stone

bearing this inscription:—

Fui Aᵒ Dni 1398 ⎫

Non Fui 1594 ⎬ Domus Dei et Pauperum

Sum 1616 ⎭

Qui hanc Deus hunc destruat.

G.P. 1830.

This means:—

I was in 1398 ⎫

I was not in 1594 ⎬ The House of God and of the poor

I am in 1616 ⎭

Whoever destroys this house may God destroy him.

This means that it was founded by De Aston as a chantry and hospital in

1398,[5] pulled down by Wray in 1594 and rebuilt by Mapletoft in 1661.

The mason who carved the date has transposed the two last figures in 1661.

G.P. should be J.P. for John Pretyman, the last “Master.”

CHAPTER XVI

ROADS NORTH FROM LINCOLN

Kirton-in-Lindsey—The Carrs—Broughton—Brigg—The North

Wolds—Worlaby—Elsham—Saxby-All-Saints—Horkstow—South

Ferriby—Barton-on-Humber—St. Peter’s and St. Mary’s—Greater

care of Churches.

Of the three roads north from Lincoln we have spoken of the road on the

ridge which is the continuation of the Cliff road on which we travelled

from Navenby to Lincoln. The view is the notable thing on this road, for,

though it looks down on a series of small villages below its western

slope, Burton, Carlton, Scampton, Aisthorpe, Brattleby, Cammeringham,

Ingham, Fillingham, Glentworth, Harpswell, Hemswell, Willoughton,

Blyborough and Grayingham, all in a stretch of fourteen miles, it passes

through nothing of importance but _Kirton-in-Lindsey_. This Kirton is

a very old place, the manor being once held by Piers Gaveston, the

favourite of Edward II., and later by the Black Prince. The office of

Seneschal was filled at one time by the Burgh family of Gainsborough.

The church is an interesting one, and has a richly carved and moulded

west doorway. Leading from the nave to the tower is a very massive double

Early English arch, resting on a large circular pillar, and two thick

responds. The south doorway is like the western one, richly carved with

tooth moulding. The porch is used as a baptistry. On the north wall of

the nave is a wall-painting representing the seven sacraments and blood

flowing from the crucified Saviour to each.

[Sidenote: “CLIFF” AND “CARR”]

The road east of Ermine Street goes through any number of villages, for

it goes on the low ground, and each parish runs up to the Ermine Street

and has its portion of high ground or “cliff.” Normanby Cliff, Owmby

Cliff, Saxby Cliff, etc., and from the west side each village does the

same, so that we have in succession Brattleby, Ingham, and Hemswell

Cliff. The winds on the ridge apparently, which “extirpated” the church

of Boothby Graffoe, have always deterred people from building on the

height; but none of the places on this low road which occur regularly at

intervals of two miles are of any special importance except Glentham,

which will be noticed later. We will therefore run along the middle

road, the grand old Roman Street, which begins at Chichester and, as

seen on the map, goes through the county north of Lincoln as straight as

an arrow for over thirty miles. At the twelfth mile we pass Spital, and

when, after eighteen miles we get to the latitude of Kirton-Lindsey on

the cliff road, we shall find that the branch road to the right, which

goes to Brigg, takes all the traffic, and the Ermine Street for seven or

eight miles is disused. So, turning off, we pass _Redbourne_ Hall and

_Hibaldstow_, the place of St. Higbald, who came to Lincolnshire across

the Humber with St. Chad to bring Christianity to the Mercians in the

seventh century. This parish runs up to the ridge, and in the middle of

it is an old camp at Gainsthorpe on the “Street.” At Scawby Park, with

its fine lakes, the property of the Sutton-Nelthorpes, we turn eastwards

and reach Brigg. This, once a fishing place on the Ancholme River, is now

the one market town of all this low-lying neighbourhood. Roads from the

four villages of _Scawby_, _Broughton_, _Wrawby_ and _Bigby_ unite here,

and the great Weir Dyke or “New River Ancholme” which runs from the river

Rase to the Humber goes through it. It is eleven miles from Bishopsbridge

on the Rase to Brigg, and seven from Brandy Wharf, whence boats used to

run to meet the Humber boats at Ferriby Sluice, ten miles north of Brigg.

Hereabouts the fens are called “carrs.” We noticed the term “carr dyke”

for the Roman drain near Bourn, which runs from the Nene to the Witham;

and the map along the whole course of the Ancholme, which runs north for

twenty miles, is covered with “carrs.” The villages are at the edge of

the Wold generally, but they all have their bit of fen and all are called

by this name, Horkstow carrs, Saxby carrs, Worlaby carrs, Elsham carrs,

etc.

_Carr_ is a north country word, and has two distinct meanings in

Lincolnshire.

1. The moat-like places which originally surrounded the inaccessible

islets, with which the Fenland at one time abounded; but now used chiefly

of low-lying land apt to be flooded.

2. A wood of alder, ash, &c., in a moist boggy place, _e.g._, “Keal

Carrs,” near Spilsby.

A third meaning is less common, viz., the humate of iron or yellow

sediment in water which flows from peaty land.

[Sidenote: BROUGHTON AND BRIGG]

Of the four parishes above mentioned which meet at Brigg,[6] _Broughton_

on the Ermine Street is worth a visit. The pre-Norman church and

tower, like _Marton_, has a good deal of herring-bone work, and, like

_Hough-on-the-Hill_, an outer turret containing a spiral staircase. There

is a small rude doorway, and as at Barton, the tower with its two apses

probably formed the original church.

The present nave is built on the Norman foundation, and the cable

moulding is visible at the base of two of the pillars. There is a chapel

in the north aisle, and on the north side of the chancel a good altar

tomb with alabaster effigies of Sir H. Redford and his wife, 1380, and

a fine brass on the floor of about the same date. This chancel was once

sixteen feet longer. In another meanly built chantry is a monument to

Sir Ed. Anderson, 1660. In Broughton woods, as at Tumby, the lily of the

valley grows wild. North of Broughton the Ermine Street becomes again

passable, and, after running some miles through a well-wooded country,

is crossed by the railway at Appleby Station, whence it becomes a good

road again, but again falls into disuse when the road turns to the left

for _Winterton_, a large village in which three fine Roman pavements were

ploughed up in 1747. Here we have a large cruciform church with a very

early tower. Afterwards the Street continues, a visible but not very

serviceable track, to _Winteringham Haven_, the Roman “Ad Abum.”

[Sidenote: OLD BOAT OF BRIGG]

In _Brigg_ we had hoped to see the old boat which was dug out near the

river in 1886, it is forty-eight feet long and four to five feet wide,

hollowed out of a single tree, and could carry at least forty men over

the Humber, though not perhaps across the sea. Its height at the stern

was three feet nine inches, and it was six inches thick at the bottom.

The tree trunk was open at the thick or stern end, and two oak boards

slid into grooves cut in the sides and bottom to make a stern-board.

It probably had bulwark-boards also, certainly it had three stiffening

thwarts, and the stern end had been decked, as a ledge still shows on

either side on which the planking rested. One very interesting feature

in it was that the boat had been repaired, with a patch of oak boarding

six feet by one foot, on the starboard side, the board being bevelled

at the edges and pegged on with oak pins. A similar boat made out of a

huge oak tree is in the portico of the British Museum. In this, which is

fifty feet long and four feet wide, tapering off a little at either end,

both the ends and two thwarts are left solid. The latter are not more

than six inches high, but sufficient to add considerably to the strength

of the hull. The boat is three inches thick at the gunwale and possibly

more at the bottom, and has no keel. But this most interesting relic of

Viking days has been removed from Brigg, for what reasons I know not, to

the Museum at Hull, and is no longer in the county. A British corduroy

road or plank causeway was also found below the mud from which the boat

was dug out, and is therefore probably of greater age, though such a

mud-bearing stream as the Humber can make a considerable deposit in a

very short time. This fact is illustrated by the process of “warping,”

which is described in the chapter on the Isle of Axholme.

_Brigg_, without its old boat, has little to detain us, so we can pass to

_Wrawby_, and then desert the main road, which goes east through a gap in

the Wold to _Brocklesby_, and turn northwards to _Elsham_, where we come

up against the most northerly portion of the “Wolds” as distinguished

from the “Cliff” or Ridge which lies more to the west. The main road

or highway to _Barton_ runs right up the hill and crosses the Wold

obliquely, and, as usual, being on the high ground, exhibits no villages

in the whole of its course, but we will turn sharp to the left and take a

byway which goes by “the Villages” of which we shall pass through no less

than half a dozen in the six miles between Elsham and the Humber.

At _Elsham_ is the seat of Sir John Astley. The church has a rich tower

doorway with curious sculptured stones on either side.

[Sidenote: SAXBY AND HORKSTOW]

Any road which runs by the edge of a curving range of hills is sure

to be picturesque; and the continuation of the Wolds south of Elsham,

after the Barnetby Gap, where the railway line gets through the Wolds

without tunnelling, with the string of villages all ending in “by,”

Bigby, Somerby, Searby, Owmby, Grasby, Clixby, Audleby, and Fonaby,

which lead the traveller to _Caistor_, affords pleasant travelling. But

it does not come up in varied charm to this western edge of the Wold,

which goes farthest north, and ends on the plateau which overlooks

the Humber near _South Ferriby_. On this route the first village from

_Elsham_ is _Worlaby_, and whereas _Elsham_ had once a small house of

Austin Canons founded by Beatrice de Amundeville before 1169, and given

by Henry VIII. at the Dissolution to the all devouring Duke of Suffolk,

_Worlaby_ had its benefactor in John, first Lord Bellasyse, who founded

in 1670 a hospital for poor women, of which the brick building still

exists. The twisting road with its wooded slopes and curving hollows is

here extremely pretty. We next reach _Bonby_, and soon after come to

_Saxby All Saints_. This is a really delightful village, and evidently

under the care of one owner, for all the houses are extremely neat and,

with the exception of two proud-looking brick-built houses of the villa

type, all have tiled roofs and buff-coloured walls. That the village

is grateful to the landlord and his agent, and is also, like Mrs. John

Gilpin, of a thrifty mind, is quaintly testified by the inscription on

a drinking fountain in the village, with a semicircular seat round one

side of it which tells how it was set up “in honour of the 60ᵗʰ year of

Queen Victoria’s reign, and of Frederick Horsley, agent for 42 years

on Mr. Barton’s estate.” Each of these parishes extends up on to the

Wold, and down across the fen, and the map shows this and marks Saxby or

Elsham “Wolds” as well as Saxby or Elsham “Carrs”; and in each village a

signpost points west “to the bridge,” which goes over the land drain and

the Weir Dyke.

In the next village of _Horkstow_, a big elm stands close to the gates

of the churchyard and parsonage. Here the fine air and the bright breezy

look of sky and landscape fill one with pleasure, and the snug way in

which the churches nestle against the skirt of the wold give a charming

air of peace and retirement. The church here is singular in its very

sharp rise of level towards the east. You mount up six steps from the

nave at the chancel arch, further east are two more steps and another

arch, and again further on, two more and another arch. It looks as though

the ground had been raised, for the capitals of the pillars on which

these last two arches rest are only four feet and a half from the floor.

The north arcade is transition Norman, the arches on the Norman pillars,

instead of round, being slightly pointed.

[Sidenote: QUAINT EPITAPHS]

A Colonel of the sixty-third regiment, who died in 1838, has a mural

tablet here, which tells us that “In the discharge of his publick

duties he was firm and just yet lenient, and as a private gentleman his

integrity and urbanity endeared him to all his friends.” This is almost

worthy to be placed beside that of the man who on ending “his social

career” is stated to have “endeared himself to all his friends and

acquaintances by the charm of his manner and his elegant performance on

the bassoon.” Curious, what things people used to think proper to put up

in churches! One of the oddest is at Harewood in Yorkshire, where, under

a bust of Sir Thomas Denison, who is represented in a wig, his widow

writes that “he was pressed and at last prevailed on to accept the office

of Judge in the Kings Bench, the duties of which he discharged with

_unsuspected integrity_.” Doubtless she meant with an integrity which was

above suspicion, but it reads so very much as if those who knew him had

never for a moment suspected him of possessing the virtue mentioned. For

other examples see Chapter V.

After _Horkstow_ we come to _South Ferriby_, where a chalk road leads

along the edge of the cliff towards a little landing stage on the water’s

edge, giving a pretty view over the wide estuary to the Yorkshire

continuation of the Wold, and the little village of _North Ferriby_

opposite.

The church of South Ferriby, which is dedicated, as many coast churches

are, to St. Nicholas, the patron Saint of children and fishermen, has its

nave running north and south, and a bit railed off at the north end for

the altar, though that is now placed at the south end.

The name suggests a ferry over the Humber, but the locality seems

to forbid this, for in no place is the Humber wider until you have

almost reached _Grimsby_, and from _Barton_ to _Hessle_, about three

miles further down stream, it is only about half the width, and there,

no doubt, there was a ferry. The reason of this great width is that

the Humber has made inroads here and washed away a good deal of land

which used to be between Ferriby Hall and the water. This being partly

deposited on the “old Warp” sand bank, once the breeding place of many

sea birds, has formed a permanent pasture there, now claimed by the Crown

and called “Reads Island.”

[Sidenote: THE BARTON HOY]

A hundred years ago the ‘hoy,’ a sloop-rigged packet, used to take

passengers from Barton Waterside Inn, just north of Barton, to Hull; and

Sir J. Nelthorpe notes in his pocket book, under date August 9th, 1793.

“arrived at Scawby after a very bad passage over the Humber, having been

on the water five hours, and at last forced to run on shore in Barrow

Haven, not being able to make Barton, owing to the negligence of the

boatmen in not leaving Hull in time; my horses, seven in number, remained

in the boat from four o’clock in the morning till seven at night, before

they could be landed.”

Coming back from the Cliff Edge road, we turn up the hill for

_Barton-on-Humber_, and from the top of the Wold, which here comes to an

end, we get a really beautiful and extended view in all directions. But

we must now speak of Barton, with its two old churches.

BARTON-ON-HUMBER

[Sidenote: BARTON-ON-HUMBER]

_Barton-on-Humber_ had a market and a ferry when Domesday Book was

compiled, and was a bigger port than Hull. At the Conquest it was

given to the King’s nephew, Gilbert of Ghent, son of Baldwin Earl of

Flanders, whose seat was at Folkingham. The ferry is still used, and

the Hull cattle boats mostly start from Barton landing-stage, but most

of the passenger traffic is from the railway pier at New Holland, four

miles to the east. The town is a mile from the waterside. It has two

fine churches, of which St. Peter’s is one of the earliest in England;

curiously one of the same type of Saxon church is also at a Barton,

Earl’s Barton in Northants, and not far from it is another of similar

date, at Brixworth, which is held to be the most noteworthy of all the

early churches in England. Barnack and Wittering in the same county

are also of the same style and of the same antiquity, and at Dover, at

Bradford-on-Avon, and at Worth and Sompting in Sussex are others similar.

Stow, near Lincoln, Broughton near Brigg, and Hough-on-the-Hill, and

the two Lincoln towers and Bracebridge, are of similar age, but these

last, like Clee and so many in the neighbourhood of Grimsby, Caistor and

Gainsborough, have little but their tower or part of their tower left

that can be called Saxon, while at Stow, and some of the churches in the

other counties mentioned, there is more to see of the original building.

The last restoration of St. Peter’s, Barton, in 1898, has put the church

into good condition and left the old work at the west end much as it was

a thousand years ago; probably the church at first was very like what we

may still see at _Brixworth_. The tower outside is divided into panels by

strips of stone, which go deep into the walls and project from the rubble

masonry, as at Barnack. This has been aptly termed “Stone carpentry,” but

cannot really be a continuation in stone of a previously existing method

of building with a wooden framework, such as we see in the half-timbered

houses of the south of England, because that method of building was

later. It is possibly a method imported from Germany; certainly the

double light with the mid-wall jamb came from Northern Italy to the

Rhenish provinces, and may have come on to England from thence. Hence it

has been termed “Teutonic Romanesque.”

[Illustration: _The Avon at Barton-on-Humber._]

[Sidenote: A SAXON CHURCH]

[Sidenote: ST. PETER’S, BARTON]

Of the four stages of the tower the lowest has an arcading of dressed

stone, as there is at Bradford-on-Avon, and on the east, south and west

sides a round-headed doorway, and on the north a triangular-headed one,

with massive “Long-and-Short” work. The next stage exhibits triangular

arcading with double lights and a massive baluster and capital under a

triangular arch. The third stage has no arcading, but a similar two-light

window. The fourth stage is not Saxon but early Norman in style. From

the west of the tower projects a sort of annexe, fifteen feet by twelve,

of the same width as the tower and cöeval with it, having quoins of

“Long-and-Short” work, this is pierced with two small rude lights north

and south, and with two circular lights on the west. These circular

lights are of extraordinary interest, for they still have in them,

across the top of the upper opening and at the bottom of the lower one,

a portion of the old original Saxon oak shutter, perforated with round

holes to let in light and air, a thing absolutely unique. A chancel,

whose foundations have been recently discovered, projected from the tower

eastward, and just below the floor, near the north wall, is a curious

bricked chamber, which might have been a small tomb.

[Illustration: _St. Peter’s, Barton-on-Humber._]

[Sidenote: ST. MARY’S, BARTON]

The tower has four doorways irregularly placed and all differing from

each other: it is fitted up for daily morning service, for which it has

been used intermittently for over a thousand years; for no doubt the

original church consisted simply of the tower and the two chambers east

and west of it. At present, from the interior of the spacious Decorated

nave, with its added Perpendicular clerestory, when you look up at the

west end and see the rude round-headed arches of the first and second

stages of the tower, and the double triangular-headed light of the next

stage, all of which come within the nave roof, you see at the same time

two deep grooves cut in the tower face for the early steep-pitched roof.

These start from the double light and finish by cutting through the

upright stone strips which run like elongated pilasters up the whole

height of the tower on either side. The tower and its annexe is of such

absorbing interest that one hardly looks at the rest of the church, or

stops to note its beautifully restored rood screen with a new canopy to

it, which serves to hide the wide ugly chancel arch. But we shall perhaps

be able to make up for this if we go on to St. Mary’s Church, which was

the church of the people of Barton, and served by a secular priest, St.

Peter’s being an appanage of Bardney Abbey. The churches both stand high,

and are quite near one another. St. Mary’s was a Norman building, as

the north arcade testifies; the south arcade was rebuilt in the Early

English period, to which the massive tower also belongs, the parapet

being later. Once the nave and chancel had a continuous roof till the

clerestory was added, and were of the same width, and built of brick and

stone intermingled and set anyhow. The four-light windows in the chancel

are handsome. The north arcade has five round arches, and one, at the

west end, pointed. The south arcade has only four arches, but larger and

with slenderer columns, consisting of eight light shafts round a central

pillar. On the south the chantry chapel extends the whole length of the

chancel, and has beside the altar an aumbry and, what is very unusual in

such a chapel, sedilia. The aisles are wide and out of proportion to the

building in both churches. The east window is white, with one little bit

of old glass in it, and on the floor is a full-sized brass of Simon Seman

Sheriff of London, in Alderman’s gown. Some Parliamentarian soldiers’

armour is in the vestry of St. Peter’s. There are also two fine oak

chests, one hollowed out of a section of a large tree with the outer slab

of the tree several inches thick as a lid. A similar, but smaller, chest

is in Blawith church vestry, near Coniston Lake, Lancashire.[7]

[Illustration: _St. Mary’s, Barton-on-Humber._]

[Sidenote: INTEREST IN CHURCH HISTORY]

In Barton St. Peter’s the Rector has provided a very full account of

the history of the church, for which all who visit it must be extremely

grateful.