Chapter XIII

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[Sidenote: HARLAXTON AND DENTON]

If you go out of Grantham by the south-west, you should stop at a very pretty little village to the south of the Grantham and Melton road, from which a loop descends to an old gateway, all that is left of the old _Harlaxton_ Manor, a pretty Tudor building now pulled down, the stone balustrades in front of it having been removed by Mr. Pearson Gregory to his large house a mile off, built on the ridge of the park by Salvin in 1845. The Flemish family of De Ligne lived in the old Hall in Jacobean times, and their predecessors are probably represented by the fine but mutilated alabaster recumbent effigies now in the northern, or Trinity, chapel of the church. In the north-east angle of this chapel is a very graceful canopied recess on a bracket, much like those at _Sedgebrook_, about five miles off on the border of the county.

The north aisle and nave are older than the tower and south aisle; and a curious staircase ascends at the east of the south aisle wall, from which a gangway crossed to the rood loft.

There are many aumbries in various parts of the church, and a tall, Decorated font, with grotesque faces in some panels, and in others sacred subjects oddly treated, such as our Lord crowned and holding a Chalice. In the south aisle is an old oak post alms-box resembling one at Halton Holgate.

A doorway leads out from the south side of the east end, an entrance probably to an eastern chapel. The two doorways, one on each side of the altar, at Spalding may have led to the same, or possibly to a vestry, as in Magdalen Chapel, Oxford.

The spire has a staircase, passing curiously from one of the pinnacles. A very massive broken stone coffin, removed from a garden, lies in the south chapel. The fine row of limes, and the ivy-grown walls of old Harlaxton Manor, add to the beauty of this quiet little village, and a group of half-timbered brick buildings, said to be sixteenth century, though looking more modern, which are near the church, are a picturesque feature.

[Sidenote: BELVOIR CASTLE]

_Denton Manor_, the seat of Sir C. G. E. Welby, Bart., is just beyond Harlaxton, and there one might once have seen a fine old manor house, now replaced by a large modern hall of fine proportions; the work is by Sir A. W. Blomfield, good in design and detail, and containing a notable collection both of furniture and pictures. St. Christopher’s Well, a chalybeate spring, is in the park, and in the restored church are a good recumbent effigy of John Blyth, 1602, and a figure of Richard Welby, 1713, with angels carefully planting a crown on his wig. After this the road passes into Leicestershire, so we turn to the right and in less than four miles, halfway between the Melton road and the Nottingham road, and more in Leicestershire than in Lincolnshire, we come to _Belvoir Castle_. The mound on which it stands is over the border and is not a natural height, but was thrown up on a spur of the wold as early as the eleventh century by Robert de Todeni, who thence became known as Robert de Belvedeir. Certainly the pile is grandly placed, and has a sort of Windsor Castle appearance from all the country round. It has been in possession of the Manners family now for four hundred years. The celebrated Marquis of Granby, a name well known in all the neighbourhood as a public-house sign, was son of the third Duke. He was “Col. of the Leicester Blues” in 1745, and General and Commander-in-Chief of the British contingent at Minden, where the English and German forces, under the Duke of Brunswick, defeated the French in 1759, and he distinguished himself in battle in each of the three following years. The castle, destroyed by order of Parliament in the civil wars, was rebuilt in 1668, and again in 1801, but a fire having destroyed part of it in 1816 it was restored at the worst of all architectural periods, so that at a near view it does not fulfil the expectation raised by its grand appearance when seen from a distance. As at Windsor there is a very fine “Guard Room,” and many large rooms hung with tapestry or pictures, and a picture gallery of unusual excellence. The Duchess’s garden in spring is one of the finest horticultural sights in the kingdom. The greater part of the castle is most liberally thrown open daily to the public.

Returning from Belvoir we can pass by Barrowby to join the Nottingham and Grantham road, which leaves the county at Sedgebrook, on either side of which are seen the churches of _Muston_ and _East_ and _West Allington_, where Crabbe, the poet, was rector 1789-1814. West Allington church stands in Mr. Welby’s park, and close by, a salt well is marked on the map. At _Sedgebrook_ is a farm house which was built as a manor-house by Sir John Markham in the sixteenth century, when he was Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. He it was who received the soubriquet of “The upright Judge,” on the occasion of his being turned out of office by Edward IV., because of his scrupulous fairness at the trial of Sir Thomas Coke, Lord Mayor of London.

From Sedgebrook to _Barrowby_ is three miles of level ground, and then the road rises 150 feet to the village, which commands a splendid view over the vale of Belvoir. Leaving this you descend a couple of miles to Grantham.

[Sidenote: GONERBY HILL]

At the outskirts of the town the road meets two others, one the northern or Lincoln road, and the other the north-western or Newark road. This is the Great North Road, and it starts by climbing the famous _Gonerby Hill_, the terror and effectual trial ground of motors in their earliest days, and described by “mine host” in _The Heart of Midlothian_ as “a murder to post-horses.” The hill once gained affords a fine view eastwards, _Foston_ and _Long Bennington_ (which has a large church with a handsome porch, a good churchyard cross, and a mutilated market cross), are the only villages, till the road crosses the county boundary near _Claypole_, and runs on about four miles to Newark, distant fifteen miles from Grantham. Long Bennington is a mile north-east of Normanton Lodge, where Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire touch.

_Stubton_, a couple of miles to the east, has a fine group of yew trees growing round the tomb of Sir George Heron, one of the family from Cressy Hall, Gosberton, I suppose, who built the hall now occupied by G. Neville, Esq.

Between Stubton and the Grantham-and-Lincoln road are many winding lanes, by a judicious use of which you may escape the fate that overtook us of landing after a steep and rather rough climb from Barkstone at two farms one after the other, beyond which the road did not even try to go. If you have better luck you will reach the out-of-the-way parish church of _Hough-on-the-Hill_.

[Sidenote: HOUGH-ON-THE-HILL]

This, the last resting-place of King John, when on his journey to Newark where he died, has a church whose tower is singularly interesting, being akin to St. Peter’s at Barton-on Humber, and the two very old churches in Lincoln, and one at Broughton, near Brigg, and we may add, perhaps, the tower at Great Hale.

The work of all these towers is pre-Norman, and it is not unlikely that the church, when first built, consisted of only a tower and two apses. At Hough, as at Broughton, we have attached to the west face of the tower a Saxon circular turret staircase, built in the rudest way and coped with a sloping top of squared masonry, of apparently Norman work. The tower has several very small lights, 12 to 15 inches high, and of various shapes, while the west side of the south porch is pierced with a light which only measures 8 inches by 4, but is framed with dressed stone on both the wall-surfaces. The two lower stages of the square tower, to whose west face the round staircase-tower clings, are all of the same rough stone-work, with wide mortar joints, but with two square edged thick string-courses of dressed stone, projecting 6 inches or more. The upper stage is of much later date. The Early English nave, chancel, and aisles are very high, and are no less than 20 feet wide, mercifully (for it was proposed to abolish them and substitute a pine roof) they still retain their old Perpendicular roofs with the chancel and nave timbers enriched with carving. The sedilia are of the rudest possible construction.

[Illustration: _Hough-on-the-Hill._]

[Sidenote: A SAXON TOWER]

The staircase turret has two oblong Saxon windows, like those at Barnack, about four feet by one, in the west face, three small round lights on the north, and four on the south, one square and one diamond-shaped and two circular. The turret is of the same date as the tower, but appears to have been built on after the tower was finished; and it almost obscures the two little west windows of the tower, one on each side of it, and near the top. A round-headed doorway leads from the tower to the turret, inside which the good stone steps lead up to a triangular-headed door into the tower, where now is the belfry floor, from which another similar doorway leads into the nave. Close to the top of the old Saxon tower walls are very massive stone corbels for supporting the roof. The Newel post of the old tower is a magnificent one, being eighteen inches thick. This, where the upper stage was added, is continued, but with only half that thickness.

There was once a porch with a higher pitched roof, as shown by the gable roof-mould against the aisle. On the stone benches are three of the solitaire-board devices, with eight hollows connected by lines all set in an oblong, the same that you see often in cloisters and on the stone benches at Windsor, where monks or chorister boys passed the time playing with marbles. It is a truly primitive and world-wide amusement. The natives of Madagascar have precisely the same pattern marked out on boards, seated round which, and with pebbles which they move like chessmen, they delight themselves, both young and old, in gambling.

The church used to go with the Head-Mastership of Grantham Grammar School, seven miles off, and some of the Headmasters were buried here; one, Rev. Joseph Hall, is described as “Vicar of Ancaster and Hough-on-the-Hill, Headmaster of Grantham Grammar School, and Rector of Snelland, and Domestic Chaplain to Lord Fitzwilliam”—he died in 1814.

[Sidenote: THE WAPENTAKE]

It stands on a high knoll, whence the churchyard, which is set round with yew-trees, slopes steeply to the south. The Wapentake of Loveden takes its name from a neighbouring round-topped hill, and the old tower of Hough-on-the-Hill may well have been the original meeting-place; just as Barnack was, where the triangular-headed seat for the chief man is built into the tower wall. The term “Wapentake” means the taking hold of the chief’s weapon by the assembled warriors, or of the warriors’ weapons by the chief, as a sign that they swear fealty to him, and then the name was applied to the district over which a particular chief held rule. The native chiefs of India, when they come to a Durbar, present their swords to the King or his representative in a similar manner, for him to touch.

Just south of Hough is the hamlet of _Gelston_, where, on a triangular green, is all that is left of a wayside cross, a rare thing in this county. Only about two feet of the old shaft is left and the massive base block standing on a thick slab with chamfered corners. This is mounted on three steps and is a very picturesque object.

There are some two dozen Wapentakes within the county, some with odd names, _e.g._, Longoboby; of these, eight end like Elloe in _oe_, which, I take it, means water.

[Sidenote: CLAYPOLE]

From Hough-on-the-Hill the byway to the Grantham and Newark road, with villages at every second milestone, runs through _Brandon_, where a small chapel contains a Norman door with a tympanum and a rather unusual moulding, very like one we shall see in the old church at Stow, and then through _Stubton_, to _Claypole_, close to the county boundary. The beautiful crocketed spire of this fine church is a landmark seen for miles; as usual, it is Perpendicular, and on an Early English tower, which is plastered over with cement outside and engaged between the aisles inside. It is a cruciform building, and in the Early English south transept are three beautiful sedilia, not at all common in such a position. The flat coloured ceiling of the nave is old, though, since the restoration by C. Hodgson Fowler in 1892, the high pitch of the roof over it has been reverted to, both on chancel and nave. The nave is large with four wide bays, supported on clustered pillars, the capitals being all different and all ornamented with singularly bold foliated carving of great beauty. The chancel arch exhibits brackets for the rood beam. The large clerestory windows were probably in the nave before the aisles were added. Another set of sedilia in the chancel are of the Decorated period, and most of the windows have flowing tracery. On the north side of the chancel is a Sacristy, containing an altar slab in situ with its five dedication crosses. The porch has a very deep niche over it, for a statue, and there is another niche at the east end of the nave; the fine Perpendicular parapet leading to it being, like the rest of the church, embattled. The screen is a good Perpendicular one, and the desk of the well-carved pulpit was once part of it, this now is oddly supported by the long stem of a processional cross. The font, which is hexagonal, is of the Decorated period.

One of the most unusual features in the church is to be found in the stone seats which surround the bases of the pillars in the south arcade. This is to be seen also at Bottesford and at Caistor.

A short distance to the south-west of the church there was, until quite recently, a charming old stone bridge, over a small stream, but this has now, I regret to say, been superseded by one of those iron girder structures, so dear to the heart of the highway surveyor.

In the church the hook for the “Lenten Veil” still remains at the end of the sedilia, and a staple over the vestry-door opposite.

In pre-reformation days there was a regular “office” or service for the Easter sepulchre, in which the priests acted the parts of the three kings, the angel, and the risen Lord, at which time a line was stretched across the chancel to support the “Lenten Veil” which served as a stage-curtain.

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