CHAPTER XVI

ROADS NORTH FROM LINCOLN

Kirton-in-Lindsey—The Carrs—Broughton—Brigg—The North Wolds—Worlaby—Elsham—Saxby-All-Saints—Horkstow—South Ferriby—Barton-on-Humber—St. Peter’s and St. Mary’s—Greater care of Churches.

Of the three roads north from Lincoln we have spoken of the road on the ridge which is the continuation of the Cliff road on which we travelled from Navenby to Lincoln. The view is the notable thing on this road, for, though it looks down on a series of small villages below its western slope, Burton, Carlton, Scampton, Aisthorpe, Brattleby, Cammeringham, Ingham, Fillingham, Glentworth, Harpswell, Hemswell, Willoughton, Blyborough and Grayingham, all in a stretch of fourteen miles, it passes through nothing of importance but _Kirton-in-Lindsey_. This Kirton is a very old place, the manor being once held by Piers Gaveston, the favourite of Edward II., and later by the Black Prince. The office of Seneschal was filled at one time by the Burgh family of Gainsborough. The church is an interesting one, and has a richly carved and moulded west doorway. Leading from the nave to the tower is a very massive double Early English arch, resting on a large circular pillar, and two thick responds. The south doorway is like the western one, richly carved with tooth moulding. The porch is used as a baptistry. On the north wall of the nave is a wall-painting representing the seven sacraments and blood flowing from the crucified Saviour to each.

[Sidenote: “CLIFF” AND “CARR”]

The road east of Ermine Street goes through any number of villages, for it goes on the low ground, and each parish runs up to the Ermine Street and has its portion of high ground or “cliff.” Normanby Cliff, Owmby Cliff, Saxby Cliff, etc., and from the west side each village does the same, so that we have in succession Brattleby, Ingham, and Hemswell Cliff. The winds on the ridge apparently, which “extirpated” the church of Boothby Graffoe, have always deterred people from building on the height; but none of the places on this low road which occur regularly at intervals of two miles are of any special importance except Glentham, which will be noticed later. We will therefore run along the middle road, the grand old Roman Street, which begins at Chichester and, as seen on the map, goes through the county north of Lincoln as straight as an arrow for over thirty miles. At the twelfth mile we pass Spital, and when, after eighteen miles we get to the latitude of Kirton-Lindsey on the cliff road, we shall find that the branch road to the right, which goes to Brigg, takes all the traffic, and the Ermine Street for seven or eight miles is disused. So, turning off, we pass _Redbourne_ Hall and _Hibaldstow_, the place of St. Higbald, who came to Lincolnshire across the Humber with St. Chad to bring Christianity to the Mercians in the seventh century. This parish runs up to the ridge, and in the middle of it is an old camp at Gainsthorpe on the “Street.” At Scawby Park, with its fine lakes, the property of the Sutton-Nelthorpes, we turn eastwards and reach Brigg. This, once a fishing place on the Ancholme River, is now the one market town of all this low-lying neighbourhood. Roads from the four villages of _Scawby_, _Broughton_, _Wrawby_ and _Bigby_ unite here, and the great Weir Dyke or “New River Ancholme” which runs from the river Rase to the Humber goes through it. It is eleven miles from Bishopsbridge on the Rase to Brigg, and seven from Brandy Wharf, whence boats used to run to meet the Humber boats at Ferriby Sluice, ten miles north of Brigg. Hereabouts the fens are called “carrs.” We noticed the term “carr dyke” for the Roman drain near Bourn, which runs from the Nene to the Witham; and the map along the whole course of the Ancholme, which runs north for twenty miles, is covered with “carrs.” The villages are at the edge of the Wold generally, but they all have their bit of fen and all are called by this name, Horkstow carrs, Saxby carrs, Worlaby carrs, Elsham carrs, etc.

_Carr_ is a north country word, and has two distinct meanings in Lincolnshire.

1. The moat-like places which originally surrounded the inaccessible islets, with which the Fenland at one time abounded; but now used chiefly of low-lying land apt to be flooded.

2. A wood of alder, ash, &c., in a moist boggy place, _e.g._, “Keal Carrs,” near Spilsby.

A third meaning is less common, viz., the humate of iron or yellow sediment in water which flows from peaty land.

[Sidenote: BROUGHTON AND BRIGG]

Of the four parishes above mentioned which meet at Brigg,[6] _Broughton_ on the Ermine Street is worth a visit. The pre-Norman church and tower, like _Marton_, has a good deal of herring-bone work, and, like _Hough-on-the-Hill_, an outer turret containing a spiral staircase. There is a small rude doorway, and as at Barton, the tower with its two apses probably formed the original church.

The present nave is built on the Norman foundation, and the cable moulding is visible at the base of two of the pillars. There is a chapel in the north aisle, and on the north side of the chancel a good altar tomb with alabaster effigies of Sir H. Redford and his wife, 1380, and a fine brass on the floor of about the same date. This chancel was once sixteen feet longer. In another meanly built chantry is a monument to Sir Ed. Anderson, 1660. In Broughton woods, as at Tumby, the lily of the valley grows wild. North of Broughton the Ermine Street becomes again passable, and, after running some miles through a well-wooded country, is crossed by the railway at Appleby Station, whence it becomes a good road again, but again falls into disuse when the road turns to the left for _Winterton_, a large village in which three fine Roman pavements were ploughed up in 1747. Here we have a large cruciform church with a very early tower. Afterwards the Street continues, a visible but not very serviceable track, to _Winteringham Haven_, the Roman “Ad Abum.”

[Sidenote: OLD BOAT OF BRIGG]

In _Brigg_ we had hoped to see the old boat which was dug out near the river in 1886, it is forty-eight feet long and four to five feet wide, hollowed out of a single tree, and could carry at least forty men over the Humber, though not perhaps across the sea. Its height at the stern was three feet nine inches, and it was six inches thick at the bottom. The tree trunk was open at the thick or stern end, and two oak boards slid into grooves cut in the sides and bottom to make a stern-board. It probably had bulwark-boards also, certainly it had three stiffening thwarts, and the stern end had been decked, as a ledge still shows on either side on which the planking rested. One very interesting feature in it was that the boat had been repaired, with a patch of oak boarding six feet by one foot, on the starboard side, the board being bevelled at the edges and pegged on with oak pins. A similar boat made out of a huge oak tree is in the portico of the British Museum. In this, which is fifty feet long and four feet wide, tapering off a little at either end, both the ends and two thwarts are left solid. The latter are not more than six inches high, but sufficient to add considerably to the strength of the hull. The boat is three inches thick at the gunwale and possibly more at the bottom, and has no keel. But this most interesting relic of Viking days has been removed from Brigg, for what reasons I know not, to the Museum at Hull, and is no longer in the county. A British corduroy road or plank causeway was also found below the mud from which the boat was dug out, and is therefore probably of greater age, though such a mud-bearing stream as the Humber can make a considerable deposit in a very short time. This fact is illustrated by the process of “warping,” which is described in the chapter on the Isle of Axholme.

_Brigg_, without its old boat, has little to detain us, so we can pass to _Wrawby_, and then desert the main road, which goes east through a gap in the Wold to _Brocklesby_, and turn northwards to _Elsham_, where we come up against the most northerly portion of the “Wolds” as distinguished from the “Cliff” or Ridge which lies more to the west. The main road or highway to _Barton_ runs right up the hill and crosses the Wold obliquely, and, as usual, being on the high ground, exhibits no villages in the whole of its course, but we will turn sharp to the left and take a byway which goes by “the Villages” of which we shall pass through no less than half a dozen in the six miles between Elsham and the Humber.

At _Elsham_ is the seat of Sir John Astley. The church has a rich tower doorway with curious sculptured stones on either side.

[Sidenote: SAXBY AND HORKSTOW]

Any road which runs by the edge of a curving range of hills is sure to be picturesque; and the continuation of the Wolds south of Elsham, after the Barnetby Gap, where the railway line gets through the Wolds without tunnelling, with the string of villages all ending in “by,” Bigby, Somerby, Searby, Owmby, Grasby, Clixby, Audleby, and Fonaby, which lead the traveller to _Caistor_, affords pleasant travelling. But it does not come up in varied charm to this western edge of the Wold, which goes farthest north, and ends on the plateau which overlooks the Humber near _South Ferriby_. On this route the first village from _Elsham_ is _Worlaby_, and whereas _Elsham_ had once a small house of Austin Canons founded by Beatrice de Amundeville before 1169, and given by Henry VIII. at the Dissolution to the all devouring Duke of Suffolk, _Worlaby_ had its benefactor in John, first Lord Bellasyse, who founded in 1670 a hospital for poor women, of which the brick building still exists. The twisting road with its wooded slopes and curving hollows is here extremely pretty. We next reach _Bonby_, and soon after come to _Saxby All Saints_. This is a really delightful village, and evidently under the care of one owner, for all the houses are extremely neat and, with the exception of two proud-looking brick-built houses of the villa type, all have tiled roofs and buff-coloured walls. That the village is grateful to the landlord and his agent, and is also, like Mrs. John Gilpin, of a thrifty mind, is quaintly testified by the inscription on a drinking fountain in the village, with a semicircular seat round one side of it which tells how it was set up “in honour of the 60ᵗʰ year of Queen Victoria’s reign, and of Frederick Horsley, agent for 42 years on Mr. Barton’s estate.” Each of these parishes extends up on to the Wold, and down across the fen, and the map shows this and marks Saxby or Elsham “Wolds” as well as Saxby or Elsham “Carrs”; and in each village a signpost points west “to the bridge,” which goes over the land drain and the Weir Dyke.

In the next village of _Horkstow_, a big elm stands close to the gates of the churchyard and parsonage. Here the fine air and the bright breezy look of sky and landscape fill one with pleasure, and the snug way in which the churches nestle against the skirt of the wold give a charming air of peace and retirement. The church here is singular in its very sharp rise of level towards the east. You mount up six steps from the nave at the chancel arch, further east are two more steps and another arch, and again further on, two more and another arch. It looks as though the ground had been raised, for the capitals of the pillars on which these last two arches rest are only four feet and a half from the floor. The north arcade is transition Norman, the arches on the Norman pillars, instead of round, being slightly pointed.

[Sidenote: QUAINT EPITAPHS]

A Colonel of the sixty-third regiment, who died in 1838, has a mural tablet here, which tells us that “In the discharge of his publick duties he was firm and just yet lenient, and as a private gentleman his integrity and urbanity endeared him to all his friends.” This is almost worthy to be placed beside that of the man who on ending “his social career” is stated to have “endeared himself to all his friends and acquaintances by the charm of his manner and his elegant performance on the bassoon.” Curious, what things people used to think proper to put up in churches! One of the oddest is at Harewood in Yorkshire, where, under a bust of Sir Thomas Denison, who is represented in a wig, his widow writes that “he was pressed and at last prevailed on to accept the office of Judge in the Kings Bench, the duties of which he discharged with _unsuspected integrity_.” Doubtless she meant with an integrity which was above suspicion, but it reads so very much as if those who knew him had never for a moment suspected him of possessing the virtue mentioned. For other examples see