CHAPTER VII

ROADS FROM GRANTHAM

Syston Hall—Belton—Harlaxton—Denton—Belvoir Castle—Allington—Sedgebrook—Barrowby—Gonerby-hill—Stubton —Hough-on-the-Hill—Gelston—Claypole.

The main South Lincolnshire roads run up from Stamford to Boston, to Sleaford and to Grantham; here of the six spokes of the wheel of which Grantham is the hub, three going westwards soon leave the county. That which goes east runs a very uneventful course for twelve miles till, having crossed the Bourne and Sleaford road, it comes to Threckingham, and in another six or seven miles to Donington where it divides and, after passing many most remarkable churches, reaches Boston either by Swineshead or by Gosberton, Algarkirk and Kirton, which will be described in the route from Spalding. The Great Road north and south from Grantham is full of interest, and passes through village after village, and on both the northern and western sides the neighbourhood of Grantham is extremely hilly and well wooded, and contains several fine country seats. Belvoir Castle (Duke of Rutland), Denton (Sir C. G. Welby), Harlaxton (T. S. Pearson Gregory, Esq.), Belton (Earl Brownlow), and Syston (Sir John Thorold).

[Sidenote: BELTON AND BARKSTON]

_Syston Hall_, Sir John Thorold’s place, looks down upon Barkstone. It is grandly placed, and the house, which was built in the eighteenth century, contains a fine library. The greatest treasure of this, however, the famed Mazarin Bible, was sold in 1884 for £3,200. A mile to the south lies _Belton_. Here the church is filled with monuments of the Cust and Brownlow families, and the font has eight carved panels with very unusual subjects—a man pulling two bells, a monk reading, a priest with both hands up, a deacon robed, a monster rampant with a double tail, a man with a drawn sword, a naked babe and a rope, a man with a large bird above him, and a tree; also among the monuments is one of Sir John Brownlow, 1754, and one dated 1768 of Sir John Cust, the “Speaker.” In this a singularly graceful female figure is holding the “Journals of the House of Commons.” The monument of his son, the first Baron Brownlow, 1807, is by Westmacott. The family have added a north transept for use as a mortuary chapel. Here, amongst others, are monuments of the first Earl Brownlow, 1853, by Marochetti, and of his two wives with a figure emblematic of Religion, by Canova. The village is always kept in beautiful order; adjoining it is the large park with fine avenues and three lakes in it. The house, built in the shape of the letter H, was finished from Sir Christopher Wren’s designs in 1689, and the park enclosed and planted in the following year by Sir John, the third Baronet Brownlow, who entertained William III. there in 1695. His nephew, Sir John, who was created Viscount Tyrconnel in 1718, formed the library and laid out the gardens. In 1778 James Wyatt was employed to make improvements. He removed Wren’s cupola, made a new entrance on the south side, and raised the height of the drawing-room to twenty-two feet. All the rooms in the house are remarkably high, and the big dining-room is adorned with enormous pictures by Hondekoeter.

Wonderful carvings by Grinling Gibbons are in several rooms, and also in the chapel, which is panelled with cedar wood.

[Sidenote: ON THE WITHAM]

_Barkston_ is near the stream of the Witham, and is thence called _Barkston-in-the-Willows_; and ten miles off, on the county boundary near Newark, is _Barnby-in-the-Willows_, also on the Witham, which has arrived there from Barkston by a somewhat circuitous route.

Barkston Church is worth seeing by anyone who wishes to see how a complete rood-loft staircase was arranged, the steep twelve-inch risers showing how the builders got the maximum of utility out of the minimum of space. The last three steps below appear to have been cut off to let the pulpit steps in. There is a similar arrangement at Somerby, where the steps also are very high. A very good modern rood screen and canopy, somewhat on the pattern of the Sleaford one, has been put up by the rector, the Rev. E. Clements. There are two squints, on either side of the chancel arch, one through the rood staircase. The church has a nave and a south aisle, and the plain round transition Norman pillars are exactly like those at Great Hale, but are only about one-half the height. The arches are round ones, with nail head ornament, and from the bases of these pillars it is clear that the floor once sloped upwards continuously from west to east, as at Colsterworth and Horkstow. The chancel arch is made lofty by being set on the stone basement of the rood screen. The transitional tower has a beautiful Early English window in the west front, and the Decorated south aisle has a richly panelled parapet; but the Perpendicular porch is not so well executed, and cuts rudely into two pretty little aisle windows, and a niche over the door. It has over it this rhyming inscription carved in stone.

[Illustration: _Withamside Boston._]

Me Thomam Pacy post mundi flebile funus Jungas veraci vite tu trinus et unus Dñe Deus vere Thome Pacy miserere.

And under the capital of one of the doorway pillars is the line, rather difficult to construe, but in beautiful lettering:—

Lex et natura XRS simul omnia cura.

The severe three-light east window has good glass by Kempe. The spire, a very good one, is later than the tower, and built of squared stones, different in colour from the small stones of the tower. Two half figures incised in bold relief on fourteenth century slabs, are built into the north wall, opposite the south door.

[Sidenote: HONINGTON AND CAYTHORPE]

Keeping along the Lincoln road the next place we reach is _Honington_. The Early English tower of the church is entered by a very early pointed arch, the nave being of massive Norman work with an unusually large corbel table. There are the remains of a stone screen, and a canopied aumbry in the chancel was perhaps used as an Easter sepulchre. The chantry chapel has monuments of the Hussey family, and one of W. Smith, 1550, in gown and doublet. An early slab, with part of the effigy of a priest on it, has been used over again to commemorate John Hussey and his wife, he being described on it as “A professor of the Ghospell,” 1587. To the south-east of the village is what was once an important British fort with a triple ditch, used later by the Romans whose camp at Causennæ on the “High Dyke” was but four miles to the east. Less than two miles brings us to _Carlton Scroop_, with a late Norman tower and Early English arcade, also some good old glass and a Jacobean pulpit. The remains of a rood screen and the rood loft steps are still there.

A mile further on is one of the many _Normantons_, with Early English nave, decorated tower, fine west window, and Perpendicular clerestory.

[Sidenote: FULBECK AND LEADENHAM]

Two miles on we come to _Caythorpe_, which is built on a very singular plan, for it has a double nave with a buttress between the two west windows to take the thrust of the arches which are in a line with the ridge of the roof. This forms the remarkable feature of the church interior. There are short transepts, and the tower rises above the four open arches. Over one of these there is a painting of the Last Judgment. There are fine buttresses outside with figures of the Annunciation and the Coronation of the Virgin, and one of our Lord on the porch. The windows are large. The spire is lofty but unpleasing, as it has a marked “entasis” or set in, such as is seen in many Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire spires, which hence are often termed sugar-loafed. Before its re-building, in 1859, after it had been struck by lightning, the entasis was still more marked than it is now. The singularly thin, ugly needle-like spire of Glinton, just over the southern border of the county near Deeping, has a slight set in which does not improve its appearance. A mile to the north the road passes through the very pretty village of _Fulbeck_. The dip of the road, the charming old houses, grey and red, the handsome church tower with its picturesque pinnacles, and the ancestral beauty of the fine trees, make a really lovely picture. Fine iron gates lead to the Hall, the home of the Fanes, an honoured name in Lincolnshire. Many of the name rest in the churchyard, and their monuments fill the dark church, which has a good Norman font. The tampering with old walls and old buildings is always productive of mischief, and, as at Bath Abbey, when, to add to its appearance, flying buttresses were put up all along the nave, the weight began to crush in the nave walls, and the only remedy was to put on, at great expense, a stone groined roof, which is the real _raison d’être_ of flying buttresses, so here at Fulbeck, when they pulled down the chancel and built it up again with the walls further out, the consequence was that the east wall of the nave, missing its accustomed support, began to lean out eastwards.

Another mile and a half brings us to _Leadenham_, where the east and west road from Sleaford to Newark crosses the Great North road. The fine tall spire is seen from all the country round, for it stands half way up the cliff. But this and the rest of the road to Lincoln is described in

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