CHAPTER XXIII

ROADS FROM LOUTH, NORTH AND WEST

The Grimsby Group of Pre-Norman Towers—Waith—Holton-le-Clay—Scartho—Clee—Humberstone—Tetney —Ravendale—Ashby-cum-Fenby—Roads to Lincoln and Horncastle—Hainton—Glentham—West Rasen—The Pack-horse Bridge—Toft-next-Newton and Newton-by-Toft—Gibbet-posts—Middle Rasen—The Labourer—Market Rasen—North Willingham—Tealby and Bayons Manor—Bishop Odo—South Elkington—Road from Horncastle—The South Wolds—Tathwell—Jane Chaplin.

[Sidenote: JUNE FLOWERS]

The road from Louth to Grimsby, in its first part, is described elsewhere; but north of Ludborough it passes through a succession of small villages in each of which is a very early church tower. These are all somewhat similar to the two primitive churches in Lincoln and to the famous one at Barton-on-Humber, but they have no “Long-and-Short” work which is distinctive of the _Saxon_ towers, and so the term _Romanesque_ perhaps best describes them. They are certainly pre-Norman. Similar groups have been described near Caistor and Gainsborough in Chaps. XVII. and XX., and others mentioned in Chap. XXII. It was a bright and breezy morning early in June when we set out from Well to visit this remarkable group. The trees were at their best, chestnuts and may trees still in bloom, and in the wayside gardens the laburnum with its “dropping-wells of fire” was a joy to see. As we passed along the wind brought the strong scent of the mustard fields and the delicious perfume of the beans, not badly described by the Barber to his wife as “just like the very most delicious hair-oil, my dear.” The pastures were golden with buttercups, but the most wonderful sight of all was the profusion of chervil, or cow-parsley (_Anthriscus_), which, with its lace-like flowers, at times filled the space of grass between the road and the hedge with mile upon mile of its delicate white blossom, and in places lined every hedge, showing above the ordinary low-cut Lincolnshire fence, or, where the hedge was higher, whitening the lower half in lines of flowery loveliness. It nowhere encroached on the cultivated land, but every hedge and ditch and roadside was marked out by it in a profusion of soft white blossoms which was quite astonishing. We note that the “tender ash” is still, as our Lincolnshire poet has it, delaying ‘to clothe herself when all the woods are green,’ but a few days of such balmy sunshine will woo even her leaves from out the bud, and full summer will be with us. The red cattle are feeding in little herds, and the sheep, white from the hands of the shearer, are dotted about the fields. The labourers seem, most of them, to be at the same work, weeding the corn; but as we get further on to the heavy lands whence _Holton-le-Clay_ so aptly gets its name, we see teams of four horses abreast harnessed to the “Drags,” by which the great clods are broken up.

The first of the group of towers we look at is _Waith_, a small cruciform building in a churchyard thickly planted with trees, two fine cedars among them. There are some Early English arcades to the nave, but outside, the tower alone is ancient. This originally was just the width of the nave, and has no openings in the north and south walls. It is also built, not of rubble with quoins, but of dressed stones throughout, solidly but roughly built, with a tiny opening low down; and above the invariable string course, a double light of two small round-headed arches supported by a stout mid-wall shaft with heavy impost. Coming away, we note on a tombstone the curious and possibly Roman surname ‘Porcass.’ Two miles south-west is _Grainsby_ where, as at Clee and Scartho, the stones bear the red marks of Danish fire, and where, inside the tower, is an old boulder stone. Two miles north, on the Grimsby road, is _Holton-le-Clay_, where the tower of the church is of similar antiquity, all but the top storey above the string-course. The west side has only one very small window, but it has on the east side a good tall Romanesque tower-arch, and there is an Early Norman or Saxon font. The rest of the church is of the poorest in all respects.

[Sidenote: SCARTHO]

As we proceed, the tall windmill with six sails shows above the _Waltham_ woods on our left, and we pass a roadside inn with the sign of “The Old Pop Shop.” Three miles more and we reach _Scartho_, a village which is beginning to take the overflow of Grimsby and is full of new buildings. This is the only living in the north or east of England which belongs to Jesus College, Oxford. The church is very interesting on account of its tower, which is Saxon in all but the absence of “Long-and-Short” work. The stones of the tower are of all shapes and kinds, the quoins alone being of hewn stone. Below are only the tiny windows common to all Saxon towers, and above, the belfry has two-light windows with the usual mid-wall shaft. In the west of the tower is a doorway with a round head of large stones and massive imposts.

There is a deep, narrow archway from the nave into the tower, with a little window looking into the nave, and there have been originally tall arches in both the north and south walls, narrow of necessity so as to leave wall enough at each angle for the tower to stand on. A charming original font is there, but hideously placed on a modern inverted stone bowl. The tower and the font are the only things worth looking at, but both of these are of unusual interest. The parapet is Perpendicular and built of different stone, and it is easy to see from the red appearance of many calcined stones used in the tower that it has been rebuilt from the old materials after a former church had been burnt by that scourge of Lincolnshire—the Dane. The principal entrance is now through a big doorway, but in the thirteenth century was in the south wall of the tower.

Leaving _Scartho_ we quickly reach the outskirts of Grimsby, and, turning to the right on the Cleethorpes road, we come in a couple of miles to the church of _Clee_. This is the best of the group we have been visiting. It is one of the earliest churches in the county, and is highly interesting, not only for the venerable antiquity of its tower, but for the fine and varied early Norman and Transition architecture in the body of the church. As a rule there is nothing left of any antiquity in these pre-Norman churches but the tower.

[Sidenote: CLEE]

There is a narrow western doorway and a much taller one of similar character opening into the nave; each has Voussoirs set in double rows. Just above the belfry on the west face is a keyhole light made of top and side stones, and a circular light in the south face. Mr. Jeans, in Murray’s “Lincolnshire,” notes that they have all similar characteristics—“Rubble walling with large quoins, a bold string-course dividing them into stages, tall, narrow doorways with rude imposts and coupled belfry windows with a massive mid-wall shaft.” All this we find at _Clee_, and the red calcined stones in the wall tell of the Danish fire here as at Scartho. The early Norman arcade in the north of the nave has square piers with shafts at the corners, one of them twisted, like the work in Durham Cathedral. All are different in their structure and in the carving of their capitals. The south arcade has thick round columns of later Norman work with chevron, billet, and very thick cable moulding. The arches are round, and the stones of the moulding, as at Somerby, being cut by various hands and without plan or drawing, fit together, but are hardly any two of them of the same sized pattern. This is quite usual in Norman arch mouldings. I noticed it lately over the west doorway of the fine tower of New Romney, Kent. The arches at the east of each aisle which give upon the transepts are pointed, but with Norman mouldings, and the transept arches are the same; the transepts themselves and the low central tower and the chancel are all modern. The old tower is, as usual, at the west end. On the shaft of one of the south arcade pillars is a very interesting record of two notable Bishops of Lincoln. It is in Latin, cut on a small tablet of marble about six inches by eight, and let in flush with the pillar. It says that “the Church was dedicated in honour of the Holy Trinity and the blessed Virgin by Hugh Bishop of Lincoln in the year 1192, in the time of King Richard and re-dedicated after restoration by Bishop Christopher Wordsworth in 1888.” 1192 was the same year in which Bishop Hugh began the choir at Lincoln, which is pure Early English, but doubtless the nave at Clee was built some years before it was dedicated. The font is a massive Norman one, and a portion of the shaft of an early cross stands just inside the door.

[Illustration: _Clee Church._]

[Sidenote: PRE-NORMAN TOWER]

[Sidenote: ASHBY-CUM-FENBY]

The pathway to the church is lined on either side with tall fuschias, not a usual sight near the east coast. This church is the old parish church of _Cleethorpes_, which is the most crowded of the Lincolnshire watering-places, the goal of endless excursions from all the neighbouring counties, but not a place of any attraction for residents. Six miles due east across the river Humber is the revolving light of the Spurn Head lighthouse, plainly seen from the hill above Alford, thirty miles away. Between the Louth and Grimsby main road and the sea another road runs south from Clee by Humberstone and Tetney, thence to Covenham and Alvingham and so to Louth. _Humberstone_ is a parish which goes with Holton-le-Clay, though they are about three miles apart. It is remarkable for its fine avenues of trees, and has a good Perpendicular tower. But in this respect it is surpassed by the extremely well-built and well-designed tower at the next village of Tetney. This, unlike the body of the church, is entirely of good, hard, grey Yorkshire stone. Some “Blow Wells,” which are circular pits of very blue water 100 feet deep, are in a field half a mile to the south-east of the church. There are others at _Laceby_ and _Little Cotes_, both in the valley of the Freshney river, six miles off. The water comes through faults in the limestone ridge four or five miles to the west. A stream also flows through Tetney, which comes out of the Croxby pond near _Hatcliffe_, the only piece of water in the neighbourhood. The roads we have been writing of are all entirely in the flat ground, but from the Louth and Grimsby main road a branch goes off to the left, after crossing a fourteenth century bridge with ribbed arches, at _Utterby_, which runs north along the western edge of the Wold past Brocklesby to Barrow on Humber. This, when it is opposite to Waith, has on its left a place called Ravendale, and, on its right, a little hidden away village, called Ashby-cum-Fenby. At _Ravendale_ there was once a priory belonging to a Premonstratensian abbey in Brittany. It was seized by the Crown with other alien priories in 1337 to form part of the dowry of Joan of Navarre, Queen of Henry IV. _Ashby-cum-Fenby_ has very pretty Early-English two-light windows in the belfry, set round with dog-tooth moulding. A Crusader effigy of 1300 is at the west end of the tower, and two fine monuments to two sisters of the Drury family are in good preservation; one to Sir F. and Lady Wray closely resembles the Irby monument at Whaplode, and, as the families are related, probably the work is by the same sculptor. That of Susannah Drury in the chancel is a good piece of sculpture, but the whole has literally been whitewashed, which does not improve it. The churchyard is for the most part deplorably neglected, and a few sheep would greatly improve it. A row of almshouses with tiny gardens, made like the Workmen’s row at Tattershall, adjoins the west side of the churchyard.

The road after this passes nothing of importance near it, till it reaches Brocklesby.

Close to the bell ropes in the tower at Tetney is a neat little brass which aptly commemorates a fine old parishioner as follows:—

Matthew Lakin born 1801 died 1899 One of the regular bellringers of Tetney for 84 years and sometime Clerk and Sexton.

The highway which goes out of Louth on the west, after passing Thorpe Hall, within a mile of the town, soon splits into two, the one going up the hill to the right has, at first, a north-easterly course, but after passing through South Elkington leaves North Elkington on the right and goes on due east to Market Rasen and Gainsborough, and is the great east-and-west road of North Lincolnshire: the only other roads which take that direction being the Boston-Sleaford-and-Newark and the Donington-and-Grantham roads in the southern part of the county, and the great Sutton-Holbeach-Spalding-Bourne-and-Colsterworth road. But none of these run so straight.

[Sidenote: HAINTON]

The other road from the foot of South Elkington hill goes on at first due west till, passing Welton-le-Wold on the right and Gayton-le-Wold on the left, it drops into the picturesque little village of Burgh-on-Bain (pronounced Bruff). So far we have had a wide Wold view, but no blue distances over fen or marsh; but _Grimblethorpe_ and _Burgh-on-Bain_ are in two parallel little valleys, and when the road turns here, at seven miles distance from Louth, to the south-west, a quite different type of country is entered, beginning with the woods of _Girsby_, the seat of Mr. J. Fox, quondam joint Master of the Southwold Hounds, and _Hainton_ Hall and park, where the Heneage family have been seated since the time of Henry III. The church tower has some of the characteristics of the early Norman or pre-Norman groups, and both church and chantry-chapel are rich in monuments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and brasses of still earlier date. The altar tombs of 1553 and 1595 are magnificent, and the kneeling effigies of 1559 and 1610 are in excellent preservation. The helmets and spurs over the effigy of John (1559), and the gilded armour of Sir George (1595), are especially noticeable, as also are the varied spellings of the name—in 1435 Henege, in 1530 Hennage, and in 1553 Henneage.

[Sidenote: GLENTHAM]

From here a road leads to the left to _South Willingham_ and _Benniworth_, but the main road runs through _East and West Barkwith_, with those fine grass borders, each wider than the road, which are characteristic of the Wold highways, for five miles to _Wragby_, eleven miles from Lincoln. Near East Barkwith Station is Mr. Turnor’s residence, Panton Hall, and from West Barkwith a road goes to the _Torringtons_. Here Gilbert of Sempringham was rector, and established one of his Gilbertine houses. The road on either side of the rather town-like village of _Wragby_ is uninteresting, till suddenly, at a distance of eight miles, the towers of Lincoln Minster appear, not in front, but away to the left, and then again disappear from view. But the road turns, and after four miles, lo! again the Minster, straight in front; and as you approach from the north-east you see all three towers at the end of the long road, getting ever finer as you approach and are able to make out the details of the architecture. Only too quickly you come to the top of the hill, and gaze at the splendid upper windows of the great bell tower, now close on your right, then sweep down the curve and, passing through the Minster yard by the Potter and Exchequer gates, go out northwards by the old Roman Ermine Street. We soon reach the turn to Riseholme, where from 1830, when Buckden was given up, the bishops resided, until Bishop King built the present house in the Old Palace grounds in Lincoln, and where in the churchyard are the tombs of her much-revered Bishops Kaye and Wordsworth, though their monuments are in the cathedral. After this we pass nothing, the road running straight on for over thirty miles, and on much the same level all the way. But we will only go to the thirteenth milestone and turn to the right at _Caenby_ Corner, where the Gainsborough and Louth road crosses the Ermine Street, and so make our way back by Market Rasen. The first village we shall come to is _Glentham_, which contains in chancel and chantry several monuments of the Tourney family from 1452. It is believed that the church was originally dedicated to “Our Lady of Pity,” hence, over the porch is a beautiful little carving of the Virgin holding the dead Christ, and the Tourney arms below it. A brass to Ann Tourney has the following play on words:—

“Abiit non obiit, preiit non periit.”

Till the early part of last century, a rent charge on some land in the village provided a shilling each for seven old maids every Good Friday for washing the recumbent effigy of a lady of the Tourney family which is under the gallery, with water from “The New Well.” This singular survival of the custom of washing an effigy of the dead Christ for a representation of the entombment is now abandoned, as the land was sold in 1852 without reservation of the rent charge on it. The effigy was known as “Molly Grime,” a corruption of “Malgraen,” which means in some ancient tongue or dialect the ‘Holy-Image-Washing.’ (“Lincs. Notes and Queries.” I., 125.)

The church is rather a curiosity, being seated throughout with box pens and having a gallery at the west end. Even the font is painted, and is a cheese-shaped stone on three legs placed on a round block. The door is old and has an unmistakable sanctuary ring on it, as at Durham, and the porch has a pretty little two-light window on each side.

[Sidenote: THE TOURNAYS]

The Tournays of Caenby are one of the genuine old county families, having held land in it certainly since 1328. John Tournay, in the sixteenth century, married a Talboys co-heiress, and was brother-in-law to Sir Christopher Willoughby and Sir Edward Dymoke.

The manor of Caenby-cum-Glentham, given in the thirteenth century to Barlings Abbey, and at the dissolution, along with so many other things, bestowed by Henry VIII. on Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was purchased by Edward Tournay in 1675, but he had inherited another manor in Caenby, or Cavenby through a long line of ancestors from the family of Thornton, of whom one Gilbert de Thornton was Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, 1289-1295. The present representative of the Tournays, or Tornys, who, to suit both spellings, have a tower for a crest and a chevron between three Bulls for their coat of arms, is Sir Arthur Middleton of Belsay Castle, Northumberland, who parted with the property at Caenby in 1871.

Three miles beyond Glentham we reach “Bishops’ Bridge” inn. Here a fourteenth century bridge crosses the stream at the junction of the River Rase with the Ancholme. Thence, after several turns, the road reaches _West Rasen_, where there is a most picturesque and interesting Pack Horse Bridge of the same date, with three ribbed arches, placed at right angles to the present road. The church has heavy embattled turrets and some curious carved figures in the chancel.

[Sidenote: THE ‘GOOD OLD DAYS’]

Going south from here, a roundabout road takes you to _Buslingthorpe_, passing by the two oddly-named villages of _Toft-next-Newton_ and _Newton-by-Toft_, each apparently, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, leaning for support on the other. Two miles to the west, on the Normanby road, is Gibbet-posthouse. The name Gibbet-post or Gibbet-hill is not uncommon, but I doubt if a single post remains. Eighty years ago some still held their ghastly record. My uncle, Edward Rawnsley, who was born in 1815, told me once that he had passed one with a skeleton hanging in chains, as he rode from Bourne to Wisbech. The Melton Ross gallows was renewed in 1830.

Only two miles east of West Rasen we reach _Middle Rasen_, which has an interesting church. It once had two, one on each side of the stream; the existing one, which belonged to Tupholme Abbey, has a very fine Norman south door and Norman piers to the chancel arch, and a deeply moulded Early English arcade, on which is a singular beaded moulding. There is also a low-side window and a beautiful Perpendicular rood screen, also a fourteenth-century effigy of a priest with vestments and chalice. In the churchyard is the font of the other church.

In the days of toll-bars there were two at Middle Rasen; usually they were let to the highest bidder, and the man who took the main road gate in the year 1845 is still living, at the age of eighty-nine, in 1912. A toll-bar keeper in the days before railways, when all the corn went to market by road, had little rest at night, as waggons full or empty passed through at all hours. In his early days food was dear—tea eight shillings a pound—and wages were low, and bread and water and barley-chaff dumpling were the common fare. He is now a rate-collector and, of course, can read and write, but he never went to school, and at eight years of age he began to earn a little by “scaring crows.” At fifteen he was mowing and using the flail at his native village of Legbourne. In a field, near where the station now is, he remembers a man mowing wheat for six days on bread and water, and the crop yielded six quarters to the acre. A woman of ninety-three, now living in the Wolds, remembers when flour was 4_s._ 6_d._ a stone, and a loaf cost 11½_d._ instead of 2½_d._ They mixed rye with wheat flour and baked at home; and a labourer who earned enough to buy a stone of flour a day thought he could live well.

Only the other day I heard of a labouring family living just between the Wold and the Marsh, seven sons of a retired Crimean soldier. The clergyman used to make them a present at the christening if he might choose the name, and he gave them grand historic names for them to live up to, _e.g._, Washington and Wellington, and the plan certainly answered, for they all took to the land and by steadiness, hard work and good sense raised themselves first to a foreman’s position and then to that of small occupiers, with the result that the family now farms three or four hundred acres between them. Yet they, as children, had had a hard struggle, and never knew either luxury or comfort. Their cottage had but two rooms, and half the family having gone to bed with the sun, habitually got up when night was but half over and came and sat round the fire whilst the other half went to bed. The conditions of life have improved since then, but the men of to-day can’t have more of the right stuff in them.

Another instance of the same kind which goes to prove that no walk of life is without its chances, if only the man is strenuous and sober and gifted with good sense, is that of a family in the Louth neighbourhood, three grandsons of a labouring man, who in two generations have raised themselves to such purpose that they now farm between them some 10,000 acres. Of course the great factors in such successful careers are steadiness and industry, and that shrewd good sense which is so characteristic of the best Lincolnshire natives.

Not many years ago I talked with a small farmer in Hampshire, whose wages as a labourer used to be ten and sixpence a week, when a pair of boots cost eighteen shillings; but then, he said, they did wear well. The family lived, year in year out, on hot water with barley in it and a sprinkling of salt. And yet, incredible as it may seem, he and his wife had brought up a family of ten. There was some grit in those people.

[Sidenote: MARKET RASEN]

From _Middle Rasen_ it is little more than a mile to _Market Rasen_. Men still living there can recall the Shrove Tuesday football, when the whole male population of the village, aided by friends from outside, spent some strenuous hours in trying to get the ball into Middle Rasen. The windows were boarded up all along the road, and the struggle of hundreds of rough fellows was more concerned in pushing their opponents into the beck by the roadside than in keeping on the ball.

The town has an unusual number of schools in it. The De Aston School, founded 1401 at Spital, was set up here in 1862 as a middle-class school, and has been most successful; and the church school and still larger Wesleyan school between them can accommodate nearly 400 children.

From Market Rasen three miles of low country brings us to _North Willingham_. The Hall, the home of Mr. Wright, was for over a hundred years the residence of the family of Boucherett, whose former mansion stood a couple of miles to the west. The present house with its pretty bit of water faces the road. In the village we may see a blacksmith who, at the age of ninety, can still shoe a horse. We are now twelve miles from Louth; a road to the left goes to Tealby and Bayons Manor, and to the right by _Sixhills_ to Hainton; and here, instead of going right on up the sweep of the hill, we will make the round by Tealby and come back to the high road at Ludford Parva.

[Sidenote: BAYONS MANOR]

_Tealby_ is quite an ideal village, with beautiful trees, a fine and well-placed church, a stream and bridges and picturesque cottages. One road leads from it up the steep “Bully hill,” a 300 feet rise, another road takes us to _Bayons Manor_, the seat of the Tennyson d’Eyncourt family. Originally there was an old eleventh or twelfth century fortified dwelling about a hundred yards up the hill, traces of which may still be seen in bank or dyke. This was replaced about the sixteenth century by a fairly large house, at one time thatched; part of this remains as the nucleus of the present castellated mansion built in the romantic era of the Waverley novels and completed with drawbridge and barbican in the middle of the last century by Charles Tennyson, M.P., uncle of the poet, who, after the death of his father, George Tennyson, took the name of d’Eyncourt. His grandson, E. Tennyson d’Eyncourt, now lives there. The house has a fine open-roofed hall, and is replete with interesting mementoes of the Tennysons as well as of the ancient family of d’Eyncourt. The site is good, with a charming garden sloping to the park, in which is a fine piece of water. The name Bayons is derived from its first Norman possessor, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. He was half-brother to William the Conqueror on the mother’s side, and he was so exalted a personage that he was called “Totius Angliae Vice-dominus, sub rege.” Thus he was on occasions the king’s representative, and seems to have had as much land in Lincolnshire and elsewhere granted to him by William, as Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk had under Henry VIII., for we hear that he held seventy-six manors in the county and 463 in other parts.

It is interesting to know that Bulwer Lytton in 1848, when he was trying to recover his seat for Lincoln, wrote his historical romance “Harold” here, making good use of his friend Mr. Tennyson d’Eyncourt’s fine collection of early English chronicles.

A little north of Tealby is the temporarily disused church of _Walesby_, where once Robert Burton (1577-1640), author of the “Anatomy of Melancholy,” was rector, before he went to Segrave in Leicestershire. It is hoped that this church may soon be in use again.

One of the many roads across the Wolds from Rasen to Grimsby passes through _Walesby_ to _Stainton-le-Vale_ and _Thorganby_, another goes through _Tealby_, _Kirmond-le-Mire_, and _Binbrook_, once a market town, and near to _Swinhope_, the ancestral seat of the Alingtons. Both roads after this unite and pass by _East Ravendale_, _Brigsley_, _Waltham_ and _Scartho_.

A clear stream flows north through a narrow valley from Kirmond top through Swinhope, Thorganby, Croxby pond, Hatcliffe, and almost to Barnoldsby, and thence east to Brigsley, and so across the marsh to Tetney Haven.

[Sidenote: SOUTH ELKINGTON]

Leaving Tealby, we climb to the top of the Ludford ridge, and, turning to the right, come to the Market Rasen and Louth highway at Willingham Corner, thence, to the left, by _Ludford Magna_ with its cruciform church on the infant ‘Bain.’ To the right we notice Wykeham Hall, further on to the left the church of _Kelstern_, standing solitary in a field, and soon we reach the singularly beautiful and well-wooded approach to Louth by _South Elkington_, the seat of Mr. W. Smyth. The church here, whose patronage goes with the Elkington estate, was given about 1250 to the convent at Ormsby, which presented to it until the dissolution, when it fell to the Crown, and was given, in 1601, by Queen Elizabeth to the famous John Bolle of Thorpe Hall. This Hall we now pass on our approach to Louth, and a splendid picture awaits us when we see that lovely spire of Louth church, standing up out of a grove of trees, and eventually presenting itself to our eyes, in its full height and beautiful proportions, as we come into the town by the west gate.

[Sidenote: LOUTH SPIRE]

The highway from Louth to Horncastle is best traversed the reverse way. Starting from Horncastle with its little river—the Bain—its cobble-paved streets and its pretty little thatched hostel, the King’s Head, the Louth road brings us soon to West Ashby. Then, at a distance of four miles from Horncastle, we come suddenly on the unpretending buildings of the Southwold Hunt kennels. These are in the parish of _Belchford_, which lies half a mile to the right.

[Illustration: _Westgate, Louth._]

We now climb 300 feet up Flint Hill, a name which tells us that we are on an outlier of the chalk wolds, and a fine view opens out on the left which we can enjoy for a mile, after which the road turns to the right and discloses a totally different scene. In front lies the snug village of _Scamblesby_, and behind it the south-eastern portion of the South Wolds, sweeping round from Oxcombe’s wooded slope in a wide curve to Redhill, behind which the Louth and Lincoln railway emerges near _Donington-on-Bain_. It is a fine landscape.

We descend to the village, and passing in the wide valley the turn to Asterby and Goulceby on the left, set ourselves to climb the main ridge of the Wolds by _Cawkwell_. On the top of the hill we pass a cross road which runs for many miles right and left without coming to anything in the shape of a village; and naturally so, for the road like the Roman streets in the Lake District, keeps sturdily along the highest ground, and who would care to live on a wind-swept ridge?

[Sidenote: TATHWELL]

To the right the Wold runs up to nearly 500 feet, but our road only crosses it, and after little more than a mile we see the level of the marsh and the tall spire of Louth five miles ahead of us. The road here forks, and forsaking the direct route by Raithby we will take the right-hand road and in a couple of miles find ourselves dropping to the village of _Tathwell_. This we circle round and arrive at the lane which leads to the church.

This little church, dedicated to St. Vedast, who was Bishop of Arras and Cambray (_circa_ 500), was once a Norman building, but the Norman pilasters supporting the round tower-arch of the eleventh century are all that is left of that period, unless the four courses nearest the ground of large stones of a hard, grey, sandstone grit can be referred to it. Upon these now is built a structure of brick with a broad tower at the west and an apse at the east; but the charm of the place is its situation, on a steep little hill overlooking a good sheet of clear chalk-stream water. You look westwards across this to a pathway running up the slope opposite which is fringed with a fine row of beeches, and just below you at the edge of the little graveyard you see the thatched roof of a primitive cottage, whilst beyond it the ground is broken into steep little grass fields, the whole most picturesquely grouped.

We leave the secluded little village, and turning to the right, pass between the Danish camp on Orgarth Hill and the six long barrows on Bully Hill (the second hill of the name, the other being near Tealby). These are all probably of the same date; the latter in a field adjoining the road. A mile more and we turn to the left at Haugham, where is another and larger tumulus, after passing which, on the left, we soon come to the main Louth and Spilsby road.

The number six seems to have been a favourite one with the Vikings. Eleven miles to the west of Bully Hill is “Sixhills,” between Hainton and North Willingham, and another place of the same name near Stevenage in Hertfordshire shows a fine row of six tumuli close to the road side.

[Sidenote: JANE CHAPLIN]

On October 25 there was a funeral in the Tathwell churchyard, when, in presence of her surviving grand-children and great-grandchildren Jane Chaplin was laid to rest beside the husband who had died forty years before. She was not only of a remarkable age—it is seldom that a coffin plate bears such an inscription:—

“Jane Chaplin, born 24th June, 1811, died 21st October, 1913”—

but during all that long life she was always cheerful and kindly and full of interest, and up to the very last, within two hours of her death, she was bright and happy, lively with talk and merriment, and in full possession of all her faculties. On her 102nd birthday she received her relatives and delighted them with her reminiscences of the days before they were born, telling the writer how she remembered Alfred Tennyson asking her to dance at the local ball, and adding that she was still able to read and to paint, though she had of late years given up reading by candlelight for fear of trying her eyes, and saying how thankful she was that she felt so well and had no pains and was, in fact, much better than she used to be fifty years ago. She had left Lincolnshire and lived of late years at Bournemouth and then at Cheltenham, where she literally ‘fell on sleep’ and passed from this life to the next, without any illness or struggle, in the happiest possible manner. Truly, we may say with Milton—

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast.

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