CAMBRIDGE COUNTY GEOGRAPHIES
GOLNSHIRE
CAMBRIDGE COUNTY GEOGRAPHIES
General Editor : F. H. H. GUILLEMARD, M.A., M.D.
LINCOLNSHIRE
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
FETTER LANE, E.G.
C. F. CLAY, MANAGER
TOO, PRINCES STREET
Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO.
lUtpjifl: F. A. BROCKHAUS
gorfe: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
All rights reserved
Gro v\\ e\Yv^>r A , V v- • |
Cambridge County Geographies
LINCOLNSHIRE
by
E. MANSEL SYMPSON,
M.A., M.D., F.S.A.
With Maps, Diagrams and Illustrations
Cambridge :
at the University Press ,•
"9"3
TO MY WIFE
Dfl
t> 70
CONTENTS
PAGE
1. County and Shire — The Word Lincolnshire . i
2. General Characteristics ... 4
3. Size. Shape. Boundaries . . .
4. Surface and General Features. . .10
5. Rivers and Watersheds ... 14
6. Geology ...... .26
7. Natural History ... .34
8. Peregrination of the Coast . . . . .41
9. Coastal Gains and Losses 47
10. Climate . . . . . . . . .51
11. People — Race, Settlement, Dialect . . . -57
12. Agriculture — Cultivations, Stock .... 64
13. Industries and Manufactures . . . . -73
14. Mines and Minerals ...... 83
15. Fisheries and Fishing Stations . . . .87
1 6. Shipping and Trade ...... 90
17. History of the County 97
i 8. Antiquities — Prehistoric, Roman, Saxon . . .112
19. Architecture — (a) Ecclesiastical . . . .117
20. Architecture — (b] Military . . . . .131
21. Architecture — (c) Domestic . . . . .138
22. Communications: Past and Present . . . 147
23. Administration and Divisions . . . . .154
24. The Roll of Honour 158
25. The Chief Towns and Villages of Lincolnshire . 169
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Lincoln from the South-east. Phot. S. Smith ... 2
The Fens in Winter. Phot. S. Jepson . 5
Iron Works, Lincoln ...... 7
Junction of the Trent, Ouse, and Humber. Phot. A. E.
Farrants ......... 9
A Wold Farm. Phot. E. Nainby 13
Tetney Lock. Phot. F. C. Cartledge . . . 17
High Bridge, Lincoln. Phot. S. Smith . . . .21
The Welland at Spalding. Phot. S. Jepson . . .22
Torksey Bridge. Phot. S. Smith . . . . .23
The Eagre running up the Trent at Gainsborough . 25
Bands of Gypsum in Newton Cliffs . . . -27
Bittern. Phot. S. Smith 37
Scawby Gull-Ponds. Phot. R. N. Lister . . . -39
Moorland, near Woodhall. Phot. Harrison ... 40
Skegness. Phot. Frith 43
Sand-hills and Foreshore at Sutton. Phot. A. James . 45
Skating on the Fens. Phot. S. Jepson . . . -57
Neolithic Implement . . . . . . -59
Lincolnshire Red Shorthorn Bull. Phot. ]. W. Ruddock 65
Lincolnshire Ram. Phot. J. W. Ruddock . . -67
Lincolnshire Shire Horse . . . . . .68
The Woad Industry: Balls drying in the Sheds. Phot.
S. Jepson ....... .70
A Field of Tulips at Spalding. Phot. S. Jepson . . 71
ILLUSTRATIONS vii
PAGE
Hardwick Hill .72
Wildfowling in the Fens. Phot. S. Jepson . . . 76
Cutting Reeds for Thatching. Phot. S. Jepson . . 77
Iron Works, Lincoln . . . . . . .80
Iron Works, Gainsborough . . . . . .81
Frodingham Iron and Steel Works: Scunthorpe. Phot. Frith 84
Fish-pontoon, Grimsby. Phot. F. C. Cartledge . . 89
Grimsby Docks. Phot. C. S. Hall . . . . .91
Immingham Dock, Grimsby . . . . . .92
The Docks, Boston. Phot. Dennis & Sons . . -95
Newport Arch, Lincoln. Phot. S. Smith . . . . 98
Entrenchment at Burnham . . . . . . 101
Jews' House, Lincoln. Phot. S. Smith . . . .103
The Angel Choir, Lincoln Minster. Phot. Frith . .105
Bronze Implements . . . . . . . .113
British Camp at Honington. Phot. Emary . . . 114
The Fossdyke. Phot. S. Smith 116
Lincoln Minster: West front. Phot. S. Smith . . 119
Parish Church, Grantham. Phot. Emary . . .171
Boston Church. Phot. Dennis & Sons . . . -123
Louth Church. Phot. A. James 125
Crowland Abbey. Phot. Frith . . . . . .127
Thornton Abbey . . . . . . . .129
Lincoln: the Castle Gateway. Phot. S. Smith . . 132
Tattershall Castle. Phot. S. Smith 135
St Mary's Guild House, Lincoln. Phot. S. Smith . -139
Grimsthorpe Castle. Phot. W. H. Redstone & Sons . 140
The Angel Hotel, Grantham. Phot. Emary . . .141
Old Hall, Gainsborough. Phot. ]. W. Ruddock . .142
Knaith Manor House. Phot. W. K. Morton & Sons . 144
Doddington Hall 146
Ermine Street. Phot. S. Smith 148
Crowland Abbey Bridge. Phot. Frith . . . .151
viii ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
John Wesley. Phot. Emery Walker . . . -159
Sir Isaac Newton. Phot. Frith 161
Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Phot. Emery Walker . -163
Statue of Sir John Franklin. Phot. W. K. Morton & Sons 165
Thomas Sutton . . . . . . . .167
Boston Grammar School. Phot. Hackford . . .170
Woolsthorpe Manor House . . . . . . .174
Grantham: the Old Grammar School. Phot Frith. . 175
Lincoln Minster, from the North-east. Phot. S. Smith . 179
Horse Fair, Lincoln . 180
Somersby Old Rectory. Phot. Carlton & Sons. . .185
St Mary's Church and Hill, Stamford. Phot. R. Nichols 186
The Church Walk: Woodhall Spa. Phot. Harrison . 190
Diagrams . . . . . . . . .191
MAPS
Lincolnshire, Physical Front Cover
„ Geological Back Cover
England and Wales, showing Annual Rainfall . . 55
Thanks are due to Messrs Clayton and Shuttleworth for the
illustration on p. 7 ; to the late Mr F. M. Burton for those on
pp. 25 and 72; to the Lincoln Museum for those on pp. 27, 59
and 113; to Mr N. Sutton-Nelthorpe for those on pp. 39 and 68 ;
to Messrs Ruston Proctor and Co. and Messrs Marshall, Sons and
Co. for those on pp. 80 and 81 respectively; to the Great Central
Railway Co. for that on p. 92; to the Rev. A. Hunt for that on
p. 101 ; to Mr Aymer Vallance for that on p. 129; to the Rev.
Canon Cole for that on p. 146; to Mr A. H. Tod for that on
p. 167; to the Rev. G. E. Mahon for that on p. 174 and to
Dr J. S. Chater for that on p. 180.
i. County and Shire. The Word
Lincolnshire.
The word county is derived from an old French
word meaning a province governed by a count (French),
or an earl (Saxon) as he was afterwards termed, and it is
applied generally to all the provinces in England, parti-
cularly to those which had been separate kingdoms in
Anglo-Saxon times, like Kent.
The last syllable of the word Lincolnshire is of
Anglo-Saxon origin, and means a portion of a state or
kingdom — a part shorn or cut off — by this reminding us
that Lincolnshire was once one of the provinces of the
great mid-England kingdom of Mercia. It is interesting
to note that nearly all the shires into which this kingdom
was divided have taken their names from their capital
towns or cities, i.e. Leicestershire. Out of 1 7 shires thus
formed the only real exception is Rutland, for Cheshire
is probably corrupted from Chestershire and Shropshire
from Scrobbesbury or Shrewsbury.
The sheriff — the shire-reeve or steward — is the king's
officer and his representative in the shire. Besides a sheriff
for the county, Lincoln City has one for itself, having
been given the dignity of a county in itself by King
s. L. i
2 LINCOLNSHIRE
Henry IV. The first part of the name of the county
is of course taken from the capital city of Lincolnshire
Lincoln from the South-east
—Lincoln. This name, like the city to which it belongs,
has a very ancient origin. By the British the town was
COUNTY AND SHIRE 3
called Lindon (Llyn being still the Welsh for a lake, and
dun or don for a hill-fort), meaning " the hill-fort by the
water." Ptolemy, writing about the year A.D. 120, says
that the two chief towns of the Coritani — a British tribe
which inhabited the present counties of Lincolnshire,
Rutland, Leicestershire, and part of Nottinghamshire,
Warwickshire, and Derbyshire — were Lindum (a Latin-
ized form of the name) and Ragae (Leicester). After the
Roman conquest of this part of Britain Lindum became
a Roman fortress and later a colony, with the title
Lindum, or Lindl colonla. By the Saxons it was called
Lindecollinam, or Lindocyllanceaster (ceaster or chester
generally indicating Roman stone fortifications). By the
Normans writing in Latin it was named Lincolnia, but in
Norman-French Nicole (a curious instance of the trans-
position of letters) as late as the time of King Edward IV,
and the same applied to the name of the county, called by
the Normans Nicoleshire, though Domesday Book calls it
Lincolescire. The division of this country into counties
or shires probably began before the time of King Alfred,
and was completed when the kingdom of King Edgar
brought all divisions of the people under one rule. Lin-
colnshire would thus be separated off from Mercia, which
got its name from bordering on the Marches or frontiers
of Wales.
Lincolnshire was, possibly from about the same time,
subdivided into three, called The Parts of Lindsey,
The Parts of Kesteven, and The Parts of Holland. Of
these the first, Lindsey (in Domesday Book Lindesie),
gets its name either from Lincoln, or as being the eye or
1—2
4 LINCOLNSHIRE
island of the Lindissi who inhabited it. It occupies about
the northern half of the county, and according to Domes-
day Book, it again was subdivided into three Redings or
Ridings (i.e. thirdings) — North, South, and West. The
second division, Kesteven (in Domesday Chetsteven), takes
the south-western quarter, and its name is believed to be
derived from Coedstefne, " the wood jutting out into the
fen." The third, Holland (in Domesday Hoiland), takes
the remaining south-eastern quarter, and signifies, as does
its namesake across the North Sea, " the hollow land," as
being below the level of the sea in many parts.
2. General Characteristics.
Lincolnshire — situated on the east coast of England
a little north of its middle point — is a maritime county
with a most important estuary on the north, the Humber,
wherein is her greatest port, Great Grimsby, possibly the
largest fishing port in the world, and a lesser and much
shallower one on the south, the Wash, where is her lesser
port, Boston. These two ports furnish practically all the
harbours she has along her 85 miles of coast, or 117 if
we measure from the junction of the Trent, Ouse, and
Humber to the beginning of the Norfolk coast. Flat
and low though that coast may be, guarded by " a sand-
built ridge of heaped hills that mind the sea," still there
is a fascination in the great extent of yellow sands exposed
by her shallow seas, just as there is a recompense for the
level plain of marsh or fen in the vast expanse of sky
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 5
where dawn or sunset are seen at their finest. As Charles
Kingsley says, speaking of these very fens, in Hereward
the Wake, "They have a beauty of their own, these great
fens, even now when they are dyked and drained, tilled
and fenced — a beauty as of the sea, of boundless expanse
and freedom." And after an exquisite appreciation of
The Fens in Winter: Cowbit Wash, near Spalding
the fen in Norman times he adds, " Overhead the arch
of heaven spreads more ample than elsewhere, as over
the open sea ; and that vastness gave, and still gives,
such cloudlands, such sunrises, such sunsets, as can be
seen nowhere else within these isles." And the views
are indeed marvellous ; from Alkborough over the
junction of the Trent and Ouse to the Humber, from
6 LINCOLNSHIRE
the Wolds above Caistor westwards towards Lincoln,
from Lincoln eastwards to those same Wolds, or west-
wards to the hills of Nottinghamshire and the mountains
of Derbyshire, or looking eastwards from the edge of the
" high Wold " over the great plain of marsh,
" That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms, and lessening towers
To mingle with the bounding main."
Lincolnshire is pre-eminently an agricultural county.
Camden, writing in 1590, describes the county as of "a
most mild climate fit for corn and cattle, adorned with
numerous towns, and watered by several rivers." The
farms on the Heath, the Cliff, the Wolds, and the Fens
are examples of first-rate cultivation of the soil in corn
and roots, while the neighbourhood of Boston is well
known for its potatoes and growth of mustard for seed,
and the Isle of Axholme for vegetables. The Marsh fur-
nishes one of the very best grazing lands in the country.
The Lincolnshire red shorthorn forms a distinct and
valuable kind of cattle, the Lincolnshire sheep is of large
size with a heavy fleece, while the reputation of its horses
at Horncastle and Lincoln fairs has been excellent for many
years.
Lincolnshire is also a great industrial county. The engi-
neering works at Lincoln, Gainsborough, and Grantham,
giving employment to many thousands of workmen, are
famed for all kinds of agricultural machinery, as well as for
that used in milling and mining. At Scunthorpe are large
and important iron mines and smelting works. Steam
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 7
mills for corn surround Brayford Pool in Lincoln, where,
as at Gainsborough, are large cake mills and wood-
works, while Sleaford has the largest malt-houses in
the country.
Iron Works, Lincoln
3. Size. Shape. Boundaries.
Lincolnshire is the second largest county in England,
its area comprising 1,705,293 acres. It takes position
between Yorkshire (with the enormous acreage of
3,889,758 acres) and Devonshire (with an acreage of
1,671,364), and it has a population of 563,960.
8 LINCOLNSHIRE
John Speed, writing in 1627, quaintly remarks:
"The forme of this County doth somewhat resemble the
body of a Lute, whose East Coasts lye bowe-like into
the German Ocean." Fuller, in 1662, compares it to
" a bended bow, the sea making the back, the rivers
Welland and Humber the two horns thereof, whilst
Trent hangeth down like a broken string, as being
somewhat of the shortest." The shape of Lincolnshire
might also be likened to a pear, with one-third of its
western side sliced off, and with the tail turned up to
join Norfolk and form part of the southern boundary
of the Wash.
Measuring from the northernmost projection into
the Humber to the southernmost part of the boundary
at Stamford its length is about 75 miles, and its breadth
from the easternmost point at Ingoldmells on the east
coast to the Nottinghamshire county border at North
Scarle on the west is about 47 miles.
Its boundaries are natural ones for the greater part.
It is bounded on the north by the river Humber; on
the east by the North Sea; on the south by various
drains and the river Welland dividing it from Norfolk,
Cambridgeshire, and Northamptonshire; and on the west
by an artificial border-line between it and Rutland,
Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire. Higher up, the
river Trent bounds West Lindsey, while the Isle of
Axholme is separated from Yorkshire chiefly by an
artificial and exceedingly irregular boundary line. This
part of the county appears, on the map, as if it must
have been captured for Lincolnshire from the old royal
I
& s
•
§ s:
10 LINCOLNSHIRE
forest of Hatfield Chase in Yorkshire, as it is on the
west side of what, obviously, is the natural boundary.
On the other hand Nottinghamshire appears to " cut a
monstrous cantle out" of Lincolnshire on the east side
of the Trent between Newark and Newton-on-Trent,
of which the north-easternmost point actually comes
within five miles of Lincoln. Some authorities have
believed that Newark and its wapentake were wrenched
away from Lincolnshire about the time of King Alfred,
and, in this connection, it is interesting to notice the
fact that, in the later years of Remigius, first Norman
Bishop of Lincoln, the Archbishop of York claimed a
large part of the provinces of Lindsey, with Lincoln,
Louth, Stow, and Newark, as properly subject to his
sway.
4. Surface and General Features.
The surface of our county is marked by two long
lines of hills, the Cliff (or Heath) and the Wolds. There
is also a vast tract of Fen, a word now used to denote
land which is or has been overflowed by fresh water, and
a wide belt of Marsh, a term in Lincolnshire applied to
land which has been or is liable to be overflowed by
sea-water.
The Cliff, which is of oolite limestone, reaches from
Winteringham on the Humber, in a course almost due
south, to Grantham and the southern limits of Lincoln-
shire. It has a general elevation of some 2OO feet, and
SURFACE AND GENERAL FEATURES 11
has a fairly sharp escarpment rising 100 feet or more
above the western plain. For most of the distance this
western plain is the valley of the Trent, which has but low
banks, save those of New Red Sandstone at Gainsborough
and Newton, on the eastern or right bank.
The Cliff is interrupted by the great gap at Lincoln,
and again by the lesser one at Ancaster, where its height
has risen to nearly 400 feet. It is here called "the Heath,"
and its western borders are known as the Vale of Belvoir.
Broadening out before reaching Grantham it attains, near
Wyville and Buckminster, its greatest elevation of 500
feet. The little Witham valley is picturesque and well
wooded by Easton and North Stoke Rochford Parks.
This range of the Cliff is really the edge of an inclined
tableland which slopes gently eastward, in Lindsey to
meet the rising Wolds, and in Kesteven to the Fens, the
parts between Grantham, Sleaford, Bourne and Stamford
being particularly well wooded . and picturesque.
Another range of Cliff is found on the right bank of
the Trent at Alkborough ; here it is about 200 feet high,
with woods sloping steeply down to the river. The
formation is of the New Red Sandstone. Much of this
part of the county was a sandy waste, given up to rabbit
warrens. At Scawby gull-ponds the scenery might pass
for Scottish, from the sandy undulations round the lake
and the abundance of pine trees.
The chalk Wolds stretch from Barton-on-Humber
and South Ferriby in a south-easterly direction for nearly
50 miles, with an average width of about eight miles,
widening as they proceed, to Burgh and Spilsby. The
12 LINCOLNSHIRE
highest point is probably just above Normanby, 548 feet,
though a fair acreage is above the 400 feet level. They
consist of great rolling downs, intersected with deep
valleys. Near Brocklesby they are well wooded, as
Pelham Pillar was erected to record the planting of
12,552,700 trees between the years 1787 and 1823 by
the Lord Yarborough of that date. In the neighbour-
hood of Somersby, Tennyson's birth-place, there is a fair
amount of wooded country, and one of the most charming
valleys, Well Vale, is close to Alford. The farms on the
Wolds are of great size ; possibly the largest is at Withcall,
which runs to 2750 acres.
Three miles south-east of Lincoln, at the village of
Washingborough, begin the Fens, marked by the black
peaty soil1. Hence they stretch southwards and south-
eastwards to Boston, Spalding, and Cambridge. A little
piece of true unreclaimed fen remains near Dogdyke,
but all the rest are drained, almost too well, as they are
sometimes short of water in the summer. The numerous
dykes take the place of hedges, which are comparatively
rare. Wheat, beans, and roots all grow finely on this
soil, and near Boston potatoes and mustard grown for
seed. The names along the Witham ending in ey, such
as Bardn^y and Southing, show the islands which alone
could have been inhabited amidst the surrounding swamp
in the pre-drainage days.
The Marsh is a strip of land between the Wolds and
1 Occasionally in dry seasons this underlying peat takes fire and is
difficult to put out, as happened on the edge of a dyke in Branston Fen in
August, 1911.
14 LINCOLNSHIRE
the North Sea. It is alluvial in origin, its width varies
from six to 10 miles, and it reaches from below Grimsby
to Skegness. It is protected from the sea only by sand-
dunes, covered with swordgrass and the spiky sallow-thorn,
with its grey green leaves, and berries of a warm orange
colour in autumn. At Marsh Chapel and North Somer-
cotes, it has been enlarged by the draining and capture
from the sea of the salt fitties (this being an old Norse
word for the out-marshes between the sea-bank and the
sea). This is Tennyson's
" Waste enormous marsh
Where from the frequent bridge
The trenched waters run from sky to sky."
Much of it is first-rate grazing ground for sheep and
cattle, and rich crops of wheat, large eared and long
stemmed, are raised.
The Isle of Axholme, almost a dead level, has been
carefully drained, and is enriched by warping (which will
be further alluded to in a later portion of this book). The
hills round Epworth contain gypsum and belong to the
New Red Sandstone formation.
5. Rivers and Watersheds.
The rivers of this county, with one exception — the
Trent — are small and slow. Macaulay poured righteous
scorn on the line " Streams meander level with their
fount " as an impossible feat, but the Witham comes a
little near the poet's description between Lincoln and
RIVERS AND WATERSHEDS 15
Boston, as the level of Brayford is only 16 feet .above
the sea. In their earlier miles some of the rivers are
lively streams, and afford good trout fishing; to their
more sluggish later portions come thousands weekly,
for coarse fishing, from the large industrial cities of
Yorkshire. The celebrity of the Witham for pike has
been hymned by Spenser and Drayton, and there was an
old and popular saying,
Wytham eel and Ancum [Ancholme] pike
In all the world there is none syke.
We will begin with those rivers which arise within
the county. There is a watershed on the Cliff, about
three miles south of the cross-road between Gainsborough
and Market Rasen, and about a mile eastwards of the
Ermine Street, the great North Road from Lincoln to
the Humber. The river Ancholme from the village of
Spridlington is joined at Bishop's Bridge by the little. river
Rase, which rises in the heart of the Wolds at Bully
Hill, and runs west past Tealby and Bayons Manor, the
handsome modern castle of the Tennyson D'Eyncourts,
through the three Rasens — Market, Middle, and West —
to which it gives its name. From Bishop's Bridge the
Ancholme proceeds almost due north, through low-lying
fields called carrs (car — fen), to fall into the Humber at
Ferriby Sluice, Brigg (properly Glanford Brigg) being
the only place of any importance on its way. It thus
serves the useful purpose of draining the valley between
the Cliff on the west and the Wolds on the east. For
its last 1 6 miles a new straight course has been cut, called
16 LINCOLNSHIRE
the New Ancholme river, which for five miles north of
Brigg is accompanied by another dyke, the Weir Dyke.
Continual complaints of the damage done to the drainage
of the Ancholme valley seem to have been made from
the time of King Edward I onwards, and in the 2ist year
of Charles I's reign Sir John Monson undertook to
drain this area. This apparently was well done, but
spoilt during the great civil war — according to the account
given by Dugdale — by the works being neglected, the
drains filled up, and the sluices damaged. Improvements
were made in the reign of King George III, and others
about the year 1826 and afterwards.
Rising from one source in Hackthorn within a mile or
two of that of the Ancholme, and from another in Busling-
thorpe, the Langworth river, about nine miles long, runs
south past Snarford, through Langworth (having got
accessory streams from Welton and Dunholme, and from
Riseholme and Sudbrook lakes, and others from the
western slopes of the Wolds), past the site of the once
powerful and important Abbey of Barlings, to join the
Witham, about seven miles east of Lincoln, close to a
pumping station called Short Ferry. In the village of
Ludford, six miles east of Market Rasen, the river
Bain has its source, and for some 13 or 14 miles runs
nearly south to Horncastle, part of whose Roman name,
Banova\\umy came from the stream. It passes en route
the picturesque villages of Burgh and Donington, and the
parks of Girsby and Biscathorpe. From Horncastle, for
the 10 miles to the Witham, an attempt was made at the
beginning of the last century to render it navigable. Its
RIVERS AND WATERSHEDS 17
course is south with a slight curve to the west, passing
near to Scrivelsby Court (the home of the Champions of
England, the Dymokes), Kirkby, the woods of Tumby,
the parish and village of Coningsby, with its fine church
tower, and Tattershall church and castle. The Bain falls
into the Witham at Dogdyke (originally Dock Dyke).
The Horncastle Canal, which leaves it at Tattershall,
joins the Witham about two miles farther east. The
Tetney Lock
other main watersheds of the county are formed by the
line of the chalk Wolds extending from the Humber at
Ferriby south-eastwards for 50 miles as far as Spilsby,
and by the line of oolite limestone Cliff running almost
due north and south from the Humber at Winteringham
to below Grantham.
The streams to the north and east of the Wolds are
not of much importance. The river Lud (which gives
s. L. 2
18 LINCOLNSHIRE
its name to Louth) rises in Withcall, runs through Louth,
and by a devious course past the site of Louth Abbey,
Alvingham, Conisholme, and North Somercotes, finds its
way into the sea a little north of Donna Hook coastguard
station, at Grainthorpe Haven. About three miles north
of this opening is Tetney Haven, where the Louth
Navigation canal — made in 1763 from Louth — joins the
sea, having left the river Lud at Alvingham. Through
the marsh lying between the Wolds and the sea flow
various other streams which generally have been dealt
with as land drains, carefully embanked and their course
straightened, as they approach the coast. The river
Steeping, at its source called Lynn, runs south-eastwards
between two spurs of the Wolds, one ending at Spilsby,
and the other at Welton-le-Marsh, and reaches the sea at
Gibraltar Point.
The same line of east to west watershed holds good,
as was noticed when speaking of the Ancholme, with
regard to the streams on the western side of the Cliff
from the Humber to Lincoln. North of a line from
Market Rasen to Gainsborough, these, like the river Eau
and Bottesford Beck, run westwards into the Trent, or,
like Winterton Beck, northwards into the Humber. Below
this line, at Corringham, is the origin of the little river
Till, which proceeding southwards and eastwards joins
the Fossdyke (the Roman canal between Lincoln and
the Trent) at a point about four miles west of Lincoln,
where is a farm with the Scandinavian-sounding name of
Odde or Hadde.
The Witham is the largest and most important of the
RIVERS AND WATERSHEDS 19
purely Lincolnshire rivers, being about 70 miles in length,
and draining on its way to Lincoln the flat country
between the edge of the Cliff and the Trent, and on its
way to Boston the great expanse of fen, altogether about
1070 square miles, of which 414,988 acres are highlands,
and 265,404 fen land. Its course may be compared to the
shape of a horseshoe, one end of which is at South Witham,
10 miles south of Grantham, whence it starts, the middle
of the rounded top at Lincoln, and the other end at
Boston, where it joins the sea. After leaving South
Witham, it passes between Woolsthorpe (in whose manor
house Sir Isaac Newton was born) and Colsterworth,
between the two fine Elizabethan houses, Easton and
Stoke Rochford, and past Great Ponton, whose striking
west tower, built in 1519, must be well known to the
passengers by the Great Northern line. After leaving
Grantham it proceeds northwards, skirting the pleasant
woods of Belton and Syston, till it is confronted with the
hill on which Hough stands, and whence the little river
Brant starts. Here it turns westwards to West borough,
near which it is joined by the Foston Beck, coming
from Denton reservoir, and at Long Bennington bends
northwards again to Claypole, where a fourteenth century
bridge was destroyed by a Rural District Council in
1905. Just by Hough may be noticed a sudden drop
in the Cliff of some 200 feet, leaving a gap leading
through to Ancaster and Sleaford. It is quite likely that
the original course of the Witham here turned eastwards
through this gap and so to the sea. Passing from
Claypole by Barnby, Norton Disney (the home of the
2 — 2
20 LINCOLNSHIRE
St Vincents) and Aubourn (not " the loveliest village
of the plain," but still quite sufficiently attractive), it is
joined by the Brant and goes northwards to Lincoln,
where it runs into Brayford, the pool below the hill
(representing a huge lake or morass of earlier times),
which is joined to the Trent by the Fossdyke, the canal
made by the Romans and restored by Henry I. From
Brayford it turns sharply to the right, flows through the
city of Lincoln, passing beneath the medieval High
Bridge, with its picturesque half-timbered houses on the
western side, and, practically canalised, runs for about
30 miles through the Fen to its outlet in Boston Deeps,
passing the sites of the once important monasteries of
Bardney and Kirkstead, the castle of Tattershall, and
Boston with its splendid church and noble tower.
It is joined on its way by many streams, of which one,
the Sleaford river, runs — as Kyme Eau — to Chapel Hill.
Possibly another route for the Witham was across from
Dogdyke to Wainfleet ; but at all events by 1240 it
must have run to Boston, as there are extant notices as
to its banks. The tide flowed as far as Lincoln, raising
the water at Swanpool two feet, till in the year 1500
Mayhowe Hake, an engineer of Gravelines, was ordered
to make a sluice at Boston to stop it. Another sluice
was made in 1543 at Langrick, and there are now others
at Bardney and Lincoln.
The Glen is about 3 1 miles long and rises at Somerby,
near Grantham. Passing southwards it skirts Bourne and
passes through Deeping Fen, through Pinchbeck, north of
Spalding and Surfleet, to join the Welland at the Reservoir.
High Bridge, Lincoln
22
LINCOLNSHIRE
The Welland enters Lincolnshire at Stamford, runs
through Market Deeping between Peakirk (where St
Guthlac's sister had a cell) and Deeping St James, and
thence past Crowland Abbey and Spalding, to fall into
the Wash at Fossdyke.
The river Nene only belongs to this county from
The Welland at Spalding
Tydd St Mary's to its entry into the Wash, having passed
under Sutton bridge. The scene of King John's disaster
with his baggage is between the bridge and the Wash.
The Trent is, of course, far the most important river
which is connected with the county and does not rise in
it. Its source is on the northern border of Staffordshire,
whence it flows by Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and
RIVERS AND WATERSHEDS 23
Nottinghamshire to our western border. Its course is
almost directly northwards from Newark, and it begins
to form the western boundary of Lincolnshire just south
of Dunham Bridge and Newton. The cliffs here, of
New Red Sandstone, are very picturesque, and much
picnicking goes on during the summer. Some four or
Torksey Bridge
five miles further down the river is Torksey, the ancient
Tiovulfingcester, where the Fossdyke joins the Trent.
Further still on the right is Marton, with the Roman
road, Tillbridge Lane, and Littleborough, the Roman
Segelocum, on the left. Some picturesque windings lead
past Knaith, the birthplace of Thomas Sutton, founder of
the Charterhouse, and Lea, the home of our distinguished
24 LINCOLNSHIRE
antiquary, the late Sir Charles Anderson, to Gainsborough
(the St Ogg's of The Mill on the Floss). Here the right
bank is high and wooded, and has a Danish encampment
on it. A little below Stockwith, where the river Idle
falls into the Trent, the county boundary line leaves the
Trent in order to include the Isle of Axholme, and goes
westwards as far as Wroot and then northwards and back
to the Trent just at its junction with the Ouse to form
the Humber, so that the rest of the river's course is within
the county. At Owston (anciently Kinnaird's) Ferry is
the site of the castle of the powerful Mowbrays, Dukes of
Norfolk. At Althorpe and Gunness the Trent is crossed by
the railway line from Grimsby to Doncaster, and another
— the New Idle — river runs into it. After passing Am-
cotts (of which the Amcotts family are still lords of the
manor), the hills now rise some 200 feet and come closer
to the river, and from Burton Stather (the latter word,
of Scandinavian origin meaning a landing stage) to Alk-
borough the Cliff is steep and well wooded. At Trent
Falls the river finally joins the Ouse, and the two form
the Humber.
There are good reasons for thinking that the course of
the river just described, from close to Newark to the
Humber, was not the original course in pre-Glacial times.
A direct prolongation of its course from Newark would
point to the great gap in the cliff at Lincoln, through
which the Witham now flows. Again, along this track
gravels are found, distinctly of river origin, and derived
from the pebble beds beyond Newark on the west. Also,
a more powerful agent than the river Witham is or ever
26 LINCOLNSHIRE
has been, must be sought for to make such a gap, and the
Trent, with its hill source and rush of many tributaries,
seems the only likely river near and powerful enough to
have done the work. The Trent is navigable for vessels
drawing 2O feet of water as far as Gainsborough, and at
certain seasons there is a tidal wave, called in Lincolnshire
the Eagre (a Saxon word), which runs up some 14 miles
past that town.
6. Geology.
If we turn to the geological map at the end of this
volume we find that the various strata occurring in
Lincolnshire run in a line roughly from north to south.
This is what in geology is termed their "strike." Their
" dip " or slope is towards the east, each stratum being
overlaid in turn by the newer one, so that the oldest rocks
are on the western side of the county. In Lincolnshire,
on the surface, there are no traces of any rocks older
than the Secondary or Mesozoic Group, except in the
form of erratic blocks or boulders of granite brought by
glacial action from Scandinavia or the mountains of the
Lake district. On the west of the county a patch in
the Isle of Axholme, and a long strip running north and
south from near the Humber to Newark and Nottingham,
represents the New Red Sandstone or Keuper marl. This
layer of rock has been laid down by successive deposits
in a vast inland sea which gradually became salt, like the
Dead Sea in the Holy Land. Gypsum or sulphate of
lime was also deposited in this bed, and it unfortunately
O
28 LINCOLNSHIRE
was found to impregnate the water from a very deep
boring (2200 feet) at Lincoln so strongly as to render it
unfit for ordinary use. This boring passed through 23 feet
of surface beds of soil, peat, sand, and gravel, 641 feet
of lias, plentiful in fossils, 52 feet of Rhaetic beds also
fossiliferous, 868 feet of Keuper marl, grey, green, red, and
purple with bands of gypsum (such as are seen in Newton
Cliffs in the illustration on p. 27) and 638 feet of the
New Red Sandstone, into the pebble beds. The deposit
of salt and brine whence the celebrated Woodhall water
comes was probably produced in a similar way. This
Keuper marl has not much in the way of fossils till
the next layer is met — that of the Rhaetic bed (so-called
from the Rhaetian Alps of Bavaria). This is full of
fossils, especially remains of fish. Evidently an invasion of
this inland sea by salt water caused the death of all the
fish. After this seems to have occurred a sinking of
the land, whereby groups of islands were formed, round
which the beds of the Lias and Oolite series of rocks
(called Jurassic from occurring in the Jura mountains)
were deposited. The lowest layer, called the Lias, is
a thick bed of shale, clay, and limestone. There is
evidence of much life in the fossil remains found in this
bed. From the clay pits on Lincoln hill have been taken
bones of huge fish-lizards, 20 to 30 feet long, such as the
Ichthyosaurus, with eyes 14 inches in diameter and a long
tail; and the Plesiosaurus, with a very long neck and
small head and teeth like a crocodile; and flying reptiles
also. The Lower Lias in this county extends as a narrow
band from the extreme south, about Sedgebrook, to the
GEOLOGY 29
Humber, narrowing and thinning as it passes north along
the edge of the Cliff, and forming about the eastern
two-thirds of the valley of the Trent. Along this route
is a belt of ferruginous limestone containing hydrated
peroxide of iron, which is extensively mined at Scun-
thorpe, where the bed is 27 feet thick. A still narrower
belt on the eastern edge of the foregoing is that of the
Marlstone, Middle Lias or Rockbed, which at Cay-
thorpe (where its breadth is at its greatest) is extensively
worked for iron ore. It forms a slighter escarpment west
of the Cliff at Harlaxton, Gonerby, Fulbeck, and Well-
born, which dies down further north.
The Upper Lias from the valley of the Witham to
the Humber is a thick bed of stiff dark blue clay, which
forms the Cliff, and is much used at Lincoln for brick-
making. Ammonites and belemnites are frequent, as well
as septaria, which are large nodules or spheroidal masses
of calcareous marl, with crystalline divisions inside.
Capping the Cliff, and varying in breadth from 10 miles
in the south of Lincolnshire to a couple of miles at the
Humber, is a band of the next layer, the Inferior Oolite
(a word meaning eggstone, as the rock is composed of
minute grains resembling the roe of a fish). The
lowest division of this is termed the Northampton
Sand, and lies from 10 to 15 feet below the surface of
the soil. Near Lincoln, on the east side, it is 12 feet
thick, and is extensively worked for siliceous ironstone,
which is sent to Scunthorpe to be mixed with the iron-
stone there and smelted. Above this is the well-known
building stone the Lincolnshire limestone, which hardens
NAMES o*
SYSTEMS
Recent
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Eocene
Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Carboniferous
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Pre- Cambrian
SUBDIVISIONS
Metal Age Deposits
Neolithic
Palaeolithic ,,
Glacial
Cromer Series
Weybourne Crag
Chillesford and Norwich Crags
Red and Walton Crags
Coralline Crag
Absent from Britain
Fluviomarine Beds of Hampshire
Bagshot Beds
London Clay
Oldhaven Beds, Woolwich and Reading
Thanet Sands [Groups
Chalk
Upper Greensand and Gault
Lower Greensand
Weald Clay
Hastings Sands
Purbeck Beds
Portland Beds
Kimmeridge Clay
Corallian Beds
Oxford Clay and Kellaways Rock
Corn brash
Forest Marble
Great Oolite with Stonesfield Slate
Inferior Oolite
Lias — Upper, Middle, and Lower
Rhaetic
Keuper Marls
Keuper Sandstone
Upper Bunter Sandstone
Bunter Pebble Beds
Lower Bunter Sandstone
Magnesian Limestone and Sandstone
Marl Slate
Lower Permian Sandstone
Coal Measures
Millstone Grit
Mountain Limestone
Basal Carboniferous Rocks
!r ) Devonian and Old Red Sand-
Lower / stone
i Ludlow Beds
\ Wenlock Beds
I Llandovery Beds
{Caradoc Beds
Llandeilo Beds
Arenig Beds
(Tremadoc Slates
Lingula Flags
Menevian Beds
Harlech Grits and Llanberis Slates
No definite classification vet made
CHAKACTERS OF ROCKS
Superficial Deposits
Sands chiefly
Clays and Sands chiefly
Chalk at top
Sandstones, Mud and
Clays below
Shales, Sandstones and
Oolitic Limestones
Red Sandstones and
Marls, Gypsum and Salt
! Red Sandstones and
| Magnesian Limestone
Sandstones, Shales and
Coals at top
Sandstones in middle
Limestone and Shales below
Red Sandstones,
Shales, Slates and Lime-
stones
Sandstones, Shales and
Thin Limestones
Shales, Slates,
Sandstones and
Thin Limestones
Slates and
Sandstones
Sandstones,
Slates and
Volcanic Rocks
GEOLOGY 31
well on exposure after quarrying. Near Ancaster and
Wilsford are the chief quarries.
The Middle Oolite consists of a great thickness of
clays, of which one kind is much used at Bytham in the
manufacture of " clinker " bricks. Above this is the
layer called the Cornbrash (so called from forming rather
easily broken up soil, good for corn growing), a pasty
fine-grained limestone, running in a thin line from Brigg
to Stamford, with very irregular distribution in the south.
Above this again is the Oxford Clay, varying between
500 and 300 feet thick, filling up the western valley
between the Cliff and the Wolds, and between the Heath
and the river Witham. Overlying this is the Kimmeridge
Clay, which forms a large patch on the western edge
of the Wold, from the valley of the Ancholme down
to Dogdyke and Spilsby, edging round to within some
10 miles of Skegness, while below Lincoln it forms
a belt some eight miles broad along the eastern slope
of the Cliff, narrowing somewhat to its end in the
valley of the river Glen.
Of the rocks forming the Cretaceous group, it may
be stated at once that they were laid down in great
ocean depths, for we know that the Atlantic is now
doing exactly the same thing, laying down a layer of
chalk (mainly composed of Foraminifera — microscopic
animals and plants) on the sea floor. As time went on,
and the sea added to the deposits of chalk, all Lincolnshire
was buried under their weight. Later, as the land rose
again, the chalk was brought to the surface and was
extensively eroded by atmospheric agencies: it is now
32 LINCOLNSHIRE
1300 feet thick, and it had originally another 1000 feet
above that.
The Wolds, a range of chalk hills, represent this
formation in Lincolnshire, and stretch from the Humber,
near Barton, south-east to West Keal and Burgh. They
are a continuation of the Yorkshire Wolds interrupted
by the Humber, and are continued into Norfolk at
Hunstanton, interrupted by the Wash. A red band of
chalk very noticeable in the Hunstanton cliffs is also to
be seen along the line of the Wolds, from Welton-in-
the-Marsh to South Grimsby, and north of Caistor.
A band of Lower Greensand, broadening out twice
into a width of five or six miles, fringes the western side,
and this is accompanied by a parallel though thinner band
of Upper Greensand, bordered on the east by chalk some
three or four times the width.
At Tealby in the middle of the Wolds are ferruginous
sands 2O feet thick, devoid of fossils, and near Caistor a
bed of ironstone ore has been worked since 1868. Below
these are beds of clay and limestone 50 feet deep, with
many fossils, especially the fine large fan-shell Pecten
cinctus, 9 to 12 inches in diameter, the same species as
that found in the Speeton Clays in Flamborough Head.
These all belong to the Lower Greensand, which is also
called the Neocomian, from the Latin name for Neuchatel,
where there are good examples of this series.
The remaining portions of the county — the belt
of marsh between the Wolds and the sea, and around
Boston, the great mass of Holland — partly owe their origin
and condition to glacial action. In the later period of
GEOLOGY 33
geological history, the Glacial period or Ice Age, it is
believed that England lay under a great sheet of ice
much as Greenland does now, and that glaciers passing
from the high lands in the north-west of Scotland and the
mountains of the Lake district travelled south-eastwards
across Lincolnshire. Also from Scandinavia a great
glacier proceeded south and joined the Scotch and English
glaciers on the east coast. Of this glacial action, the
cliffs of Yorkshire and the coast of Lincolnshire are the
result; for they are composed of drift or boulder clays —
the debris of the glaciers which, passing over the surface
of the country, wore it down, and produced a mass of
mud and pebbles — with boulders of Norwegian granite
and other rocks from the north-east, and of Shap granite
from the Shap Fells in Westmorland from the north-west.
For instance, near Barton-on-Humber has been found a
large boulder of Shap granite, and another one near Ferriby
in the boulder clay, where there is a small moraine.
A Norwegian granite boulder was found near Thorpe
Hall just outside Louth, and the "Bluestone" boulder of
some four or five tons weight in Mercer Row, Louth,
had probably a Scotch origin. From our county also
the stream of glacier action would sometimes proceed, as
near Melton in Leicestershire is a block of Lincolnshire
oolite some 300 yards long by 100 yards wide. The
moraines of the Norwegian glaciers still exist as a line of
gravel hills from Flamborough Head into Lincolnshire,
crossing the Humber at Paull.
Finally come the Fen beds, due to the action of rivers
in bringing down mud and sand from the interior of the
s. L. 3
34 LINCOLNSHIRE
country, which are deposited along their course, especially
at their outlets. These beds are composed of mud, silt,
and peat, and all along the coast from the Humber to the
Wash are remains of a submerged forest. Practically all
Holland is typical fen. A boring near Boston pierced
through 24 feet of silt, 161 feet of boulder clay, and 400
feet of Oolitic clays. The forest bed is about 2^ feet deep,
and rests on about a foot of whitish clay and sand. It
crops up in several places along the coast at low water
mark, and is composed of stumps and roots of oak, beech,
elm, birch, holly, yew, hazel, elder, and willows. A
particularly good example of this is at Trusthorpe, where
it is noted that the sea made a great breach in 1777 (the
forest was destroyed centuries before that), and where the
original church and a great part of its parish are said
to lie beneath the waves. In the fens where the forest
has been uncovered, the trunks of the trees all slope to
the north-east, a clear proof that in their lifetime, as at the
present day, the most prevalent wind was that from the
south-west.
Finally, the "blow-wells" deserve notice; they are
powerful springs, rising from the chalk through the drift
and alluvial deposits, and are found between Grimsby
and Sutton-on-Sea.
7. Natural History.
All our existing animals, insects, and plants probably
only date from after the time when Britain was over-
spread with a vast and thick sheet of ice. It is very
NATURAL HISTORY 35
doubtful if any species can have survived the intense
cold of that period. Later, when England was still
joined to the continent at Dover and Calais, and across
from Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Yorkshire to Holland
and Belgium, there must have been a re-colonisation of
our land by animals and plants, though the latter do not
depend only on land for their distribution, their seeds
being often carried by birds to far distant shores. The
number of kinds of animals in this island is less than that
found on the continent, and in Ireland still less, showing
that the channel between Britain and the continent was
formed before the immigration was complete, and that
Ireland being further off naturally fared worse.
Dealing with mammals first, of which there are some
50 species, there have been found in Lincolnshire antlers
of the red deer1 and bones of Bos longifrons, of wild horse,
wolf, wild boar, and beaver. Other animals have become
extinct within living memory, such as the wild cat, of
which the last specimen was shot in Bullington Wood
near Wragby in 1883. The pine-marten is now very rare,
but weasels and stoats are common, and the polecat haunts
the marshes along the east coast. The otter is much in
evidence, and the badger (or brock) is more abundant in
Lincolnshire than in any other midland county. Bats of
three kinds are plentiful, as are hedgehogs, moles, and
three kinds of shrews; squirrels abound in this county.
The dormouse is recorded to inhabit the woods of south-
west Lincolnshire, the harvest mouse is very rare, the field
1 Antlers were dug up in making the lake at Hartsholme, near Lincoln,
and in the peat at Barton and New Holland on the Trent.
3—2
36 LINCOLNSHIRE
mouse very abundant. Rabbits are exceedingly plentiful,
especially on the sandy moors of the north, and hares are
still very numerous and of large size on the Wolds, and
on the Cliff to the south of Lincoln. Fallow deer are
kept in some half-dozen parks in the county, and the
herd of red deer in Grimsthorpe Park are believed to be
the descendants and last remnant of the herds which
inhabited the great forest of Kesteven.
Along the coast and on the sandbanks of the Wash
are multitudes of the common seal, and the grey seal
has been noticed also. Specimens of some eight kinds
of whale have been stranded or captured along the coast,
the porpoise is common, and the bottle-nosed dolphin
rather less so.
With the great change in the Fens and altered conditions
of the waterways, various birds have practically disappeared
from the county, such as the avocets and ruffs. Grouse
and blackcock, both of which latter birds used to be shot
not very many years ago, are also gone. As a large
arable county, it naturally breeds many partridges, mainly
English, but with a sprinkling of the French or red-legged
species; and, as a great sporting county, it rears very large
numbers of pheasants, of which there are still some wild
ones, free from imported strain. Snipe and woodcock
are fairly abundant in winter, with a quantity of golden
plover in the north of Lincolnshire, and the common
peewit or lapwing all over it. On the salt marshes, as
by Saltfleet, are generally to be found hundreds of knot,
curlew, dunlin, ringed plover, redshanks, etc., with wild
geese occasionally coming over.
NATURAL HISTORY 37
At Scawby and Manton the black-headed gull
(Larus ridibundus) breeds in thousands, while heronries
are met with here and there, as at Evedon, and in one or
two places along the Witham. The bittern has vanished,
one of the last having been shot on the Holmes Common
Bittern
close to Lincoln in 1845. The barn, long-eared, and
brown owls frequently breed in the county, as did the
short-eared owl till some 25 years ago. The harriers
(marsh and hen) ceased to breed in Lincolnshire some
50 or 60 years ago. About 1885 the buzzard ceased to
38 LINCOLNSHIRE
nest here, though formerly common. Sparrow-hawks
are quite common, and are judiciously kept under by
the gamekeeper. The last kite's nest known was noted
in Bullington Wood near Wragby in 1870. The hobby
is a summer visitor, the merlin a winter one along the
coast line. The kestrel still is common, and till 1893
a pair nested on the western towers of Lincoln Minster.
The nightingale is often heard as far north as Horncastle
and also, though rarely, round Lincoln.
Of the reptiles the most interesting specimen is
probably the natterjack toad (Bufo calamltd] which has
been found on the sandhills near Mablethorpe.
The county is full of interest for the entomologist,
though here again the drainage of the fens and an in-
creased arable area have driven away many interesting
kinds. Among the butterflies the chequered skipper, the
brown hairstreak, the purple emperor, the greasy fritillary,
and the marbled white are all notable.
At the time of Domesday Book there were about
34,000 acres of woodland, now there are some 10,000
acres more. The great forest of Kesteven was partially
disafforested on its Boston side by King John in 1204,
and the rest was thrown open in 1230. The submerged
forests along the coast, and the remains of forests found
in the peat of the fens, testify to the former covering
with wood of large tracts of this county. In the parks,
such as Grimsthorpe and Haverholme, are oaks, horn-
beams, and hawthorns of considerable age ; there is much
ash on the Wolds, and Scotch firs have been planted more
than 100 years ago at Fillingham and Burton. Those at
NATURAL HISTORY
39
Scawby on the sandy borders of the gull-ponds give a
distinctly Scotch effect to the scene. The largest willow
in England is in Haverholme Park and has a girth of
25 feet at five feet from the ground. There is a large
oak at Well, and another at Woodthorpe (both near
Alford) whose trunk is four yards in diameter. The
common oak of the county is Quercus pedunculata, which
Scawby Gull-Ponds
Mr E. W. Peacock has found to be the species occurring
in the submerged forests and those covered in peat.
The botany of Lincolnshire, as mentioned by Dr
F. A. Lees, is remarkable for presenting us with various
kinds and species of plants which generally live on different
soil, and at different altitudes, meeting here. This is due
probably to the geographical position of the county, and
to the absence of any mountainous features. The list of
40
LINCOLNSHIRE
Lincolnshire plants numbers nearly 2000. The sandhills
along the coast still retain their covering of swordgrass
and sea-buckthorn or sallowthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides\
the first name due to the gleaming scales beneath its leaves,
known here since 1670, and remarkable for its glaucous
leaves, orange berries, and sharp spikes. The salt marsh
has sea-orach, and below high water level the glasswort
Moorland, near Woodhall
(Salicornia\ and that most attractive food for wildfowl,
the glasswrack (Zostera marina). The land round Wood-
hall is still gorgeous in autumn with purple heather ; the
common heath, the cross-leaved kind, and ling being not
at all rare. Of insectivorous plants can still be found two
sorts of the sundew and the common butterwort. The
rarer Alpine clubmoss (Selaginella\ the marsh mountain
NATURAL HISTORY 41
ferns, the beautiful grass of Parnassus, the marsh gentian,
and the bog pimpernel are all noted as inhabitants of
this county. At Halton Holgate is much of the hoary
cinquefoil. The woody nightshade, henbane, and dwale
or deadly nightshade, are all natives of the county. The
latter is mentioned by Gerarde (16.36) as growing plenti-
fully in Holland in Lincolnshire, though it is not so
common now. In May the woods are carpeted with
bluebells (wild hyacinth), and the lily of the valley
flourishes greatly in the woods near Lincoln. The
network of rivers, canals, and land drains has been
choked in past times by the imported water-weed from
America, the Anacharh alsinastrum. Lastly it may be
mentioned that one species of plant, Sellnum curvtfolium,
is only known to exist in this county and in the Isle
of Ely.
8. Peregrination of the Coast.
As has been already stated, there are only two estuaries
in or near her coast by which the rivers of Lincolnshire
enter the sea — that of the Humber, which receives the
Trent ; and that of the Wash, which receives the Witham,
Welland, and Nene. Moreover, the coast itself is very
low and flat, the land near the edge of the sea being only
from 4 to 20 feet above sea-level ; the low-water line is
distant, and the five-fathom limit generally well out to
sea. Therefore, between the Humber and the Wash
there are no harbours or ports, and therefore also there
are no large sea-side towns.
42 LINCOLNSHIRE
We may conveniently begin our peregrination of the
coast at the extreme north-west corner of the county,
where the Trent joins with the Yorkshire Ouse to form
the Humber. This river is about three-quarters of a mile
wide at the junction, and the range of hills on which
Alkborough is situated comes very near to the edge of
the river. This edge, passing Whitton on the way, runs
east north-east for four miles to Whitton Ness, the most
northerly point of the county, then makes a curve south-
eastwards past Winteringham, Read's Island, and the flat
lands through which the Ancholme runs, to South Ferriby,
where the north-western extremity of the Wolds termi-
nates almost on the water's edge. Probably Read's Island
owes its origin to the alluvial matter brought down by
the Ancholme. Close to Winteringham Haven was the
north end of the Roman road, the Ermine Street. North-
easterly again the coast trends, past the rather important
town of Barton, which has two fine churches, and is
connected by a railway with New Holland, whence there
is a steam ferry to Hull, almost opposite. It is three
miles from here to Skitter Ness, whence the coast runs
south-easterly for 12 miles to Grimsby, about half-way
being the great new dock at Immingham, where the
five-fathom line approaches very close to the shore, which
was one reason, no doubt, for the selection of this site for
the dock.
Leaving Grimsby, which is dealt with as a fishing and
general port in other chapters, an almost continuous line of
houses leads to the popular watering-place of Cleethorpes,
which has a large tract of sand, a long pier, bracing air, and
PEREGRINATION OF THE COAST 43
many other attractions for the Midland excursionist, and
on Bank Holidays some 100,000 people are often brought
to it by train. Hence the coast runs still south-eastwards.
Wider and wider get the sands exposed at low water as
Tetney Haven and Grainthorpe Haven are reached, while
at Donna Nook the five-fathom line has gone nearly six
miles out to sea to the Sand Haile and the Rosse Spit
A
%
.Hi
f-1!S:^** UL ,4
Skegness
Buoys. Quite possibly this may indicate land which has
been overwhelmed by the sea at some past epoch, or on
the other hand it may be due to the alluvial matter
brought down by the Humber being deposited here. The
edge of the coast from Grimsby to Skegness is composed
of sand-hills, sometimes, as near Theddlethorpe, low, but
a quarter of a mile wide, sometimes, as near Mablethorpe,
44 LINCOLNSHIRE
60 or 70 feet high but of narrow width. They are
covered with sea-buckthorn and grass, and are a great
nursery for rabbits. On the shore between Donna Nook
and Theddlethorpe are patches of higher sand, covered
with glasswort (samphire) and intersected with many
channels, much frequented by various kinds of sea-birds.
At the Manor House at Saltfleet, Oliver Cromwell is
traditionally supposed to have slept on September 26,
1643, a few days before the battle of Winceby. On
these extensive sands at low tide mirages are frequently
seen.
Mablethorpe is a rising watering-place ; Trusthorpe,
a mile or two south, is very much smaller, but not
less popular, and Sutton perhaps outrivals Mablethorpe
in size and popularity. Tennyson spent much time at
Mablethorpe in the earlier years of his life. "At high tide
the sea comes right up to the bank with splendid menacing
waves, which furnished him, five and thirty years after he
had left Lincolnshire for ever, with the famous simile in
The Last Tournament : —
...as the crest of some slow-arching wave,
Heard in dead night along that table shore,
Drops flat, and after the great waters break
Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves,
Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud,
From less and less to nothing.
This accurately describes the flat Lincolnshire coast with
its interminable rollers, breaking on the endless sands,
than which waves the poet always said that he had never
anywhere seen grander, and the clap of the wave as it fell
46 LINCOLNSHIRE
on the hard sand could be heard across that flat country
for miles1."
At Sutton was the destined termination of the
Lancashire, Derbyshire, and East Coast Railway, which
never got farther east than Lincoln, and which has now
been absorbed by the Great Central Railway. Huttoft
is picturesquely situated on a piece of rising ground,
and between it and the shore is the site of a proposed
" Garden City," Woldsea. Chapel St Leonards is a
favourite place for families to stay at, and at present it
is far from the usual haunts of trippers. Ingoldmells
Point is the most easterly part of the county and the five-
fathom line is some five miles out to sea. At Winthorpe
the Roman Bank is close to the edge of the shore.
From Ingoldmells the coast-line runs south, with a
slight inclination westwards, past Skegness to Gibraltar
Point.
Probably a Roman fort was situated close to Skegness
(part of this land was called Chesterland or Castelland in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) which with Bran-
caster on the Norfolk coast opposite would defend the
Wash. Skegness owes much of its development to the
Earls of Scarbrough ; it is an excellent sea-side resort (out
of the tripper's season), with as fine air as can possibly
be found, and first-rate golf links at Seacroft. It is the
resort of excursionists, very many thousands of whom are
taken there annually. Just below Gibraltar Point the
Wainfleet Haven or Steeping River runs into the sea,
1 Mr Willingham Rawnsley, in Tennyson and his Friends, Macmillan &
Co., 1911.
PEREGRINATION OF THE COAST 47
Wainfleet itself being a pleasant little town about two
miles from the edge of the marsh. William of Wayn-
flete's School — reminding one of Tattershall Castle — still
exists. Here begin the great Wainfleet Sands which a,t
low-water stretch seawards for nearly four miles, and are
separated from a patch of sand called the Long Sands in
the middle of the Wash by less shallow water called
Boston Deeps. From Gibraltar Point, interrupted only
by the outlet of Boston Haven, the coast-line runs south-
westwards to the bridge over the junction of the river
Welland with the Wash at Fossdyke. A large semi-
circular bend, with the convexity northwards, extends
thence to the outfall by Sutton Bridge of the River
Nene. This land, and that on the east of the Nene
called Wingland, has all been reclaimed from the sea.
At Sutton Bridge is an unfortunately ruined dock,
constructed by the Great Northern Railway.
9. Coastal Gains and Losses.
In past times a considerable loss of land has occurred
on the Lincolnshire coast. Grimsby old harbour, it is
true, has been filled up with silt, but a few miles further
south part of the parish of Clee has disappeared. Itterby
has vanished, and the signal-house south of Cleethorpes
has been three times set back out of reach of the sea.
Saltfleet and Mablethorpe St Peter's have lost their
churches and some portion of their land. There has
been encroachment also at Ingoldmells. Leland says of
fc Skegnesse, a four or five miles of Wilegripe " — a pert
48 LINCOLNSHIRE
which has disappeared — " sumtym a great haven towne,
the old towne clean consumed and eten by the sea." All
along the coast from the Humber to the Wash can be
seen at low tide the remains of a submerged forest ; this
is especially well seen at Trusthorpe, where the trees are
of birch, fir, and oak. Along this coast the normal
direction of travel of beach material is from north to
south. The gains are chiefly due to the material brought
to the sea by the rivers. Thus at Trent Falls in the upper
Humber there were 260 grains of "warp" (i.e. silt) in the
gallon, while near Grimsby there were only 30 grains
per gallon at low water. In the Wash warp begins to
be deposited at 5-5 feet above ordnance datum, samphire
or glasswort (Salicornia) in another two feet, grass in a
further two feet. New marsh is formed at icr68 feet,
and old high marsh at 13*15 feet, about the level of
ordinary spring tide. Another valuable plant for helping
the reclamation of salt marshes is the so-called " rice
grass " (Spartina strlcta\ which grows below high- water
mark.
Accretion is predominant in the Wash. Erosion
in recent years (between 1883 and 1905) has caused a
loss to Lincolnshire of 400 acres, but there has been a
gain in the same time of no less than 9106 acres, partly
no doubt from the material oft the Yorkshire coast, but
mainly from that discharged into estuaries by the rivers.
In South Holland about 25,000 acres were reclaimed
north of the Roman Banks by the year 1632 in the
parishes reaching from Moulton to Tydd St Mary's.
And in the middle of last century some 600 acres of
COASTAL GAINS AND LOSSES 49
salt " fitties " (an old Norse word for the outmarsh lying
between the sea-bank and the sea) were reclaimed in the
parishes of Grainthorpe and Marsh Chapel. It has been
calculated that since the Norman Conquest some 330,000
acres in Lincolnshire have been reclaimed from the sea
or from the waters of the fen. On the banks of the
Trent, particularly in the Isle of Axholme, a special
method of fertilising the land is in vogue called warping.
Silt-laden tidal water is let in through sluices and drains,
and allowed to stand on the land chosen for the purpose,
the water being gradually drawn off with the fall of the
tide. This is continued for some three or four years, and
a thick layer of rich alluvial deposit is secured, making
what was previously poor soil into almost the richest in
England.
The protection of the coast of Lincolnshire is accom-
plished in various ways. Along the south shore of the
Humber a substantial bank stretches between Barton and
Grimsby. At Cleethorpes a sea wall and embankment
more than a mile long have been erected. A low range
of sand-hills with a clay foundation forms the coast pro-
tection as far as Skegness. This range has been artificially
heightened and broadened with clay and faggoting, and
fronted with thorn bushes in some places to accumulate
the sand, as at Trusthorpe, while exposed parts are faced
with a massive timber defence. Wooden groynes also
have been of much service in protecting the coast
between Mablethorpe and Sutton.
The coast, with its very shallow sea, is naturally a
dangerous one, and the banks well out are carefully
s. L. 4
50 LINCOLNSHIRE
buoyed and lighted, as is the entrance to Boston Deeps
from the sea, for the Wash is difficult to navigate, owing
to the many sandbanks and their frequent alteration in
form and size. The New Cut to Boston has fixed lights.^
and there are 22 lights up to the Dock entrance. Skegness
Pier head has two fixed white lights. There are also
light-vessels off the Dudgeon, Inner and Outer Dowsing
shoals, with revolving light and foghorn, and on the
last-named a submarine bell.
Off Spurnhead is a light-vessel with a revolving light,
visible for u miles. At Spurnhead, a point of special
importance to navigation, there are two lights in the light-
house, the upper one visible 17 miles, flashing white for
i-| seconds, and being obscured for 181 seconds. The
lower light is fixed, and visible for 13 miles, showing
white over the Skegness Shoal, and to the east red over
the Sand Haile Buoy. This expanse of sand will be
noted on the map as taking the five-fathom limit more
than five miles out to sea to the Rosse Spit Buoy, east
and south of the entrance to the Humber. The Humber
is of course well buoyed, with a lightship on the Bull
Sand (almost in the middle of the Channel), revolving
white and red every 10 seconds alternately, visible
1 1 miles. There are also many other lights of lesser
importance along our coast.
There are lifeboats stationed at Grimsby, Donna
Nook, Mablethorpe, Sutton, and Skegness.
CLIMATE 51
10. Climate.
The climate of a country or district is, briefly, the
average weather of that country or district, and it depends
upon the latitude, the temperature, the direction and
strength of the winds, the rainfall, the character of the
soil, the height above sea-level, and the nearness of
the district to the sea.
The differences in the climates of the world depend
mainly upon latitude, but a scarcely less important
factor is nearness to the sea. Along any great climatic
belt there will be found variations in proportion to this
nearness, the extremes being " continental " climates
in the centres of continents far from the oceans, and
"insular" climates in small tracts surrounded by sea.
Continental climates show great differences in seasonal
temperatures, the winters tending to be unusually cold
and the summers unusually warm, while the climate of
insular tracts is characterised by equableness and also by
greater dampness. Great Britain possesses, by reason of
its position, a temperate insular climate, but its average
annual temperature is much higher than could be expected
from its latitude. The prevalent south-westerly winds
cause a drift of the surface-waters of the Atlantic towards
our shores, and this warm water current, which we know
as the Gulf Stream, is the chief cause of the mildness of
our winters.
Most of our weather comes to us from the Atlantic.
It would be impossible here within the limits of a short
4—2
52 LINCOLNSHIRE
chapter to discuss fully the causes which affect or control
weather changes. It must suffice to say that the conditions
are in the main either cyclonic or anticyclonic, which
terms may be best explained, perhaps, by comparing the
air currents to a stream of water. In a stream a chain
of eddies may often be seen fringing the more steadily-
moving central water. Regarding the general north-
easterly moving air from the Atlantic as such a stream,
a chain of eddies may be developed in a belt parallel with
its general direction. This belt of eddies or cyclones, as
they are termed, tends to shift its position, sometimes
passing over our islands, sometimes to the north or south
of them, and it is to this shifting that most of our weather
changes are due. Cyclonic conditions are associated with
a greater or less amount of atmospheric disturbance ;
anticyclonic with calms.
The prevalent Atlantic winds largely affect our island
in another way, namely in its rainfall. The air, heavily
laden with moisture from its passage over the ocean,
meets with elevated land-tracts directly it reaches our
shores — the moorland of Devon and Cornwall, the Welsh
mountains, or the fells of Cumberland and Westmorland
— and, blowing up the rising land-surface, gets cooled and
parts with this moisture as rain. To how great an extent
this occurs is best seen by reference to the accompanying
map of the annual rainfall of England, where it will at
once be noticed that the heaviest fall is in the west, and
that it decreases with remarkable regularity until the least
fall is reached on our eastern shores.
The above causes, then, are those mainly concerned
CLIMATE 53
in influencing the weather, but there are other and more
local factors which often affect greatly the climate of a
place, such, for example, as configuration, position, and
soil. The shelter of a range of hills, a southern aspect,
a sandy soil, will thus produce conditions which may
differ greatly from those of a place — perhaps at no great
distance — situated on a wind-swept northern slope with
a cold clay soil.
The character of the climate of a country or district
influences, as everyone knows, both the cultivation of the
soil and the products which it yields, and thus indirectly
as well as directly exercises a profound effect upon Man.
The banana-nourished dweller in a tropical island who
" has but to tickle the earth with a hoe for it to laugh a
harvest " is of different fibre morally and physically from
the inhabitant of northern climes who wins a scanty
subsistence from the land at the expense of unremitting
toil. These are extremes ; but even within the limits of
a county, perhaps, similar if smaller differences may be
noted, and the man of the plain or the valley is often
distinct in type from his fellow of the hills.
Very minute records of the climate of our island are
kept at numerous stations throughout the country, relating
to the temperature, rainfall, force and direction of the
wind, hours of sunshine, cloud conditions, and so forth,
and are duly collected, tabulated, and averaged by the
Meteorological Society. From these we are able to
compare and contrast the climatic differences in various
parts.
Speed (1627) says of this county, "The Ayre upon
54 LINCOLNSHIRE
the East and South part is both thicke and foggy, by
reason of the Fennes and unsolute grounds, but there-
withall very moderate and pleasing. Her graduation
being removed from the Equator to the degree of 53,
and the Windes that are sent of her still working Seas,
doe disperse those vapours from all power of hurt."
The average number of hours of bright sunshine in
the year for the North Eastern Division of England from
1871-1905 was between noo and 1400. In 1911, a
very bright year, the number of hours of bright sunshine
at Skegness was no less than 1832 (the value for the
district being 1597), and Rauceby had 1701. On the
map recording sunshine in this year a small patch on the
south bank of the Humber is marked as having 1400 hours,
a third of the county 1700, and the rest up to 2000 hours.
In the annexed map, which shows the average annual
rainfall, almost the whole of Lincolnshire is in the area
marked " under 25 " (meaning less than 25 inches fall of rain
in the course of the year). The exception is a patch along
the summit of the Wolds running north-west to south-east,
which comes into the higher rainfall division of "25— 30."
At Teal by on the Wolds the average annual rainfall, for
example, was 27-35 inches, while at Lincoln only 23-34
inches of rain fell on 150 days, the average annual rainfall
for Lincoln for the past 10 years being 23-27 inches. At
Fulbeck on the under edge of the Cliff on 178 days there
were 23*67 inches, and at Rauceby a little eastward of
the last station, there were 25^66 inches. These should
be compared with the average annual rainfall for Great
Britain, which is 32 inches.
ENGLAND & WALES
ANNUAL RAINFALL
Statute Miles
GEORGE PHIUP& SON LT.
(The figures give the approximate annual rainfall in inches?)
56 LINCOLNSHIRE
The number of wet days in each month varies from
ii to 17, and the wettest months are undoubtedly those
of July (2-37 to 2'6o inches), September (2-01 to 2'68
inches), August (2-57 to 3-22 inches), and October (2-47
to 3-30 inches).
The mean annual temperature for the county varies
from 47° F. at Tealby (251 feet above sea-level) to 48° F.
at Lincoln (station 58 feet above sea-level), thus being very
much the same as the average temperature for England,
i.e. 48°. The most prevalent winds are south-west, and
it is very interesting to note that the trees in the Fens
now lean towards the north-east, just as their predecessors
did hundreds of years ago before they were invaded and
swamped by peat. Owing to the fact of these winds
having swept across the Devon and Somerset moors and
the Welsh mountains and a great expanse of land before
reaching this county, they do not bring much rain ; and
the same applies to snow, which rarely falls very heavily,
except on the Wolds in a specially severe winter. The
hardest and longest frosts occur with these winds.
In the early months of the year there is a great
prevalence of easterly winds, and these, coming straight
from the North Sea, bring a large amount of moisture
with them, giving rise to grey skies, and when the wind
is south-easterly, to heavy and persistent rain. Frequently,
in the evening, a long line of cloud may be seen, lying
a little above the summits of the Wolds, showing that
some condensation is taking place from the air saturated
with moisture. And, frequently, 30 or 40 miles inland,
when an east wind is blowing, it carries a strong smell
CLIMATE
57
of sea-water with it. Sea-mists are not uncommon ;
particularly on or after very bright hot days. And,
by contrast, never is the sky more blue, or the
distances more distinct, than on a day of clear bright east
wind. Very few sea-side resorts of the British Isles
can surpass those of the Lincolnshire coast in the
splendidly bracing quality of the air.
Skating on the Fens
ii. People — Race, Settlements, Dialect.
We have no written record of the history of our land
carrying us beyond the Roman invasion in B.C. 55, but
we know that Man inhabited it for ages before this date.
The art of writing being then unknown, the people of
58 LINCOLNSHIRE
those days could leave us no account of their lives and
occupations, and hence we term these times the Prehistoric
period. But other things besides books can tell a story,
and there has survived from their time a vast quantity of
objects (which are daily being revealed by the plough of
the farmer or the spade of the antiquary), such as the
weapons and domestic implements they used, the huts
and tombs and monuments they built, and the bones of
the animals they lived on, which enable us to get a fairly
accurate idea of the life of those days.
So infinitely remote are the times in which the earliest
forerunners of our race flourished, that scientists have not
ventured to date either their advent or how long each
division in which they have arranged them lasted. It
must therefore be understood that these divisions or
Ages — of which we are now going to speak — have been
adopted for convenience sake rather than with any aim
at accuracy.
The periods have been named from the material of
which the weapons and implements were at that time
fashioned — the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age ; the
Neolithic or Later Stone Age ; the Bronze Age ; and
the Iron Age. But just as we find stone axes in use at
the present day among savage tribes in remote islands, so
it must be remembered the weapons of one material were
often in use in the next Age, or possibly even in a later
one, that the Ages, in short, overlapped.
Let us now examine these periods more closely.
First, the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age. Man was now
in his most primitive condition. He probably did not
PEOPLE— RACE, SETTLEMENTS, DIALECT 59
till the land or cultivate any kind of plant or keep any
domestic animals. He lived on wild plants and roots and
such wild animals as he could kill, the reindeer being then
abundant in this country. He was largely a cave-dweller
and probably used skins exclusively for clothing. He
erected no monuments to his dead and built no huts. He
could, however, shape flint implements with very great
dexterity, though he had as yet not learnt either to grind
or polish them. There is still some difference of opinion
among authorities, but most agree that, though this may
-li • i ..
Neolithic Implement
not have been the case in other countries, there was in
our own land a vast gap of time between the people of
this and the succeeding period. Palaeolithic man, who
inhabited either scantily or not at all the parts north of
England and made his chief home in the more southern
districts, disappeared altogether from the country, which
was later re-peopled by Neolithic man.
Neolithic man was in every way in a much more
advanced state of civilisation than his precursor. He
tilled the land, bred stock, wore garments, built huts,
60 LINCOLNSHIRE
made rude pottery, and erected remarkable monuments.
He had, nevertheless, not yet discovered the use of the
metals, and his implements and weapons were still made
of stone or bone, though the former were often beautifully
shaped and polished.
Between the Later Stone Age and the Bronze Age
there was no gap, the one merging imperceptibly into the
other. The discovery of the method of smelting the ores
of copper and tin, and of mixing them, was doubtless a
slow affair, and the bronze weapons must have been ages
in supplanting those of stone, for lack of intercommuni-
cation at that time presented enormous difficulties to the
spread of knowledge. Bronze Age man, in addition to
fashioning beautiful weapons and implements, made good
pottery, and buried his dead in circular barrows.
In due course of time man learnt how to smelt the
ores of iron, and the Age of Bronze passed slowly into
the Iron Age, which brings us into the period of written
history, for the Romans found the inhabitants of Britain
using implements of iron.
We may now pause for a moment to consider who
these people were who inhabited our land in these far-off
ages. Of Palaeolithic man we can say nothing. His
successors, the people of the Later Stone Age, are believed
to have been largely of Iberian stock — people, that is, from
south-western Europe — who brought with them their
knowledge of such primitive arts and crafts as were then
discovered. How long they remained in undisturbed
possession of our land we do not know, but they were
later conquered or driven westward by a very different
PEOPLE— RACE, SETTLEMENTS, DIALECT 61
race of Celtic origin — the Goidels or Gaels, a tall, light-
haired people, workers in bronze, whose descendants
and language are to be found to-day in many parts of
Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. Another Celtic
people poured into the country about the fourth century
B.C. — the Brythons or Britons, who in turn dispossessed
the Gael, at all events so far as England and Wales are
concerned. The Brythons were the first users of iron in
our country.
The Romans, who first reached our shores in B.C. 55,
held the land till about A.D. 410 ; but in spite of the
length of their domination they do not seem to have
left much mark on the people. After their departure,
treading close on their heels, came the Saxons, Jutes,
and Angles. But with these, and with the incursions of
the Danes and Irish, we have left the uncertain region of
the Prehistoric Age for the surer ground of History.
Of the Celtic population of this county at the time
of the Roman invasion but few traces are left, thus
contrasting greatly with what has happened in counties
such as Somerset, Cornwall and the wilder parts of
Wales, and the Lake district, where the Brythons (hence
the name Britain) fled before the Roman advance and
later from the Saxons. These Celts, belonging to the
tribe of Coritani, have left little impression on the
names of places (Lincoln itself being an exception), and
probably none on the actual people of Lincolnshire.
On the other hand the Saxon invasion and settlement
must have been complete early in the sixth century.
With respect to the Danish invasions in the ninth and
62 LINCOLNSHIRE
tenth centuries the case was otherwise, and the lion and
the lamb would lie down at length peaceably, as after
all they were essentially of the same racial stock. This
can be seen by frequent intermingling of names. The
Danish settlements and their advance in Lincolnshire
may be traced in four special directions on the map by
means of the Scandinavian names of towns or villages.
No less than 195 of these names end in by (originally =
a single dwelling-house), while 76 end in thorpe, which
represented a collection of houses, or village. One
advance was certainly made from near Grimsby west-
wards and southwards, and another from the Trent
eastwards, and the two streams would meet somewhere
about Caistor. Again, on the coast from Saltfleetby to
Skegness the names of Scandinavian origin are thickly
spread, and so on to the Wolds around Spilsby and Alford
and Horncastle. Moreover, the stream of invaders and
settlers must have come up the Fossdyke from Gains-
borough to Lincoln.
There is no great distinction nowadays to be found
between the two races of Saxons and Danes in Lincoln-
shire. In a list of citizens at Lincoln in the fourteenth
century, Old Norse and Saxon names are fairly equally
represented. The country folk are generally speaking
fair-haired, and, like David, ruddy of countenance. The
ordinary language in the county is much the same as
on the east coast and the south of Scotland, and is Saxon,
added to and modified, but not supplanted, by Norse or
Danish. There is a distinct difference between the dialects
of the parts of the county divided by the Witham,
PEOPLE— RACE, SETTLEMENTS, DIALECT 63
between north Lincolnshire, which was the home of
the Lindiswaras, and south Lincolnshire, where the
Gyrwas dwelt. Of the northern dialect (which approxi-
mates fairly closely to that of its neighbour Yorkshire)
Tennyson's Northern Farmer and other poems in dialect
will serve as excellent examples. Probably many of the
local pronunciations of words are original and right, in
reality. For instance, road (where the vowels do not
make a diphthong) is pronounced as a dissyllable, ro-ad,
instead of as in our modern parlance " rode," leaving out
the a altogether. One exception possibly from what
has been said above as to the disappearance of all Celtic
traces in the county, may be found in the way in which
the shepherds, or at all events some of them, number
their flock. This notation, pethera, pimp, dik, bumpit, yan
a bumpit (4, 5, 10, 15, 16), is strikingly like that in the
Celtic system, and that in use in modern Welsh, the
Welsh equivalents being pedwar, pump, deg, pymtheg,
unarbymtheg. Both systems start again at 15, and do
not go further than 20, when a " score " was cut on the
tally, and the counting commenced over again1.
There are still some enduring traces of Huguenots in
the county. From both France and Flanders there was
a stream of immigration into England after the massacre
on St Bartholomew's day, 1572, and more especially after
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The
Flemish, being trained to drainage working, helped
Vermuyden in draining the Fens. In 1626, for the
1 An almost identical notation occurs in parts of Cumberland and
Westmorland — Ed.
64 LINCOLNSHIRE
use of those foreigners working on Hatfield Chase, a
chapel was built at Sandtoft near Belton, in the Isle
of Axholme, wherein services were held alternately in
French and Dutch. Thence, in the troublous times of
the Great Civil War, many of these settlers were driven
away, and made for Thorney. One family has been
traced from Hatfield Chase to Thorney, whence it
spread to Fleet, Crowland, Brothertoft, Swineshead, and
Sutterton, and probably many others are in the same
category.
12. Agriculture — Cultivations, Stock.
Lincolnshire is pre-eminently an agricultural county,
and a great proportion of its large area is devoted to the
production of various crops. In 1911 out of its total
of 1,705,293 acres, arable land accounted for no less
than 1,003,743 acres, while permanent pasture occupied
517,925 acres. The county possesses a larger acreage of
barley than any other in the kingdom, and produces rather
more than two bushels per acre above the average. Her
wheat acreage also is the largest in England, yielding nearly
six bushels per acre above the average. For acreage of
oats she ranks between Yorkshire and Devon, with eight
bushels per acre over the average. Her acreage of peas
is the largest in England, that of beans between Suffolk
and Essex, with over seven bushels to the acre over the
average. The Lincolnshire potato-growing area is
2O,ooo acres larger than that of Yorkshire, the next on
the list ; and she ranks third among the counties for
S. L.
66 LINCOLNSHIRE
turnips and swedes. It is interesting to note that in the
ten years 1895-1904 the Lincoln corn-market was first in
the list for oats three times, and for barley once, Norwich
being generally the first corn-market in the kingdom,
with London and Peterborough coming next. In 1910
Lincoln ranked sixth on the list for wheat, second for
barley (about 100,000 quarters behind Norwich, and
about the same in front of Berwick), and sixth for oats,
Stamford being third. About three thousand acres are
allotted to orchards, and about two thousand acres to
small fruit, especially strawberries, currants, and goose-
berries. There are nearly five thousand small holdings
from one to five acres each, and about ten thousand
between five and fifty acres. Along the roads leading
from Lincoln to Branston, Navenby, and Low Brace-
bridge, can still be seen small one-storied houses which
have each had about a rood of ground attached to them.
These were early precursors of " Three acres and a
cow," and were built by Fergus O'Connor, the Chartist.
Lincolnshire has a great reputation for breeding and
raising stock, and takes third place (after Yorkshire and
Devon) among the counties of England in the number of
cattle she possesses. A special breed (constituting about
90 per cent, of the cattle bred in the county) — the Lin-
colnshire Red Shorthorn — is becoming well-known; it is
of a well-defined type, with much wealth and evenness
of flesh, and with great milking qualities. As regards
sheep her position is the same, ranking after Yorkshire
and Northumberland. The typical Lincolnshire sheep
is the largest and heaviest of its kind in the kingdom, has
AGRICULTURE
67
a good growth of bright fleece, is of great hardiness of
constitution, and is much used for crossing with other
varieties, such as the Leicester. It is also in great
request for exportation to Argentina, Australia, and
Lincolnshire Ram
New Zealand, where it is crossed with the Merino.
Consequently immense prices have been paid — as much
as 1000 guineas — for Lincolnshire rams. There are
large sheep-fairs held annually at Lincoln and Corby,
5—2
68
LINCOLNSHIRE
but the numbers are very much smaller than in years
gone by. At Sleaford wool-fair in 1911, no less than
15,000 fleeces were for sale. For pigs the county
takes fourth place, the majority being of the Large
Lincolnshire Shire Horse
White breed, which attain a very great size, 50 stone
being a not infrequent weight; but a native kind, the
Lincolnshire curly-coated, is rapidly advancing into
favour.
AGRICULTURE 69
As becomes a county wherein two famous horse-fairs,
Lincoln and Horncastle, are held, Lincolnshire has a
great repute for breeding horses for riding, driving, and
for heavy work; she ranks second to Yorkshire for the
number of her horses. The shire horse has been a
Lincolnshire production for generations past. It is in-
teresting to note — as showing how customs change — that
in 1566 it was observed that in Lincolnshire there were
"few draught horses; the carriage of that county standeth
most by oxen." Hence comes one of Shakespeare's two
allusions to the county in Mr Justice Shallow's enquiry
" How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford Fair ?"*
Of special cultivations, there is now nothing very
particular to chronicle. As we shall see in the next
chapter, in old days, before the drainage of the fens,
very many geese of excellent quality were bred there.
On the Heath were very large warrens of silver-
grey rabbits (some still exist near Santon, close to
Frodingham) whose skins were very marketable. Some
300 or 400 acres of fen were also devoted to the produce
of cranberries. Mustard is extensively grown for seed
about Holbeach and Spalding, and the Isle of Axholme
is well known for its vegetables, such as celery. Fields
may also be seen of white poppies for " poppy-heads "
and for the production of opium. Flax also is cultivated
round Epworth and Crowle. A favourite Lincolnshire
vegetable, Good King Henry or mercury, is extensively
1 The other being "as melancholy as the drone of a Lincolnshire
bagpipe," both from the play of Henry IV. Pepys was entertained in 1667
to drink and the bagpipes by Sir Freshville Holies, a Lincolnshire M.P.
70
LINCOLNSHIRE
grown and used as a rather coarse spinach, and the
glasswort of the coasts (Saltcornia) is used for pickling.
Around Boston some woad (hath tinctorid] is to be seen,
and there were two woad-growers registered in the
Lincolnshire Directory for 1909. The blue dye is obtained
from the root-leaves, which are crushed in a mill by
rude conical crushers dragged round by horses, and the
The Woad Industry : Balls drying in the Sheds
pulp thus made is worked up into balls and laid out for
some weeks to dry. These are then thrown in a heap
in the dark, mixed with water, and fermented, being left
for a considerable time before being packed into casks for
sale. This dye is now always used with indigo.
Near Boston also, in the last few years, flower farms,
producing narcissus and tulips, have come into vogue.
AGRICULTURE
71
In the Isle of Axholme, round Haxey in particular,
and on the higher levels, the land is cut up into parallel
strips called selions, about a rod wide and half an acre in
extent. As these belong frequently to different owners
(one man for instance owned 40 acres in too different
plots in one village), they are diversified in crops.
A Field of Tulips at Spalding
On the Heath or Cliff, which extends nearly from the
Humber to south of Grantham, the soil is thin and near
the oolite rock. The fields are large, often walled in, and
the older farm buildings generally of stone. The rotation
of crops is carried out with marrowfat peas, wheat, roots
and barley, which is of the best quality. Carrots are
much grown, especially where the soil is sandy.
AGRICULTURE 73
On the Wolds also the soil is very thin, hardly more
than a foot deep above the chalk. The farms are large,
running from 300 to 1500 acres, the largest of all being
at Withcall. A four-course rotation of crops is strictly
carried out, wheat (or oats rather commonly of late years),
turnips, barley (with seeds sown in it), and wheat, or oats
again.
Much of the north Marsh is under permanent grass,
and is some of the most valuable grazing ground in the
kingdom. Further south a good deal of the land is
now tilled, and produces mustard, potatoes, and corn.
The growth of straw and yield of grain are very large
indeed.
The Fens are now so well drained that they are
rather short of water in a dry summer. Most of the
land is under arable culture, the corn crops being mainly
wheat or oats, occasionally barley, or beans or peas.
Turnips, mangolds, potatoes, and carrots are the chief
root crops.
13. Industries and Manufactures.
In the centuries immediately succeeding the Norman
Conquest the chief industry of Lincolnshire was the
preparation of wool, as far as regards the dwellers on
the Cliff, Heath, and Wold. It was no doubt due to the
export of wool that the port of Lincoln ranked fourth
among the ports of the kingdom in the sixth year of
King John (1204), while Boston ranked second, Grimsby
74 LINCOLNSHIRE
tenth, Barton eleventh, and Immingham twelfth. In
1291 Lincoln was made a "staple" town, wherein the
wool was sold, weighed, and certified, and then sent down
the river Witham to Boston. In 1361, however, the
latter port had the "staple" transferred to it, to its great
advantage, and to the great discontent of Lincoln, whose
inhabitants vainly petitioned to have it restored. Nearly
a hundred years before, Boston had stood at the head of
the Customs returns for several years (1278-1290). In
spite of the complaints of Lincoln's decaying trade, it
must have been fairly prosperous, since it is estimated to
have had a population of 5000 in 1377, when it was the
sixth largest town in the kingdom, and in 1503 it was by
assessment actually fourth in the list. It had had a guild
of weavers for centuries, and in the middle of the thirteenth
century Lincoln was celebrated for its manufacture of
scarlet cloth. Later, the colour always associated with
Lincoln was green, as is mentioned in Spenser's Faery
Queene, Drayton's Polyolbion, and the ballads of Robin
Hood, but few clothiers seem to have been in the city in
the earlier years of the sixteenth century. The weaving
trade probably went abroad during the stormy times
of King John and Henry III, and never came back to
Lincolnshire again, though the actual wool export trade
must have lasted on well into the times of Queen
Elizabeth, as the fine manor house at Bassingthorpe
testifies, being built by a merchant of the staple, Thomas
Coney, who had 1000 sheep in 1569.
Later efforts to stimulate the working-up of the wool
in the county do not seem to have met with much success.
INDUSTRIES AND MANUFACTURES 75
Several attempts were made at Lincoln both to establish
knitting and spinning schools, and also clothworking in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but they all
came to nothing. In 1561 Thomas Trollope proposed to
Cecil, Queen Elizabeth's powerful minister, to set up
mills at Stamford for the beating of hemp and the
manufacture of linen and canvas cloth, but they met
the same fate as those dealing with wool. At Belton
House there is still some excellent tapestry made at
Stamford in the eighteenth century. In 1787 an Annual
County Ball was established for the encouragement of
native woollen manufactures, for the first two years being
held at Alford, but ever since at Lincoln. From its
origin it is still often called the "Stuff Ball." The ladies
used to wear stuff gowns and the gentlemen stuff coats,
waistcoats, and breeches, according to the late Sir Charles
Anderson, who adds that stuff was little worn after 1820.
From the custom of the Lady Patroness choosing the
colour or colours of the ball, it is also sometimes called
the "Lincoln Colour Ball."
In the Fens, before they were drained, one great
source of income was from the very abundant supply of
wild fowl. For these decoys were used, of which there is
still one left at Ashby near Burringham on the Trent.
In 35 seasons at this decoy the total catch was nearly
100,000 wild fowl, of which nearly half was contributed
by mallard and teal1. A great number of wild fowl
are still taken in nets along the sand-flats on the Wash.
1 Victoria County History of Lincolnshire, vol. 11, article Wildfowling, from
which all that follows on this subject is taken.
76
LINCOLNSHIRE
Both Fuller and Camden wrote enthusiastically of the
wealth of wild fowl in Lincolnshire, and Pennant in 1768
refers to this county as " the great magazine of wild fowl
in this kingdom." Another source of profit to the "Fen
Slodgers," as the men were called, was from the reeds and
rushes, which were gathered for thatching before tiles
Wildfowling in the Fens
and slates came into ordinary use. Camden says that
a well-harvested stack of reeds was worth from £200 to
.£300. Dr Johnson was told that a roof thatched with
Lincolnshire reeds would last 70 years. It is easy to
understand why the fenmen were so keenly and so
tenaciously determined to resist the drainage of the
Fens.
Cutting Reeds for Thatching
78 LINCOLNSHIRE
It is interesting to note that, in 1585, an order was
made for " xij or xvj Stiltmen in the countie of Lincolne
furnished with either of them two paire of the highest of
Stiltes and the longest poles that are or maie be used with
the said stiltes to be sent over into the Low Contryes to
the Erie of Leicester."
Geese, as already stated, were in past years kept in
enormous numbers in the Fens, both for their feathers,
which provided the penman's quill before Birmingham had
popularised the substitute of steel, and for stuffing beds,
as well as for food. There are still many kept in the
districts around Spalding.
As would be expected in an agricultural county, there
are large crushing-mills for linseed and for other kinds
of cake for feeding stock. These are at Lincoln and
Gainsborough, and there are manure works at Lincoln
and Saxilby. Flour-mills driven by steam are fairly
common in most of the large towns, and have superseded
windmills, which are disappearing fast, and are not
replaced. Forty years ago there was a row of seven or
eight along the cliff between Lincoln and Burton, now
two only are left. In a barley-producing county malting
is naturally a very prominent industry, and the enormous
new malt-kilns and houses at Sleaford are probably far
the largest in the country.
In Saxon times, certainly after the days of King
Edwy, there wras a mint in Lincoln which struck coins
there of all the succeeding kings up to the Norman
Conquest. When Domesday Book was compiled the
Lincoln mint paid ^75 to the king, a larger sum than
INDUSTRIES AND MANUFACTURES 79
was paid by any other mint in the country. After the
Conquest, coins struck at Lincoln are known of all the
kings (Kings Richard I and John being excepted) down
to King Edward I.
This city also was one of the provincial assay towns,
as was ordained by a statute of the year 1423 (the second
year of King Henry VI) that each of the towns mentioned
should have divers " touches," i.e. marks, and further that
no goldsmith should work silver of worse alloy than the
sterling, and should put his mark upon it before he " set
to sell," under the same penalties as those obtaining in
London. No mark is known peculiar to Lincoln. But
there is a mark — a capital I on a capital M in a florid type
of shield, almost invariably alone — which has been found
on fifty communion cups which, except in one instance, are
all in this county. It is almost certainly a Lincoln maker's
private mark. These cups have paten covers, and on the
paten foot is frequently inscribed the date, i.e. 1569 in
19 instances, 1570 in two, and 1571 in one case. Other
cups unmarked, but of the same date and style, may
safely be attributed to the same maker, whose name,
unfortunately, is not known.
Towards the end of the first half of the nineteenth
century agricultural-implement works were started in
Lincoln. From small beginnings these works have grown
and prospered exceedingly, their buildings and shops
covering many acres and giving employment to some
thousands of workmen. They produce portable and
fixed engines, boilers, traction engines, road rollers, pumps,
threshing-machines, hay and straw elevators, maize-
80
LINCOLNSHIRE
shellers and chaff-cutters, oil engines, gas engines, steam
navvies, engines for mining and electrical purposes, and
steam wagons. In some of these works all the machinery
is electrically driven, and in all the best and latest develop-
ments in tools, workshops, etc., are found. Plough-works,
malleable-iron works, and wire-works also produce a large
Iron Works, Lincoln
output, and employ many men. At Grantham also are
large iron-works making much the same class of machinery,
with a particular leaning to oil and gas engines. At
Gainsborough are large foundries and iron-works, with
like products in agricultural and other machinery. The
smelting industry, which has attained such large dimen-
sions at Scunthorpe, will be noticed in the next chapter.
S. L.
82 LINCOLNSHIRE
At Brant Broughton much excellent work has been done
recently in wrought iron, artistically handled.
At both Gainsborough and Lincoln are large wood
works, and, as will be seen later, wood holds an important
position in the import trade of the Lincolnshire ports.
A comparatively new industry which employs many
hands, chiefly women and girls, in Boston, Lincoln, and
other towns of this county, is pea-picking, in which the
peas are sorted out in sizes and qualities and packed for
sale in boxes. Another large industry is that of the
feather factories, wherein the feathers supplied by farmers
and poultry dealers are sorted by machinery and then
purified by steam, the residue going to form a valuable
manure.
Of places in the county that have given name to any
product there are only four — Lincoln, as mentioned above,
Grantham (for gingerbreads), Boston, and Torksey. Boston
seems to have been known in Elizabethan times for its
drinking-vessels, as Bishop Hall in his Satires refers to the
" palish oat frothing in Boston clay1."
At Torksey2 a china manufactory was established in
1803 by William Billingsley, with his son-in-law, George
Walker. Billingsley had previously been many years at
Derby working for Duesbury, the proprietor of the old
Derby works. The business at Torksey only lasted five
years. Billingsley was an admirable flower and landscape
painter on china.
1 Victoria County History of Lincolnshire, vol. n, article Industries, p. 388.
2 Associated Architect. Societies' Report, vol. xxm, pp. 153 — 15^> Dr
O'Neill.
INDUSTRIES AND MANUFACTURES 83
In the early days of lawn tennis, a considerable industry
was established in Horncastle for the manufacture of the
racquets used in the game. But this has died out in the
last 20 years.
14. Mines and Minerals.
The first place among Lincolnshire mines must be
given to Scunthorpe and Frodingham in the north of the
county. The fact that the ironstone there was sufficiently
rich to make it worth smelting was only realised about
the year 1855, when the late Lord St Oswald (then Mr
Rowland Winn) first opened quarries. The ore was at
that time taken to the river Trent, and shipped to
iron-works in Yorkshire. The first blast furnace in the
district was erected about 1864, and others followed
shortly afterwards. There are now five firms who smelt
iron on the spot, and in addition to the ore used by them,
a very large quantity is sent to iron-works in Yorkshire
and Derbyshire. The area in which ironstone is being
dug extends from Ashby on the south to Thealby on the
north, a distance of about seven miles — its widest part
measuring about a mile and a half — and it includes
portions of the parishes of Ashby, Brumby, Frodingham,
Scunthorpe, Flixborough, Normanby, and Burton. The
ore is a fossil-bearing limestone in the Lower Lias and
contains the iron in the form of hydrated peroxide. The
bed, where it attains its full thickness, is about 30 feet
deep ; it has a slight north-easterly dip, and the quarries
6—3
84
LINCOLNSHIRE
are all situated on its outcrop, so that the available thick-
ness diminishes from east to west, according to the degree
of denudation to which it has been subject. Towards
the east the bed dips under the scarp of the hill ; but it
was reached in shafts and borings near Appleby station at
a depth of 300 feet, still being nearly 30 feet thick. The
stone is all got in open quarries. It is covered with blown
Frodingham Iron and Steel Works : Scunthorpe
sand varying in depth from a few inches to about 30 feet,
containing in places beds of peat. This is removed by
digging and burrowing, or in some cases by mechanical
means. The ironstone is got by drilling and blasting.
The percentage of metallic iron varies in the different
bands that make up the full thickness of the bed ;
some of the richest yield upwards of 30 per cent, and
MINES AND MINERALS 85
some are too poor to treat. It has been calculated that
on an average two tons of coal produce one ton of metal.
The stone contains in itself sufficient lime to act as a flux,
and a siliceous component is furnished by the ironstone
of the Northampton Sands, quarried at Greetwell by
Lincoln.
The ore is smelted in large blast furnaces, and the
result is mostly disposed of in the form of pig iron. But,
a few years ago, one firm at Frodingham built steel works
and rolling mills, using the Siemens-Martin method. The
Lincolnshire steel is of very high quality, suitable for
rolling into thin sheets or drawing into wire. Some
extensive new works wherein both iron and steel will be
made are nearing completion at Flixborough.
At Caythorpe are considerable open workings of the
Middle Lias (Marlstone) ironstone.
At Greetwell and Monks Abbey, just east of Lincoln,
as already mentioned, is quarried the siliceous ironstone
found in the lowest layer of the Lower Oolite, known as
the Northampton Sands. The ironstone is worked partly
in the open when there is little soil above, but chiefly
by galleries driven into the Cliff, with narrow-gauge rails
and trucks, on which horse-traction is being superseded
by small locomotives. The ore is reddish brown at the
outcrop and gets bluer in colour the deeper the tunnel
goes in. The yield of metal is from 28 to 40 per cent.
The soil is replaced in the open workings, and has
been covered with allotments, etc. ; in the other workings
the galleries have fallen in and produced a very irregular
surface.
86 LINCOLNSHIRE
Near Claxby and Nettleton the Middle Neocomian
layer of ironstone, about six feet six inches thick, has
been worked by galleries driven into the side of the hill.
The workings began in 1868. The ore is almost entirely
made up of small and beautifully polished oolitic grains
of hydrated peroxide of iron. It is a calcareous ore,
yielding from 28 to 33 per cent, of metallic iron, and
is useful for mixing with the clayey ores of the coal-
measures. From the presence of slag with charcoal and
bits of pottery it is evident that this bed of ore was known
to and worked by the Romans during their possession of
this country.
The county is not rich in other minerals, coal not yet
having been tapped to any practical result. The chief
building stone is the Lincolnshire Limestone, an oolitic
rock worked near Ancaster and Wilsford, at Haydor, and
near Grantham, of which many churches and houses in
Kesteven are built, including Lincoln Minster. It hardens
on exposure and forms a most excellent building stone.
Many churches on the Wolds and in the Marsh are built
of the beautiful local grey-green sandstone (of the Lower
Neocomian series), which unfortunately is rather perish-
able. In some instances the white chalk is used for
building, as at Legbourne Church, where the smooth
white surface suggests at a distance unglazed white tiles.
The clay on Lincoln hill and below the Cliff is extensively
used for brick-making, and at Little Bytham are works
for making so-called "clinker" bricks, which are specially
hard and used as fire-bricks.
FISHERIES AND FISHING STATIONS 87
15. Fisheries and Fishing Stations.
There are several different methods adopted for
catching sea-fish. Among the most important is that
of trawling, in which a triangular net with a bag is
towed along the sea-bottom. This, therefore, can only
be done when the sea-floor is fairly smooth and sandy
and without rocks. By this method the bottom-feeding
fish are caught. Steam trawlers are gradually superseding
the sailing vessels. In winter the east coast trawlers —
with which we are chiefly concerned — fish the Dogger
Bank, which lies in the North Sea about midway between
the coast of Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland, and
that of Denmark, and each vessel takes its own catch into
port, having a well on board wherein the fish can be kept
alive, while in harbour special boxes are placed in the
water for the same purpose. In the months of February
and March cod are very plentiful along the coast north
of the Humber, and from 150 to 200 boxes of haddock
are often landed at Grimsby by a steam trawler after a
week's fishing on the Dogger Bank. In summer they
fish along the Danish, German, and Dutch coasts in
fleets, wherefrom a steamer takes the catch to port.
The fish caught are chiefly flat-fish, halibut, turbot, brill,
soles, and plaice, and those possessing the quaint names of
witches and megrims, with some cod, haddock, whiting,
hake, gurnard, and red mullet. Of late years, trawlers
have gone farther a-sea for their quarry ; to Iceland,
where are large plaice and haddock, and south to Vigo
Bay, in the Bay of Biscay, where hake are plentiful.
88 LINCOLNSHIRE
The second kind of sea-fishing is by lines and hooks,
and is carried on over much the same area as the former,
especially over the Dogger Bank and Cromer Knoll, but fish
are caught by this method at any depth, so that the state of
the sea-floor, whether rocky or sandy, is of no consequence.
Mussels and whelks are extensively used for bait, the lines
are some eight miles long with 4580 hooks on each, and
are shot across the tide. Cod and haddock are the main
catch. The Faroe, Shetland, and Iceland fishing-grounds
are worked by large steamers from Grimsby, which bring
back enormous numbers of halibut,- with ling, cod, coal-
fish, and skate. Fishing by head-lines, with generally two
hooks, is familiar to every visitor to our coast, and is
practised near the shore.
The third kind of fishing is by drift-nets, which are
hung suspended vertically across the tide, and through the
meshes of which the fish (herrings on the north-eastern
coasts, pilchards round Cornwall) get their heads, but
cannot get them back, owing to the gills.
Grimsby, from a small town with 9000 inhabitants
in 1860, has sprung into the foremost position in Europe
and probably the world, as a fishing port. She had in the
1911 census a population of 74,663, a magnificent fleet
of 564 steam fishing vessels (with tonnage 41,648), which
is more than one-third of the entire number of vessels in
the United Kingdom. The fish-market is two miles long,
and in 1910 there were landed at Grimsby no less than
3,491,000 cwts. of wet fish, valued at ^2,528,000, as
well as £6000 worth of crabs, oysters, and other shellfish.
In the preservation of all this fish much ice is necessary,
FISHERIES AND FISHING STATIONS 89
and hence there is a very large ice factory in the town.
An effort is being made (1911) to make this port also
one of the most important in the kingdom for curing and
pickling herrings, as is done at Yarmouth and elsewhere.
One of the earliest notices of Boston as a fishing port
occurs in the year 1325, when orders were sent to buy
and provide for the King's use in the markets of St Botolph,
Fish-pontoon, Grimsby
ten thousands of stockfish and styfish. In 1907 there were
at Boston 95 fishing vessels, which employed 433 men
and boys, and in 1910, 88,075 cwts. of wet fish, valued
at £66,242, and £7835 worth of shellfish were landed
at this port.
Oysters used to be very abundant near Saltfleet, and
they are still numerous near Cleethorpes, where they
grow to a large size. Under Boston jurisdiction in the
90 LINCOLNSHIRE
Wash are some six to eight square miles of mussel "scalps."
A good deal of shrimping is done along the Lincolnshire
coast, and smelts were caught in large numbers, as
also were grey mullet, near Wainfleet Haven, but the
fishermen complain that these have decreased in late years,
and the fishing is now chiefly for flounders and dabs.
One enemy of fish, the seal, has recognised this part of
the coast as an excellent feeding place, and although several
have been killed and captured, the fishermen have had
to leave this locality to the seals. In 1912 there was a
colony of 500 seals in the Wash, doing great damage to
the fisheries and the Eastern Sea Fisheries Association
offered 55. for each seal killed. These, of course, are of
little commercial value either for skin or oil. In the north
of the county the gate-posts at the entrance to a farm
are occasionally formed by huge whale jaws, testifying to
the prevalence of whale-fishing years ago, before the
whales were nearly exterminated.
16. Shipping and Trade.
The principal port in Lincolnshire, as has been in-
dicated in the preceding chapter, is that of Great Grimsby.
Situated on the south bank of the Humber, not far from
its entrance into the North Sea, Grimsby is exceedingly
well placed for the promotion of river, coast, and foreign
trade. Its jurisdiction extends from Skitter Ness in
Goxhill parish, on the north-west almost opposite Hull,
to Trusthorpe drain on the south, where that of Boston
SHIPPING AND TRADE
91
begins. The port has undergone several vicissitudes.
In the reign of King Edward III, it supplied n ships
and 170 seamen for the siege of Calais. With the
gradual silting-up of the harbour its shipping trade
declined (in 1588, probably there was not a ship above
100 tons at Grimsby), until the latter end of the eighteenth
century, when steps were taken to improve the harbour.
Grimsby Docks
A dock of about 14 acres was finished in 1800, when
the population (in the following year) was only 1524 in
number. With the advent of the Manchester, Sheffield,
and Lincolnshire Railway — now the Great Central Rail-
way— on the scene in 1848, the new era of commercial
prosperity opened for Grimsby. The Royal Dock, of
25 acres, had its first stone laid by the Prince Consort
in 1849, and received its name when Queen Victoria
92
LINCOLNSHIRE
visited the town in 1854. There is also the Alexandra
Dock (48 acres, partly including the old dock), a uniting
dock between them, an old fish dock of 13^ acres, and
a new one of 9^ acres. The dock gates and locks are
moved by hydraulic power, derived from a stately tower
335 feet high. A new dock at Immingham, six miles
higher up the river, where the five-fathom line comes
Immingham Dock, Grimsby
(Showing Coal Hoists)
very near to the shore, is rapidly approaching completion,
and will be one of the largest, if not the largest, on the
east coast. It is a deep-water dock, in a land-locked
harbour, with a deep-water channel, and consists of a
square basin 1100 feet square, with two arms 1250 feet
long and 375 feet wide, making a total water area of
55! acres.
SHIPPING AND TRADE 93
Grimsby has also ship-building and engineering works
and a very large trade altogether apart from fish and their
belongings. In 1910, she exported 1,611,220 tons of
coal, her steam fishing fleet shipped 833,420 toris, and
other vessels 270,025 tons, making a grand total of coal
passed through the port of 2,714,665 tons. In the same
year she imported 305,478 loads of timber and wood
goods valued at £776,857, butter to the value of
£3,124,154, corn, grain, etc. £120,114, eggs £311,878,
and bacon £422,597. In the same year the total value of
her imports (£12,615,959) and her exports (£18,958,924)
was no less than £31,574,883.
Boston attained to a much greater position in medieval
times than Grimsby, owing doubtless to its being the port
at the entrance of the Witham into the Wash, whereby a
very large trade in wool was carried on. In 1204, of the
tax on the fifteenth part of land and goods of the merchants
at this port, Boston paid £780, coming second in the
kingdom to London with £836. In 1279 the Hanseatic
merchants were trading here, and merchants from Ypres,
Cologne, Caen, and Ostend had houses in the town.
The reputation of its great fair was widespread. The
canons of Bridlington Priory, for example, regularly
attended this fair to buy their wine, groceries, clothes,
etc., as did those of Fountains Abbey. In 1336, a grant
of protection was given to a number of German mer-
chants and 14 ships to attend the fair. When King John
of France was confined in Somerton Castle, he procured
spices from Boston, and rented a cellar of wine from
William Spaign (the name still exists in Spain Lane) in
94 LINCOLNSHIRE
the town. In 1359, to King Edward Ill's fleet of 710
ships, with 14,151 men, Boston contributed 17 ships and
361 mariners. In 1361 the staple of wool was removed
to Boston, and no doubt contributed very largely to the
commercial growth and prosperity of the port. In 1575,
the authorities received praise for having captured some
pirates, who were handed over to be dealt with by Lord
Clinton, vice-admiral of the court. The port seems
nearly to have been brought to ruin in Elizabethan days,
probably by the silting up of the Witham and the shifting
sands of the Wash. The dissolution of the monasteries
also, and some quarrels between the Esterlings and the
townsfolk, helped in the decay of commerce. In 1751,
owing possibly to the diversion of some fen drains from
the Witham, a small sloop of 40 to 50 tons and drawing
six feet of water, could only sail to and from the town at
spring tides.
Early in the nineteenth century things were better,
coals came by the Witham, grain was sent to London,
and there was some trade with the Baltic. In 1812,
Boston had 177 vessels, one of 412 tons, and in that
year and the preceding one, one-third of the oats received
in London was shipped from Boston. A new dock,
825 feet long by 450 feet wide, was made in 1882, a
new channel was cut from Lynn Well to Boston Deeps,
the bed of the Witham was deepened in 1896, and a new
channel made to deep water. In dealing with a sluggish
river like the Witham, there is always a difficulty with
regard to locks and the proper scouring of the outfall.
Without locks it is almost impossible to keep sufficient
PQ
96 LINCOLNSHIRE
water in the river for the necessary traffic, while the
presence of a lock at the outfall means a considerable
silting up of the channel on the seaward side of the
lock, and an inefficient scouring of the channel. The
jurisdiction of the Port of Boston extends from Trus-
thorpe drain on the north to Fleet Haven outfall or
Sutton Corner in the south-east. Her trade consists of
imports of timber from the Baltic, and of grain, cotton,
and linseed from the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and
America. There is a regular line of steamers to Hamburg
twice a week.
In 1909, 369 steam and sailing vessels of 177,630
tons entered the port, 383 vessels of 176,062 tons cleared,
and 53 sail and steam vessels belonged to the port with a
tonnage of 3684. The Deep Sea Trawling and Steam
Trawling Companies do a large trade in fish. Boston's
exports of coal, coke, and other fuel were 180,415 tons.
Her imports amounted to the value of £891,126, con-
sisting of barley £88,343, maize £93,655, refined sugar
£360,627, and timber £98,175.
Little need be said of the former ports of this county.
Lincoln was among the most considerable ports in the
time of King John, and its decline was no doubt due
chiefly to the removal of the staple therefrom to Boston,
and to the state of the river Witham. Huttoft appa-
rently had some trade once, now there is practically no
estuary1. A list of Lincolnshire ports in 1342 gives
Lincoln, Boston, Saltney, Saltfleetby, Wainfleet, Barton-
1 Leland says " at Huttoft marsch cum shippes yn from divers places
and discharge."
SHIPPING AND TRADE 97
on-Humber (whence there used to be a ferry to Hull,
before New Holland was made the ferry station by
the M. S. & L. railway), Grimsby, Burton-on-Stather,
Whitton, South Ferriby, Stroyten, North Coates,
Swynhumber, Tetney, Wrangle, Surfleet, Spalding,
Torksey, Gainsborough, and Kinnard's Ferry. Of these
Torksey, situated at the junction of the Fossdyke with
the Trent, has been of considerable importance both as
a stronghold and a port in Roman and medieval times.
Gainsborough still does a considerable trade by water.
Spalding is included in the Boston trade. Skegness,
according to Leland, in the time of King Henry VIII,
had been "at sumtyme a great haven towne...a Haven
and a Towne waulled, having also a Castelle."
17. History of the County.
The first notice of this part of our country is that of
Claudius Ptolemaeus about the year 120 A.D., in which
he mentions the British tribe of Coritavi or Coritani.
This tribe inhabited the site of the existing counties of
Lincoln, Rutland, Leicester, part of Nottingham, War-
wick, and Derby, and had as its chief towns, Lindum
(Lincoln), and Ratae (Leicester). Under the Roman
domination Lincoln was first a fortress, and then a colony.
Several tombstones have been found there to soldiers of
the Ninth or Spanish Legion, and Lincoln can still show
a Roman City gate (Newport Arch), part of her Roman
walls and the ditch surrounding them, and other remains.
s. L. 7
98
LINCOLNSHIRE
The Roman roads and canals are mentioned in other
chapters, and the Roman villas, discovered at positions
far from any military protection, give an idea of the peace
which must have prevailed under the Roman rule. The
Roman banks which protected the land from the sea are
still to be seen. These banks and the necessary dykes
Newport Arch, Lincoln
were neglected when the last legion departed in 426, and
once more large tracts of Fen were left to be covered by
floods.
To resist the invading Picts and Scots, King Vortigern
is said to have invoked the aid of Saxons, Jutes, and Angles
(the last-named settled in Mercia, of which Lincolnshire
was a part). Meeting the northern invaders at Stamford
HISTORY OF THE COUNTY 99
he defeated them with much slaughter, being assisted by
the Saxon forces under the command of Hengist and
Horsa. At Caistor, King Vortigern is supposed to have
met Hengist's daughter, Rowena, who afterwards married
him. She is related to have poisoned her stepson
Vortimer, who died in 475 and was buried at Lincoln.
In this year Hengist ravaged the country, and captured
London, Lincoln, and Winchester, which were regained
by the British under Ambrosius in 487.
With the Saxon invasion Paganism replaced Christ-
ianity. Two hundred years later, the Venerable Bede
recounts the re-introduction of Christianity. In the
year 628 he says " Paulinus also preached the Word to
the Province of Lindsey...and he first converted the
Governor of the City of Lincoln, whose name was
Blecca, with his whole family." In 678, Egfrid, King
of Northumbria, captured Lindsey from Wulfhere, King
of Mercia, and had Eadhed ordained the first Bishop of
Lindsey. In Doomsday Book are named over 200
churches as in existence in Lincolnshire at the time of
the Norman Conquest, which testifies to the widespread
establishment of Christianity in these parts.
But another Pagan invasion, that of the Danes, was
to sweep over the country towards the end of the eighth
century, and Lincolnshire was particularly exposed to
their attack, from the facility with which they could land
on the coast, or sail up the Humber to Gainsborough and
Torksey, and thence along the Fossdyke to Lincoln.
Direct evidence of these incursions and settlements is
furnished by the names of places such as Mablethorpe,
7—2
100 LINCOLNSHIRE
Trusthorpe, and Saltfleet^y along the coast, and Saxi%,
Kettletborpe and Skellingtborpe along the Fossdyke.
Lincoln also was one of the five towns which were under
the Danelagh (Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, and Stam-
ford were the others, to which Chester and York were
added later). This grouping of towns replaced the
kingdom of Mercia, and Lincoln seems to have represented
the Lindiswaras (dwellers in Lindsey on the higher land)
as Stamford did the Gyrwas (who lived in the Fens).
Each town was ruled by its own Earl with his separate
host, twelve lawmen administered Danish law, and a
Common Court of Justice existed for the whole con-
federacy.
In 869 the army of the Pagans (i.e. of the Danes)
under Hubba and Hingvar having made some stay at
York, at the close of the winter passed over by ship into
Lindsey, and landing at Humberstone (possibly Hubba
stone) ravaged the whole country. Ingulph, whose
authority is of no great weight, describes a battle fought
on St Maurice's day (Sept. 22) 870, at Stow Green near
Threekingham, in which the Danes were beaten with
great slaughter. At Threekingham, near the church,
there is still a large mound in which some of the slain
were buried, and a piece of land in the parish is called
Danes Field or Danes Hill to this day. In 873, when
the Danish forces wintered at Torksey, peace was made
with them. In 911 Mercia was infested with Danes,
and in 937 occurred the battle of Brunanburgh, one
of the greatest in the long struggle between Saxons and
Danes. Possibly Burnham near Thornton Curtis in
HISTORY OF THE COUNTY
101
North Lincolnshire was the site of this battle, wherein
King Athelstan with his brother Edmund Atheling gained
a very decisive victory over Constantine King of the Scots,
with whom were many Danes under Anlaf. The Danish
King Sweyn died at Gainsborough in 1014.
Entrenchment at Burnham
In 1068 William the Conqueror visited Lincoln and
ordered the erection of the castle. He distributed lord-
ships freely among his followers, this county being divided
up between twenty-three Normans, of whom Gilbert de
102 LINCOLNSHIRE
Gant, Odo Bishop of Bayeux, and Alan Earl of Richmond,
took the lion's share. In the next year Earls Edwin
and Morcar, with two hundred and forty ships, landed on
behalf of Edgar Atheling on the Lincolnshire side of the
Humber and were almost all captured by a strong force
of the king's friends from Lincoln. The Empress Maud,
coming to England in 1140 and asserting her claim to
the Crown against King Stephen, took up her residence
at Lincoln, which was well provisioned and fortified.
The city (and probably the castle) was soon besieged and
taken by King Stephen, but the Empress had managed
to escape previously. Next year Ranulf Earl of Chester
and his half-brother William de Roumare, whom King
Stephen had created Earl of Lincoln, captured the castle
by an ingenious trick, and were besieged by Stephen, who
regained the city. Earl Ranulf, escaping, brought back
Robert Earl of Gloucester and a large army to raise the
siege. A battle ensued on the north-western slopes of
the city, and partly through treachery ended in the
complete defeat of Stephen, who had fought most
gallantly. From the comparative ease with which this
battle was won, it got the name of " The Joust of
Lincoln." Stephen, having been exchanged for the Earl
of Gloucester, again besieged the castle, of which he
obtained possession in 1146. Later, it was once more
attacked unsuccessfully by Earl Ranulf. The Empress
Maud's son, King Henry, was crowned again in 1158,
in Lincoln, but in a suburb without the walls. Here,
too, in November 1200, King John met William,
King of Scotland, who swore fealty and did homage to
HISTORY OF THE COUNTY
103
him. On November 23, the body of St Hugh, Bishop
of Lincoln, was received at Lincoln by King John and
three archbishops and thirteen bishops, and buried in the
Cathedral on November 26. In 1216 came the closing
Jews' House, Lincoln
scene of John's restless and evil life, when he left Kings
Lynn with a powerful army and lost all his baggage in
crossing the river Nene, a part of the Wash1, he himself
1 This was close to Sutton Bridge, a large tract of land having been
reclaimed from the sea since that date.
104 LINCOLNSHIRE
with the army only just escaping. October 13 he was at
Swineshead Abbey, the next day he proceeded to Sleaford
Castle, and thence to Newark Castle, where he died on
October 18. A long siege of Lincoln Castle had been
carried on by the Barons who were on the side of the
French Prince Louis. This was relieved on May 19,
1217, by an army under the command of William, Earl
Marshal (attended by the Papal Legate), who threw Fulk
de Breaute" with crossbowmen into the castle, and forced
open the west gate of the city. After much hand-to-
hand fighting, the party of the Barons and the French
was decisively beaten, their leader the Comte de Perche
slain, and the city and close given up to plunder. Owing
to the great amount of booty gained the battle was
nick-named " Lincoln Fair."
In 1255 tne Jews of Lincoln were accused of
having crucified a Christian boy called Hugh, and King
Henry III and his Queen were at Lincoln to investigate
the case. In 1265 the first writs of general summons to
Parliament were issued, and Lincoln, London, and York
were the only cities expressly named to send up two
burgesses. On October 6, 1280, the beautiful Angel Choir
of the Minster received the body of St Hugh, translated
there with much state ceremony. On December 2,
1290, King Edward I was in Lincoln for the burial
of the viscera of his dearly loved Queen Eleanor, who
had died at Harby. The first of the Eleanor Crosses
stood just outside the city south gate. An important
Parliament was held in Lincoln in 1301, which dealt
with the pretensions of the Pope to dispose of the
The Angel Choir, Lincoln Minster
106 LINCOLNSHIRE
kingdom of Scotland. Parliaments were also held at
Lincoln in 1304, two in 1316, and one in 1327, and it
has been thought that the oak seat of state now in the
Chapter House at Lincoln was made for the king's use at
one of these Parliaments. A Parliament was summoned
to meet at Stamford in 1309, where also Councils were
held in 1326, 1337, and 1392.
Education was not neglected in medieval Lincoln-
shire, for it appears that there were at least eleven schools
in the county existing in the first half of the fourteenth
century, besides the grammar schools at Lincoln, which
date from 1090. And several of Lincolnshire's sons,
whether by birth or adoption, had great influence in, or
were great benefactors to, both our ancient universities of
Oxford and Cambridge. Robert Grosseteste (Bishop of
Lincoln 1235-1253), was one of the foremost teachers
of his time, a great scholastic and ecclesiastical reformer,
and Chancellor of Oxford ; Richard Fleming (Bishop of
Lincoln 1420—1431), founded Lincoln College, Oxford,
in 1427, which was refounded by Archbishop Rotherham
(Bishop of Lincoln 1471-1480), who was also Chancellor
of Cambridge, and a great benefactor to the library of
that University and to King's and St Catharine's colleges;
William Alnwick (Bishop of Lincoln 1436-1449), was
another great benefactor to King's College. In 1457
William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, founded
Magdalen College, Oxford ; he also built and endowed
a school at his birthplace, Wainfleet. In 1512, William
Smith (Bishop of Lincoln 1496-1514), rebuilt and practi-
cally refounded Brasenose College, Oxford ; and in 1516,
HISTORY OF THE COUNTY 107
Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, who was born at
Ropsley near Grantham, founded Corpus Christi College,
Oxford. At one time it was not beyond the bounds of
possibility that Lincolnshire might have rejoiced in a
University of its own, as in 1333 there was a large
secession of masters and students from Oxford to
Stamford, and this attempt was not ended till two years
later, after the aid of the Queen and the Bishop of
Lincoln had been obtained, and after three royal monitions
and the seizure of the seceders' goods.
With the Wars of the Roses Lincolnshire was not,
fortunately, much concerned. In 1470, however, a
Lincolnshire man, Sir Robert Wells, eldest son of Richard
Lord Wells and Willoughby, was persuaded by the King-
maker, the Earl of Warwick, to raise a large force of men
for the Lancastrian cause. Apparently he drove Lord
Burgh out of his house at Gainsborough and burnt it,
and with some 30,000 men proclaimed King Henry.
But King Edward IV managed to get Lord Wells and
his son-in-law Sir Thomas Dymoke into his power, and
set out for Stamford with them and a strong force. He
also made Lord Wells order his son to desist from his
undertaking, but as this order was set at nought, he pro-
ceeded to behead Lord Wells and Sir Thomas Dymoke,
and marched against the Lancastrian army. So savage
were the commanders of this latter force (Sir Robert Wells
and Sir Thomas de la Launde) with King Edward's action
that they would not wait for the arrival of the Earl of
Warwick, but commenced the battle at Hornefield near
Empingham on March 12. Over 10,000 men were slain,
108 LINCOLNSHIRE
the Lancastrians were defeated and both their leaders were
taken prisoners.
In 1536 occurred the Lincolnshire portion of the
rebellion against King Henry VIII, called the Pilgrimage
of Grace. There were several causes for this outbreak,
the suppression of the smaller monastic houses being
among the most powerful. On October i, Nicholas
Melton, shoemaker (known consequently as Captain
Cobbler), and others, took possession of Louth Church, so
as to stop the jewels of the church (as they said) being
given up to the king. In the course of a few days risings
of the same description took place at Horncastle, Caistor,
and elsewhere in Lindsey. By October 6 some 25,000
men were encamped round or in Lincoln, and a letter
was sent to the king. His answer was read to some 300
of the troops in the Chapter House where the gentlemen
were collected and where they were nearly massacred,
only managing to escape out of the south door of the
Chapter House. After some discussion, and a diplomatic
address from a Herald, the forces dispersed. About
twenty persons suffered for this rising, Moigne (Recorder
of Lincoln), the Abbot of Kirkstead, the Abbot of
Barlings, and eleven more, were tried by a commission
in March 1537, and hanged or gibbeted in various
towns of the county, Lord Hussey being executed at
Lincoln.
In the great Civil War between King Charles I and
his Parliament, Lincolnshire held an important position
midway between the Royalists of Yorkshire and Notting-
hamshire, and the Puritans of East Anglia, and on her
HISTORY OF THE COUNTY 109
heath or wold Cromwell found a training-ground for
his Ironsides. One of the first overt acts was that of
Lord Willoughby of Parham (one of a younger branch
of the Willoughby d'Eresby family), in calling out the
militia in June, 1642. This was followed by a brisk
correspondence with the king, who spent two nights in
Lincoln and was received with much loyalty. It was
perhaps on this occasion that he presented the third sword
to the city. He once more passed through Lincoln on
August 20 on his way to Nottingham, where he raised
his standard two days later. In 1643 Lord Willoughby
was made by Parliament Sergeant-Major-General for the
county. In April of that year Crowland stood a siege
of about a fortnight, Oliver Cromwell being one of the
capturing commanders. Next year, having been recaptured
in the interval, it stood a siege by the Parliamentarians of
two months' duration.
One of the greatest thorns in the side of the Parliament
in this district was Newark, which was successfully held
for the king till he surrendered to the Scottish army.
He spent his last day as a free man at Barn Hill
House, Stamford, before going on to Southwell, May 3,
1644. In February 1643, a combined force from
Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Lincolnshire, attacked
Newark, but were repulsed, owing, it was said, to the
half-hearted conduct of the Lincolnshire commander.
As a retort, Colonel Cavendish, a young and brilliant
cavalry leader, captured Grantham on March 22, and
took Stamford, defeating Cromwell. Again Cavendish
was victorious at the battle of Ancaster, and in a third
110 LINCOLNSHIRE
skirmish the Royalists also won, but in a fourth, on the
road from Grantham to Newark, Cromwell defeated
Cavendish. As a result of this, Grantham and Lincoln
must have become Parliamentarian, as the latter place had
its castle and walls put into a state of defence by order
of Parliament. An abortive attempt to seize Lincoln
for the king, promoted by the Hothams of Hull, took
place on Sunday, July 2. Gainsborough, with its com-
mander the Earl of Kingston, was surprised on July 20
by Lord Willoughby, and the Earl, being sent as a
prisoner down the Trent to Hull, was killed by a cannon
ball fired at the pinnace by the Royalists on the banks.
On July 28 Cromwell, fresh from the capture of Stamford
and Burghley House, met Cavendish at Lea, near Gains-
borough, where the latter was defeated and killed. Then
Cromwell had to retire before the advance of the whole
army of the Earl of Newcastle, and Lord Willoughby
surrendered Gainsborough, left Lincoln (as he considered
the fortifications were too slight to be any protection)
and retired to Boston. But by the commencement of
October, Fairfax's cavalry had been transported from
Hull into Lincolnshire, and were joined by troops under
Lord Willoughby, Cromwell, and the Earl of Manchester.
On October n, at Winceby, five miles south-east of
Horncastle, these forces met the Royalist troops, who
intended to raise the siege of Bolingbroke Castle close by,
and decisively routed them. " Slash Lane," between
Winceby and the high road, still commemorates the
slaughter which took place. On October 24 Lord
Manchester captured Lincoln, but next year Prince
HISTORY OF THE COUNTY 111
Rupert's brilliantly successful attack, March 22, 1644,
on the forces besieging Newark, led to the evacuation of
Lincoln and Sleaford, and to the dismantling of the de-
fences of Gainsborough.
But the whirligig of time soon brought its revenge,
and on May 3, 1644, the Parliamentary forces under
Lord Manchester attacked the lower part of the City of
Lincoln and carried it, and after waiting a day, as there
was a great rainfall which made the slopes very slippery,
captured the castle and upper town by storm on May 5
with surprisingly little loss.
In 1648, orders were sent to put Tattershall Castle and
Belvoir Castle into defensible condition, as these were the
only two places capable of defence in or near this county.
This was done to protect them against raids from Ponte-
fract Castle, which was in the hands of the Royalists.
In Lincoln the only stronghold was the Bishop's Palace,
which on June 30 was attacked, captured, and burnt by
the Royalists, under Sir Philip Monckton. This force
left Lincoln and a few days later was followed by Colonel
Rossiter with a powerful detachment, who gained a com-
plete victory over them at Willoughby, near Nottingham.
Since the Civil War there has been little in the way
of history to record in connection with our county.
112 LINCOLNSHIRE
18. Antiquities — Prehistoric, Roman,
Saxon.
In Lincolnshire there have been found, as yet, no
traces of the earliest races of mankind on this island,
and the stone axes, knives, spear-heads, arrow-heads, and
the like that we do find all belong to the Neolithic, or
New Stone Age. The people of this date are known
as dolicho-cephalic (i.e. long-headed) and were buried in
long mounds or barrows, of which there are examples
at Swinhope and elsewhere in the county. Five boats,
in each case made out of a single tree-trunk, have been
dug up, two at Lincoln, one at Scotter, and two at
Castlethorpe near Brigg. Two very early boats or canoes
were discovered in Nocton parish in 181 1, but it is difficult
to assign a date to these objects. Around Scunthorpe,
on the peat moors, have been found quantities of small,
beautifully-made flint implements.
Of Bronze Age man there are many relics, such as
swords, celts, spear-heads, daggers, shields, and pottery of
good design. The people of this age were brachy-cephalic
(i.e. round-headed) and were interred, generally after being
burnt, in barrows of a round shape, of which examples in
Lincolnshire are numerous.
Many of the more important earthworks in the
county probably belong to this age. Such is the camp
above Honington, which has a triple rampart and two
ditches; the circular encampment at Ingoldsby; the huge
earthworks called the Moats at Irby-on-Humber; the
camp at Kyme, with a double rampart; the circular
Bronze Implements
(Found at Caythorpe in 1884)
S. L.
114 LINCOLNSHIRE
mound at Kingerby (wherein three British skeletons
were found) enclosed by a ditch with a square embank-
ment outside it; the Castle Hills, Gainsborough, afterwards
used by the Danes if not due entirely to them ; the great
earthworks at Withern ; and the great mound at Hoe Hill,
near Fulletby. At Tetford Lock are some hut-circles.
British Camp at Honington
Of the Iron Age, traces are found in the pre-Roman
smelting works at Manton, and in many swords, spear-
heads, and shields, found in the Witham. A beautiful
Romano-British shield also found in that river should be
mentioned.
Of the Roman occupation of Lincolnshire there
are many remains. Lincoln, once a Roman colony, as
ANTIQUITIES 115
already stated, retains portions of its Roman ditch,
rampart, and wall, the only existing Roman city gate,
Newport Arch, and the lower part of a long colonnade
in Bailgate. Here also a Roman milestone of the date
of Victorinus was found, and hypocausts or heating
apparatus, altars, tombstones (chiefly to soldiers of the
Ninth, the Spanish Legion), tesselated pavements, etc.
Other Roman stations in the county were at Horncastle
(Banovallum on the river Bane), where the Roman ditch
and part of the wall are evident, also at Caistor and
Ancaster, with the ditch well shown, where an altar for
incense, a milestone, a group of Deae Matres, and
Romano-British graves have been found. South Ormsby
was a watch or outpost camp, between Burgh and
Caistor; Yarborough camp was near Melton Ross, and
Alkborough overlooked the junction of the Trent, Ouse,
and Humber. Many tesselated pavements have been dis-
covered, as at Roxby, Scawby, Winterton, and Horkstow,
in the north of the county, Scampton (a few miles north
of Lincoln), and Little Ponton, near Grantham. These,
belonging to private houses, show the state of security of
the country during the Romano-British period.
The chief Roman roads, which are mainly in use
now, are the Ermine Street, which beginning at Pevensey
enters Lincolnshire at Stamford, skirts Grantham, and
passes through Ancaster to Lincoln, where it joins the
Fosseway. From Lincoln the Ermine Street runs almost
due north to the Humber, and is in full use for the first
17 miles. Four miles north of Lincoln a branch road,
called Till Bridge Lane, leaves it on the west and runs
8—2
116 LINCOLNSHIRE
to the ford at Littleborough on Trent (Agelocum or
Segelocum). The Fosseway extends from the south of
Devon to Newark, and enters our county just beyond
Brough. It forms the county boundary here for about
a mile. Another Roman road enters the county at West
Deeping and runs fairly straight to Sleaford, while another
connects Lincoln with Horncastle.
The Fossdyke
Evidence of Roman engineering also remains in the
Fossdyke, a canal joining the Trent at Torksey with
the River Witham at Lincoln ; and the Cardyke, which
beginning near Peterborough, runs northwards, skirting
the junction of the higher ground and the fen, to
Washingborough, three miles from Lincoln, where it
joins the Witham. The Roman banks, placed so as to
ANTIQUITIES 117
resist the encroachments of the sea in the south-east of
the county, have already been mentioned.
Of both Saxon and Danish antiquities there is not
much to record, save in the way of churches, parts of
which, especially in towns, mark the work of the former
people. Both races have left their mark more on the
speech of the people and the names of places. The
fortifications called the Mainwarings, with a double fosse,
near Swineshead, have been attributed to the Danes, and
no doubt they occupied several of the earthworks, such as
the Castle Hills, Gainsborough, already mentioned. The
existence of coins minted in Lincoln in the reigns of
King Alfred and (missing out the reigns of Edward the
Elder, Athelstan, Edmund, Edred, and Edwy) all the
succeeding monarchs to the Norman Conquest, is a proof
of the importance of the city in Saxon and Danish times.
19. Architecture — (a) Ecclesiastical.
The material used for building churches in Lincoln-
shire was almost invariably stone. Near Lincoln and
southwards on the Cliff this was the local oolite lime-
stone, of which the most famous quarries were at
Ancaster and Wilsford ; further south and south-west
much of the stone came from Barnack in Northampton-
shire ; on the Wolds and in the Marsh, a green sandstone
was in use, not very durable, but weathering delightfully
from an artistic point of view. In some cases, as at
Legbourne, the white chalk itself is used, giving, as already
mentioned, a curious effect as of unglazed white tiles.
118 LINCOLNSHIRE
The first churches of which we have any remains in
this county are of Saxon building. Their builders had
but an imperfect knowledge of construction in stone,
and imitated rudely the Roman buildings which existed
in England. A very early plan of a Saxon church had
a central tower, with a chancel on the east and possibly
a baptistery on the west side, as at Barton (St Peter's),
Broughton, and Hough on the Hill. Later, the usual
plan was a square and tall western tower, with a midwall
shaft in the belfry windows (of these there are over
30 instances in this county) and a tiny chancel, opening
by a very narrow arch into the nave. The walls were
rather thin and roughly built, the corners of the nave had
" long and short work " (i.e. large stones set alternately
vertically and horizontally as in the nave of St Mary
le Wigford in Lincoln, and those of the parish churches
of Bracebridge, Cranwell, and Ropsley), there were no
buttresses, but occasionally the wall or tower was orna-
mented with strip panelling, as in the lower part of the
tower at St Peter's, Barton, and in the western tower arch
of Stow.
With the Norman Conquest came in a new style
from the continent, the Romanesque or " Norman."
It was a massive style, with very thick walls, round-
headed arches for doorways, windows, and arcades> sturdy
pillars, with large capitals, semi-circular vaulting, fiat
roofs, and square towers with low pyramidal tops.
The middle portion of the west front of the Minster
at Lincoln is a good example of Norman work, while
the beautiful doorways, highly ornamented, and the lower
Lincoln Minster: West front
120 LINCOLNSHIRE
half of the two western towers, are good specimens of
later work of this period. The nave and chancel (later)
of Stow are Norman, Clee church has an early Norman
arcade on the north side of the nave, and a later one on
the south side ; at Whaplode the chancel arch and eastern
bays of the nave are good Norman work, the three western
ones being Transitional (between Norman and the next
period).
For about 70 years, from 1180 to 1250, a further
development of architecture took place. It was charac-
terised by much thinner walls, high-pitched roofs, pointed
arches and vaulting, which instead of having the weight
supported by thick walls, has it spread scientifically over
large buttresses on the aisle walls, and flying buttresses to
the clerestory walls. This is the first period of "Gothic"
called First Pointed or Early English. Other features
are piers of grouped slender pillars, often of marble (at
Lincoln Minster much Purbeck marble was used), con-
ventional foliage round the capitals, long narrow lancet-
headed windows, and rich deep mouldings round doors
and windows. Of this period St Hugh's Choir and the
great transepts in Lincoln Minster are early examples,
built before 1200, when St Hugh died. The nave is
also a superb work of about 30 years later, and in light-
ness of design and elegance of proportion it is very hard
to equal. Kirkstead Chapel, Bottesford (near Brigg),
Grimsby parish church, and St Mary's Weston are almost
entirely Early English, as is the beautiful west front of
Crowland Abbey, which resembles the west front of
Wells Cathedral. In this period the towers were first
Parish Church, Grantham
122 LINCOLNSHIRE
made to carry spires, as at Frampton, Rauceby, and
Sleaford, and the tower and spire (of timber, lead-covered)
of Long Sutton is an admirable specimen.
After the middle of the thirteenth century the
Decorated Period began and windows became broader,
divided up by bars of stone called mullions, with their
heads ornamented by patterns of tracery. The gradual
introduction of this can be well seen in the grouping of
two window openings under one arch, when the space
between all three arches is perforated, as in the triforium
of St Hugh's Choir at Lincoln. The most perfect and
sumptuous example of this Early Decorated or Geometrical
Gothic is the Angel Choir of Lincoln Minster (see p. 105).
The north aisle of Grantham Church is also of this period,
and probably owes much to the Angel Choir at Lincoln.
By 1300 was finished one of the great architectural
glories of the county, the tower and spire of Grantham,
281 feet high. Not many years afterwards, the Broad
and Rood Tower of Lincoln Minster, with its timber
and lead spire (rising altogether to a height of 525 feet —
excepting Old St Paul's, quite the loftiest spire in Europe
at that time) was completed.
Several of the finest churches in the county, especially
round Sleaford, belong to the later Decorated Period, and
of these perhaps Heckington is the typical queen. The
window tracery is more elaborate, a favourite pattern
very prevalent in this county being reticulated or like
network ; the mouldings are rich, the vaultings more
intricate, and pinnacles and spires are adorned with
crockets and finials of well-wrought foliage. The foliage,
ARCHITECTURE— ECCLESIASTICAL 123
of internal work, often closely resembles natural leaves,
such as vine, oak, and sometimes holly, as can be seen in
the South Choir aisle of Lincoln Minster, and on the
shrine of Little St Hugh. The grand parish church
Boston Church
of Boston is chiefly of this date, while Ewerby (with
a fine broach spire), Helpringham, Silk Willoughby,
Croft, Welbourn, and Winthorpe may serve as admirable
and diversified examples.
In 1349 came the widespread destruction of life by
124 LINCOLNSHIRE
the plague called the Black Death, and church and all
other building was stopped for half a century or more.
The next period of Architecture, the Perpendicular, is
entirely English and is not found abroad. It is characterised
by much flattened arches, elaborate vaulting (the so-called
fan-vaulting is not infrequent in flat roofs), and the
prevalence of vertical lines in the tracery of windows
and panelled ornament, which has given the period its
name. Several grand churches in the Marsh were built
at this time, as Grimoldby, Marsh Chapel, Theddlethorpe
All Saints, Tattershall Collegiate Church, and Sedgebrook.
Towers without spires now became frequent, the superb
"Stump" (as it is locally named, from being spireless) of
Boston, 293 feet high, Great Ponton, of a kind more
frequent in Somerset, and several in marsh-land being
instances. Claypole, Donington, Leadenham, and Stam-
ford All Saints have good Perpendicular spires, while
Louth has a tower and spire 300 feet high, only second
to that of Grantham. This spire cost £305. Js. bd.
It was begun in 1501 and finished 14 years later, the
weather-cock being made out of a copper basin taken
two years previously from the Scottish king by the men
of Lincoln at Flodden Field.
Not much church-building took place for many years
after the Reformation, but of the so-called " Classical "
architecture there is the admirable Minster library and
colonnade in the north side of the cloisters, built by
Sir Christopher Wren in 1674. The parish church at
Gainsborough (except the tower) was rebuilt in 1745;
St Peter-at-Arches, Lincoln, a typical " City " church,
Louth Church
126 LINCOLNSHIRE
in 1724, by Abraham Hay ward ; and the diminutive
church at Cherry Willingham about 1770.
Towards the middle of the last century began the
Gothic revival ; very many of the churches of the county
have been restored, and a considerable number rebuilt,
and among the finest of the new ones may be mentioned
those of Nocton and Fulney, St Swithin's Lincoln,
Morton, and Revesby.
There is evidence of the former existence of no less
than 1 24 Religious Houses, Monasteries, Priories, Friaries,
and Hospitals in Lincolnshire. At the time of the re-
introduction of Christianity into this county in the Saxon
era, monasteries were established as outposts to assist the
missionary work. Only two of these, out of several
in this county, were re-established after the Danish
invasion and the Norman conquest. The Benedictine
Abbey of Bardney, 10 miles from Lincoln, founded by
King Ethelred and Queen Osthryd of Mercia in 697,
was rebuilt in Norman times, and its ground plan, with
bases of pillars of excellent Norman and Early English
work, and many beautiful memorial slabs, has recently
been laid bare. Crowland Abbey, also Benedictine, was
founded in honour of St Guthlac about the year 714, by
Ethelbald, King of Mercia1. The splendid west front,
dating from 1171, the north aisle of the nave (used as
the parish church), a Perpendicular tower, with part
of the nave, a grand Norman arch over the western
1 After its destruction by the Danes it is interesting to note a gift to
the Abbey from King Canute of 1 2 polar bear skins for the altars, to keep
the priests' feet warm.
Crowland Abbey
128 LINCOLNSHIRE
crossing, and a stone screen underneath it, remain. It
was far the wealthiest house in the county, being worth
£1093. 155. io%d. a year at the time of its suppression
by King Henry VIII. In 1114 was founded another
Benedictine Priory at Frieston. Many of these houses
were founded by the great noblemen or landowners, and
endowed with the tithes and presentations of rectories in
the county and elsewhere. When the religious houses
were dissolved by King Henry VIII and their income,
lands, and buildings were given to his favourite courtiers, a
small part only being devoted to education, the parish often
retained the part of the monastic church wherein it had
been wont to worship, as in the case of the north aisle at
Crowland and the nave at Frieston.
At Stamford there still remain the west front and
five arches of good Norman work of the nave of the
church of St Leonard's Priory. After Crowland the
most remarkable remains of monastic buildings are the
ruins of the fine Perpendicular gatehouse of Thornton
Abbey, which belonged to the Austin canons and was
founded in 1139. Both Crowland and Thornton were
presided over by mitred abbots, who consequently had
seats in the House of Lords. For a brief space after the
dissolution of the Abbey a college existed at Thornton,
founded by King Henry VIII. The parish church at
South Kyme preserves the south aisle of another house
of Austin canons, while the parish church of Bourne is
the nave of the church of Bourne Abbey, which belonged
to a reformed branch of the Austin canons.
The parish church of Sempringham is the north
Thornton Abbey
S. L.
130 LINCOLNSHIRE
aisle and part of the nave of the Abbey founded by St Gilbert
of Sempringham in 1139. This order, the Gilbertine,
was the only order founded in England and consisted of
Augustinian monks and Cistercian nuns, with lay brothers
and sisters, kept strictly apart though living under the
same roof. In their churches a wall ran from east to
west completely dividing the monks and lay brothers
from the nuns and lay sisters. There were 10 houses of
this order in the county. The Knight Templars had
five preceptories in Lincolnshire. Of these a fine tower
at Temple Bruer is alone left. After their downfall their
property passed to the Knights Hospitallers, or Knights
of St John, who had three other houses as well.
The church of the Grey Friars at Lincoln, built in the
thirteenth century, still exists, with a later vaulted under-
croft inserted, and after having been used as a grammar
school for some centuries, has now been taken over by
the Corporation as a museum. A small portion of the
hospital of St Giles at Lincoln is also existing. The
picturesque building of Cantilupe College, founded in
1367 for the warden and seven chaplains to commemorate
the souls of the founder and his wife in Lincoln Minster,
is just south of the great south door. Of Tattershall
College, founded by Ralph Lord Cromwell, only the
splendid Perpendicular church is left.
The beautiful fifteenth century churchyard cross at
Somersby ought to be mentioned, and the fine series of
sepulchral monuments to the St Paul family at Snarford,
the Willoughbys at Spilsby and Edenham, the Monsons
at South Carlton, and the Heneages at Hainton. At the
ARCHITECTURE— ECCLESIASTICAL 131
east end of the Minster there are interesting monuments
to the Burghersh and Wymbush families, and a repro-
duction of Queen Eleanor's original altar tomb and
effigy.
20. Architecture — (6) Military.
In various parts of the county there are remains of
entrenched camps, which may date from British, from
Roman, from Saxon, or even from prehistoric times.
But the building of castles began practically with the
reign of William the Conqueror, who ordered the erection
of a great number throughout the land and began that at
Lincoln after his visit in 1068. It may therefore be taken
as a fair example of the plan and arrangements of a castle
in the late eleventh and early part of the twelfth centuries.
It occupies most of the area of the south-west quarter of
the first Roman city, on the top of the hill, where most
probably the original British city of Lindum stood, and is
roughly quadrangular, the south and west walls being on
the lines of the Roman walls. It is guarded by a broad
and deep dry ditch (for it is situated really on the lime-
stone rock), and by a massive bank of earth, 50 to
80 yards broad and from 20 to 30 feet high, sloping
steeply externally. On the middle line of these mounds
are strong walls, 8 to 10 feet thick and from 30 to
40 feet high, which date probably from before the time
of King Stephen. Originally, no doubt, the mounds
were topped by a palisade. The main entrance to the
9—2
Lincoln: the Castle Gateway
ARCHITECTURE— MILITARY 133
castle is by the eastern gate, which is Norman, but has
had a later (Edwardian) arch and towers affixed to it,
and had a little outwork or barbican, now destroyed.
On the north-east angle is a low tower, vaulted in two
stories, called Cobb Hall, from being the place for
floggings. It possibly was built by John of Gaunt, who
was custodian of this castle. A second Norman tower-
gateway, with its barbican partly existing, breaks the long
line of the western wall at its northern end. There are
two great artificial mounds on the south side of the castle
(as a rule there was only one), one possibly being British.
The larger one is about 50 feet high and 100 feet in
diameter at its summit. The keep of Norman masonry
which stands on it is only a shell, many-sided, the wall
about 8 feet thick and 20 feet high. The other mound,
of the same height but half the diameter, supports the
Observatory Tower, so called from the modern round
turret surmounting it which was built as an observatory.
This tower must have been of importance, as it commands
the main street coming up the Steep Hill into Bailgate.
In spite of the long stretch of wall and the few towers
thereon, the castle proved in the course of its history to
be a hard nut to crack, having only twice been fairly
captured in the course of many sieges and attacks.
Eight miles south of Lincoln is Somerton Castle,
which was built in 1281 by Anthony Bek, Bishop of
Durham. It comprised within its walls a quadrangular
area 330 feet long from north to south by 181 feet from
east to west. At each angle was a large circular tower.
The south,-eastern tower, 45 feet high, still exists in a
134 LINCOLNSHIRE
fairly good condition, and an Elizabethan manor house joins
on to it. The castle was further defended by two moats.
The most interesting piece of history in connection with
the castle is the fact that from July 1359 to March 1360
it was the residence of King John (le Bon) of France and
his son, Prince Philip, that monarch having been defeated
and captured by the Black Prince at Poitiers in 1356.
About 20 miles south-east of Lincoln, close to the
river Witham, is Tattershall Castle. It exemplifies well
the change that was gradually coming over the country
with the introduction of gunpowder, that the nobleman's
castle was more and more becoming the nobleman's
palace, for in this case the windows of the exposed side
of the keep are just as large, as decorated, and as beautiful
as on the less exposed sides. The original castle was
built after the year 1230. Nothing except the large
outer moat and the earthworks inside it remain. The
existing portion of the castle represents the keep of earlier
days and is a large quadrangular tower 112 feet in height
built of small red bricks, with patterns externally in
blue-black brick, probably all of local manufacture. The
windows, battlements, and fireplaces are of stone, almost
certainly from the Ancaster quarries. The fireplaces, which
after having been torn out and sold are now replaced, are
very beautiful and heraldically interesting. The builder
of this splendid specimen of brickwork was Ralph, third
Baron Cromwell, who was King Henry VI's Lord
Treasurer from 1433 to 1443, Master of the Royal
Mews, and Royal Falconer. There is, however, but
little history connected with the castle. It sustained
Tattershall Castle
136 LINCOLNSHIRE
some damage in the great Civil War, after the battle
of Winceby most likely, when the Royalists were badly
beaten. It was the only fortified place in the county
which was garrisoned by the Parliament in 1648, when
Lincolnshire was attacked by Royalists from Pontefract,
all other defensible places having had their walls, towers,
and ramparts "slighted." Its last inhabitant was in the
early years of the last century — a pensioner who lived
in the gallery in the eastern wall to be ready to light
a beacon in the south-east tower in case of invasion.
Kyme Tower, between Sleaford and the Witham,
is all that remains of an important castle built by the
Umfravilles, Earls of Angus. It consists of three stories
with a turret stair, and is groined at the top with fan
tracery, springing from a central pillar. It probably was
only used as a place of safe retreat, not for living in, as
there are no traces of fireplace or floors or chimneys
throughout the building.
Of other castles, strong and famous in their day, only
the mounds and ditches remain. Such is the case with
Sleaford, built by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln about the
year 1130. Here King John spent the night of the I4th
October, 1216, on his last journey from Kings Lynn
across the Wash, when his baggage was lost. Next day
he rode through Hough to Newark, and died there on
the i8th of that month. Bishop Fleming died here in
1431. Probably the great Civil War would be responsible
for its having been "slighted," as it was termed, i.e. made
almost impossible of defence.
Folkingham, once the property of Gilbert de Gaunt,
ARCHITECTURE— MILITARY 137
who rebuilt Bardney Abbey, and later of the powerful
Beaumont family, shows only a mound (on which a
gaol, now closed, stands) and a fairly well marked inner
moat. In Leland's time the castle was ruinous, so the
Cromwellian cannon and the orders of Parliament may
not have had much to do with its downfall.
Just where the Lincolnshire wolds sink into the great
plain of marsh and fen, close to Spilsby, a few mounds
alone represent the site of Bolingbroke Castle, the
birthplace of the son of John of Gaunt and the Duchess
Blanche of Lancaster, afterwards King Henry IV, on
April 3, 1366. It was built by William de Roumare,
first Norman Earl of Lincoln, about the middle of the
twelfth century. It is described by Gervase Holies,
before the great Civil War, as built of soft wold
sandstone in a square, with four strong forts (at the
corners probably), containing many rooms, and occupying
about an acre and a half of ground. Queen Elizabeth
also added some rooms. The castle stood a siege of a
few days by the Earl of Manchester and the Parliamentary
army in October, 1643, but after their complete victory
at Winceby fight it was deserted. The perishable nature
of the sandstone, and possibly some " slighting " after its
capture, have left now not one stone upon another, the
gate having fallen down in May, 1815.
At Castle Carlton are three great artificial mounds
covered with trees, near the church, which with their
moats occupy a space of nearly five acres. On the south
and east of the village is a rampart, 12 feet wide and
5 feet high, and about a mile in length. These moated
138 LINCOLNSHIRE
mounds are all that is left of the once very strong and
important castle which was built by Sir Hugh Bardolph
in 1295-1302.
The same fate has overtaken the once strong castle
of Bourne (connected with the Wake family), and Castle
Bytham, the fortress of the Earls of Albemarle.
21. Architecture— (c] Domestic.
Of buildings of Norman date other than churches and
castles but few have lasted to these latter days ; but there
are four of these in Lincolnshire which demand attention.
The manor house at Boothby Pagnell is of late Norman
date, has a vaulted undercroft, an external staircase, and
a very early fireplace. The two Jews' Houses at Lincoln
(see p. 1 03) of about the same date are probably the oldest
inhabited houses in England ; both are two-storied, have
chimney-shafts corbelled out over a round-arched door,
and have round-headed windows. St Mary's Guild House,
also in Lincoln, has a fine semicircular-headed entrance
arch, and a rich cornice of foliage runs along the street
front. Within the court is a good Transition Norman
house, with two-light windows and a plain Norman
fireplace. The houses of the Priest Vicars of Lincoln
Minster were built between 1280 and 1398 in collegiate
fashion round a court. Several of the houses have
disappeared, as has the common dining-hall ; in the
south house are some beautiful decorated windows.
The Chancery, Lincoln, was built about 1316, and
the picturesque red-brick front and stone oriel window
ARCHITECTURE— DOMESTIC
139
were added in the time of Bishop Russell (1480-94).
The finest country house in Lincolnshire undoubtedly is
Grimsthorpe Castle, belonging to the Earl of Ancaster.
At the south-east corner remains one of the original
towers of late twelfth century date; the east, south, and
west fronts were built by Charles Brandon, Duke of
St Mary's Guild House, Lincoln
Suffolk, to receive his brother-in-law King Henry VIII
in 1541 ; while Sir John Vanbrugh erected the stately
but rather heavy north front in 1722. The Angel
Hotel in Grantham is one of the very few medieval
hostelries in existence, the entrance gateway dating from
the fourteenth century — the corbel ends of the weather
140
LINCOLNSHIRE
moulding being the heads of King Edward III and Queen
Philippa. The rest of the front of the house is about a
century later. King Richard III signed the death-warrant
for the execution of Buckingham here in 1483.
The Rectory of Market Deeping still contains part of
the refectory of a Priory which belonged to Crowland
Abbey : it has a fine timbered roof and a beautiful
Grimsthorpe Castle
window of fourteenth century date. Wainfleet School,
a good example of brickwork, was built by the Bishop of
Winchester (William of Waynflete) in 1484, and greatly
resembles the much earlier brickwork of Tattershall Castle
already described. The Old Hall at Gainsborough was
probably built in the reign of King Edward IV, as the
Banqueting Hall with the other timber work is of that
ARCHITECTURE— DOMESTIC 143
date, as well as its butteries and kitchen, though the oriel
window, tower, .and gallery were added in the reign of
King Henry VII. Some remains of mural paintings
perhaps owe their existence to King Henry VIIFs visit in
1541, when he stayed here with Thomas, Lord Burgh.
Ayscoughfee Hall, Spalding (the residence of Maurice
Johnson, now the Museum) is supposed to have been
built about 1420, but it has been greatly altered.
The Stone Bow, Lincoln, is a good example of a
fifteenth century city gate. The Guildhall is the couple
of rooms above the arches, with a fine open-timbered roof.
Browne's Hospital, Stamford, the finest of several Hospitals
or Calltses^ as they are called, from having been built by
Calais merchants of the Staple, was founded about 1480.
The half-timbered manor house of Knaith, where Thomas
Sutton was born, was built by the Willoughby family of
Parham in the early sixteenth century, and the stone
manor house at Great Ponton and the fine house at
Irnham were erected about the same date.
Scrivelsby Court, the home of the Dymokes, the
King's Champions, now much modernised in Tudor
Gothic, was probably a good medieval house before the
fire in 1761 and has an ancient entrance gateway.
Thorpe Hall, built in 1584 by Sir John Bolle, is an
interesting Elizabethan house. The ruined manor house
of the Jermyns at Torksey, those at Bassingthorpe and
North Carlton, the Red Hall of the Digbys at Bourne
(now the station-master's house), and the splendid house at
Doddington (p. 146), built in 1600, with its spacious win-
dows, flat cornice, and turreted gazebos (much resembling
ARCHITECTURE— DOMESTIC 145
Hatfield House), all date from the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
Of later houses Harrington Hall, originally Tudor, was
rebuilt in 1678 ; Belton House, built by Wren in
1659, was added to by Wyatt in 1775; Uffington House
was erected in 1688; Summer Castle by Sir Cecil Wray
in 1760; Norton Place by Carr, an architect of York,
who also enlarged Panton Hall, which was built in 1724
from designs of Hawksmoor, the architect of Queen's
College, Oxford. Haverholme Priory is a stately house
chiefly of Tudor Gothic, erected in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries on the site of the Gilbertine
monastery, of which some slight remains still exist.
Brocklesby Park is the most important house in the
county next to Grimsthorpe Castle. It dates from the
eighteenth century, with large additions at the beginning
and end of the last century. Langton Hall by Spilsby,
where lived Bennet Langton, Dr Johnson's friend, built
in 1866 in Elizabethan style, is the fifth in the same
park.
In the villages on or near the Cliff, where stone was
easy to be obtained, there occur smaller stone houses,
with high gables and mullioned windows, either dating
from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries or, as
in the Cotswolds, perpetuating almost to our own time
the ancient, excellent fashion of building. Such houses
can be found in Navenby, Leadenham, Caythorpe, and
Brant Broughton. Many of the villages are mainly
composed of stone cottages, originally perhaps of timber
and plaster, of which a few remain here and there with
their picturesque thatched roofs, though in some cases
s. L. 10
ARCHITECTURE— DOMESTIC 1 47
these roofs are being replaced by that modern abomination,
galvanised iron. But the greater number of cottages in
the county are of brick, chiefly red; the yellowish white,
so common in Cambridge, being fortunately not much
made in Lincolnshire.
22. Communications: Past and Present.
The Roman roads have been already considered in the
chapter on Antiquities, so it may suffice to say that they
generally run in this county at a distance from, and
apparently independent of, the villages along their track.
This may be due either to these villages having been built
in the wooded districts purposely away from the roads for
security (if they date from later than Roman times) or to
the directness of the Roman roads, which merely joined
the various stations together for military purposes. In
Robert Morden's map of the county, published in Thomas
Cox's History of Lincolnshire in the years 1720 to 1731,
three roads are marked which enter the county from the
south: — (i) the present Great North Road from London
and Stamford passing by South Witham to Grantham
(this is part of the Ermine Street) and thence to Newark;
(2) another road from London entering the county at
Market Deeping, thence by Bourne and Folkingham to
Sleaford (also a Roman road thus far) and from Sleaford
by Leasingham past Dunston Pillar to Lincoln ; lastly (3)
a road from Stilton entering the county at Crowland, and
running through Cowbit, Spalding, Gosberton, and Kirton
10 — 2
Ermine Street
( The Roman Road leading north from Lincoln)
COMMUNICATIONS 149
to Boston. The Fosseway from Newark to Lincoln
is also well marked. From Lincoln the Ermine Street
goes as far as Hibaldstow and then becomes the existing
road to Brigg and Barton-on-Humber, whence the map
quaintly directs " to Flamborough " ! Another Roman
road leads eastwards through Welton,Snarford,and Market
Rasen to Grimsby.
In the earlier maps of the county such as that by
J. Hondius in 1610, and that by Blaeu in 1645-50, no
roads, unfortunately, are marked. The hill at Lincoln
in coaching days must have been always difficult and
dangerous. In a map dated 1819 and corrected to 1848,
the steep ascent from Hungate through Michaelgate to
the South Roman gate is marked " old coach road," and
was probably preferable to that going straight up the
Steep Hill. A hundred years ago there was one mail
coach from London which arrived in Lincoln every after-
noon between four and five o'clock and set off for Barton
about three-quarters of an hour after its arrival. There
was also a light coach which passed through Lincoln
morning and evening from and to London and Barton.
A coach also started every morning at nine o'clock for
Newark and Nottingham, and another left Nottingham
every morning and arrived at Lincoln about half-past five
the same day. Waggons for the conveyance of goods
from Lincoln to London started every Monday and Friday
and arrived there in four days, a distance of 134 miles,
and returned in the course of a few days, " so that," in
the proud words of a contemporary guide book, "there
is a regular communication between this place and the
150 LINCOLNSHIRE
capital." Two waggons seem to have carried goods to
Brigg and Barton, but how frequently does not appear,
and the Sheffield carriers arrived at the Old Crown every
Thursday evening and set off again on Friday forenoon.
A waggon from Louth also arrived at the Crown on
Thursday evening and left again next forenoon.
This stands out in wonderful contrast to the present
conditions, when there are 34 trains to London from
Lincoln, and 26 trains from London to Lincoln in the
day.
Owing probably to its geographical situation, Lincoln-
shire is not much affected by the main lines of the
principal railway systems of this country. That of the
Great Northern Railway enters it at Tallington, crosses
a little tongue of Rutland at Essendine (whence is a
branch line to Stamford) and running north-west to
Grantham attains its highest elevation (370 feet) on the
east coast route between London and Berwick as it passes
through Stoke Rochford. The 105^ miles from London
to Grantham, often a non-stop run, is timed to take under
two hours. From Grantham the line runs to Barkston,
and leaves the county between Claypole and Balderton, just
before reaching Newark. Communication with Lincoln
is secured by a branch line from Barkston, linking up the
villages just on or west of the Cliff; and from Honington
another branch line passes through the gap in the Cliff at
Ancaster to Sleaford and Boston. At an early date in the
construction of railways it seemed possible that Stamford
might be the site of the Great Northern Railway's chief
repairing and building works, combining the junctions
152 LINCOLNSHIRE
of Peterborough and Doncaster. Fortunately for the
antiquarian and picturesque interest of the town, this did
not take place. An important cross-country line owned
jointly by the Great Northern and Midland runs from
Melton Mowbray to Bourne, Spalding, Holbeach, and
Kings Lynn. The Great Eastern may be said to have
one main line through Lincoln, as it comes north from
London through Cambridge, Ely, March, Spalding, and
Sleaford, and runs from Lincoln to Gainsborough, Don-
caster, and York. Boat trains from the north and the
west also pass on this route to Harwich for the continent.
The Great Central Railway (in its earlier days the
Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire) connects Don-
caster with Crowle, Scunthorpe, Barton-on-Humber,
New Holland (for the ferry to Hull), and Grimsby, and
has lines from Lincoln and Gainsborough to the same
places. It has also taken over the line of the incorrectly
named Lancashire, Derbyshire, and East Coast Railway,
which runs from Chesterfield through important collieries
and the "Dukeries" to Lincoln. It does not exist in
Lancashire and never got to the east coast, where at
Sutton it was proposed to construct a dock.
From Grimsby and Cleethorpes the Great Northern
Railway runs to Peterborough through Louth, Alford,
Boston, and Spalding. There is also a branch line to
the coast by Theddlethorpe, Mablethorpe, Sutton, and
Willoughby; a short line to Spilsby, and another to
Skegness; while Boston is connected with Lincoln by a
line following the course of the Witham.
The record of the canal system of Lincolnshire is
COMMUNICATIONS 153
rather a melancholy one. From the junction of the
Witham with the once great Mere at Lincoln, now
shrunk to small proportions and called Brayford (Broad
ford ?), the Romans constructed a canal — the Fossdyke
— westwards to the Trent at Torksey. King Henry I is
recorded by Hovenden to have made a long canal from
Torksey to Lincoln by digging (though it is almost certain
that he merely cleared out a pre-existing dyke, as the
presence along its course of so many villages with
Scandinavian names testifies). By turning into it the
water from the river Trent he made a passage for shipping.
This canal was presented by King James I to the City
of Lincoln, who granted it on a long lease in 1740 to
Mr Richard Ellison. It is now under the control of the
Great Northern Railway, and a fair amount of traffic is
carried on by barges between Gainsborough and Lincoln,
and on the Witham to Boston.
The Cardyke (car = fen) has been already mentioned
when dealing with the drainage of the county. It
reached for 57 miles from the river Nene to the river
Witham, though not navigable, and is still useful as a
land-drain in several portions of its course. The Louth
Canal, the New Cut for the Ancholme river, and the
Horncastle Canal have been already noticed. Owing to
the railways obtaining the command of most of these
canals, so as to be able to extinguish all competition,
the traffic on them has become quite insignificant, and
some of them are now not navigable. It might have
been possible, it seems, to have made them of great use
for the carriage of heavy goods, such as coal, etc., and
154 LINCOLNSHIRE
so saved the railways loss of time and overcrowding of
their lines. It is possible, however, that with the advent
of motor power the canals may again come into use.
23. Administration and Divisions.
The general business of our country is watched over
and administered by the Houses of Parliament. In the
Upper House a county such as Lincolnshire is represented
by the Peers who have estates in the county, and the
Lord Bishop of the Diocese, if it has come to his turn to
take his seat in that House, while to the Lower House
she sends 1 1 representatives, being one each for the City
of Lincoln, the towns of Boston, Grantham, and Grimsby,
and the county divisions of Brigg, Gainsborough, Horn-
castle, Louth, Sleaford, Spalding, and Stamford. The
domestic affairs of the county are administered by three
great local bodies, called County Councils, of which
there is one for each Part of Lincolnshire, which also
possesses its own treasurer, magistrates, Quarter Sessions
and Clerk of the Peace (who is also Clerk of the County
Council). The Lindsey County Council consists of a
chairman, vice-chairman, 1 6 aldermen and 48 members,
and meets at Lincoln. The Kesteven County Council
consists of a chairman, vice-chairman, 16 aldermen and
48 members, and meets at Grantham and Sleaford
alternately. The Holland County Council consists of a
chairman, vice-chairman, 16 aldermen and 42 members,
and meets alternately at Boston and Spalding. The
ADMINISTRATION AND DIVISIONS 155
Councils manage the administrative business of the
county by a Standing Joint Committee, which among
other duties has the appointment of Clerk of the
Peace and the control of the police. There are about
300 county policemen, under the charge of a Chief
Constable. Before this system was established each of
the smaller divisions of the county had its own High
Constable, who was responsible for the policing of his
own area1.
There is a large prison at Lincoln, mainly for the
county of Lincolnshire, which is managed entirely by the
Prison Commission of the Home Office, under the Home
Secretary, but a Visiting Committee from the county and
from Lincoln attends once a month to investigate com-
plaints and to deal with any specially refractory prisoner.
There are also Urban and Rural District Councils,
and Parish Councils. All this is not unlike the form of
government in Saxon times, when there was a king and a
sort of Parliament, the Witenagemot, and lesser councils
for the counties and various divisions down to the villages.
The name applied to the larger divisions is in Lincolnshire
(as in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire) wapentake (i.e. "a
weapon touching," in acknowledgment of fealty, and hence
the district affected by the ceremony) and many of them
bear evidence of their Scandinavian parentage. Lindsey has
13 wapentakes, 2 hundreds (the Saxon and more common
1 Probably a vestige of this is found in the existence of this office at
Lincoln, where the Sheriff, after his term of office has expired becomes the
High Constable for the following year, but his only duty is to determine
the date of the Statutes or Hiring Fair.
156 LINCOLNSHIRE
equivalent, meaning the area containing 100 families),
and 2 sokes (literally " a seeking into," hence the precinct
within which the right of hearing suits existed). Kesteven
has 9 wapentakes and I soke, while Holland has 3 wapen-
takes.
At the official head of the county comes the Lord-
Lieutenant, who is usually a nobleman or great landowner
appointed by the Crown, and who was, in past times,
responsible for the troops of Militia, etc., within his sphere
of action. Under him are several Deputy-Lieutenants
who will probably take much more active interest in the
Territorial forces than has been the case for many years
past. The representative of the King and his officer in
the county is the High Sheriff, whose name is pricked by
the King every November out of a list furnished by
the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Assizes are held
three times a year at Lincoln for the City and County,
and Lincoln, Grantham, and Grimsby have each a special
judicial officer, the Recorder, a barrister of eminence, who
holds Sessions to try prisoners sent to him by the magis-
trates four times a year. There are also Quarter Sessions
for the three Parts of the county, and Petty Sessions are
held frequently in various places for the County and
City Justices of the Peace to try all offenders against
the law.
Lincoln City must have long experienced a kind of
domestic Home Rule, for when she was a Roman colony
there was much of local rule, and still more when, as a
member of the Danelagh (with Stamford), she had her
own Earl with his separate " host," while twelve lawmen
ADMINISTRATION AND DIVISIONS 157
administered Danish law and a common Justice Court
existed for the whole confederacy. From King Richard I
came the right to elect the City's Provost (there were two
allowed in 1227) and a Mayor was evidently elected — the
Provosts becoming Bailiffs early in the thirteenth century.
The first date relating to a Mayor of the City is 1210.
King Henry IV gave the city the privilege of electing
twd Sheriffs in the place of the Bailiffs, as he had granted
Lincoln the privilege of being styled " The County of
the City of Lincoln." It is now governed by a mayor,
6 aldermen and 18 councillors, and has its own sheriff
and coroner, the latter a very ancient officer whose duty
it is to investigate into the cause of all doubtful or
suspicious deaths.
Boston was incorporated by King Henry VIII,
Grantham by King Edward IV, Grimsby by King John,
Louth by King Edward VI, and Stamford by King
Edward IV. Louth and Grimsby also possess the addi-
tional office of High Stewards.
There are 18 Poor Law Unions, under Boards of
Guardians, to manage the workhouses and relieve the
poor by specially appointed officers. The Registration
County of Lincolnshire does not coincide with the
Geographical County, as it includes several parishes from
neighbouring counties, and has several of its own parishes
allotted to other counties.
The ecclesiastical government of Lincolnshire is in
the hands of the Lord Bishop of the Diocese, who is
assisted by two Archdeacons, of Lincoln and of Stow,
who each supervise 21 associations of parishes over which
158 LINCOLNSHIRE
a Rural Dean presides. In many cases the names of these
Rural Deaneries and their areas are almost identical with
the secular divisions (wapentakes and hundreds) already
mentioned, but the ecclesiastical names have frequently
kept nearer to the original forms. There are 582 parishes
in the diocese, but in a number of instances two or more
are joined together, either from the loss of one church, as
at Mablethorpe, Claxby-Pluckacre, and Fordington, or on
account of the smallness of the stipends attached.
24. The Roll of Honour.
"This Shire triumpheth," remarks John Speed, "in
the birth of King Henry the fourth, at Bullingbrooke
borne." He was son of John of Gaunt, "Time-honoured
Lancaster," who lived in Lincoln, where a small part of
his palace still exists, and whose third wife and daughter,
Katherine Swynford and Joan Countess of Westmorland,
are buried in the Minster. He goes on to say with less
accuracy, " but may as justly lament for the death of
King John, herein poysoned by a monk of Swynsted
Abbey " (as noted above King John died at Newark
Castle) ; " and of Queene Eleanor, wife to King Edward
the first, the mirrour of wedlocke and loue to the
Commons, who at Harby1 ended her life."
Of early Saints Lincolnshire can claim two as belong-
ing to her perhaps by birth, certainly by life — St Botolph,
who died about 680, and whose memory survives in
Boston — Botolph's town, and St Guthlac, who died in
1 Just outside the Lincolnshire border, in Nottinghamshire.
John Wesley
160 LINCOLNSHIRE
713, and in whose honour Crowland Abbey was founded.
In later times St Gilbert of Sempringham (1083-1 189 ?),
Lincolnshire born and bred, founded the only monastic
order — that of the Gilbertines — which originated in this
country. Mention has already been made of the many
founders of Colleges, so that out of the great roll of
Bishops of Lincoln room can be found here only for St
Hugh (1186-1200); Sanderson, whose life was delight-
fully written by his friend, Izaak Walton; and in these
later years Christopher Wordsworth, scholar and divine,
and the greatly beloved and saintly Edward King.
Archbishop Whitgift (1530-1604) was born in this
county, at Grimsby, and Daniel Waterland, theologian
(1683-1740), at Walesby, of which place Robert Burton,
author of The Anatomy of Melancholy was once rector.
William Paley, author of the famous View of the Evidences
of Christianity, probably wrote his Natural Theology when
Sub-Dean of Lincoln.
John Cotton, nonconformist divine, was Vicar of
Boston for several years before leaving for Trimountain,
Massachusetts, afterwards called Boston. And the Lin-
colnshire Boston was the native place of John Foxe
(1516-1587) the martyrologist. In 1703 there was born
in Epworth Rectory one who made a vast change in the
religious world, especially of that portion, unlike himself,
outside the Church of England. This was John Wesley.
His brother Charles, the divine and hymn-writer, was
born there in 1707. One of Lincolnshire's proudest
boasts should be that the great genius, Sir Isaac Newton,
was born at Woolsthorpe (in 1642) and educated at the
ROLL OF HONOUR
161
neighbouring grammar school of Grantham, where there
is a statue of him by Theed. Another mathematician,
Sir Isaac Newton
(From the statue by Ronbiliac in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge]
George Boole, author of The Laws of Thought (i 8 1 5-1 864),
was born in Lincoln.
s. L.
1 1
162 LINCOLNSHIRE
On August 6, 1809, tne Poet> Alfred Tennyson, was
born in Somersby Rectory. He was educated at Louth
grammar school. His earlier work reveals much of the
influence on his receptive mind of the varying moods of
river and marsh and fen. His statue by G. F. Watts is
on the north-east side of the Minster Green at Lincoln.
His elder brothers, Frederick (author of Days and Hours)
and Charles, who took the additional name of Turner,
were also poets. Boston was unusually favoured in the
early years of the nineteenth century, as James Westland
Marston, poet, dramatist, and critic, and father of the
blind poet, Philip Bourke Marston, was born there in
1819; Jean Ingelow, the poetess, in 1820; John
Conington, the famous classical scholar in 1825; and
Herbert Ingram, the founder of the Illustrated London
News in 1811. Thomas Cooper, the chartist (author of
The Purgatory of Suicides], lived for the later part of his
life at Lincoln, where he died in 1892. Mrs Centlivre,
actress and dramatist (1667-1723), was born at Holbeach,
while Thomas Hey wood, dramatist and poet (died 1650 ?),
avers himself a Lincolnshire man in his commendatory
verses to James Yorke's Union of Honour, a book of
heraldic use, by a Lincoln blacksmith. Robert Mannyng,
or Robert de Brunne (1288-1338 ?), poet, was born at
Bourne; Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, the historian
(1084-1 155), was buried at Lincoln; and to turn to lighter
literature, John Sheffield, ist Duke of Buckinghamshire,
the friend of Dryden and Pope, had his seat at Normanby,
the home of Sir Berkeley Sheffield. Bulwer Lytton, who
was M.P. for Lincoln, is reported to have written A Strange
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
II — 2
164 LINCOLNSHIRE
Story in the grounds of the old Palace, and the scene of
the story is laid in Lincoln.
Among antiquaries respect will always be paid to
the names of Maurice Johnson (1688-1755), founder of
the Gentlemen's Society (the oldest antiquarian society
in England) at Spalding, his birth-place; of William
Stukeley (1687-1765), author of Itlnerarium Cur'wsum\
of Sir Charles Anderson of Lea (1804-1891), author of
the charming Lincoln Pocket Guide ; of Edward Trollope
(1817-1893), Bishop of Nottingham; and of Edmund
Venables (1819-1895), Precentor of Lincoln. To both
these latter Lincoln and Lincolnshire archaeology owes
very much.
Of explorers this county has produced many of
marked distinction, beginning with a typical "scout,"
Captain John Smith of Willoughby (1580-1631) one
of the Virginian colonists, who was rescued from the
Indians by their Princess Pocahontas; the traveller, Fynes
Moryson (1566-1617), of Cadeby (?) ; Sir Joseph Banks
(1743-1820), one of the most distinguished of naturalists
and President of the Royal Society, who lived at Revesby
and was companion of Cook in his voyage in the
Endeavour round the world ; Matthew Flinders of
Donington (1774-1814), explorer of Australasia; and,
best known of all, Sir John Franklin (1786-1847),
" heroic sailor soul," the Arctic explorer, whose statue
is in Spilsby market place.
Among famous soldiers1 may be mentioned Sir John
1 The history of Hereward the Wake and his connection with this
county is, unfortunately, almost entirely legendary.
Statue of Sir John Franklin
(/// Spilsby market-place]
166 LINCOLNSHIRE
Bolle of Haugh (where he is buried) and Thorpe Hall,
the hero of the Spanish Lady's ballad j Bartholomew,
Lord Burghersh (died 1369), who fought at Crecy, and
whose praise as a brave and gallant knight is enshrined
in Froissart ; Peregrine Bertie, nth Lord Willoughby
de Eresby (1555-1601), the hero of the ballad, The
bravest man in battel was brave Lord Willoughby ; and
Francis Willoughby, 5th Lord Willoughby of Parham
(1613-1666), a great Parliamentary general who after-
wards returned to his allegiance to his King.
At the manor house at Knaith near Gainsborough
was born in 1532 Thomas Sutton, a member of a
prominent Lincolnshire family, who after service in the
army as Surveyor of Ordnance, amassed great wealth and
founded the Charterhouse Hospital and School in 1611,
in which year he died. A portrait of him hangs in the
Guildhall at Lincoln. The greatest name among Lincoln-
shire statesmen is that of William Cecil, Lord Burghley
(1520-1598), born at Bourne, Queen Elizabeth's chief
minister. Sir John Cust (1718-1770) and Sir Robert
Sheffield (in 1510 and 1512) were Speakers of the House
of Commons.
In the world of commerce it is interesting to
note that our county supplied no less than nine
Lord Mayors of London between the years 1470 and
1632.
For many centuries Scrivelsby has been associated with
the family of Dymoke. Sir John Dymoke by his marriage
with the heiress of the Marmions succeeded to the manor
and was made King's Champion at the coronation of
Thomas Button
168 LINCOLNSHIRE
Richard II., an office ever after retained by the family,
though no longer exercised.
Of artists the county certainly has had few : William
Hilton (1786-1839), Royal Academician and historical
painter, was born in the gatehouse of the Vicar's Court
at Lincoln, the son of a portrait painter of that city.
His sister married Peter de Wint, who has shown his love
for the city and county in many beautiful water-colours.
A monument to the two painters is in Lincoln Cathedral.
The splendid illustrations of Roman tesselated pavements
produced by William Fowler (1761-1832) must not be
left without mention.
In the medical world Francis Willis (1718-1807)
attended King George III in his attacks of mental
derangement, and John Conolly (1794-1866), born at
Market Rasen, and Edward Parker Charlesworth (1783-
1853) were a^so distinguished for their treatment of
insanity, the method of non-restraint being introduced
by the latter, whose statue stands just south of The
Lawn — a private asylum at Lincoln.
One of the most distinguished musicians of the six-
teenth century was William Byrd, organist of Lincoln
Minster from 1563-1572 ; and John Reading, the com-
poser of Adeste fideles (O come, all ye faithful), was
Master of the choristers there in 1702.
25. THE CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES
OF LINCOLNSHIRE.
(The figures in brackets after each name give the population in
1911, and those at the end of each section refer to the
pages in the text.)
Alford (2394), a market town at the junction of the Wold
with the Marsh, with a fine church of Decorated date and
handsome chancel screen, (pp. 12, 39, 62, 75, 152.)
Algarkirk (485), 6| miles south-south-west of Boston,
has a very fine cruciform church chiefly of Early English and
Decorated date. Woad is grown in this parish.
Ancaster (536), 8 miles north-east of Grantham, was a
Roman station on the Ermine Street (probably Causennae), the
fosse or ditch is clearly traceable. Quarries for Ancaster stone are
worked in this parish and in the neighbouring one of Wilsford,
where is a picturesque manor house built by Sir Charles Cotterell,
a scholarly courtier of Charles II. (pp. n, 19, 31, 86, 109, 115,
Bardney (1302), a thriving town 9 miles east of Lincoln,
originated with the famous abbey dedicated to St Oswald, of
which the ground plan has been worked out. Aethelred resigning
his crown became abbot here, and a mound still called King's
Hill may be his burial place. There is a junction here connecting
the Lincoln and Boston line with Louth. (pp. 12, 137.)
Barrow-on-Humber (2734), includes New Holland,
whence there is a steam ferry to Hull. A Saxon monastery was
founded here by St Chad, and there is a large series of earthworks,
The Castles." At the neighbouring hamlet of Burnham to the
south was possibly the site of the Battle of Brunanburgh in 937.
170
LINCOLNSHIRE
Barton- on -H umber (6673), 6 miles south-west of Hull,
a prosperous market town and small port, which had a market
and ferry at the time of Domesday survey, with a Saxon church
(St Peter) having a very early tower and handsome Decorated
nave and chancel, and a second fine Early English church
(St Mary's), almost entirely in that style. The chief trades of
the town are malting, and brick, tile, and cement making, (pp.
IIJ 32, 33, 35, 42, 49, 74, 9^, n8, 149, 150, 152.)
Baumber (354), a little village 4 miles north-west ot
Horncastle, chiefly notable for its training stables; Galopin,
winner of the Derby in 1875, was bred here.
Boston Grammar School
Billingborough (964), a large village 3 miles east ot
Folkingham, with fine church mainly Decorated, a Tudor Hall,
and abundant springs.
Billinghay (1288), a large village 83 miles north-east of
Sleatbrd, includes Dogdyke eastwards on the Witham, where is
a piece of genuine untouched ^Fen, and Walcot, westwards, with
the well-known Catley Abbey springs of natural seltzer-water.
CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES 171
Boston (16,673) (St Botolph's town), has a very ancient
history; its importance as a port and fishing-centre has already
been described. Many of the "Pilgrim Fathers" hailed from this
place, and re-christened the town of Trimountain after it. The
church (St Botolph's) is a little less in area than St Nicholas,
Yarmouth, and is a splendid specimen of a first rank parish
church. It is almost entirely of Decorated date, except the grand
Perpendicular lantern tower, 272 feet high, known locally as
Boston Stump. There is a picturesque half-timbered house,
Shodfriar's Hall, a fifteenth century red brick Guildhall, and
a sixteenth century Grammar School, also in red brick. The
neighbouring church of Skirbeck has a grand Early English
nave. (pp. 4, 6, 12, 15, 19, 20, 32, 34, 38, 47, 50, 70, 73, 74,
82, 89, 90, 93, 94-97, no, 123, 124, 150, 152, 153, 154, 157,
158, 160, 162.)
Bourne (4343) is a nice market town 95 miles west or
Spalding, with a powerful spring, from which it gets its name.
The parish church is the nave of the monastic one, with late
Norman arcades. Bourne was the seat of the Wake family,
though the connection with Hereward is very obscure. The
castle and station-master's house have been previously mentioned,
(pp. n, 20, 128, 138, 143, 147, 152.)
Brant Broughton (531), a village 3 miles west of
Leadenham, has one of the most perfect parish churches in the
county, both outside and inside. It is chiefly of the Decorated
period, though the nave, aisle, arcade, and chancel arch are Early
English. The interior decoration, stained glass, screen-work, font
and cover, and iron-work, is all of a very high order of merit.
Here Bishop Warburton was rector and wrote his Divine Legation
of Moses, (pp. 82, 145.)
Brigg or Glanford Brigg (3343), a thriving market town
23 miles north of Lincoln on the Ancholme, over which is the
172 LINCOLNSHIRE
bridge which gives the place its most used name. On the site
of the -gasworks was discovered a prehistoric boat, 48 feet long,
cut out of the trunk of an oak. (pp. 15, 16, 31, 112, 120, 149,
'50, 154-)
Burgh (937), a small market town 6 miles east of Spilsby,
on an outlying hill in the Marsh, was a Roman station; has a fine
Perpendicular church, and a Missionary College founded thirty
years ago. (pp. u, 16, 32, 115.)
Caistor (1544), a small market town 7^ miles east-south-
east of Brigg, was a Roman station, and possesses part of its
walls and ditch. It is situated on a western spur of the Wolds.
The church tower is probably Norman, the nave Early English.
A gadwhip is kept here, to which a purse was attached containing
30 silver pennies and four pieces of wych elm, and on Palm Sunday
was cracked by a man from Broughton during the reading of the
first lesson. He knelt before the officiating minister when he
began to read the second lesson, waved it three times over the
minister's head, and held it over him till the lesson was finished,
and then deposited it in the seat of the Lord of the Manor of
Hundon. Lands in Broughton (near Caistor) were held by this
ceremony, which has been discontinued for 70 years, (pp. 6, 32,
62, 99, 108, 115.)
Cleethorpes (21,417). This favourite watering-place is
situated about 3 miles south-east of Grimsby (with which it is
practically continuous), on the south shore of the Humber and
facing the North Sea. It is frequented by many thousands of
visitors, for day trips or longer, during the summer. About
a mile inland is the church of Old Clee, which has a Saxon
tower, Norman nave, and Transitional Norman north transept.
A tablet records the dedication of the church (perhaps the chancel
and transepts) by St Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, in 1 192. (pp. 42,
47,49, 89, 152.)
CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES 173
Crowle (2853), a small market town in the Isle of Axholme
on the Yorkshire border with a station on the light railway from
Haxey to Goole. The church, dedicated to St Oswald, has the
stem of a Saxon cross with runic inscription in the arch of the
tower, which is Norman with Perpendicular top. It has also a
fine Norman doorway, (pp. 69, 152.)
Epworth (1836) is a market town in the Isle of Axholme
about 6 miles south of Crowle, and has a good church with
a fine Perpendicular tower. In the old Rectory (which was
burnt by the parishioners in 1709) John Wesley was born in
1703 and Charles Wesley in 1708. Samuel Wesley, their father,
was rector of Epworth for 39 years, and is buried in a tomb in
the churchyard on the south side, from which his son John used
to preach, (pp. 14, 69, 160.)
Frieston (1024) is a large village 3 miles east of Boston.
The parish church is the nave of the Priory Church, of
Transition Norman ; with fine tower, clerestory, and aisle of
Perpendicular date. The beautiful font cover is of the same
date. (p. 128.)
Friskney (1373) is a large village on the coast, 14 miles
north-east of Boston, with a fine (mainly Perpendicular) church,
which is especially remarkable for its wall paintings of early
fifteenth century date.
Fulbeck (611), 9 miles north of Grantham, is situated on
a well-wooded lower rise of ground between the Cliff and the
plain and is perhaps the most delightful village in the county.
The Hall has been a seat of the Fane family for nearly 300 years.
(PP- 29, 54.)
Gainsborough (20,587) is a large market town on the banks
of the Trent, 15^ miles north-west of Lincoln. Here, in 868,
King Alfred is recorded to have married Ealswitha, daughter of
Ethelred, chief of the Gaini (whence the town gets its name).
174
LINCOLNSHIRE
The earthworks occupied by the Danes, the interesting Old
Hall, the history of the place during the great Civil War, the
malting, seed crushing, and agricultural implement works, have
all been alluded to earlier in this book. George Eliot describes
the town under the name of St Ogg's in the Mill on the Floss,
and the Bazaar took place in the Old Hall. The " eagre " or
bore on the river reaches a little above Gainsborough, as do the
ordinary tides in the Trent, the Spring tides reach about 10 miles
further up the river, to Newton, where the picturesque red cliffs
Woolsthorpe Manor House
(the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton]
are much visited by picnic parties in the summer, (pp. 6, 7, 11,
15, 18, 24, 26, 62, 78, 80, 82, 97, 99, 101, 107, no, iii, 114,
117, 124, 140, 152, 153, 154, 166.)
Great Gonerby (1296), two and a half miles north-north-
west of Grantham, was well-known as affording the steepest hill
on the Great North Road, and as such is mentioned in Scott's
Heart of Midlothian (chap. 29). (p. 29.)
CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES 175
Grantham (20,070), a large and increasing market town, and
a parliamentary and municipal borough, is situated 24 miles
Grantham: the Old Grammar School
south of Lincoln and 105^ from London. It is notable for
its splendid church with the finest spire in the county, and the
176 LINCOLNSHIRE
Angel Hotel, one of the three remaining medieval hostelries in
the country, which with the large agricultural implement and
other engineering works, have been already mentioned. Sir Isaac
Newton was born at the neighbouring manor house of Woolsthorpe
and educated at the Grantham Grammar School, (pp. 6, 10, n,
T7, J9» 71, 80, 82, 86, 109, no, 115, 121, 122, 124, 139, 147,
MO, i54, 156, 157, 161.)
Great Grimsby (76,659) has been already dealt with as
far as its gigantic fishing interests and the port generally are
concerned. The name is traditionally derived from that of a
fisherman "Grim," who (according to the poem of Havelock the
Dane) rescued a Danish chief's son Havelock from drowning
and was rewarded by a gift of this Danish port. It is a Borough
by prescription. King Richard I held a parliament here, and
King John visited the town twice, and gave its first charter. One
only is left of two fine churches (St Mary's fell into ruins in the
sixteenth century), St James, the parish church, which belonged
to Wellow Abbey. Of early thirteenth century date are nave,
south door, porch, transept and part of the chancel — the tower was
rebuilt in 1365. The Town Hall, opened in 1863, is of white
brick and stone in Italian style; the Corn Exchange in red brick
dates from 1854. A fine bronze statue of the Prince Consort
stands opposite the Royal Hotel. Archbishop Whitgift and
Gervase Holies, author of valuable notes on Lincolnshire
churches in the seventeenth century, were natives of Grimsby.
(pp. 4, 14, 24, 34, 42, 43, 47-50, 62, 73, 87, 88, 90-93, 97, 120,
!49» M2, M4, 156, 157, 160.)
Haxey (2035), a small town 3 miles south of Epworth,
7 miles north-west of Gainsborough, on the G.N. line from
Lincoln to Doncaster, and on the light railway to Goole. It was
the capital town of the Isle of Axholme. The church is hand-
some externally, of Perpendicular date with a good tower, " which
has a ring of six bells with chimes of exceptional sweetness"
CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES 177
(Jeans). Here on January 6th occurs a kind of football match,
called "throwing the Haxey hood," a piece of sacking closely
tied up serving for the hood, while 12 "Boggins" and a Fool"
(who proclaims the amount of refreshment offered by the various
public-houses of the town to the man who conveys the hood
thither) try and keep the hood from leaving a field, the rest of
the players striving to capture it. (p. 71.)
Heckington (1666), a large village 5 miles south-east
of Sleaford with a magnificent Decorated church which has a
beautiful Easter sepulchre and sedilia, in the chancel made by the
same workmen as the Easter sepulchres at Navenby, Hawton
near Newark, and the Minster chancel screen, (p. 122.)
Holbeach (5052), a small town 8 miles east of Spalding,
with an enormous parish, containing 21,000 acres of land, and
14,000 of water. Henry Rands, Bishop of Lincoln (1547-1551),
who alienated most of the episcopal manors to the king, and
Stukeley the antiquary, were natives of this place. The church is
large and dignified, of the latest Decorated date, with a spire
1 80 feet high; the north porch has curious circular battlemented
turrets, like those at the east end of the Lady Chapel at Grantham
Church, (pp. 69, 152, 162.)
Horncastle (3900) is a market town at the foot of the
Wolds, 21 miles east of Lincoln, on an angle of land between
the rivers Waring and Bain (the latter giving rise to the Roman
name, Banovallum), hence the more modern name. Portions of
the Roman walls still exist. There is a good trade carried on
in corn, coal, malting and brewing, and the largest horse fair in
the kingdom. The manor was possessed for some centuries by
the Bishops of Carlisle, as a safe retreat from the incursions of
the Scots. The church is fine, with some Early English portions,
but the nave and aisles are of Decorated date, and the chancel
Perpendicular. A monument to Sir Lionel Dymoke, King's
S. L. I2
178 LINCOLNSHIRE
Champion in 1519, another to Sir Ingram Hopton, who nearly
captured Cromwell at Winceby fight, in 1643, and a number
of scythe heads, most probably used in the Lincolnshire rising
in 1536, deserve notice, (pp. 6, 16, 17, 38, 62, 69, 83, 108,
115, 116, 153, 154.)
Kirton- in -Holland (2444) a large village 4 miles south-
south-west of Boston, has a fine church which was barbarously
treated in 1804, when its central tower and a fine transept were
pulled down, and the chancel shortened. The present west tower
was then built. The nave is Early English, with clerestory of
good Perpendicular work, and a fine roof.
Kirton-in-Lindsey (1602), a market town and large
parish, 1 8 miles north of Lincoln, has a large church with Early
English tower, and north arcade of the nave. This place was
given by King William the Conqueror to Bishop Remigius
towards endowing his new Cathedral at Lincoln, and remained
attached to the sub-dean's office for many years as a "Peculiar."
(p. 147.)
Langton-by-Spilsby (168) is chiefly remarkable for the
fact that the manor and advowson and the estate have been in
the possession of the same family (Langton) since the thirteenth
century. The Hall has been rebuilt about four times. Bennet
Langton was visited here by Dr Johnson, (p. 145.)
Lincoln (57,285), a city and county by itself, returning one
member to Parliament, occupies the brow of a cliff 210 feet high,
and extends downwards across the river Witham for two miles.
It is the episcopal see of the diocese of Lincoln, and is governed
(as it has been since 1210) by a mayor and corporation. Its
early history, its extensive Roman remains, and its later history
have been already dealt with, as have been also its trade, the
Jews' Houses, St Mary's Guild, and the Castle. The Cathedral
or Minster, as it is usually called, was first built by the first
CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES 179
Norman Bishop Remigius, and completed in 1092. The west
front of this church and one bay of its nave alone remain.
The three splendid Norman doorways and the lower part of the
western towers and the gables are later additions. The saintly
Bishop St Hugh of Lincoln (1186-1200) began rebuilding in
Gothic style, and much of the present ritual choir and western
transepts was completed before his death. The rest of the
Lincoln Minster, from the North-east
transepts with part of the central towers, the nave (a superb work
of great lightness and elegance) and the Chapter House were
built in the time of Bishops William of Blois and Hugh of
Wells. The great west screen, with the central (Broad or Rood)
tower is due to Bishop Grosseteste, the greatest of Lincoln's
Bishops. The extreme popularity and sanctity of St Hugh's
shrine led to the pulling down of the apsidal end of his choir,
12 — 2
180
LINCOLNSHIRE
and to the replacing it by a most sumptuous and splendid work
of Early Decorated date which was consecrated in 1280, when
St Hugh's remains were translated to a new shrine. This was
called, from the artistic sculpture in the spandrels, the Angel
Choir. The south porch is almost unique in the country, with
lavish figure sculptures. The cloisters were built by Bishop Oliver
Sutton (1280-1300), and are elegant specimens of Decorated date.
Horse Fair, Lincoln
The great central tower was completed in 1311, when with its
spire it was about the highest in Europe, reaching a height of
525 feet. The beautiful chancel screen, with its exquisite side
doors (like the king's door at Trondhjem Cathedral), was made
about the same time. About 1380 the tabernacled stalls of the
choir, according to Pugin " by far the finest in England," were
put in. The upper part of the western towers (Perpendicular
CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES 181
in style, but blending wonderfully well with the Norman under-
structure) dates from 1390. After the Restoration, Sir Christopher
Wren completed the north side of the cloisters with an arcade
and built a library over it.
A fine statue of Tennyson by G. F. Watts stands on the north-
east Minster green. St Mary-le-Wigford, St Peter-at-Gowts,
and St Benedict have all pre-Norman or early Norman towers;
St Swithin's is the finest new church in the city. There are plenty
of recreation grounds around the city, the Arboretum above
Monks Road, a well-kept People's Park, Monks Abbey, and the
South Park on the slope of Canwick and Crosscliflf Hills. Horse-
racing is mentioned in the Corporation records in 1597. King
James attended races here in 1617. The Lincolnshire Handicap,
the first great flat race of the year, was first run in 1849. (PP-
1-3, 6, 7, 10, ii, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18-21, 24, 29, 31, 35-38, 41,
46, 54, 56, 61, 62, 66, 67, 69, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 82, 85, 86,
96> 97, 99-in, 112-126, 130-139, 143, 147-158, 1 60, 162,
168.)
Louth (9880), a municipal borough and market town,
deriving its name from the river Ludd, is situated in a valley
on the east side of the Wolds, about 15 miles south of Grimsby.
It is a handsome, well built, and prosperous town, and a great
agricultural centre. The main feature of the town is the large
and splendid church of Perpendicular date, with its grand tower
and spire, rising to a height of 300 feet. Close to Louth on the
Lincoln road is Thorpe Hall, built in 1584 by Sir John Bolle,
the hero of the Spanish Lady's ballad, who is buried at Haugh.
The grammar school had the distinction of educating all the
Tennyson brothers, Hobart Pasha, and Governor Eyre of
Jamaica. Louth Park Abbey ruins are about i^ miles away;
it was a large Cistercian foundation, originating in a colony of
monks who left Haverholme Priory, (pp. 10, 18, 33, 124, 150,
182 LINCOLNSHIRE
Mablethorpe (1232) is a pleasantly situated watering-place
on the coast 8 miles north-east from Alford, with many resident
visitors, and crowds of trippers in the season. The sands are
excellent and very extensive at low tides. Mirages are not
uncommon. Tennyson, who frequently visited the place in his
early years, used to say that nowhere, except on the west coast of
Ireland, had he seen such length of wave, and many allusions to
this coast and the neighbourhood will be found in his poems,
(pp. 38, 43, 44, 49, 50, 99, 152, 158.)
Marsh- Chapel (551) is a large parish si miles south-
east of Grimsby, with a spacious Perpendicular church, perhaps
the finest in the Marshes, with a good tower and a fine rood
screen, (pp. 14, 49, 124.)
Moulton (2226), a large parish 4 miles east of Spalding,
has one of the grand series of churches on the road between
Spalding and Sutton Bridge which belonged to Spalding Priory.
It was built about 1180, the nave showing very Early English
work of six bays, the clerestories are Transitional Norman, and
there is a Perpendicular chancel, and a fine early Perpendicular
tower and spire about 1 6.0 feet high. Half a mile north-east is
the Elloe stone, which marks the place of assembly for the
wapentake.
Pinchbeck (2836), a large village of over 13,000 acres,
2 miles north of Spalding, with a large and fine church with
Early English arcade of five bays in the nave, Perpendicular
clerestory roof and west tower, and late Decorated chancel. The
name Pinchbeck for an alloy of copper and zinc came from
Christopher Pinchbeck, its discoverer, but whether he had any
connection with the village does not appear, (p. 20.)
Market Rasen (2296), is a market town 14 miles north-
east from Lincoln. Two other villages of the same name are
close by, Middle Rasen and West Rasen, both with interesting
CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES 183
churches. The name comes from the little river Rase. (pp. 15,
16, 18, 149, 168.)
Ruskington (1214), a large village about three and a half
miles north of Sleaford, has large building works, and a good
Early English church.
Sedgebrook (168), a small village 4 miles north-west
from Grantham, has a rather remarkable late Perpendicular
church, with the rood loft carried across the aisles. The chapel
on the south of the chancel was built by Sir John Markham, a
Justice of King's Bench, called "the upright Judge" because he
was dismissed from office by King Edward IV after displaying
conspicuous fairness in dealing with the trial of Sir Thomas
Coke, Lord Mayor of London, (pp. 28, 124.)
Skegness (3775) is a rapidly developing watering-place
on the coast, 4 miles east of Burgh, and 5 miles north-east
of Wainfleet. It has very good accommodation for visitors, who
are very numerous in the summer months. The sands and
bathing are good, there are a fine pier and cricket ground, and
there are first class golf links at Seacroft, on the sand-hills south
of the town. The air is wonderfully pure and bracing. The
railway communication is through the Great Northern branch
from Firsby, either from Boston or Louth, but a connecting line
is being made with the Great Northern Railway line from Lincoln,
(pp. 14, 31, 43, 46, 47, 49, 50, 54, 62, 97, 152.)
Sleaford (3808) is a thriving and improving market town,
of much importance as an agricultural centre, situated about
half way between Spalding and Lincoln on the little river Slea.
The railway communications are excellent. The church is one
of the first class, has a very early spire, a handsome Perpendicular
nave (externally Decorated) and a Perpendicular chancel with the
finest oak rood screen in the county. The Castle only remains in
the shape of mounds. The large makings have been already
184 LINCOLNSHIRE
mentioned, (pp. 7, n, 19, 20, 68, 104, in, 116, 122, 136, 147,
150, 152, 154.)
Somersby (47), 6 miles north-east of Horncastle, was the
birthplace of Alfred Tennyson in 1 809. The old Rectory is much
the same internally and externally as in the days of the Tennysons,
with the quaint Gothic dining-room built by Dr Tennyson, who
himself carved the mantelpiece. His grave is in the churchyard.
The church is a simple little one of the local sandstone, which has
been put in good repair, and a bust (by Woolner) of the poet
placed in the chancel in memory of his centenary in 1909. There
is a beautiful fifteenth century churchyard cross, (pp. 12, 130,
162.)
Spalding (10,308) is a large market town and port,
14 miles south-south-west of Boston, on the river Welland, which
is navigable for vessels of 120 tons, carrying on a trade of coal,
oil-cake, and timber. It is also a valuable agricultural centre,
and for distributing fruit and vegetables. Scarcely any remains
exist of the important Priory which was the richest in the
county, after Crowland, at the dissolution. The church is
mainly Early Decorated, but has had additional aisles added to
the nave, and a south-east chapel. The rood screen is fine and
very lofty. Ayscoughfee Hall, now town property, was originally
of fifteenth century date ; it has been much modernised, but has
fine Tudor gardens. Maurice Johnson lived here, the founder
in 1710 of the Spalding Gentlemen's Society, which still exists
and has established itself in a new house, (pp. 12, 20, 22, 69,
97, 143, 147, 152, 154, 164.)
Spilsby (1464) is a pleasant market town 10 miles east-south-
east of Horncastle at the southern extremity of the Wolds, on a
branch of the Great Northern Railway from Firsby. The
church is chiefly interesting for the series of monuments of the
Willoughby de Eresby family, who took their title from Willoughby
0) 5:
I £
GO
12—5
186
LINCOLNSHIRE
near Alford, and Eresby, where was a Hall, about three-quarters
of a mile south of Spilsby. A bronze statue of the Arctic explorer,
Sir John Franklin, who was born here, is in the market place,
(pp. n, 17, 18, 31, 62, 130, 137, 152, 164, 165.)
St Mary's Church and Hill, Stamford
Stamford (9647), a most charming municipal borough,
situated on the extreme southern border of the county on the
Welland, and with one parish, St Martin's, in Northamptonshire
(as is Burghley House, the magnificent seat of the Marquis of
Exeter, built by Lord High Treasurer Burghley). It has an
ancient history, and was one of the Danelagh towns, representing
CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES 187
the Gyrwas or dwellers in the Fens. It has several fine and
interesting churches, among them St Mary's with an Early English
tower and spire and All Saints with a Perpendicular spire and
excellent brasses. Browne's Hospital has been already noticed, and
the gate of Brasenose College (the nose has gone to its namesake
at Oxford) still remains as a reminder of the University that might
have been at Stamford, (pp. 8, 11, 22, 31, 66, 69, 75, 98, 100,
107, 109, 115, 124, 128, 143, 147, 150, 154, 156, 157.)
StOW (309), six miles south-east of Gainsborough, is notable
for its large cruciform church, and is supposed to owe its name to
St Etheldreda having made a stay (or stow) here, where her staff
budded in the night. Parts of the piers of the central tower are
probably earlier than 1020, when the church was rebuilt by
Bishop Eadnoth; the nave and upper part of the transepts were
due to Remigius, and the chancel and fine western doorway to
Bishop Alexander. Here was a manor house of the Bishops of
Lincoln, and here St Hugh's favourite swan lived, (pp. 10, 118,
120, 157.)
Sutton-on-Sea (835) is another of the pleasant sea-side
resorts of this county about 3 miles south of Mablethorpe, and
with much the same attractions, (pp. 34, 44-46, 49, 50, 152.)
Swineshead (i 899), a large village about 6 miles south-west
of Boston, has a grand church, with Decorated and Perpendicular
tower, Decorated nave and clerestory and south aisle. A mile
away is the site of Swineshead Abbey, occupied by a farmhouse,
where King John lay the night after the disastrous crossing of the
Wash, and where lie was possibly poisoned by the monks, (pp.
64, 104, 117.)
Tattershall (415), on the river Bain 11 miles north-west
of Boston, has the splendid castle already described and a spacious
Perpendicular cruciform church with western tower, built of stone
by Ralph, Lord Cromwell, left unfinished at his death in 1455,
188 LINCOLNSHIRE
and finished by William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester.
The stone pulpitum or screen dividing the chancel from the
transepts has had two altars on its western face, and has two
stone book-rests on the projection over the door into the chancel,
for the books of the Gospel and Epistle, which used to be read
therefrom. There are very fine brasses commemorating the
founder and others in the north transept. The market was
gained for the town at the price of a well-trained goshawk in the
reign of King John, and the market cross bears the shields of
Tattershall, Cromwell, and Deincourt, and was erected about the
same time as the castle. No market is now held, but there is a
cattle and sheep fair in September, (pp. 17, 20,47, Iri> I24>
130, 134-)
Torksey (183), 7 miles south of Gainsborough, was once an
important port at the junction of the Fossdyke and the Trent,
and the probable scene of the baptism by Paulinus. The so-called
"castle," built in the late sixteenth century, was the Hall of the
Jermyn family, and being occupied by the Parliamentarians was
captured and burnt by the Royalists from Newark. Torksey has
given its name to china and pottery made here. (pp. 82, 97, 99,
100, 116, 143, 153.)
Wainfleet- All- Saints (1258), a market town and port
15 miles north-east of Boston, on the Steeping river and Wainfleet
Haven, which reaches the sea at Gibraltar Point, 5 miles away.
It is chiefly notable as the birthplace of William Patten (or
Barbour), best known as William of Waynflete, who was Provost
of Eton, Bishop of Winchester, and Founder of Magdalen College,
Oxford, in whose chapel is the tomb of his father, which used to
be here. The Bishop also built the existing school at Wainfleet
of red brick, much resembling Tattershall Castle in appearance,
but about forty years later in date. (pp. 47, 96, 106, 140.)
Wliaplode (2270) is a large village on the Holbeach to
Spalding road, on which some of the finest churches of the county
CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES 189
are situated, that of Whaplode being among the first rank. There
are seven bays in the nave, the four eastern ones and the chancel
arch well-developed Norman, the three western Transitional, the
tower (on the site of the south transept), lowest stage Transitional,
second and third Early English, fourth Early Decorated, (p. i 20.)
Wlnteringham (606), once a market and corporate town,
seven and a half miles west of Barton-on-Humber, is close to the
north ending of the Ermine Street, at Flashmire (Ad A bum).
Kirke White, the poet, was for a time a pupil here at the old
Rectory. Here St Etheldreda is supposed to have landed, when
she was fleeing from her second husband, en route for Ely, and
at West Halton close by, where she stopped some time, she is
said to have founded a church which is dedicated to her. The
church has Transitional Norman piers in the nave, with semi-
circular arches on the south and pointed ones on the north, an
Early English chancel, and a Perpendicular tower, (pp. 10, 17,
40
Winterton (1426), a small market town on the Ermine
Street two and a half miles south of Winteringham. Both towns
derived their names from the tribe of Winterings. An eagle
of a Roman Legion was found here, and close by several Roman
pavements, which were figured by William Fowler, who lived here.
There is a fine cruciform church, with a pre-Norman tower, its
upper portion Early English, an Early English nave, and a
Decorated chancel. The altar-piece is by Raphael Mengs.
(P- H5-)
Woodhall Spa (1484) is an inland watering-place 3 miles
south-west of Horncastle, of considerable and fast rising importance
in the treatment of gout, rheumatism, and scrofula, due to the
exceeding richness of the natural mineral water in salts of Iodine
and Bromine. The spring was accidentally discovered about
100 years ago in the course of an unsuccessful boring 1000 feet
190
LINCOLNSHIRE
deep for coal. The water flows through a soft spongy rock at
a depth of 540 feet, and yields from 16,000 to 20,000 gallons
a day. There is a spacious pump room and bath establishment
of the most modern character. Woodhall is situated on a sandy
The Church Walk: Woodhall Spa
and gravelly soil, and is in the midst of extensive woods. It is
sheltered on the north and east by the Wolds, and within easy
reach are Tattershall Castle, Scrivelsby, Somersby, Revesby
Abbey, and Kirkstead. (pp. 28, 40.)
DIAGRAMS
191
England & Wales
37,337,630 acres
Lincolnshire
Fig. i. Area of Lincolnshire (1,705,293 acres) compared
with that of England^and Wales
England & Wales
36,075,269
Lincolnshire
r
Fig. 2. Population of Lincolnshire (563,960) compared
with that of England and Wales in 1911
England and Wales 618 Lincolnshire 212 Lancashire 2550
Fig. 3. Comparative Density of Population to the
square mile in 1911
(Each dot represents 10 persons)
192
LINCOLNSHIRE
Corn Crops
560,835 acres
Fig. 4. Proportionate area under Corn Crops compared with
that of other Cultivated Land in Lincolnshire in 191 1
Fig. 5 Proportionate area of chief Corn Crops in
Lincolnshire in 1911
DIAGRAMS
193
podlands|*M|5
Fig. 6. Proportionate area of land in Lincolnshire
in IQII
Fig. 7. Proportionate numbers of Horses, Cattle, Sheep,
and Pigs in Lincolnshire in 1911
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DAVIES, D.Sc., F.G.S.
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MARY CAROLINE HUGHES
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