Читать книгу Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire - W. F. Rawnsley - Страница 3

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All writers make use of the labours of their predecessors. This is inevitable, and a custom as old as time. As Mr. Rudyard Kipling sings:—

“When ’Omer smote ’is bloomin’ lyre

’E’d ’eard men sing by land and sea,

And what ’e thought ’e might require

’E went and took, the same as me.”

In writing this book I have made use of all the sources that I could lay under contribution, and especially I have relied for help on “Murray’s Handbook,” edited by the Rev. G. E. Jeans, and the Journals of the associated Architectural Societies. I have recorded in the course of the volume my thanks to a few kind helpers, and to these I must add the name of Mr. A. R. Corns of the Lincoln Library, for his kindness in allowing me the use of many books on various subjects, and on several occasions, which have been of the utmost service to me. My best thanks, also, are due to my cousin, Mr. Preston Rawnsley, for his chapter on the Foxhounds of Lincolnshire. That the book owes much to the pencil of Mr. Griggs is obvious; his illustrations need no praise of mine but speak for themselves. The drawing given on p. 254 is by Mrs. Rawnsley.

I have perhaps taken the title “Highways and Byways” more literally than has usually been done by writers in this interesting series, and in endeavouring to describe the county and its ways I have followed the course of all the main roads radiating from each large town, noticing most of the places through or near which they pass, and also pointing out some of the more picturesque byways, and describing the lie of the country. But I have all along supposed the tourist to be travelling by motor, and have accordingly said very little about Footpaths. This in a mountainous country would be entirely wrong, but Lincolnshire as a whole is not a pedestrian’s county. It is, however, a land of constantly occurring magnificent views, a land of hill as well as plain, and, as I hope the book will show, beyond all others a county teeming with splendid churches. I may add that, thanks to that modern devourer of time and space—the ubiquitous motor car—I have been able personally to visit almost everything I have described, a thing which in so large a county would, without such mercurial aid, have involved a much longer time for the doing. Even so, no one can be more conscious than I am that the book falls far short of what, with such a theme, was possible.

W. F. R.