CHAPTER XXIX

CHURCHES IN SOUTH LINDSEY

Spilsby to Wainfleet—Little Steeping—Tomas-de-Reding—Monksthorpe—The Baptists—Thomas Grantham—Firsby—Thorpe—Churchwarden’s Book—The “Dyxonary”—Wainfleet—William of Waynflete—Halton Holgate—Sire Walter Bec—Village Carpentry.

The record of the churches in the marsh land of the South Lindsey division would not be complete without some mention of Wainfleet. The Somersby brook, which, winding “with many a curve” through Partney and Halton, becomes at last “the Steeping river,” is thence cut into a straight canal as far as Wainfleet, and then, resuming its proper river-character, goes out through the flats at Wainfleet Haven, near that positive end of the world, “Gibraltar Point.”

_Little Steeping_ has just undergone a most satisfactory restoration in memory of its once rector, Bishop Steere, who succeeded Bishop Tozer of Burgh-le-Marsh as the third missionary bishop in Central Africa, and there did a great work as a missionary, and also built the first Central African cathedral in what had previously been the greatest slave market of the world—Zanzibar. The restorers have had a most interesting find this year (1912), for the chancel step, when taken up, proved to be the back of a fine recumbent effigy of a fourteenth century rector. Doubtless the monument was taken from the arched recess in the north wall of the chancel and thus hidden to save it from destruction in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. The masons who fitted it into its new bed had no scruple in knocking off the inscribed moulding on one side, and a bit of the carved stone got broken off and was found in the rectory garden.

[Sidenote: LITTLE STEEPING]

The figure represents a robed priest, with feet curiously clothed in what look like socks. The face is good and in excellent preservation. The work was probably local, for the ear is of enormous size. The mutilated inscription read originally: “Tomas de Red_ing priez qe Dieu pour sa grace_ de sa alme eyt merci.” The letters in italics are missing. Thomas de Reding was presented to Little Steeping in 1328. There is a very good font, and the south porch outer arch is remarkable for the very unusual depth of its hollowed moulding on both of the outer porch pilasters. The canopied work over the head of the inner doorway is good, but quite of a different character, and the wide projection of the north arcade capitals is noticeable. A stone on the outer wall marked “1638 W P & R G” gives the date of a destructive restoration, when tomb slabs were cut up for window-sills and some ruthless patchwork put in on the north side of both aisle and chancel. A good rood screen with canopy has been put in, old work being used where possible, and a new churchyard cross erected on the old base, with figures of St. Andrew and the Crucifixion, under a canopy like that at Somersby. The octagonal font in rich yellow stone has figures difficult to make out, and a small niche over the north-east pier of the nave arcade is to be noted; probably it contained some relic or image. The stone brackets for the rood loft remain, but there is no trace left of the staircase. The seats and pulpit of dark stained deal are interesting, as they were all made by Bishop Steere himself. The tower is patched with the old two-inch bricks, which always look well, and with some of the larger modern kind, which seldom do.

Our best way now is to return to the Spilsby-and-Firsby road at _Great Steeping_, which will take us past _Irby_ to _Thorpe-St.-Peter_ and _Wainfleet_.

[Sidenote: THE BAPTISTS]

The hamlet of _Monksthorpe_ in Great Steeping parish indicates by its name the fact that Bardney Abbey had an estate here. No trace now remains of the manor built by Robert de Waynflete, when he retired in 1317 from the abbey and had the proceeds of the estates in Steeping and Firsby and two cells in Partney and Skendleby assigned to him for the maintenance and clothing of himself and family. But part of the moat is visible, and one may see here in a chapel enclosure a baptist’s pool bricked and railed round on three sides with one end open and sloping to the water, for the Baptists walked into the pool and did not believe in the efficacy of infant baptism. This was doubtless one of the places which was ministered to by the famous leader of the “General Baptist Church” who suffered such shameful and repeated persecution in the days of Cromwell and Charles II., Thomas Grantham, for he was a native of Halton, where the name still exists, and throughout a long life showed himself a man of a truly religious and eminently courageous heart, of whom his native village may well be proud. He died in 1692, aged seventy-eight, at Norwich, and was buried inside the church of St. Stephen, as a memorial to him set up therein states, “to prevent the indecencies threatened to his corpse,” such as, we read on a tombstone in Croft churchyard, had been perpetrated on the body of his friend and fellow-Baptist, Robert Shalders, whose body was disinterred on the very day of his funeral by inhabitants of Croft, and dragged on a sledge and left at his own gates. Doubtless the clergyman was privy to this, so hot was the feeling for religious persecution in those days, and took credit to himself for it, for in the parish book of Croft we may read as follows:—

“Dec 20th, 1663. These persons here underwritten, viz. Roger Faune, Gent., Robert Shalders, Anne Montgomerie, Cicilie Barker, Alice Egger, were excommunicated in the parish church of Croft the day and year above written,

“per me R. Clarke Curate Ibid Philip Neave ⎫ John Wells ⎭ Churchwardens.”

[Sidenote: THORPE]

[Sidenote: CHURCHWARDEN’S BOOK]

Two miles east of Steeping a good road to the right goes to _Firsby_, where is a small church built by Mr. G. E. Street to show how an entirely satisfactory building adapted to the needs of quite a small parish could be put up at a very small cost. The whole church cost under £1,000, and was built in less than six months, and opened November 5, 1857. In _Thorpe_ we find a graceful font, a well-carved Perpendicular screen and a good Jacobean pulpit. The place belonged after the Conquest to the Kyme family. The Thorpe churchwardens’ book commences in 1545, and in 1546 contains such items as these about the rood light and the light in the Easter Sepulchre:

“Anᵒ regᵒ regˢ Hen. VIII, xxxvij.

“By thys dothe ytt appr what Symon Wylly̅son & Roger Hopster hath payᵈ & layd for the cherche cocernyng the rode lyght & ye Sepulture lyght in ye xxxvj yere of ye rene off ower Soffera̅t lorde king He̅r̅y ye viij. fyrst payd by yᵉ hands off yᵉ forsayd Rogʳ for one powd waxe makyng and a half agenst lent j½d Item payd to Gu̅rwycke Wyffe for brede and ale to ye waxe makyng for yᵉ supulture lyght xiiijd Item payd for j powde waxe maykyng for the rode lyght aga̅s̅t estʳ jd Item payd to yᵉ clark for kepping off yᵉ sepulture lyght ijd.”

In the reign of Edward VI the churchwardens seem to have had a jumble sale of all the odds and ends in the church, which they called the “offalment” or rubbish.

“Anᵒ Reg E. VIᵗⁱ Vᵗᵒ.

“Howffulment in the church soulde & delyvered by ye hands of John Greene & Robert Emme cherche masters.”

Amongst the various items of metal and woodwork, vestments, chests, books, &c., we have:—

“Item off John Wolbe yᵉ elder for an Albe and an old pantyd cloth iiijˢ Item to John Wolbe all yᵉ boks in yᵉ cherche ijˢ iiijᵈ Item sowlde to Wᵐ Keele ij altar clothes, a robe vˢ Item sowlde to Sir John Westmels curate, ij robes iiijˢ Item Sowlde Wᵐ Sawer ij corporaxs[23] wᵗ otre ofelment iijˢ vijiᵈ”

They were probably restoring their church, for we have two years later:—

“Itᵐ pᵈ for a wayn and iiij beasts for sand to the cherche viijᵈ”

This was in the first and second year of Queen Mary, and they were then busy putting back what they had sold in Edward’s reign, making side altars, etc., hence we find:—

“Itᵐ pᵈ for yᵉ clothe yᵉ roode was paynted on xiiijᵈ Itᵐ pᵈ for paentyng off the roode ijˢ viijᵈ Itᵐ pᵈ to yᵉ man that mayd the syd aulters in wageys xijᵈ Itᵐ pᵈ to Thomas hymlyn Wyffe for meat & dryncke too them that mayd the saide aulters ijˢ viijᵈ Itᵐ pᵈ to yᵉ man that makg. the Roode in prte of paementt xijᵈ”

Other interesting items are—

“Itᵐ payd to yᵉ players off ca̅dylmesse day viijᵈ Itᵐ payd in yᵉ same year to yᵉ players whytche playd off yᵉ Sonday next after Sant Mathyes day vjᵈ”

One might make quite an amusing “story of a dictionary” from the various entries in the Thorpe churchwardens’ book about an Elliott’s Dictionary which, in the middle of the sixteenth century the vicar bequeathed to his successors _in perpetuo_. It is described as “one boke called a dyxonary,” and evidently exercised both vicar and wardens a good deal until one vicar bethought him of the device of “delivering” it to the parish to be kept along with various volumes of homilies, and expositions and the paraphrases of Erasmus.

But it is time to leave Thorpe; and two miles will bring us to _Wainfleet_ which, as its name declares, though now a couple of miles from the sea, was once a haven for sea-going ships, for “Fleet” means a navigable creek. This little place gave its name in the fifteenth century to a great man, William of Wainfleet, or Waynflete, Headmaster of Winchester, and first headmaster and Provost of Eton, successor to Cardinal Beaufort as Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VI. He was a great builder, for he possibly planned, and certainly completed, Tattershall Castle, built Tattershall church, and founded Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1457, the first college to admit commoners, a wise and far-seeing innovation of Waynflete’s; and in his native town erected in 1484 the Magdalen College School, a fine brick building seventy-six feet by twenty-six with its gateway flanked by polygonal towers recalling the entrance to Eton College. In the south tower is a remarkable staircase, and in the north a bell.

[Sidenote: WAINFLEET]

His adoption of St. Mary Magdalen as the patron of his school at Wainfleet and his college at Oxford may have originated in his having been appointed by Cardinal Beaufort to the mastership and chantry of St. Mary Magdalen hospital on Magdalen Down outside Winchester.

The bishop lived to the reign of Richard III., and died in 1486. He erected a monument to his father, Richard Patten. The son is called either Patten or Barbour, for he bore both names indifferently, though he soon discarded them both for the name of his birthplace, as was commonly done from the eleventh to the sixteenth century; his brother also taking the name of Waynflete. This monument was in the original church of All Saints, for the second church of St. Thomas had long been destroyed. But All Saints’ church, built cruciform and with a light wooden spire on account of the soft nature of the soil on which it stood, was destined to the same fate, for the foolish inhabitants having, in 1718, put a heavy brick tower to it, with five bells in it, the weight brought a great part of the building to ruin. Subsequently it was pulled down, and the present church was set up at some distance from the old site in 1820, when the inhabitants added vandalism to their folly and wantonly demolished this fine tomb. The broken bits were collected and placed in the Magdalen School, and later were, by the intervention of the rector of Halton Holgate, Rev. T. H. Rawnsley, obtained for the President and Fellows of the Bishop’s College at Oxford, and are now on the north side of the altar in the College Chapel. The figure has its feet resting on a bank of flowers and its head on a cushion and pillow supported by his two sons, John the Monk and William the Bishop. The face of the latter resembles the father, but is not so broad or so old as that of John. It is to be noted that Lincolnshire has produced two Bishops of Winchester, each of them the founder of a college at Oxford—Bishop Fox and Bishop Waynflete.

The town is older than Boston and existed in Roman days, possibly under the name of Vannona, and apparently a Roman road ran from Doncaster to Wainfleet, passing through Horncastle and Lusby. Certainly “Salters road,” which crosses the East Fen, was a Roman road, and the Romans made a good deal of salt from the sea-water in the immediate neighbourhood of Wainfleet. In the charter rolls of Bardney Abbey (_temp._ Henry III.) we read that Matthew, son of Milo de Wenflet, paid annually “to God, Saint Oswald and the Monks of Bardney 4 shillings and eighteen sextaires of salt by the old measure” for the land he held in the village of Friskney.

Later we find that (_temp._ Edward II.) Hugh le Despencer held lands in Wainfleet in 1327, and we know that a Robert le Despencer did so in Burgh in the time of Edward I. In the reign of Edward III. Wainfleet furnished two ships and forty seamen for the invasion of Brittany.

_Wainfleet St. Mary’s_ lies one and a half miles to the south. The church is a massive structure with five arches on the north and four on the south of the nave.

We have now completed the round of the Marsh churches, and in so doing, on leaving Gunby, we struck into the Spilsby and Wainfleet road, just where the Somersby brook, there called the Halton river, is crossed by an iron bridge. This we did not cross, but keeping always to the left bank we followed the stream to Wainfleet. We must now go back and cross this iron bridge, and trace the road thence for four miles and a half to Spilsby. This will take us on to the Wold. We shall only pass one village, but this is one of infinite charm.

[Sidenote: HALTON HOLGATE]

[Sidenote: THE HOLLOW-GATE BRIDGE]

_Halton Holgate_ stands on the very edge of the Wold, where the green-sand terminates, and looks far across the Fen to Boston. The name of the village is always properly pronounced by the natives Halton Hollygate, _i.e._, hollow gate or way; for the descending road has been cut through the green-sand rock, and where the cutting is deepest a pretty timber footbridge is thrown over it, leading from the rectory to the churchyard. The garden lawn has, or had, two fine old mulberry trees. These were once more common—for in the reign of James I. an order went out for the planting of mulberry trees in all rectory gardens with a view to the encouragement of the silk trade by the breeding and feeding of silkworms, whose favourite diet is the mulberry leaf. From the garden, “Boston stump” is visible eighteen miles to the south. The church is a

## particularly handsome one with massive well-proportioned tower, and large

belfry windows, eight three-light clerestory windows on either side and a fine south porch of Ancaster stone. The rest is built of the beautifully tinted local green-sand, with quoins of harder Clipsham stone. Inside it is spacious, with lofty octagonal pillars. It is seated throughout with oak, and has several good old oak poppy-heads and some large modern ones copied from Winthorpe and carved by a Halton carpenter. Here it is worth notice that for the last hundred years Halton has never been without wood-workers of unusual talent.

[Illustration: _Bridge over the Hollow-Gate._]

[Sidenote: HALTON CHURCH]

South of the chancel two tall blocked arcades, leading to a Lady chapel long pulled down, were opened by the Rev. T. Sale, rector in 1894, who had reseated the chancel and filled the east window with good stained glass. The chapel, which now holds the organ, was rebuilt in memory of the two previous rectors, Rev. T. H. Rawnsley (1825-1861) and R. D. B. Rawnsley (1861-1882), and their wives Sophia Walls and Catharine Franklin. The fine effigy of a Crusader, called Henry de Halton, had been buried for safety and forgotten, like that of the priest at Little Steeping, and the sepulchral slab with Lombardic lettering, of Sir Walter Bec, of the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, is the oldest monument in the neighbourhood. The inscription is: “Sire Walter Bec jist ici de ki alme Dieu ait merci.” There is a fine peal of six bells, and a “tingtang,” a thing very common in Lincolnshire, and reminiscent of the pre-Reformation Sanctus bell.

We have so often seen, owing to the negligence of church authorities, damp church walls, and wet streaming down from gutter or stack-pipe, which is blocked with growing grass or sparrows’ nests, to the great detriment of the building, that it is pleasant to record the useful

## activity of the Halton churchwardens, of whom one has carved, and the

other put together, a fine oak screen, with the names and dates of all the known rectors, churchwardens and clerks of the parish.

[Illustration: _Halton Church._]

In the north wall of the chancel is a priest’s door, which has always been in constant use. It is a beautiful bit of Perpendicular work with an exceptionally good hood-moulding and lovely carving of waved foliage in the spandrels. These north side doors are sometimes called “Devils’ doors,” as they were not only to let the priest in but also to let the Devil out, being left open at baptisms to let him fly out when the infant renounces the Devil and all his works, and becomes the child of grace. The idea that the north was the Devil’s side had possibly something to do with the repugnance, hardly yet quite overcome, to a burial on that side of the churchyard.

[Sidenote: LOCAL WORKMANSHIP]

An avenue of elms, planted by the Rev. T. H. Rawnsley about 1830, starting from the “Church Wongs,”[24] leads past the tower at the west to the Hollow-gate road, close to where a pit was dug by the roadside to get the sandstone for repairing the tower; and to-day, as we pass along to Spilsby, we shall see a wall of sandstone rock exposed on the right of the road, and a lot of blocks cut out and hardening in the air preparatory for use at Little Steeping, and we shall naturally be reminded of the words of Isaiah, “Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.”

We have said that the restoration of Halton Holgate church was carried out by the Rev. T. H. Rawnsley about 1845, and it is remarkable that it was done so extremely well; for at that particular time the art of architectural restoration was almost at its lowest. As far as they went there were no mistakes made by the restorers at Halton, and the carved work for the seats was copied from the best models to be seen in any Lincolnshire church, and executed under the eye of the rector and his son, Drummond Rawnsley, by a Halton carpenter. That is just as it should be, and just as it used to be, but it is not often possible of attainment now.

Jesus College chapel at Cambridge underwent a much needed restoration at the same bad period, _i.e._, in 1849, and here too, by the genius of the architect, excellent work was done, some good old carving being preserved and very cleverly matched with new work well executed, and by a very curious coincidence, the shape of some of the poppy-heads and the plan of the panel carving is almost identical with that which was executed at Halton, after the Winthorpe pattern.

##