Читать книгу Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire - W. F. Rawnsley - Страница 10

Table of Contents

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Chapter XIII.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hough-on-the-Hill.

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.

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.

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.