SPIDERS.
| Anyphæna accentuata | Meta segmentata |
| Epeira gibbosa (a first record) | Epeira marmorea (doubtful, not yet recorded in Britain) |
| Dictyna arundinacea | Xysticus pini |
| Diœa dorsata (a first record) | Epeira sollers |
| Epeira quadrata | Linyphia triangularis |
| E. scalaris | Theridion varians |
CHAPTER VII. GEOLOGICAL NOTES.
In a county like Lincolnshire, mainly agricultural, in which the operations of man are, for the most part, confined to the earth’s crust, in ploughing and sowing, and, as some one has said, in “tickling” the earth’s surface into fertility,—in such a county we are not led ordinarily to explore the inner bowels of the world; as is necessary in mining districts such as certain parts of Yorkshire, Durham, Cornwall and elsewhere. Yet, with regard to our knowledge of its geological features, Woodhall may be said to compare favourably with a large majority of places. With one exception [84a] it is the spot, par excellence, in this part of the kingdom, where the earth’s hidden resources have been tapped, and tapped to considerable purpose, in the unique commodity for which it is famed—its mineral water. The book of Nature, so often “sealed,” has here been opened and its contents indexed. We have in the strata of the Woodhall well sundry chapters in the earth’s past history unfolded, at least to the initiated. The writer is not going to attempt here a systematic disquisition on a subject so abstruse (for which, indeed, he is not qualified), beyond touching upon some of its more salient, or more interesting features. The geological records of the Woodhall well have already been given [84b] in the very concise form in which they have been preserved for us. Whether they are to be entirely depended upon is questionable,
but we may here repeat them:—Gravel and boulder clay, 10 feet; Kimeridge and Oxford clays, 350; Kellaways rock, blue clays, cornbrash, limestone, great oolite, clay and limestone, upper Estuarine clay, 140; Lincolnshire oolite, and Northampton sand, 140; lias, upper, middle, and lower, 380 feet; total, 1,120 feet. The mineral spring is said to have issued from a stratum of spongy rock lying at a depth of 540ft. [85a] This would probably be in or near the ferruginous Northampton sand, the lowest layer of the oolite, and lying immediately above the upper lias. [85b]
In the year 1897 a boring was commenced within 500 yards of the original well by the artesian engineers, Messrs. Isler and Co., on behalf of the Rev. J. O. Stephens, on the west side of the Stixwould road, with a view to obtaining a second supply of the Woodhall water; this was carried to a depth of 700 feet. The engineers furnished me with a register of the strata so far pierced by the bore, but, as they are not described in the technical terms of geology, it is rather difficult to compare them with those of the old well. At a depth of 490 feet, sandstone with iron pyrites was pierced; this would probably be the ferruginous Northampton sand of the Oolite. It is at a less depth than the same stratum at the Spa well; but that was to be expected, as geologists state that all the geological strata “dip” eastward, and this bore being to the west, the stratum would naturally tilt upward. This born was ultimately abandoned. According to the records of the Spa well, derived from Dr. Snaith, of Horncastle, who knew the well from its birth, the saline spring was found at 540ft.; but Dr. Granville, who visited Woodhall, and wrote his
version, in 1841, puts it at 510ft. It is difficult to say which of these two doctors, who differ, should be accepted as the more trustworthy; and in 1841 Dr. Granville would still certainly be able to find plenty of persons familiar with the well and its details. But in the ferruginous sand, or near it, the spring was to be expected; and there it would seem Messrs. Isler, in the new boring, found saline water, though only in small quantity. The depth, according to their computation, was, as we have said 490ft., which is 20ft. above the Spa spring’s level, according to Granville’s version, and 60ft. above the depth given by Snaith. The paucity of the supply of the saline water in the Isler boring may probably be accounted for thus: The trend of the current found in making the Spa well was said to be from south-east to north-west, whereas this new bore is very nearly due west from the Spa well. If, therefore, the stream is of narrow width, this later boring is scarcely in the position to catch more than the side soakage of the current, and it would seem that the main stream can only be tapped either by another boring further north, or by a lateral shaft from the present bore running northward till it encounters the current. There remains, of course, the further and open question as to whether the saline stream formerly passing through the Spa shaft, still continues its former north-westerly course, after having the outlet afforded by that shaft. Would it not be more in accordance with the law of nature that the stream should take the course of least resistance by rising in the well, and not flowing further along the bed of its special original stratum? If that be so, the only chance of another well would be to bore south-eastward of the Spa; and probably the shaft sunk by the late Mr. Blyton beside Coalpit Wood, if it had been continued, would have proved a safer venture than any other as yet attempted. At some future time we may have the wolf disturbing the stream, above the lamb represented by the original well, to the detriment of the latter. It may be here noticed that in the Scarle boring, as we are told, there was found a strong spring in the upper part of the lower Keuper sandstone at the depth of 790ft., and a still stronger spring at the base of that formation at 950ft. In that case, therefore, as also at Woodhall, the water was found in sandstone, but at a much greater depth, and also in sandstone of a different character, viz., the Keuper at Scarle, the Northampton at Woodhall. Another difference is that in the
Scarle strata we pass at once from the surface drift to the lower Lias; the Kimeridge clay and all the Oolite formations, which are found at Woodhall, with a thickness of some 630ft., being entirely absent. These differences, of course, illustrate the fact that, owing to abrasion and other causes, not only do the strata underlying the surface drift vary in different localities, but their several thicknesses vary; while, as at Harrogate, the mineral properties of the water also vary at a distance of only a few yards. Pass beyond the limits of the particular stream, and, below ground as well as above it, you are not “in the swim.”
In the spring of 1904, Mr. R. A. Came, of the Royal Hotel, commenced sinking a shaft, in search of the Spa water, at a point some ¾ mile south of the original well; and early in 1905 water was struck at a depth of 492 feet, which proved to have the same saline properties, with the addition of Epsom salt, a good supply issuing from the spongy sandstone. This opens up a vista of great possibilities in the future; it does away with the monopoly hitherto existing, and may have a most important effect, in the further development of the Spa. The well is 7ft. in diameter, is bricked to a depth of 495ft., and sunk to 520ft. The boring was carried out by Mr. Joseph Aldridge, of Measham, near Atherstone, Warwickshire, an expert mining engineer. Many fine fossils, as ammonites, belemnites, and bi-valves, were found in the different strata that were pierced.
I now proceed to remark upon some of the geological strata, as found at Woodhall. And first, after the mere surface gravel, we have the Boulder clay. This has a very interesting history. In the “Life of Nansen,” the Arctic traveller, it is stated [87a] that the geological strata of the Arctic regions show that at some remote period the climatic conditions were the reverse of those which prevail now. Throughout those regions, at present of intense cold, there was quite a southern climate, in which walnut trees, magnolias, vines, etc., flourished; while, on the other hand, there was also a period during which our own country, and large parts of the Continent, lying in the same latitude, were buried under vast ice-fields with an Esquimaux climate. It is there further stated [87b] that boulders are
found scattered over Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, which have been transported thither on glaciers, from regions still further north. In like manner glaciers at one time also spread over what are now Scotland and a great part of England, bringing along with them boulders from Norway, and Scandinavia generally. The present condition of Greenland, with its vast glaciers, pouring through its valleys, down to the water’s edge, on the sea shore, illustrates the condition of our own country at that remote period. [88a] As regards this country, these ice-streams may be classed under two distinct heads, (a) the native, inland glaciers, and (b) the north-eastern, Scandinavian glacier. To speak first of the former. As the climate, from causes into which we cannot here enter, [88b] gradually became coldier, glaciers were formed among the rugged hills in the present lake country of Cumberland and Westmoreland, some of which pushed their way westward, literally inch by inch, until they debouched in the Irish Sea, and filled it to overflowing, for it is only shallow. From Borrowdale, Buttermere, Eskdale, and other head centres, they also streamed southward and eastward. There was an immense central stream, which forced its way over the wild tract of Stainmoor (named doubtless from the thousands of boulders with which it is strewn); then, fed by lateral branches from many directions, it traversed Teesdale, turned towards the coast, passing by Scarborough, and so on to Holderness and the Humber, a branch also filling up Airedale and the Vale of York. [88c] From Holderness it passed the Humber, into Lincolnshire. Its most eastern limb would doubtless have debouched in the North Sea, and filled it; but here the north-eastern glacier, to which I have alluded, came into collision. Taking its rise in Scandinavia, it had spread into a vast sheet
in parts 3,000ft. thick, [89a] filled up the shallow North Sea, and the Baltic, a veritable mer de glace, and over-run northern Germany, its thickness even at Berlin being supposed to have been 1,300ft. Impinging on our eastern coast of Scotland and of northern England, it spread over a great part of Holderness, meeting and blending with the inland native glacier on the Humber; and the vast united ice-stream thence pursued its onward southern course, enfolding everything in its icy embrace, to the Thames and to the Severn. [89b] These great ice-streams created the geological formation called “The Drift,” or boulder-clay, which we have at Woodhall. The clay is simply the detritus, produced by the grinding, through long ages, of the rocks under the vast and weighty ice-fields slowly moving over them, and the abrasion of the hill-sides which they scraped in their course. The boulders are detached fragments, which fell from various rocky heights overhanging the ice-stream, rested on the surface of the ice-sheet, were borne along by it through hundreds of miles, and when, in the course of ages untold, the climate became milder, and the glaciers gradually shrunk and eventually disappeared, these fragments, often bearing the marks of ice-scraping, and oftener rounded by ice-action, fell to the soil beneath, and remain to this day, to bear their silent witness to the course once taken by the giant ice-stream. The period through which this process was going on has been variously computed, from 18,000 years, according to the estimate of Major-General A. W. Drayson, F.R.A.S., who gives elaborate astronomical statistics in support of his views (Trans. Victoria Institute, No. 104, p. 260), to 160,000, as calculated by Mr. James Croll (“Climate and Time”). It is now generally held that there were more than one ice-age, with inter-glacial breaks. These boulders are abundant in our neighbourhood, and of all sizes.
They may be measured by inches or by yards. There is a good-sized one in the vicarage garden at Woodhall Spa, which the present writer had carted from Kirkby-lane, a distance of a mile and a half. There is a larger one lying on the moor, near the south-east corner of the Ostler Ground. The writer has one in his own garden, a large one, more than 6ft. in length by 3½ft. high, and 2½ft. thick. It took five horses to drag it from its position, a quarter of a mile distant. There are six visible in the parish of Langton, two or three large ones near Old Woodhall Church; several large ones in Thimbleby, Edlington, and elsewhere. Smaller ones are often to be seen placed at turns in the roads to prevent drivers running their vehicles into the bank, or used as foundations to old cottages or farm buildings; and still smaller specimens may be constantly picked up by the pedestrian, or the sportsman, in his rambles through the fields. Much interest has of late years been taken in these boulders, arising from the distinct classes of glaciers to which I have referred, and the consequent difference between the nature of the boulders, as well as the source from which they have come, according as they belong to the one class or the other; and our Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union have now a special “boulder committee” engaged in the investigation of this subject.
The late Professor Sedgewick, of Cambridge (whose lectures the writer attended), was the first to notice that along the Holderness shore there were (as he says) “an incredible number of blocks of granite, gneiss, greenstone, mica, etc., etc., resembling specimens derived from various parts of Scandinavia.” [90] These, we now know, were dropped by the great Scandinavian glacier; and, along with the kinds of stone here named, there are also boulders of Rhombporphyry (the “Rhomben porphyry” of Norwegian geologists, from the neighbourhood of Christiana), Augite syenite, and several more, not of British origin. These boulders are now being searched for, and found in our own neighbourhood. On the other hand, there is the different class of boulders which were brought down by the native inland glaciers. These consist largely of igneous kinds. The rugged hills of the Lake district owe their origin to fire; and the boulders which the glaciers have transported correspond. The shap granite, for instance, which is probably one of the commonest of this
class, comes from the shap granite bed of Wastdale, in Cumberland. Boulders of this rock, as Mr. Kendall tells us, “passed over Stainmoor in tens of thousands,” [91a] to visit us in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Other kinds are Felspar porphyry from Eskdale, in Cumberland, Andesite from Borrowdale, Granophyr from Ennerdale and Buttermere, Quartz, Basalt, and several more from the crystalline formations in the Lake district. Several boulders of these rocks have also been found in our own neighbourhood; and doubtless more remain to reward the explorer. [91b] I have dwelt at some length on this particular formation—the boulder clay—because it is the most ready to hand; it lies on the surface, in many parts around us, within the ken of the ordinary visitor to Woodhall Spa. It may give an additional interest to his rambles in search of health, to know that he may, at any moment, pick up a boulder which has travelled further, and passed through more strange vicissitudes, than he can well have done himself; perhaps, with Shakespeare, to read “Sermons in Stones,” and to moralise on the brevity of human life, with all its ailments, compared with those ages untold, through which the pebble in his hand slowly [91c] travelled on its long, laborious journey, to rest at length as a constituent element of the locality, where he himself is seeking relief and recreation.
To the west of Woodhall Spa, beyond the Stixwould-road, near the vicarage, and northward, the surface sand, in some parts, at the depth of a foot, or slightly more, hardens into an ironstone, so compact that tree roots cannot penetrate it. In root-pruning or manuring apple-trees, I have found the tap-root stunted
into a large round knob, further downward growth being prevented by this indurated formation. This oxide of iron also pervades the sandy soil, in parts, to a depth of four or five feet, impregnating the water with ferruginous properties, so that it “ferrs” bottles, or vessels, in which it is allowed to stand for any length of time. In consequence, the water frequently has a dull appearance, although the iron may probably make it a wholesome tonic.
The surface sand, which is of a still lighter character on the moor ground in Woodhall, and in Martin, Roughton, and Kirkby, contiguous to Woodhall, is what is technically called the “Old Blown Sand,” borne by the winds from the whilom salt marshflats of the Witham, when it was much wider than at present, and a tidal arm of the sea. It is comparatively a recent formation, yet abounding in fine particles, or pebbles, of quartz, and other elements of far earlier date; the larger of these are often rounded by tidal action. Below this surface sand we find, in many parts, a blue clay of varying depth. In a pit called Jordan’s pond, in an abandoned brickyard on the east of the road to Stixwould, it is at least 16ft. thick; also, in a large pit in Kirkstead, near Hogwood, some half-mile south-east of the Abbey Inn, which was dug to procure this clay, for “claying” the light super-soil, otherwise almost barren, it is many feet thick. Ammonites and other fossils are plentiful in it, often cemented together with veins of gypsum. Both these pits are mentioned in the Government Geological Survey (pp. 152, 153) of “The country around Lincoln.” Close by the latter pit the writer once found a curious fossil, which was for some time a puzzle to all who saw it. It is now in the British Museum, and was pronounced to be an Echinus crashed into an Ammonite.
The Kimeridge clay, named as the next stratum in the bore of the Woodhall well, crops up first about Halstead Hall in Stixwould, and continues through Woodhall to Horncastle, and so on to Wragby and Market Rasen. It abounds in fossils. Mr. Skertchly [92] found in the first of the pits just named, that this clay was divided into three layers, the upper being a line of Septaria (or nodules) full of serpulæ one foot in depth, then soft dark-blue clay, 6ft.; and below that another course of Septaria; and
Professor J. R. Blake records from this pit the following fossils[93a]:—Belemnites nitidus, Ammonites serratus, Rissoa mosensis, Avicula ædiligensis, Cyprina cyreneformis, Ostrea deltoides, Lima ædilignensis, Thracia depressa, Arca, Serpula tetragona. In other pits in the neighbourhood several other fossils have been found. [93b] [For a list of fossils found about Woodhall see Appendix II.] A peculiarity of this stratum is that the upper part of it contains bands of “inflammable shales,” being blue, laminated, bituminous clays, which burn readily. It was the presence of these which has tempted explorers to throw away their money in search of coal; as in the case at Donington on-Bain, where Mr. Bogg drove a bore to the depth of 309ft., but only found clay and thin bands of inflammable schist. [93c] In the case of Woodhall Spa, the money thrown away on one purpose has brought health and wealth to others, from a source then undreamt of in man’s philosophy. We cannot leave the Kimeridge clay without noting that its presence at Woodhall, in the position where it is, as the first geological formation below the surface drift, opens to us a vista—reveals to us a yawning hiatus—which embraces a vast expanse of time.
In the normal order of geological strata, the whole series of cretaceous formations have to be passed through before reaching the Oolite formation, of which the Kimeridge clay forms almost the upper layer. But at Woodhall and the surrounding district the whole of this series of rocks and soils is wanting. Their absence is eloquent, and tells a tale of widespread destruction. Standing near the Tower on the Moor we can see in the distance, stretching from north-west to south east, the range of hills called the “Wolds,” which, with a “cap” of marls, or sandy and flinty loams, are composed almost entirely of chalk; from them, near Cawkwell Hill (the hill par excellence of chalk), comes the water supply of Horncastle and Woodhall. They extend for a length of some 45 miles, with a width of some six miles to eight. The actual depth of the chalk is not exactly known, but a boring made through it, near Hull, reached the
Oolite beneath at 530ft. We may perhaps, therefore, put the average at 500ft. [94a] Doubtless, at one period, this cretaceous formation extended over the whole tract of country, but southward and westward from the foot of the present wolds it has since been swept away. And this must have taken place before the glacial period, because the glacial boulder clay lies upon the Kimeridge clay, which normally underlies the chalk. Mr. Jukes Brown (“Geological Journal,” No. 162, p. 117) says: “The Boulder clay is bedded against the slope of the chalk, shewing that this escarpment had retired to its present position in pre-glacial times.” By what precise process this was effected must be left to our savants to decide; but the remarkable fact remains, that a solid stratum, or rather series of allied strata, from 500ft. to 1,000ft. in thickness, has, by one process or another, been wiped out of existence, over the large area now coated by the Kimeridge clay. Through ages of enormous length the chalk was forming as the bed of a sea; a deposit consisting of inconceivable myriads of beautiful minute shells, mainly of the foraminifera, which can be detected by the microscope; and its destruction probably occupied as long a period as its formation.
Mr. Jukes Brown, whom I have just quoted, says: “The Wold hills must have been, in some way, exposed to a severe and long-continued detrition, when erosive agencies were very active.” Active, indeed, they must have been, to efface from an area so extensive a solid formation from 500ft. to 1,000ft. in thickness. And this boulder clay, as Mr. Jukes Brown further observes, has forced its way up the sides of the chalk, in places, to a height varying from 300ft. to 400ft.
The Oxford clay, which lies next below the Kimeridge, is a deep sea deposit, dark blue, with brown nodular stones; some of the fossils found in it are Nucula Ornata, Ammonites Plicatilis, A. Rotundus, Cucullæa, Gryphæa Dilatata, Leda Phillipsii, Annelida Tetragona, and A. Tricarinata, Avicula inequivalvis. [94b]
Kellaway’s rock, which lies just below, so called from a village in Wiltshire, near Chippenham, is a mixture of yellowish and buff sands, with brown and buff sandstone. The
chief fossils are Gryphæa Dilatata, and G. bilobata, Belemnites in abundance, and Avicula Braam-buriensis. [95a]
The Cornbrash, which succeeds (so called also from a district in Wiltshire, favourable to corn), is a light grey, fine-grained limestone, often so hard as to need blasting. It abounds in fossils. Among them are Avicula Echinata, Ostræa Sowerbyi, Clypeus Ptotii, Ammonites Macrocephalus, A. Herveyi, Nucula Variabilis, Astarte Minima, Trigonia (of four kinds), Modiola (of four kinds), Myacites (five kinds), Cypricardia, Corbicella Bathonica, Pholadomya (two kinds), Cardium (three kinds), Pecten (six kinds), and several more. [95b]
The great Oolite (so named from the Greek Oon, an egg, referring to the number of small stones, like fish-ova, found in it) is divided into Oolite clays and O. limestone. The clays are mottled green and bluish, with bands of ironstone, and concretions of lime. They indicate a shallow sea, as contrasted with the Oxford clay. Fossils are not numerous, but Rhinconella Concinna, Gervillia Crassicosta, Modiola Ungulata, Ostræa Gregaria, O. Sowerbvi, O. Subrugulosa, Perna Quardrata, Trigonia Flecta, and Palate of Fish are found. [95c] These beds correspond to the so-called Forest Marble of the South of England.
The Oolite limestone beds consist of white soft limestones, having at intervals bands of marly clay. This formation burns well, and makes good lime. Its chief fossils are Serpula, Rhynconella, Terebratula, and T. Intermedia, Avicula Echinata, Corbicella, Lima Rigida, Lucina, Modiola Imbricata, Myacites Calceiformis, Mytilus Furcatus, Ostræa Sowerbyi, Pecten Vagans, Pteroperna plana, Trigonia, T. costata, T. flecta, T. striata, T. undulata. [95d]
The Estuarine deposit, underlying the great Oolite limestone, is composed of light blue, green, and purple clays, intersected by soft bands of sandstone, and having at its base a band of nodular ironstone. It is not very fossiliferous, but the following are found:—Rhynconella Concinna, Modiola Imbricata, Ostræa Sowerbyi, Monodonta. [95e] The sandstone bands contain plant-markings in considerable numbers. As its name implies, this formation
was produced as the bed of an estuary or tidal river.
The next lower formation is the Lincolnshire limestone. This enters largely into the making of what is called “the Cliff,” which is the high land running south from Lincoln (visible from Woodhall) to the west of the Witham Valley and the Fens. It is a hard building stone, though once the muddy bed of a sea. It is sub-divided into the Hibaldstow and Kirton beds, so called because these strata are exposed in those parishes. Dipping to the east, it underlies the Fens and other upper strata to be found in the Woodhall well. It abounds in fossils, there being as many as 340 species classified, [96a] and consists, indeed, very largely of the hard parts of shells and corals compressed into a solid mass. To a Lincolnshire person, it is sufficient to say of this stone that our grand Cathedral is mainly built of it. We can only give here a few of the more frequent species of fossils:—Three kinds of Echinus, Coral (Thecosmilia gregarea), Serpula socialis, Lima (five kinds), Ostræa flabelloides, Pecten (two kinds), Hinnites abjectus, Astarte elegans, Cardium Buckmani, Ceromya Bajociana, Cyprina Loweana, Homomya Crassiuscula, Isocardia, Cordata, Rhynconella (four kinds); among the bivalves are Avicula Inequivalvis, and A Munsteri, Lima (three kinds), Lucina Bellona, Modiola Gibbosa, Mytilus Imbricatus, Pholadomya (two kinds), Trigonia costata; of univalves, Natica (two kinds), Nerinea Cingenda; of fishes, Strophodus (two kinds). [96b] This is a most useful stone for building purposes. The so-called “Lincoln stone” is largely used in our churches; whilst the “Ancaster quarries,” which also belong to this formation, are famous. The commissioners appointed in 1839 to report on the building stones of England, for the new houses of Parliament, stated that “many buildings constructed of material similar to the Oolite of Ancaster, such as Newark and Grantham churches, have scarcely yielded to the effects of atmospheric influences.” (“Old Lincolnshire,” vol. i., p. 23.) The well-known Colly-Weston slates are the lowest stratum of this rock. The fine old Roman “Newport Arch,” which for some 700 years has “braved the battle and the breeze,” a pretty good test of its durability, is built of this stone.
The base on which this lowest Oolite lies is the Northampton Sands, an irony stratum of red ferruginous sand and sandstone, the upper portion of it also being called the Lower Estuarine deposit. It is from this stratum so many springs arise in various parts of the county, as already mentioned, and among them the Woodhall well water. Its fresh water conditions show it to have been the bed of a great river, but a tidal river, as among the fossils which it contains some are marine shells. In this formation is found the iron-stone, which is worked at Lincoln. Its commoner fossils are Lima duplicata, L. Dustonensis, Hinnites abjectus, Astarte elegans, Cardium Buckmani, Modiola Gibbosa, Ammonites Murchisoniæ, Belemnites Acutus. Its ferruginous layers are (as given by Capt. Macdakin), [97a] Peroxide bed, clay ironstone, hard carbonate of iron, hard blue carbonate peroxidised band, blue ferruginous sand, ironstone nodules, bed of coprolites with iron pyrites.
And this brings us to the Lias formation, in which lies the lower part, amounting to rather more than a third, of the Woodhall wells. It is divided into the upper Lias of clay and shale; the middle Lias of Marlstone rock bed, clay, and ironstone; and the lower Lias of clays, ironstone clays, limestones. [97b] This formation, with a thickness of from 900 to 1,000 feet, runs across England from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire down to the coast of Dorset. The upper Lias of the Woodhall wells also helps to form the slope from 100 feet to 150 feet in thickness of the escarpment called “the Cliff,” to the west of the Witham Fens, and to the north of Lincoln, by Fillingham, and so on. Lincoln itself stands on Lias beds, with a capping of the lower Oolite limestone. [97c] It contains many Belemnites, Lucina, Ammonites Bifrons, A. Serpentinus, A. Communis, A. Heterophillus, Nucula Hammeri, Pleuromyæ, [97d] and especially the Leda Ovum,
which distinguishes it from other strata. The middle Lias, which underlies the upper, contains Ammonites Spinatus, A. Margaritatus (in great abundance), Rhinconella, Icthyosauri, Plesiosauri, and fossil wood, etc. [98a] The lower Lias contains Ammonites Capricornus, with many pyrites, A. Ibex, A. Jamesoni, A. Armatus, A. Oxynotus, A. Obtusus, A. Semicostatus, A. Bucklandi, A. Angulatus, A. Planorbis, Gryphœa incurva very abundant, and fossils of many other kinds. [98b] This brings us to the base of the Woodhall Spa wells. For a full list of the fossils so far found at Woodhall, the reader is referred to Appendix II. at the and of this volume.
These strata are shewn in the diagram given at the head of this chapter.
In giving the history of the well in Chapter I., the writer did not state the properties of the Woodhall water; but as these depend upon the geological elements, from which it originates, this seems to be the proper place to state them. The official analysis made by Professor Frankland, F.R.S., 1875, is as follows:—[98c]
| Parts | Grains per gallon | |
| Total solids in solution | 2361.200 | 1652.8400 |
| Organic carbon | .362 | .2604 |
| Organic Nitrogen | .532 | .3724 |
| Ammonia | .810 | .5070 |
| Nitrogen as Nitrates and Nitrites | .009 | .0063 |
| Chlorine | 1425.000 | 997.5000 |
| Total combined nitrogen | 1.208 | .8456 |
| Bromine | 6.280 | 4.3960 |
| Iodine | .880 | .6160 |
| Arsenicam | .016 | .0112 |
| Temporary hardness | 20.000 | 14.0000 |
| Permanent do | 245.000 | 171.5000 |
| Total do. | 265.000 | 185.5000 |
The water contains unusually large proportions of Iodine and Bromine.—E. Frankland.
The remarkable features of this analysis are the quantities of iodine and bromine. Professor Frankland, for the Geological Survey, found, of iodine, 6.1 grains in 10 gallons of the water; bromine, 44 grains in ditto.
As compared with the water of Cheltenham, of Leamington, and of the famed German Spa at Kreuznach, we have the original analysis of Mr. West, of Leeds, giving:—
The Woodhall water, therefore, has five times the amount of iodine, and nearly twice the amount of bromine, of the strongest known Continental water. [99a]
I mentioned, in Chapter I., that the Dead Sea, in Palestine, was stronger in bromine than Woodhall. According to M. Marchand’s analysis, it contains bromide of magnesium 74 times the amount at Kreuznach, or about 30 times the strength of Woodhall; but the other great ingredient of the Woodhall water, iodine, is absent from the Dead Sea. [99b] In iodine the only known water surpassing Woodhall Spa is the spring of Challes in Savoy, [99c] which contains 1.045 parts per 100,000 of water.
I may add that at Old Woodhall, about four miles distant from “The Spa,” at a depth of 33 feet, in sinking a well, some 20 years ago, salt water was tapped, resembling in taste that of the Woodhall Spa well, but it gradually became less salt, and finally was replaced by a supply of fresh water. [99d]
There is one other geological feature of the neighbourhood of Woodhall, which has not yet been touched upon, viz., the Fens bordering on the Witham. These are said to have been, to some extent, drained by the Romans; [99e] but
within the last few centuries they have been partially reclaimed, have relapsed into bog and morass, and been finally reclaimed for good, in quite recent times. The writer, when a boy, used to visit a large farmer, living in Blankney Fen, whose father built the house in which he resided. Before building, an artificial foundation had to be made, by transporting soil in boats, or carts, from terra firma beyond the Fens, the whole Fen tract being more or less bog and swamp. When this had become sufficiently consolidated, the house and farm buildings were erected upon it; and from that centre roads were constructed, drains made, and the work of reclamation gradually extended. These drains, or “skirths,” as they are sometimes called, were periodically cleaned by a “bab,” a kind of dredge, with hooks at its under side to tear up plant roots. Great flocks of geese were kept, which were plucked alive several times a year, for the sale of the feathers, to make the famed Lincolnshire feather beds, and quills for the pens, now rarely seen, although, 50 years ago, in universal use. Until the land had become systematically reclaimed, it still continued to be extensively flooded in the winter months, and all cattle had to be housed, or penned, during that time, on the artificially raised ground. It frequently happened that early frosts caught the farmer napping, with his cattle still afield; in which case they had to be driven home over the ice, and numbers were at times “screeved,” i.e., “split up,” in the process, and had to be slaughtered. The fen soil is a mass of decayed vegetation, chiefly moss, interlarded with silt, deposited by the sea, which formerly made its oozy way as far as Lincoln. Large trees of bog oak and other kinds are found in the soil. These, it is supposed, became rotted at their base by the accumulating peat; and the strong south-west winds, prevailing then as they do now, broke them off, and they are, in consequence, generally found with their heads lying in a north-easterly direction. Borings at different places show the fen soil to vary in depth from 24ft. at Boston to 14½ft. at Martindale; but, as it has been gradually dried by drainage, it has considerably shrunk in thickness, and buried trees, which only a few years ago were beyond the reach of plough or spade, are now not uncommonly caught by the ploughshare.
The river Witham, which the visitor to Woodhall Spa sees skirting the railway, has passed through more than one metamorphosis.
Now confined by banks, which have been alternately renewed and broken down at different periods, before the drainage of the Fens, it spread over all that level tract of country, meandering by its many islands and through its oozy channels and meres, the resort of countless flocks of wild fowl and fish ad infinitum, but preserving still one main navigable artery, by which vessels of considerable tonnage could slowly sail to Lincoln. Acts were passed, in the reigns of Edward the Third. Richard the Second, Henry the Seventh, Queen Elizabeth, and the two Charleses; and Commissioners were again and again appointed to effect the embanking and draining of these watery wastes, but with only temporary success; and it was not till 1787, or 1788, that the present complete system of drainage was commenced, which is now permanently established. [101a] And in these days, the Fens, once consisting as much of water as of land, at times even suffer from a scarcity of that commodity; drains, which within the writer’s own recollection abounded with fish, being now often dry almost all the year round. At a much more remote period the Witham was probably a much stronger river, and largely conduced to altering the features of the county. This subject has been carefully investigated by our geologists, [101b] with the result that certain changes in the strata of the upper Witham valley, from its source near Grantham, and changes also in the lower valley of the Trent, go far to prove that the Trent, instead of, as it does now, flowing into the Humber, took a more easterly course, and joining forces with the Witham some miles above Lincoln, the united streams pushed their way through the gorge, or “break” in the cliff formation, which occurs there, and is technically known as “The Lincoln Gap,” and continued their course to the sea by
something like the present channel of the Witham. The idea of this “Lincoln Gap,” though the term is not actually used, would seem to have originated with Mr. W. Bedford, who stated, in a paper already mentioned, read before “The Lincolnshire Topographical Society,” in 1841, that “the great breach below Lincoln could only be accounted for by the mighty force of agitated waters dashing against the rocks, through long ages”. (Printed by W. and B. Brookes, Lincoln, 1843, p. 24, &c.) The theory would seem to be now generally accepted. Thus: “that ancient river, the river” Witham, honoured, we believe, by the Druid as his sacred stream, [102] consecrated in a later age to the Christian, by the number of religious houses erected on its shores, through a yet earlier stage of its existence performed the laborious task of carving out the vale of Grantham, and so adding to the varied beauty of our county; then, by a kind of metempsychosis of the river spirit, it was absorbed in the body of the larger Trent; the two, like “John Anderson, my Joe,” and his contented spouse, “climbed the hill together,” to the Lincoln Gap, and hand in hand wended their seaward way, to help each other, perchance, in giving birth to the Fenland; or, according to another theory, in making its bed. Through a long era this union lasted; but, as the old saying is, “the course of true love never did run smooth”; a change geologic came over the scene, and, through force of circumstance, the
two, so long wedded together, broke the connubial bond, and henceforth separated, pursuing each their different ways; the one, the Trent, the river of thirty fountains, betaking herself “to fresh woods and pastures new,” after brief dalliance with the Ouse, became bosomed in the ample embrace of the Humber; the other, the humbler stream of the two, retaining its previous course, pursued the even tenor of its way through the flats of the Fenland, with their “crass air and rotten harrs,” to find its consolation in the “dimpling smiles,” but restless bosom, of the shallow “Boston Deeps.” During the period of that ancient alliance of these two streams the tract of country between Lincoln and Boston, or rather between the points now occupied by those places, would be scoured by a greatly-augmented volume of water, and this may possibly account in some degree for the shallowness of “The Wash,” and the number of submarine sandbanks which lie off the mouth of the present Witham. Had the union of the two streams continued to the present time, bringing down their united body of silt, Boston would either never have come into existence at all, or would have been much further from the sea than it is.
The precise period at which this riverine union prevailed would seem to be still an open question; and we may say, with Horace, adhuc sub judice lis est; for, whereas Professor Archibald Geikie, Director-General of the Government Geological Survey, [103a] gives his opinion that “the gravels which have been laid down by an older Trent, that flowed through the gorge in the Jurassie escarpment at Lincoln, were later than the glacial deposits”; on the other hand, Mr. F. M. Burton, F.L.S., F.G.S., [103b] who has a thorough local knowledge of the county and its geological features, says there is sufficient evidence “to convince any reasonable mind that the present course of the Trent is not its original one; but that ages ago, in early pre-glacial times, I think, it passed through the Lincoln Gap to the fenland beyond, which was then open bay.” We may well say with Pope: “Who shall decide when doctors disagree?” [103c] This,
however, is too large a subject for a chapter on the geology of Woodhall Spa; but this brief reference to it may serve to show the visitor, who has the taste and inclination for such pursuits, that there are still subjects for interesting investigation in our neighbourhood, on which he might well employ his capacities for research.
CHAPTER VIII. THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD.
In entering on this portion of our Records we are passing from the Natural to the Artificial, from the operations of the Creator to the works of the creature. A systematic process of enquiry would shew that, as in geology, so here, the subject-matter lies in layers. We have the prehistoric period concerning palæolithic and neolithic man; then follow the British, the Roman, the Saxon, the Danish, and the Norman strata, or eras; so many have been the elements which have contributed to the moulding of our country and our people, as we find them at the present day. But again, as in geology, so here, we find few traces in our own immediate neighbourhood of the earlier links in this series—the people who preceded the historic Britons. On Twig Moor, near Brigg, in the north of the county, a tract of ground very similar to our own Moor, many flint implements have been found. On an excursion of our “Naturalists’ Union” to that tract, one of the party found “a handful” of stone “knives and finely-chipped arrow heads.” [105a] The members of the same Society, visiting Woodhall in 1893, found on the Moor “patches of pale-coloured sand, slightly ferruginous, and having a considerable number of flints,” but none were found which could be said to shew traces of human use. This, however, is no reason why the visitor to Woodhall should not search for them. That they exist in our neighbourhood has been proved, since a good specimen of flint axe was found a few years ago by Mr. A. W. Daft, on Highrigge farm, near Stobourne Wood, in Woodhall. It is about five inches in length and 1¼ inches broad, and, from its high degree of polish, probably was the work of neolithic man. [105b] Another, smaller, flint celt
was found in 1895 by Mr. Crooks, of Woodhall Spa, in the parish of Horsington, near Lady-hole bridge, between Stixwould and Tupholme. Its length was 3½ inches, by 2½ inches in breadth, thickness about ¾ inch. More recently one was found in a field on the Stixwould road by his son, about three inches in length and 1½ inches broad, thickness ¾ inch. In 1904 several finely chipt flint arrow heads, about one inch in length and breadth, were found in the parish of Salmonby, near Horncastle, in a field called “Warlow Camp,” doubtless the site of a prehistoric settlement. The present writer has picked up at odd times some half dozen specimens, bearing more or less trace of human manipulation, but none of them so well finished as those referred to. A farmer residing near the Moor, to whom I recently explained what a flint implement was, said he had noticed several stones of that kind, but did not know that they were worth picking up. Two molar teeth of the Elephas primigenius, or extinct mammoth, have been found in a pit at Kirkby-on-Bain, situated between the road and the canal, about a quarter of a mile north-west of the church; [106a] and bones of Bos primigenius and Cervus elaphus were found among gravel and ice-scraped pebbles in a pit, near Langworth bridge (not far from Bardney). The former of these, the gigantic Ox, or Urus, belonged to the palæolithic age, [106b] when the first race of human beings peopled this land, but was extinct in the neolithic period in this country (though in a later age re-introduced). The latter, which is our red-deer, survived in a wild state, in our county and neighbourhood, until comparatively modern times. Large vertebræ, apparently of some huge Saurian, have been found, which the writer has seen, in West Ashby; and a large mammoth tooth is preserved among the treasures of the late Mechanics’ Institute at Horncastle, having been found in the neighbourhood. These are all the pre-historic relics which I can find recorded in our neighbourhood.
Later antiquities, of the British, Roman, and succeeding periods, are, or have been, fairly plentiful; the misfortune being that, as we, as yet, have no County Museum wherein they could be preserved, they have doubtless many of them been lost, or, if kept in private hands, are unrecorded.
When the bed of the Witham, by order of the Royal Commissioners, was cleansed in 1788, a number of swords, spears, arrow heads, etc., were found on the hard clay bottom, which had been covered over, and so preserved, by the accumulated mud. And in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for that year a list of them was given. The late Sir Joseph Banks, of Revesby Abbey, secured a considerable number of such relics, catalogues of which are given in “Lincolnshire Notes & Queries,” Vols. III. and IV. They consist of arms and utensils of our British, Roman, Saxon, and Danish ancestors. Among the more interesting of these was a whittle, or “anelace,” exactly resembling one described by Greene as part of Chaucer’s dress. [107] In connection with Woodhall were the following:—A sword, probably Saxon, brought up from the Witham bed near “Kirkstead Wath,” entangled in the prongs of an eel-stang. The pommel and guard are tinned, as we now tin the inside of kitchen utensils; an art which we should not have known that our forefathers at that period possessed but for such discoveries as this. The polish still remained on parts of the blade “admirably brilliant.” It bore the inscription + Benvenutus + on one side, and on the other + me fecit +, in Saxon characters; the name shewing that the maker was an Italian, the crosses probably implying that he (or the owner, if made to order) was a Christian; while from the Saxon lettering we should infer that the Italian sword-cutler exercised his craft in the north of Europe. Another sword, with brass scabbard, of elegant workmanship and richly gilt, was found near Bardney. Several more swords, with Saxon and Roman inscriptions, were also found near Bardney.
A dagger was brought up by an eel-stang near “Kirkstead Wath,” the handle, of elm, being in fairly good preservation, the only instance of wood thus surviving. [108a] Several others, one of superior work with an ivory handle, were found in the Witham near Bardney.
A spear head of bone, of British structure, was found in Stixwould in an ancient sewer, which was being cleansed. Sir J. Banks says that “it does credit to the skill of the person who made it.” [108b] Several more of these were found at Bardney and other parts of the Witham; and again at “Kirksted Wath” the eel-stang brought up an iron specimen, which from its appearance would seem to have been broken in action.
A large barbed arrow head was found near Bardney, with an orifice large enough to receive a broom handle. [108c]
A Roman lituus, or clarion, was found near Tattershall Ferry. Though imperfect, both ends being broken off, it is interesting as being probably the only one in existence. This instrument is represented among trophies on the base of Trojan’s column in Rome, and appears on some Roman coins. [108d] A description is given in the “Archæologia” of the Society of Antiquaries (Vol. XIV.) of an iron candlestick, of curious construction, being one of six which were found
in the Witham by Kirkstead. We may well imagine that they, at one time, served to light the refectory of the Abbey, where the monks of old dispensed hospitality to the poor and needy, or to the wayfaring stranger. Perhaps the most interesting relic of all is a British shield, of finely-wrought metal, originally gilt, with a boss of carnelian, and ornamented with elaborate devices, shewing that those primitive people, though living a rude life, had attained to a very considerable degree of skill in working metals. It is described in the “Archæologica” (Vol. XXIII.); and an engraving is given of it in “Fenland” by Skertchly and Miller (p. 463). It was formerly in the Meyrick collection.
The above are a selection of the most interesting objects yielded up to us chiefly by the Witham; there have been many more, but of less importance. Several Roman urns in different places have been exhumed. The parish of Thornton runs down to Kirkstead station, passing almost within a stone’s throw of the Victoria Hotel; and in Thornton a small Roman vase was discovered when the railroad was made, in 1854. The present writer has seen it, but it has, unfortunately, disappeared. An engraving and description of it are given in the “Linc. Architectural Society’s Journal,” Vol. IV., Part II., p. 200. It was nine inches in height, of rather rough construction, and with a rude ornamentation. Two Roman urns, or, according to another account, six (“Lincolnshire N. & Q.” Vol. III., p. 154), were also found at the north-east corner of a field, on the road leading from Stixwould to Bucknall, about 3½ miles from Woodhall. They were of the kind technically termed “smoke burnt.” The soil at the spot was a clay of so tenacious a character that several horse-shoes, some of them of a very old and curious make, have been found in the former quagmire. Several large Roman urns have been found in, or near, Horncastle, and are preserved among the treasures of the late Mechanics’ Institute, having been presented to the town by the sole surviving trustee, Mr. Joseph Willson, to form, with other objects, the nucleus of a local museum at some future time. Engravings of these also are given, with a Paper by Rev. E. Trollope, the late Bishop Suffragan of Nottingham, in the abovementioned Journal, at p. 210.
At Ashby Puerorum, so called because certain lands in the parish go to pay for the choristers of Lincoln Cathedral, in the year 1794, a labourer, cutting a ditch, discovered, three feet
below the surface, a Roman sepulture, a stone chest squared and dressed with much care, in which was deposited an urn of strong glass of greenish hue. The chest was of freestone, such as is common on Lincoln heath. The urn, of elegant shape, contained human bones nearly reduced to ashes, and among them a small lacrimatory of very thin green glass. [110a]
On the Mareham road, on the south side of Horncastle, beyond the Black Swan inn, was a Roman burial ground, and several cinerary urns and some coffins have been discovered there. One stone coffin now stands in the back premises of Mr. James Isle, near to the corner where the Spilsby and Boston roads meet. In connection with this subject, I may here mention the most recent archæological “find” in Horncastle. While digging gravel in a pit recently opened in a garden at the back of Queen Street, not far from the Mareham Road, in 1897, the pick of the labourer struck against a hard substance, about two feet below the surface, which, on examination, proved to be an ancient coffin. It was constructed, except the lid, of one sheet of lead, slit at the corners to allow its being doubled up to form the sides and ends. The coffin was 5ft. 2in. in length, and within were the remains of a skeleton, pronounced by experts to be that of a female. A few days later a second lead coffin was found, similar to the former, except that it was 5ft. 7in. long, and the skeleton was pronounced to be that of a man. Both coffins lay east and west. The present writer was asked to investigate the matter. On enquiry, it was found that, about 24 years before, three lead coffins had been found within 100 yards of the same spot; they were sold for old lead and melted down. [110b] As Horncastle was the old Roman station Banovallum, the question arose whether these coffins were Roman, or of later, date. The orientation of both implied that they were Christian. After much interesting correspondence, the writer obtained the information from an antiquary of
note, that if the lead was pure it would be of post-Roman date, if it contained an admixture of tin it would most probably be Roman. Analysis of the lead was made by a professional, which gave “percentage of tin 1.65 to 97.08 of lead, 1.3 of oxygen, which implied that the persons buried were Romans, as well as Christians. A peculiar feature in these burials was that there were lumps of lime about the skeletons. I find, however, that some years ago a lead coffin was discovered near the Roman road, which passes through the parish of Bow, containing a skeleton with lime. [111] From its position near the Roman road we should infer that this was a Roman burial, and the presence of lime confirms the origin of the Horncastle coffins. The lime was probably used as a preservative. One of the coffins was sold for a collection in Manchester, the other was bought by public subscription, to be preserved for a future local museum. In the same gravel pit, a few days after the finding of the coffins, the labourer’s tool struck against another object, which proved to be an earthenware vessel, probably a Roman urn, but it was so shattered that he threw the fragments away, and they could not be recovered. It was described as being about 10 inches high, of a brown colour, and bearing traces of a pattern running round it.
Several old coins have been found in Horncastle, and some at Tattershall. As to the latter place, Allen, in his “History,” vol. ii., p. 72, and Weir (“Historical Account of Lincolnshire,” vol. i., p. 302), say that several Roman coins have been found, but they do not specify what they were. There were two so-called “Roman camps” in what is called Tattershall Park, this being supposed to be the Roman station Durobrivis. But, alas! “Jam seges est, ubi Troja fuit”: the plough has eliminated the camps from the field of view. Roman coins would be a natural result of a Roman station. It should not, however, be forgotten that Gough, Camden, and other authorities pronounce these camps to have been of British origin. The earlier Britons used mainly a brass coinage, or iron bars (utuntur aut aere, aut taleis ferreis, says Cæsar, Bell. Gall., v. 12); so that there should not be much difficulty in deciding whether the coins were those of British or Roman occupants. Taught by the Romans, the later Britons probably coined considerably. The oldest
specimens known to be coined at Lincoln bear the name of King Arthur. Camden and Speed give several. At Horncastle, the oldest coin found was British, having on one side, amid mystic circles, the figure of a “horse rampant,” indicative of the reverence in which the horse was held by the Druids. [112a] Stukeley says, in his Diary, “a coign I got of Carausius found at Hornecastle. It had been silvered over. The legend of the reverse is obscure. It seems to be a figure, sitting on a coat of armour, or trophy, with a garland in her left hand, and (legend) Victorii Aug.” [112b] Silver coins of Vespasian, Lucius Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, and Volusianus, a large brass coin of Trajan, middle brass of Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Trajan, Hadrian, Domitian, Antoninus Pius, Faustina the elder, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Lucius Verus, and Faustina the younger, and several more. [112c] In December, 1898, a coin was found by a son of Mr. W. K. Morton, bookseller, while playing in the garden at Onslow House, which proved to be one of the Emperor Constantine.
In deepening the bed of the river Bain to form the canal, in 1802, an ornamental brass spur, part of a brass crucifix, and a dagger, were found together, at a short distance from the north basin of the canal; and the writer once found, some quarter of a mile out of Horncastle, on Langton hill, the rowell of a spur, with very long spikes, probably at one time belonging to a cavalier at the battle of Winceby. He has also in his possession a pair of brass spurs, found not far from Winceby, massive and heavy, the spikes of the rowell being an inch in length.
Let us now return to Woodhall Spa; and on the way pause for a moment on the moor. We have already mentioned a curious character, by name Dawson, but more commonly called “Tab-shag,” who, within the memory of the writer and many more, lived as a kind of squatter, in his sod-built hut, close to “The Tower.” A sort of living fossil was this individual, short in stature, dark in complexion, and with a piercing, almost uncanny, eye; roughly clad, and looking as though he were something of a stranger to soap and water. “What’s in a name?” said
love-sick Juliet. Yet the name which clung to this eccentric person probably had its significance. In one of the “Magic Songs” of the Finns (given in “Folklore,” vol. i., No. iii., p. 827) a sort of demon is described as “Old Shaggy,” “the horror of the land,” “reared on a heather clump,” “living on the lee side of a stone,” corresponding much to the home and haunts of our Tab-shag. Brogden [113] says “Shag-foal” means “a hobgoblin supposed to haunt certain places,” and a writer in the “Archæological Review” (for January, 1890) says that “Shag” is an old term for an elf, or Brownie, or “goblin dwarf.” He adds, “The Hog-boy, or Howe-boy, of the Orkneys, in Lincolnshire is pronounced Shag-boy.” An old lady, born at the beginning of the eighteenth century, is quoted, in “The Cornhill Magazine” (August, 1882) as saying she had often heard of fairies and shag boys, but had never seen one herself, “though lasses were often skeart (i.e., scared, frightened) at them.” And the weird-looking figure of Tab-shag, living in the peculiar way he did, in a kind of “brock,” or “how,” of his own construction, was not altogether unlike that of one of the “How folk,” the “little people,” believed in by our superstitious forefathers, and whose memory is perpetuated in the Folk’s glove (digitalis) of our heath; as he squatted on his “faerie-knowe” on the lee side of the old Tower, or roamed over the dreary moor at nightfall to startle the belated wayfarer.
What may have been the meaning of the other element in his soubriquet is not so easy to say. There is a Cornish (and probably British) word “Tab,” which means turf (“Archæol. Journ.” vol. ii., No. 3, p. 199), and that would suit this dweller on the heath; but it is more likely that “Tab” had a reference to the cat, “Tabby” being the term for a brindled cat. And Bishop Harsnet, in his curious book on “The Superstitions of the Day” (1605), says a witch, or elf, “can take the form of hare, mouse, or cat.”
Tabby is really a corruption of Tibby, and that is from Tybalt, the name of puss in the old Beast Epic of the middle ages. Ben Johnson uses “tiberts” for cats; and Mercutio, in “Romeo and Juliet” (Act. iii., sc. 1) addresses Tybalt, when wishing to annoy him, as “Tybalt, you rat catcher . . . King of cats” (Folk-etymology).
This prowler on the heath might well be likened to pussy prowling after mice, or higher
game. [114a] But elfs and bogies have now vanished from our sylvan glades, as the will o’ the wisp has from the fens and marshes, where the present writer has seen it. Drainage, and schools, and newspapers have banished alike such phenomena, and the belief in them; and Tab-shag, like many another equally harmless, and equally perhaps misunderstood, creature, will soon be forgotten.
One more antiquarian discovery may here be noticed. Much interest was excited by an ancient canoe which was unearthed near Brigg, in North Lincolnshire, in the year 1886, while some excavators were working on the east side of the river Ancholme. It was constructed out of a single tree, which must have been a very large oak. It was 48ft. in length; its width 5ft. at the widest part, and 4ft. at the narrowest. It had three transverse stays, also cut out of the solid. It was distant from the present river about 40 yards, lying due east and west, on what must have been a sloping beach. It was completely buried in a bed of alluvial clay; one end being 5ft. below the surface, and the other 9ft. below. It is fully described in an article, written by T. Tindall Wildridge, in “Bygone Lincolnshire” (1st series). The writer gives other instances of similar discoveries—in the Medway in 1720, in the Rother (Kent) in 1822, on the Clyde, etc.; various such boats, indeed, have been found on the Clyde, and, in one case, what is further interesting, the boat had within it a beautifully-finished stone celt, thus connecting it with the race of, probably, the later stone period. Several finds of this kind have occurred in our own river, the Witham, or near it.
In digging for the foundations of a house in the upper part of the High Street, Lincoln, some 80 or 90 years ago, a boat was discovered fastened by a chain to a post, [114b] the spot being several yards higher than the present level of the Witham; thus showing that, when the Witham was a tidal river, it rose at times considerably higher than it does now.
In 1816 an ancient canoe was found, [115a] some 8 feet below the surface, in cutting a drain, parallel to the Witham, about two miles below Lincoln. This, like the Brigg boat, was hollowed out of a single oak, 38ft. long, and 3ft. at the widest part. Another was found in 1818, in cutting a drain not far from the last, but was unfortunately destroyed by the workmen before they knew what it was. Its length was about the same as that of the previous boat, but it was 4½ft. wide. Two more similar canoes—“dugouts,” as they were technically termed—were found about the same time in drain-cutting, in the same vicinity; and one of these was presented to the British Museum. [115b] The Fen men used to call their boats “shouts,” from the Dutch “schuyt,” a wherry. They propelled them along the drains by a long pole, called a “poy.” It would be too much to say that all these vessels belonged to pre-historic man, because of the presence in one case of a flint implement, connecting it with the neolithic period. Such boats have probably been used by all nations, at early stages of their existence. The Greek writer Hippocrates, about 400 b.c., mentions the “monoxyle,” or one-tree boat; one has been found in the Tunhovd Fyord in Norway. The Russians of the 9th century, in the neighbourhood of Novgorod, used them, laden with slaves for the market. The Goths of the 3rd century, as stated by Strabo, swept the Black Sea with them; and Professor Righ says that they have been used until comparatively modern times in Scandinavia; but at any rate these found in our fens belong to a period, apparently, when the fens were not yet formed, or, at most, were forming.—Article on the Brigg Boat in “Byegone Lincolnshire.”
We now come to a case nearer home. The visitor who takes a stroll from the cross roads by St. Andrew’s Church, along the Tattershall road, shortly after crossing the pellucid sewer, will see a large pond on his right, close to a farm yard; and on the other side, eastward, are two ponds, about 80 yards from the road. All these ponds are pits dug for clay, which was put on the somewhat light land to strengthen it. The present course of the sewer, now running in a straight line due east and west, from Kirkby lane to the Witham, is artificial. It formerly pursued a tortuous course, and, on
reaching the Tattershall road, flowed southward along the west side of that road, past what is now the Abbey Lodge public-house, dividing into more than one channel on its way to the Witham. This change was made soon after the Kirkstead estate passed, by purchase, from the Ellison family to that of the present proprietor, in the year 1839, when great improvements were made in the farms; the woods, [116] which then reached from the Moor ground to the Tattershall road, were cleared away, and much land brought into cultivation which had hitherto been waste, or forest. In digging for clay some 150 yards eastward from the road, and about the same distance, or a little more, south of the present course of the sewer, the labourers came upon the skeleton of a boat several feet below the surface. I am not able to discover whether it was a so-called “dug-out,” formed from one trunk, or constructed, as modern boats are, of several planks. Probably it would be the latter. But its position several feet below the surface would seem to imply considerable antiquity; while its mere existence would seem to indicate that either the sewer was formerly a larger stream than it is now, to float such a boat, or that the waters of the Witham, when unconfined by such a bank as the present, extended to this point inland. A circumstance which confirms the supposition of the sewer being larger is the fact that about this same place it is known that there was a mill-dam, and doubtless the stream turned the mill-wheel. The boat in question may not, therefore, like some of those previously mentioned, have belonged to pre-historic man; and yet it might well lay claim to an antiquity sufficiently hoar to make it a relic of some interest. But, though so long preserved beneath the surface, once above ground, it soon perished, and even the memory of it only remains with a few.
The visitor to Woodhall, who has antiquarian proclivities, may well spend an enjoyable day at Lincoln, not only for the sake of seeing the
Cathedral, which is unsurpassed by any in the kingdom, or, rather, as has been said by no less an authority than Ruskin, “worth any two others”; or of visiting the Castle, founded by the Conqueror; but there are many other objects of much interest. One of the most important discoveries of recent years is the remains of a Roman basilica, found beneath the house of Mr. Allis, builder, in Bailgate, where a small fee is charged for admission. This has been pronounced by an authority, the late Precentor Venables, to have been “the finest Roman building in the kingdom.” Its length was 250 feet, width 70 feet, and it had stately pillars rising to a height of 30 feet. Beyond this is the fine old Newport Arch, the only Roman city gate in the kingdom. “The noblest remnant of this sort in Britain,” says Leland. He will do well to furnish himself with the “Pocket Guide to Lincoln,” by the late Sir Charles Anderson, one of our greatest authorities, and “A Walk through Lincoln,” by the late learned Precentor Venables, a compendium rich in historic lore. Either of these will prove a valuable Vade mecum, but the former, perhaps, more for the study, to be perused before his visit; the latter a manual for the street.
It may be added that, within quite recent years, the visitor to Lincoln found himself at once, on landing from the train, in an atmosphere of antiquity, for, on emerging from the station of the G. N. Railway, he would see over the door of a shop, full of modern utensils, facing the gate of the station yard, the name “Burrus,” Cooper, a genuine Roman patronymic, the bearer of which we may well suppose to have been a lineal descendant of some early Roman colonist, settled at Lindum Colonia, “a citizen of no mean city,” for Precentor Venables reminds us (“A Walk through Lincoln,” p. 9) it is one (with Colchester and Cologne) of the only three cities which still preserve, embedded in their names, the traces of their ancient distinction as Roman colonies.
By way of whetting the appetite for further enquiry, I give here a succinct catena of historic items, shewing the many interesting memories which cluster round our ancient cathedral city.
Lincoln was the British Caer-Lind-coit, the “Fortress (or City) of River and Wood,” these being the chief features of the position; the river, a sacred British stream, which carved out for itself its channel through “the Lincoln Gap”; and the woods (Welsh, or British, ‘coed,’ a wood) which stretched far away for
miles around it; of the remains of which De la Prime says, “infinite millions of roots and bodies of trees have been found, of 30 yards length and above, and have been sold to make masts and keels for ships . . . as black as ebony, and very durable.” [118a] Then, as the city took the last element of its name from its woods (coeds), so the people who dwelt around were called Coitani, or woodmen [118b]; corresponding to the name given to the dwellers in the fens, Gir-vii, or men of the cars. Lincoln was the royal city of the Coitani.
During the Roman occupation the Britons were christianized. After the Romans left the country, the people having, through the long period of peace, almost lost the art of war, the British chief Vortigern called in the Saxons from the continent to aid him against the inroads of the Picts and Scots; and Hengist and Horsa, Saxon chiefs, came with a large following and settled in the country (circa a.d. 450). Vortigern, with their assistance, repelled those northern marauders, and himself married Rowena, daughter of Hengist, giving to Hengist, in return for his aid, considerable lands—“multos agros,” says Matthew of Westminster [118c]—in Lindsey.
But these so-called friends soon proved to be enemies, and, in 462, seized London, York, and Lincoln. Vortimer, son of Vortigern, died and was buried at Lincoln. Vortigern himself retired into Wales, and was burnt in his castle there, in 485.
Matthew of Westminster records that King Arthur of “the round table” pursued a Saxon army as far as Lincoln, having defeated them, with a loss of 6,000 men, in a wood near Barlings.
The Saxons, being ultimately victorious, re-introduced Paganism, the names of their gods still surviving in our day-names, Tuesday (Tuisco), Wednesday (Woden), Thursday (Thor), Friday (Friga), Saturday (Seater).
Among the kingdoms of the Saxon Heptarchy, Mercia was the largest and most important division, [118d] founded by the chief Crida in a.d. 584, and Lincoln is said to have been its capital city.
Paulinus preached Christianity among the Saxons (circa a.d. 630), and converted Blecca, the governor of Lincoln, where a stone church was built, said by some to have been the first stone church in the kingdom, [119a] that at Glastonbury being made of wattles. The Venerable Bede says it was of excellent workmanship. [119b] Two churches in Lincoln have claimed to represent this ancient fabric.
At a later period the Humber formed a highway for the marauding Danes, who overran the country, and, if in nothing else, have left their traces in every village-name ending in “by.” In their time Lincoln was the first city of the Pentapolis, or Quinque Burgi, of Fifburg, a league of the five confederate towns, Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, and Stamford. Before the Norman Conquest Lincoln was the fourth city in the kingdom, and during the 11th and 12th centuries it was one of the greatest trading towns in the kingdom. The castle was founded by the Conqueror, a.d. 1086, being one of four which he erected at York, Nottingham, Hastings and here; and 166 “mansions” were destroyed to provide space for it. [119c]
The Empress Maud, in 1140, took up her residence in Lincoln, and strongly fortified the castle. It was besieged by Stephen, who was defeated and made prisoner at the battle of Lincoln. A prophecy had long been current to this effect,—
“The first crowned head that enters Lincoln’s walls,
His reign proves stormy, and his kingdom falls.”
On Stephen’s restoration he visited Lincoln in triumph, wearing his crown; but subsequent events verified the prediction.
At Lincoln, in 1200, William the Lion, of Scotland, did homage to King John of England.
On the death of Queen Eleanor, the beloved wife of Edward I., at Harby, a small hamlet of North Clifton, Notts, the embalmed body was taken to Westminster for burial, but the viscera were brought to Lincoln and interred in the Cathedral, a.d. 1290.
In 1301 Edward I. held a Parliament in Lincoln, to decide on sending letters to Rome to Pope Boniface VIII., asserting England’s independence of the Pope.
In 1305 Edward I. kept his court in Lincoln a whole winter, and held another Parliament, in which he confirmed the Magna Charta of King John. [120a]
A Parliament was also held in Lincoln by Edward II., and another, in his first year, by Edward III.
In 1352 the staple of wool was removed from Flanders to England; and Lincoln, with Westminster, Chichester, Canterbury, Bristol, and Hull, was made a staple town [120b] for that commodity.
John, of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III., resided in Lincoln Castle. His son, “Henry of Bolingbroke,” afterwards Henry IV., was the only king born in this county. John of Gaunt married Catherine Swynford, sister of Chaucer the poet. She and a daughter were interred in the Cathedral, on the south side of the altar steps. The royalty of Lincoln Castle was shewn by a shield over a doorway, bearing the arms of England and France, quarterly, which were shewn in Buck’s engraving, date 1727.
In the year 1386 Richard II. visited Lincoln and held a Court in the Episcopal Palace. He granted to the Mayor and his successors the privilege of having a sword carried before them in civic processions.
Henry VI. visited Lincoln and held a Court at the Bishop’s Palace in 1440.
Henry VII. visited Lincoln in 1486, and was right royally entertained.
On the dissolution of monasteries [120c] by Henry VIII., Lincoln became the headquarters of 60,000 insurgents, who, by the subsequent “Pilgrimage of Grace,” made their protest against the spoliation, a.d. 1536.
In 1541 Henry VIII. made a progress to York, and, although he had called Lincolnshire one of
“the most brute and beastly shires in the realm,” he, on his way, visited Lincoln in great state. It is recorded that he found in the Cathedral Treasury 2,621 ozs. of gold and 4,285 ozs. of silver, besides jewels of great value.
On the commencement of the Civil Wars between Charles I. and his Parliament, the King came to Lincoln, where he received assurances of support from the Corporation and principal inhabitants. He convened there a meeting of the nobles, knights, gentry, and freeholders of the county. Lincoln Castle was taken by the troops of Cromwell, under the Earl of Manchester, in the year 1644.
James I. visited Lincoln a.d. 1617, hunted wild deer on Lincoln Heath, touched 50 persons for “the King’s evil,” attended service in the Cathedral, and cockfighting at “The Sign of the George.” [121a]
In 1695 William of Orange visited Lincoln, but it is on record that, being entertained the day before by Sir John Brownlow, at Belton, “the king was exceeding merry there, and drank very freely, which was the occasion, when he came to Lincoln, he could take nothing but a porringer of milk.” [121b] In Lincolnshire phrase, he had been “very fresh.”
Reviewing these historic items, I think we may say, with the historian Freeman, that Lincoln “kept up its continuous being, as a place of note and importance, through Roman, English, Danish, and Norman Conquests,” and that it has a record of which we may fairly be proud, as meriting the praise which old Alexander Necham, in his treatise “De divina Sapientia,” bestowed upon it,”
Lindisiæ columen Lincolnia, sive columna,
Munifica felix gente, repleta bonis.
I have said little of the Cathedral. That is, indeed, too large a subject. The visitor must see it for himself. I have referred to the opinion of Mr. Ruskin. His exact words, written at the time of the opening of the School of Art, to the Mayor, were these: “I have always held, and am prepared against all comers to maintain, that the Cathedral of Lincoln is out and out the most precious piece of architecture in the British islands, worth any two other cathedrals we have got.” [121c] Viewed in the distance, from the neighbourhood of Woodhall Spa, its three towers
seem to coalesce into one, almost of pyramidal form, to crown the hill on which it stands. That form was once more lofty, and more pointed, for each of the three towers had a spire. An entry in the Minster Archives records the fall of the largest—ruina magnæ pyramidis—in 1547. In 1808 the two other lesser spires were taken down, not without strong remonstrances and much skirmishing in the public papers and elsewhere, as to the propriety of the act. The Lincoln people proved themselves more law-abiding than they had been on a previous occasion, for when, in 1726, the Chapter had decided to remove them, there was a very considerable riot, called “The Religious Mob,” of which an amusing account was found among some MS.
“Tuesday night, Sept. 20, 1726, a mob was raised in Lincoln to hinder the puling down the 2 west End spirs of the Cathedrall, which was then began to be puled down it was computed ther was aBout 4 or 500 men. On Wednesday following by orders of the Marsters of the Church sent an order to the Mayor and Aldermen desiering them to send a Belman through the town with this cry, whereas there as Been a Tumult for this 2 or 3 Long Day, upon puling the 2 west end Spirs of the Cauthed Church of Lincoln, this is to give satisfaction that they have made a stop’ and that the spirs shall be repaired again with all speed.”
On hearing this important proclamation “the mob with one accord gave a great shout and said ‘God bless the King.’”
The emeute terminated with no more serious results than some headaches the next day, as the beer barrels in the Chancellor’s cellars were broached and drained to the last drop by the exultant crowd. [122]
An interesting feature of Lincoln is the ancient “Jew’s House,” situated on the left hand of “the street which is called strait,” on the “Steep Hill.” The Jews of old, notwithstanding the scorn with which they were often treated, were persons of no small consideration to almost all ranks, from the Sovereign downwards. Their almost instinctive propensity for amassing wealth gave them a powerful lever for moving any who were in need of the moneylender; and there were few who were not. Through them, and sometimes through them alone, the sovereign could indirectly break the power of his unruly barons, and, naturally, in
a city of commerce such as Lincoln was, as well as the not unfrequent seat of Parliament, and the residence of powerful members of the nobility, the Jews were an important element in the population. Among the “Pipe Rolls” of the “Public Records,” there are frequent mentions of them; the famous Aaron and his kinsfolk figuring largely among them. I here give a few brief extracts taken from those Rolls (31 Henry I. [1130–1]—1 John [1199–1200]).
William of the Isle renders count of the ferm of Lincolnshire . . . and (cr.) by payment of King’s Writ to Aaron the Jew, £29 8s. l0d. . . . owes £12 4s. 9d. He renders count of the same debt in the treasury £2 6s. 9d. new money, for £2 4s. 9d. blank money, and £10 in two tallies, and is quits.—12 Hen. II., Rot. i. mem. i. Linc.
The Sheriff accounts for the ferm of the counties, And (cr.) by payment by King’s writ to Aaron of Lincoln and Ysaac Jew £80.—22 Hen. II., Dorset and Somerset.
Benedict brother of Aaron, and Benedict son of Isaach, and Benedict son of Jaocb render count of £6 for one mark of gold to be quits of the pledges of Isaac son of Comitissa.—25 Hen. II., City of Lincoln.
The following looks very like Jews leaguing together to “Jew” a fellow Jew:—Brun the Jew owes £400 of the fine he made with the King at his transfretation; but they ought to be required from Aaron of Lincoln, and Ysáác, and Abraham, son of Rabbi, and Ysáác of Colchester, his sureties, who have acknowledged that they received those £400 from his chattels.—28 Hen. II., Lond. and Midd.
Benedict, brother of Aaron, renders count of £6 for one mark of gold, to have in peace his mortgage of Barewe (i.e., Barrow). Abraham, son of Aaron, owes £6 for one mark of gold to have his debts (settled).—29 Hen. II., Linc.
Brun the Jew renders count of £1,000 out of the 2,000 marks of the fine he made with the King, and of which Aaron of Lincoln has to answer for 500 marks.—30 Hen. II., Lond.
The following again looks suspiciously like a bit of Jewish sharp practice:—Jacob, sister’s son of Aaron, and Benedict his son, owe one mark of gold, because they kept back the charters of Benedict of the Bail, which had been acquitted.—31 Hen. II., Linc.
Accordingly, as a succeeding entry, we find that:—Benedict of the Bail owes 4 bezants, for him, and for fat Manasses, and Vives son of Deulcresse, and Josoe, son of Samuel, to have
their charters from Benedict, son of Jacob, and from Jacob, sister’s son of Aaron.—31 Hen. II., Linc.
But, after all, honesty is the best policy, as shewn in the result of crafty dealing, in the following:—Benedict, son of Aaron, owes 20 marks for right to £4 8s. 8d., against Meus the Jew of Lincoln; where Benedict has to pay more than three times the amount of the debt to obtain it.
The following seems to point to a playful practical joke:—Jacob, Aaron’s sister’s son, renders count of 20 marks, for an amerciament, for taking off a priest’s cap, and for the deed of Gerard de Sailby.—33 Hen. II., Linc.
Aaron Jew, of Lincoln, Abraham son of Rabbi, and Isaac of Colchester, owe £400 of the chattels of Brun the Jew, which they received in old money, of the fine which he made with the King at his crossing over the straits (otherwise called his “transfretation”).—1 Ric. I., Lond. and Weston.
Of the debts of Aaron of Lincoln, 430 are named, amounting to about £1,500, a very large sum in those days.—Rolls, 3–5 Ric. I.
Here again we have a case of Jewish trickery:—Ursell, son of Pulcella, owes 5 marks because he did not give up to Ysaac his debt, and Matathias the Jew owes half a mark because he has confessed what he previously denied.—3 Ric. I., Linc.
In the time of Richard I. anti-semitic feeling ran high. In a Roll, 3 Ric. I., Chent (Kent), we find:—The town of Ospringe owes 20 marks because it did not make a hue and cry for a slain Jew. In another, 4 Ric. I., we find:—Richard Malebysse renders count for 20 marks, for having his land again, which had been seized in the hand of the king on account of the slaughter of Jews at York. William de Percy, Knight, Roger de Ripun, and Alan Malekuke owe 5 marks for the same. In Lincoln, however, it has been generally supposed that the Jews escaped violent treatment, but in a Roll, 3 Ric. I., Linc., there is a list of 80 names of men of the city fined, as “amerciament for assault on the Jews.”
There are several more mentions of transactions of Lincoln Jews, but these will suffice.—“Archæol. Review,” Vol. ii., No. vi., pp. 398–410.
There were at one time 52 churches in Lincoln besides the Cathedral; now they number 15. There were also in the city 14 monasteries. Honorius, the fifth Archbishop of Canterbury,
was consecrated by Paulinus in Lincoln, in 627.
Services in some of the churches have been held somewhat irregularly even in this cathedral city, for in answer to queries from the Bishop in 1743, it was found that in St. Bennet’s there was divine service once a month, and twice on the greater festivals. St. Mark’s had services on the three greater festivals, and four times a year besides. St. Martin’s had services four or five times a year, St. Mary le Wigford once every Sunday. An epitaph in the churchyard of the last-named church, on an old tombstone, a specimen of Lindocolline wit, runs as follows:—
Here lies one—believe it, if you can—
Who, though an attorney, was an honest man. [125]
We have only to add that when Remigius of Fecamp, the first Norman Bishop, presided over the See of Lincoln, his diocese was far the largest in England, extending from the Humber to the Thames, and embracing no less than eight counties. It was reduced to something like its present dimensions on the appointment of Bishop Kaye in 1827; except that, since then, a portion has been taken off and included in the new Diocese of Southwell. Truly our bishops were princes in those olden times.
Yet, interesting as Lincoln is, to the archæologist one thing is lacking, viz., a fitting museum, wherein to bring together, tabulate, and conserve the many precious relics of the past, which are now scattered about in private hands, and liable to all sorts of accidents. When we visit such collections as those in the museums at Newcastle or Nottingham—even the limited and crowded, but very interesting, one at Peterborough, and, above all the very fine collection (especially of Roman antiquities) at York—we are tempted to exclaim, with a sigh of regret, “O! si sic omnes!” At Lincoln, colossal fortunes have been, made in the old “staple city,” now vastly grown, and growing, in its trade; will not some one, or more, of her wealthy sons come forward, and build, and endow, a museum worthy of the place, and while there are yet so many priceless treasures available to enrich it? The Corporation, indeed, have, in the year of grace 1904, commenced at last a movement toward establishing a county museum, but no site is yet secured for it. A few objects, chiefly of Natural History, are already placed for safety in the Castle, till better accommodation can be provided.
We now return to some remains, possessing considerable antiquarian interest, in our neighbourhood, within easy reach for the visitor to Woodhall Spa, and belonging to a period later than that of the Briton, or Roman, or even the Saxon and the Dane; when, as the poet says:—
Another language spread from coast to coast,
Only perchance some melancholy stream,
Or some indignant hills old names preserve,
When laws, and creeds, and people, all are lost.
The name Woodhall implies the existence, at one time, of a hall in a wood, and that of sufficient importance to give its name to the whole demesne. [126a] Of such a building we have the traces.
The reader of these pages will have learnt that Woodhall Spa is but a modern creation, in what was, not long ago, an outlying corner of the parish from which it gets its name. The original village of Woodhall, comprising a few scattered farmhouses and cottages near the church, is distant some four miles from the Spa. The church will be more fully described in another chapter; it is here merely referred to as a landmark in connection with this “hall.” Immediately adjoining the churchyard, on the south and south-east, are a farmhouse and buildings of no great age; but directly south of these, and within 150 yards of the church, is the site of the ancient Wood-Hall. There is the hollow of a former moat, enclosing an area of about 120 feet by 90 feet, and beyond this can be traced the channel of a dike, which would seem to have connected the moat with a small, but limpid, stream, [126b] locally called, by the Norse term, “beck,” which rises in the gravel, some mile and a half distant eastward, in the parish of Thornton, not far from Langton hill; and which, passing Woodhall, finds its way, by Poolham and Stixwould, into the Witham. Covering a space of some two acres, there are mounds, beneath which, doubtless, was the debris of what must, in their day, have been extensive buildings. They are dotted about with
gnarled hawthorns of considerable antiquity; but otherwise the wood is now conspicuous only by its absence.
Mr. Denton says (“England in the 15th Century,” p. 252, Bell & Sons, 1888), “the ancient hall or manor house was usually moated for the purpose of defence,” in times which were apt to be lawless; and in the case of the “Moated Grange” connected with a greater religious house, there was the further advantage of the ready supply of fish for the restricted diet of the monks, amongst whom, except for sick members, animal food was prohibited.
I have said that the Wood-Hall, or Hall in the Wood, must have been sufficiently important to give its name to the demesne. It may be doubted, however, whether the name Woodhall has always applied to the whole parish, now so called. In Camden’s “Britannia,” written about 1586, Gibson’s Edition being 1695, although the names of all the adjoining parishes appear in his map, that of Woodhall is absent, [127] and in its place we find “Buckland.” This latter name still survives in “Buckland lane,” given in the Award Map, in the north of the parish, and near to which, within the writer’s memory, there remained a tract of waste, and wild woodland. This name, therefore, is interesting, as indicating the former presence of the wild deer in our neighbourhood. It is, as it were, the still uneffaced “slot” of the roaming stag,—a footprint in the sand of time, still visible. And, since this Buckland lane leads to nowhere beyond itself, we may well imagine it to have been a sort of cul-de-sac, a sylvan retreat, in which especially the antlered herds did congregate from the larger wood of the Manor Hall; and, in connection with this, we may notice that, not far from this lane, there still remain two woods, named Dar-wood, which may be taken, by an easy transition, to represent Deer-wood; further indicating the wild forest character of the demesne. Buckland lane terminates at a small enclosure, now known, for some unrecorded reason, as “America,” the sole plot of land, besides the churchyard, remaining in the parish attached to the church. The modern incumbent may indulge his fancy by supposing that, notwithstanding
the strict monastic rule, this bit of church land may, in the olden day, occasionally have furnished a “fatte buck” for the table of the lordly Abbot of Kirkstead. [128a] In the Liber Regis, or King’s Book, issued by Commissioners under Henry VIII., the benefice is called Wood Hall; but it would seem, from what has been given above, that it was not until a later period that the whole Civil Parish became known by that name. There is nothing to show who were the occupants of this Wood Hall, but, until the Reformation, they probably held it in fee from the Abbots of Kirkstead. One little evidence of the connection with the great religious house survived, till within the last few years, in the Holy Thistle (Carduus Marianus), which grew in an adjoining field, as it also did about the ruin of Kirkstead Abbey, but it is now, it is believed, extinct. The monks found an innocent recreation in gardening, but they are gone, and even their plants have followed them.
In this same parish, and within two miles of this old Wood Hall, are the traces of another similar ancient establishment, viz., High-hall. We have already stated that Brito, son of Eudo, the Norman Baron of Tattershall, gave to the Abbots of Kirkstead two portions of the parish of Woodhall, which would seem to imply that he retained the third portion for himself. [128b] In that case this residence of the superior Lord of the Manor might naturally be distinguished from the Wood Hall by the title of the High Hall; and the traces of it which remain indicate that it was on a larger scale than the former. The position is in the second field northward from the road called “‘Sandy lane,” which is the boundary between the Woodhall Spa Civil district and Old Woodhall, and just outside, westward, the present High-hall Wood, which
formerly extended further than it now does, so as completely to shelter this hall from the north and east. There are traces of three moated enclosures, from 70 yards to 100 yards in length east and west, and from 40 yards to 60 yards in width, covering an area of some three acres. Here, also, as at Woodhall, the moats, for the sake of fresh water, are connected by a channel with a running stream near at hand, though now at this point only small, named Reed’s Beck, which rises within the High-Hall Wood.
At what date this old Hall fell into decay we have no means of knowing. The turf which now covers its foundations has at some time been levelled, and beyond slight indications of walls in the central of the three enclosures, the moats alone survive to shew its extent. The writer is in possession of an interesting relic, an old pistol of curious workmanship, which was found near the place by Mr. Atkinson, of the farm adjoining, in digging a ditch. The peculiar make of the weapon would seem to indicate that it was of the date of about Charles I.; [129] in which case we may suppose that the Hall was at that time occupied as a residence, and the pistol, being of French manufacture and rather handsomely chased, may have belonged to the wealthy occupant of the mansion; or, perhaps more likely, may have been part of the accoutrements of a cavalier of rank in the Royalist army, which, after their defeat at the battle of Winceby, near Horncastle, Oct. 11, 1643, was dispersed over the whole of this neighbourhood; and a fugitive officer may have sought shelter and hospitality at the High-Hall.
It is not a little remarkable that there should have been these two Halls, so near to each other and within the one parish; but they represent to us the lay, and the ecclesiastical, powers that were.
There were, also, other large, moated, ancient residences in our immediate neighbourhood, but in this chapter I confine myself to the two situated in Woodhall. The others will claim attention hereafter.
CHAPTER IX. ARCHÆOLOGY—continued.
It was stated in the preceding chapter, that, besides the two ancient moated mansions in the parish of Woodhall, there described, there are other remains of a like character in our immediate neighbourhood. I will first mention a residence, the site of which I have not been able definitely to fix, but it would probably be somewhere near the Manor House of Woodhall Spa. I have before me a copy of a will preserved at the Probate Office, Lincoln, [131] which begins thus:—“The 6th of Dec., 1608, I, Edmund Sherard of Bracken-End, in the parish of Woodhall, and county of Lincoln, gente., sicke in bodye, but of perfect memorie, do will,” &c. We may pause here to notice that the name “Bracken-End” would seem to imply that the residence stood at an extreme point of what is now “Bracken” wood, and, as the position would naturally be viewed in its geographical relation to the centre of the parish, either to the Woodhall by the parish church, or to the manorial High Hall, this point, we may assume, would be on the far, or south, side of Bracken wood, as the present Manor House is. In a similar manner a row of houses in Kirkstead, from their outlying situation, are called “Town-end.” In an old document, in Latin (Reg. III., D. & C.D. 153), mention is made of “Willelmus Howeson de Howeson-end”; and the residence of Lord Braybrooke, in Cambridgeshire, is named Audley End. There are known to have been a succession of buildings on the site of the present Woodhall Manor House, and we can hardly doubt that the residence here referred to as “Bracken-end” also stood there.
The will is of further interest as shewing the testator’s connection and dealings with members of families of position once, or still, well known in the neighbourhood or county.
His first bequest is (that which is the common lot of us all) “my bodye to the earth whence it came.” He then goes on to bequeath certain sums “To Susanna my weif . . . To Elizabeth Sherard my daughter . . . To my sonne Robert . . . To the child my weif is conceaved with . . . The portions to be payde when my son Robert is xxj. years of age, and my daughters’ portions when they are xx., or shall marrie. My executur to keepe and maintaine my children,” &c. He then wills that, in accordance with “an arbitrament between Sir John Meares, of Awbrowy (Aukborough), in the county of Lincoln, knight,” and another, “with the consent of Willm. Sherard, of Lope-thorpe, in the parish of North Witham, knight, on the one partie, and I, the said Edmund Sherard, of the other partie . . . that the said William Sherard shall be accomptable . . . every yeare, of the goods and chattles of John Sherard, late of Lincoln, gent., deceased” . . . and, “I desire my said brother William Sherard, knight, . . . that he should discharge the same accordinglie to the benefit of my weif and children. Item, that Robert Thomson, my Father-in-law, shall have all my sheepe in Bracken End, which I bought of him, and owe for only fourty of them; that he shall paye to my wief for them vs. iiijd. (5s. 4d.) apeece.” He then mentions as “debts dewe”:—“John Ingrum of Bucknall for sheepe of lord Willoughbie xijli.; Edward Skipwith of Ketsby, gent, for lx. sheep xxvvijli.; and if he refuse the sheepe, to pay to my executrix xls., which the Testator payde for sommering them: Edward Skipwith to be accomptable for the wool of the sayde sheepe for this last year, but (i.e., except) for vli. he hath payde in parts thereof.” “The Lord Clinton oweth for 1000 kiddes. Thomas Brownloe, servant of lord Willoughbie of Knaith, oweth for monev lent him, lvs.”—Prob. at Lincoln 9 Jan. 1608–9.
On these various items we may remark that, from the figures here given, 60 sheep cost 27 pounds, or 9 shillings each, of the money of that date, and for the “sommering” of them was paid 8d. each. In the first case his father-in-law was only able to pay 5s. 4d. each, because the testator still owed him for 40 of them.
The Lord Clinton named as owing for “1000 kiddes” would at that time be residing at Tattershall Castle, which was one of his principal residences, Sempringham being another (Camden’s “Britannia,” p. 478). We here have the thoroughly Lincolnshire word
”kid” for faggot. [133] The name “Lope-thorpe” for the residence of the testator’s brother, Sir William Sherard, is a variation from Lobthorpe. A moat and fish ponds still mark the site of Lobthorpe Hall in North Witham, and there are several monuments in the church of Sir Brownlow Sherard and other members of the family. As there is no mention of the burial of this Edmund Sherard, Gent., of Bracken-end, in the Woodhall parish register, he was doubtless also interred at North Witham.
The “Sir John Meares of Aukborough” mentioned as a party to the “arbitrament” was a member of a very old Lincolnshire family, whose chief seat was Kirton near Boston, Sir John being lord of that manor; and there are several monuments of the family in the church there. Sir Thomas Meares, of Meres, was M.P. for Lincoln in eleven Parliaments, and was knighted at Whitehall in 1660 by Charles II.; and another Thomas Meeres was Member for the county in three Parlaiments temp. Henry VI. The “Edward Skipwith, of Ketsby, Gent.,” also mentioned, is again a scion of one of our very old county families, their chief seat in this neighbourhood having been South Ormsby, to which Ketsby is attached. The church there has a brass of Sir William Skipwith, Knight, his wife (who was a Dymoke) and children. Among the “Lincolnshire Gentry” of 1634
named in a list preserved in the library of the Herald’s College, are Robert Sherard of Gautby, and John Sherard; Robert Meeres of Kirton, and Anthony Meeres of Bonby; Edward Skipwith of Legbourne, Edward Skipwith of Grantham, and Samuel Skipwith of Utterby.
In the person, then, of this former squire of Bracken-end in Woodhall, we have an individual belonging to a family of knightly rank, his friends being members of some of our oldest county aristocracy, and his transactions connected with such Lords paramount as the Baron Willoughby of Knaith and Lord Clinton of Tattershall. I may add that the family is now represented by Lord Sherard of Leitrim, in the Peerage of Ireland, who is connected by marriage with the Reeves of Leadenham, the Whichcotes, and other good Lincolnshire families.
I now proceed to mention a few more of the ancient moated mansions in our neighbourhood. It was mentioned in the last chapter that, besides two portions of the land of the parish of Woodhall being given by Baron Brito, son of Eudo of Tattershall, to the Abbey of Kirkstead, the rectory of that benefice was also in the gift of the Abbot. In like manner the Abbot held lands in Thimbleby, erected a gallows there on which, at different times, several persons were hanged; and he owned the advowson of that benefice; and the present rectory house of that parish, built about 1840, stands on the site of a former residence, which was guarded by a moat. Within this enclosure there is still an ancient well, lined with Spilsby sandstone, of which the church, like most in the neighbourhood, is also built. This well has been said to be “Roman,” [134] but, without venturing to give it so early a date, we may, perhaps, safely say that it belonged to the lesser religious house formerly there existing, as a dependency of the Abbey of Kirkstead. There was, however, a Roman well found a few years ago, at Horncastle, within the old Roman castle walls, at the spot where the National Schools now stand. Similarly, the Abbot of Kirkstead was patron of the benefice of Wispington, another neighbouring parish, by the gift (about 1400) of another and later descendant of Eudo of Tattershall, who owned
a moiety of this parish, the Bishop of Durham holding the other moiety; and, accordingly, here again there are extensive moats, ponds, and mounds, indicating a former large, and strongly protected, residence. Portions of this still form parts of a farmhouse (Mr. Evison’s), and the farm buildings on the same premises, as well as of those now occupied by Mr. Gaunt, whose very name carries us back to the days of the great Norman magnate, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, scarcely less powerful than his ancestor, Gilbert de Gaunt, to whom the Conqueror gave no less than 113 manors; but to John belonged the peculiar distinction of being father of Henry IV., the only sovereign born in our county. This mansion was for some generations the property of a family of substance, named Phillips. The head of this family, in the reign of Elizabeth, is mentioned among those patriotic individuals who subscribed his £25 towards the cost of the Fleet which was intended to repel the Spanish Armada. One of this family, Phillips Glover, who was sheriff for the county in 1727, had a daughter Laura, who married Mr. Robert Vyner, of Eathorpe, Warwickshire, whose family are now amongst our greatest landowners, and draw an almost princely revenue from the Liverpool docks.
We now pass on to another neighbouring moated mansion. About 2½ miles from Woodhall Spa to the east, and only separated from Woodhall parish by a green lane, is White-Hall wood; on the opposite, northern, side of this lane being the High-Hall wood, already mentioned. Both these woods take their names from the old residences contiguous to them. The visitor to Woodhall Spa, if a pedestrian, leaving the road from Woodhall Spa to Horncastle, in that part of it called “Short lane,” because it is so long; after passing the two small woods, called Roughton Scrubs, on his right hand, and just before reaching the slight ascent near Martin bridge, may take to a cart-track, on the left or north side of the road, through a wood, crossing the railway, which here runs almost close to the road; pursuing this track through the wood some 200 yards, and then, turning slightly to the left in a north-westerly direction through two small grass fields, he will find, in an angle on the north side of the wood, a moated enclosure, between 75 and 80 yards square, shewing slight irregularities of the ground, on its northern side, indicating the site of a former building. Outside the moat are
traces of another enclosure; a large depression shews where there was probably a “stew pond” for carp and tench; and the channel of a dyke is seen running north-west till it joins a small ditch, which may probably, at one time, have been a feeder to one of two streams already mentioned as being near the High Hall remains, and named “Odd’s beck.” I may say here, once for all, that the moats and ponds of these large establishments were a matter of considerable importance and care. They were protected from injury by the Acts, 3 Ed. I. and 5 Eliz., c. 21 (Treatise on Old Game Laws, 1725). “The fish-stews were scientifically cultivated, and so arranged that they could be drained at will. When the water was run off from one, the fish were transferred to the next. Oats, barley, and rye grass were then grown in it; when these were reaped it was re-stocked with fish. The ponds were thus sweetened and a supply of food introduced; suitable weeds were also grown on the margin, and each pond, or moat, was treated in the same way in rotation.”—“Nature and Woodcraft,” by J. Watson.
Nothing now exists of this former mansion above ground, but the moats and mounds cover an area of more than two acres, shewing that it was a large residence. It is in Martin parish. Within the writer’s recollection there were marigolds and other flowers still growing about the spot, survivals from the quondam hall garth, or garden. This was the home of a branch of the Fynes, or Fiennes Clinton, family, whose head, Edward, Lord Clinton and Saye, Lord High Admiral of England, was created Earl of Lincoln by Queen Elizabeth in 1572; the present head of the family being the Duke of Newcastle, whose creation dates from 1756.
The connection of this great family with our neighbourhood came about in this wise. The line of Lord Treasurer Cromwell having become extinct, Henry VII., in 1487, granted the manor and other estates to his mother, Margaret, Countess of Richmond, and in the following year entailed them on the Duke of Richmond. The Duke died without issue; and Henry VIII., in 1520, granted them to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. On the death of the two infant sons of the Duke, surviving their father only a short time, the estates again reverted to the Sovereign; and in 1551 Edwd. VI. granted them to Edward Lord Clinton and Saye, afterwards, as we have said, Earl of Lincoln. These estates included that of the dissolved Abbey of Kirkstead, and other properties in this neighbourhood;
and among them the White Hall and its appurtenances. When the earldom of Lincoln, through a marriage, became absorbed in the Dukedom of Newcastle, several of these estates remained with junior branches of the Clinton, or Fiennes, family. Of the particular branch residing at White Hall, probably the most distinguished member was one whose monumental tablet is still in Roughton church; the ministrations of which church they would seem, judging by entries in the registers, to have attended, in preference to the church of Martin, in which parish the estate was situated. The lengthy inscription on this tablet is as follows:—“Here lies the body of Norreys Fynes, Esq., Grandson to Sir Henry Clinton, commonly called Fynes, eldest son of Henry Earl of Lincoln, by his Second Wife, Daughter of Sir Richard Morrison, and Mother of Francis Lord Norreys, afterwards Earl of Berkshire. He had by his much-beloved and only Wife Elizabeth, who lies by him, Twelve children, of which Four Sons and Two Daughters were living at his decease, which happened on the 10th of January 1735–6 in the 75th year of his age. From the Revolution he always liv’d a Non-juror, [137] which rendered him incapable of any other Publick Employment (tho’ by his Great Ability and Known Courage equal to the most Difficult and Dangerous) than that of being Steward to two great Familys, wherein he distinguish’d himself during his service of 40 year a most Faithful and Prudent manager, of a most Virtuous and Religious Life. His paternal estate he left without any addition to his son Kendal his next heir. His eldest son Charles was buried here
the 26th August 1722, aged 36 years, whose Pleasant Disposition adorn’d by many virtues which he acquired by his Studys in Oxford made his death much lamented by all his Acquaintance.” Possibly, as being a Non-juror, he may have thought it best not to attend public worship in his own parish church at Martin, and so have gone, with his family, to the church of Roughton, where, as an “outener,” he would be asked no questions. I find in connection with his family the following notices in the Roughton Registers, the spelling of which would certainly shew that the writer was not a “Beauclerk”:—“1722 Mr. Charles fines burried Augst ye 26. 1722”; “Madame Elizabeth fines was buered May ye 29, 1730” This was the “only and much loved wife” of Norreys Fynes, and the title “Madame” was a recognition of her superior rank. “Norreys Fynes Esq. was buried ye 10th January 1736/7” This entry was evidently so correctly made by the Rector himself; as also was probably the next one, “Dormer Fynes ye sonn of Kendall Fynes Esq. and Frances his wife was baptized Nov. 10. 1737.” “Cendal (Kendal) fins, the son of Norreys fins was buried June the twenty foorst, 1740.” (Note the Lincolnshire pronunciation “foorst”). “Francis Fynes, widow of Kendall Fynes buried May 13. 1752.”
I mentioned in a previous chapter the very bad condition of the roads about here; and there is a still lingering tradition that the last of the Fynes residing at White Hall used to drive about in a waggon drawn by bullocks. This estate, with some other land, of which the writer has been “shooting tenant” for more than a score of years, is still in the hands of “the Fiennes Clinton Trustees”; but there are Fynes, still in the flesh, living in our midst at Woodhall, who, though treading a humbler walk in life, are not altogether unworthy of their high ancestry. [138]
There is another old moated residence, of considerable historic interest, which next claims our attention. Within a mile westward of the Wood Hall, by the church, and closely contiguous to the north-west boundary of the Woodhall estate, stands Poolham Hall, an old-fashioned, but
comfortable and substantially-built, stucco-coated and slated farmhouse. It now, along with the small manor, belongs to Dr. Byron, residing in London, who bought it a few years ago from Mr. Christopher Turnor, of Stoke Rochford and Panton Hall, in this county. At the back of the Hall, at the south-west corner of what is now the kitchen garden, and close to the enclosing moat, are the remains of a small chapel, consisting of an end wall and part of a side wall, each with a narrow window; there are fragments of larger stones bearing traces of sculpture, and, within recollection, there was also a tombstone with the date 1527, and a font. [139] The house was, doubtless, formerly much larger than it is now. Like the other similar residences which I have described, Poolham Hall has close by it a running stream, called Monk’s dyke, which unites with some of the other becks already named, and ultimately flows into the Witham. The chief interest in this old place lies in the distant past; it has gone through a varied series of vicissitudes, and witnessed some stirring scenes. Weir, in his “History of Horncastle” (ed. 1820, p. 58), under the head of Edlington, says briefly of Poolham, “anciently called Polum, it formed part of the Barony of Gilbert de Gaunt, until about the 35th year of Edward I., when Robert de Barkeworth died seised of it; and it appears to have been the residence of Walter de Barkeworth, who died in 1374, and was buried in the cloister of Lincoln Cathedral. Afterwards it was the residence of the family of Thimbleby, a branch of the Thimblebys of Irnham, who probably built the present house about the time of Henry VIII. In the reign of Elizabeth the Saviles of Howley possessed it; and in 1600 Sir John Savile, Knight, sold it to George Bolles, citizen of London, whose descendant, Sir John Bolles, Baronet, conveyed it to Sir Edmund Turnor, Knight, of Stoke Rochford.” Of the above families, I have not been able to find very much about the Barkworths, who took their name
doubtless from East Barkwith, where they had property. But Gocelyn de Barkworth, and after him William de Barkworth, are named in an Assize Roll (4 Ed. II., 1311) as having possessions in Tetford. In 3 Ed. III. (a.d. 1329), William de Barkworth and his wife “fflorianora” were plaintiffs in a land dispute with Robert de Hanay and Alice his wife; whereby “1 messuage, 1 carucate of land, 9 acres of meadow, 1 acre of ‘more,’ and the moiety of 1 messuage and 1 mill, with appurtenances in Normanby, Claxby, and Ussylby, were quitclaimed to William and fflorianora, and fflorianora’s heirs.” I may add, as to the item here named “1 mill,” that a mill in those days was a property of some value; all the dependents of the lord of the manor were obliged to have their corn, for man or beast, ground in it; and no other mill was allowed in the neighbourhood where one was already established. It is recorded by Beckman that “a certain Abbot wished to erect a mill, which was objected to by a neighbouring proprietor, who contended that the wind of the whole district belonged to him. The monks complained to the bishop, who gave them permission to build, affirming that the wind of the whole diocese was episcopal property.” (Oliver’s “Rel., Houses,” p. 76 note 9.) In 1351 William de Barkworth, “lord of Polume,” presented to the moiety of the chapelry (of Poolham); and in 1369 Thomas de Thymelby presented to it. And from this time the Thimblebyes take the place of the Barkworths. These Thimblebyes, whose name is variously spelt Thimelby, Thymbylbye, and even (as in Domesday Book) Stimblebi, and Stinblebi, were a numerous and influential race. Their chief residence was Irnham Park, near Grantham, which was acquired about 1510 by Richard Thimbleby, on his marriage with the heiress of Godfrey Hilton, whose ancestor, Sir Geoffrey Hilton, Knight, had obtained it in 1419, by his marriage with an heiress of the Luterels, several of whom were called to Parliament, as Barons, in the 13th century. This was one of fifteen manors given by William the Conqueror to Ralph Paganel; and with the heiress of his family it passed, by marriage, to Sir Andrew Luterel, Knight. The Thymblebyes would seem to have taken their patronymic from the village of that name (part of which now forms a portion of the Woodhall Spa parish), as the earlier members of the family we find designated as Thomas de Thymelby. Nicholas de Thymelby, and so forth. Besides land in
Thimbleby they owned many other estates. For instance, in the Court of Wards Inquisitions (3, 4, and 5 Edward VI., vol. v., 91), we find that Matthew Thimbleby “of Polom,” who married Anne, daughter of Sir Robert Hussey, about 1521, died “seised of the manors of Polome, Farfford, Ruckelyond, Somersby, Parish-fee, in Horncastle, Edlynton, Thymylby, and Tydd St. Mary; also of lands in Horsyngton, Styxwolde, Blankney, Buckland (i.e. Woodhall), and Flette: and of the advowsons of Tetforde, Farefford, Rucklonde, and Somersbye.” This Matthew Thimbleby’s wealthy “grass widow” married again, Sir Robert Savile, Knight, who (according to Chancery Inquisition, post mortem, 28 Eliz., 1st part, No. 116) “died seised of the manors of Poolham, Horsington, Stixwolde, Edlington, Tetford, Farforth, Somersby, and Ruckland.”
Before quitting the Thimblebyes, we have one more incident to name in connection with them. In 1581, one of them, residing at Poolham, was imprisoned in Lincoln Castle for refusing to attend the new Reformed Services and Communion. His wife greatly desired to see him, and was allowed her request by Thomas Cooper, Bishop of Lincoln. She was near her confinement, but, as her name was among a list of those not favourable to the Reformation, she was treated rather roughly, and detained by force in her husband’s cell. This brought on premature labour, and in the hour of her weakness she was denied the assistance of a matron. It is said that a speedy death ended her sufferings; her husband also dying in prison.—“The Church under Elizabeth,” by Dr. F. G. Lee, vol. ii., p. 60. It is further recorded of this same Bishop, that he summoned Sir Robert Dymoke to Lincoln for examination as to his supposed Papist tendencies, and on Sir Robert excusing himself on the score of ill health, the Bishop came in person to Scrivelsby and carried him forcibly to Lincoln, and cast him into prison, where he presently died. It is not a little curious that one, who, as a doughty knight, at three coronations threw down his gauntlet and challenged the world on his Sovereign’s behalf, should have succumbed to a stiff-necked prelate. The account of this is given in Lodge’s “Scrivelsby, the Home of the Champions,” pp. 77, 78.
We now come to the Saviles. They were a wealthy and distinguished Yorkshire family, now represented by the Earls of Mexborough. Sir Robert disposed of some of the property in
this neighbourhood, which he had acquired by his marriage with the widow Thimbleby, but he retained Poolham, and made the Hall his headquarters. [142a] The Saviles may have been hot-blooded, for they had not been located long at Poolham before they became embroiled with their neighbours. The manners of the times were somewhat rough, and we here give a sample or two. The autocrat of the neighbourhood at that time was Henry Fiennes Clinton, second Earl of Lincoln, who was apparently inclined to ride roughshod over everyone who came in his way; the object of his life seems to have been to quarrel, and to keep in a state of irritation the county from which he derived his title. It is said that Denzil Hollis, “living much at Irby, used to confront the Earl of Lincoln, who was a great tyrant among the gentry of Lincolnshire, and to carry business against him, in spite of his teeth.” [142b] But stout old Denzil died in 1590, and, this check withdrawn, the Earl’s conduct increased in violence. [142c] Lodge, [142d] in his records, mentions one Roger Fullshaw of Waddingworth
(near Horncastle), who, in 1596, prayed for protection against the most horrible outrages committed by the Earl, and says that his conduct savoured of insanity. Before he succeeded to the earldom, and consequently when he had not yet so much power to oppress, he committed the following aggressions on the Saviles of Poolham. We must premise that Sir Robert Savile, though a knight of good estate, and though his descendants became Earls of Sussex, was, nevertheless, a natural son of Sir Henry Savile, by Margaret Barkston, “his Ladie’s gentlewoman,” [143a] which, as will be seen, was not forgotten by the high-born Clinton. These occurrences took place in 1578. They were neighbours, and jealous of trespass; and, on the 13th of June, Lord Clinton, “with 7 men with cross-bowes and long-bowes bent,” forced himself into the parlour at Poolham Hall, and, after threatening words, struck Sheffield Savile, the son, on the head. The elder Savile says that he prevented his son from noticing the outrage, an unusual degree of forbearance under the circumstances; but there had evidently been some previous misunderstanding, and possibly young Savile had been in the wrong. On the 25th of June following, Lord Clinton, hearing Sir Robert’s hounds hunting in Mr. Welby’s wood, [143b] although it was no concern of his, seized five of them, and then sent a letter to Sir Robert, threatening that he would hang them before his house; and, in fact, did hang them, as Sir Robert says, “upon my own tree within my own ground.”
Another violent proceeding is described in a letter of the Earl’s friend. Mr. Metham [143c] had been previously entertaining Lord Clinton at Metham, and was now on a return visit to Tattershall; and, as he relates, “It pleased him (Lord Clinton) to carrye me with my companye through his park (still surviving in the name “Tattershall park”) unto the chase, where his meaning was to have made sport with hounds
and greyhounds (i.e., badger hounds), and leading me by, into the meadows, he shewed me certain of the great deer of the chase, such as he kept rather for show than to be hunted.” These would be the red deer (cervus elaphus) still existing then on Hatfield chase, in the northwest of the county, in considerable numbers. The deer broke away into Mr. Welby’s woods, and “thence, as my lord affirmed, with an oath, into the mouths of the Saviles.” Lord Clinton’s attendants followed the hounds, Lord Clinton himself not doing so; but, in passing along a lane, he encountered some of the Savile followers, “in number 20 or 24, the more part having swords, bucklers, and daggers, some pyked staves, one a cross-bowe with an arrowe, another a long bowe and arrows.” While words were being exchanged “ould Mr. Savile” came up, and the following characteristic dialogue ensued. “My Lord Clinton, yf thou be a man, light, and fight with me.” “With thee, bastardlye knave,” quoth my lord, “I will deal with thee well enough, and teach thee, knave, thy duty.” Upon which words Mr. Savile called my lord “a cowardly knave.” Challenges passed between them, and with Sheffield Savile, who, withdrawing, as he says, Lord Clinton by the arm, called out after him, “You a lord, you are a kitchen boy.” Sir Robert, after their departure, having got hold of one of Lord Clinton’s dogs, meant, Metham says, “to use it with like courtesy as my lord has done his.” Lord Clinton then approached Poolham Hall, and a challenge passed, through John Savile, to fight six to six, “which by good entreaty was stayed.” Savile says, [144] in his narrative, that the followers of Lord Clinton were entertained at Horncastle, the same day, with a buck; and getting hold of an unfortunate tailor, some ten or twelve of them drew their swords and sore wounded him, saying he should “have that, and more, for his master’s sake, Mr. Sheffield Savile.”
The Lansdown MSS. give details of other violent proceedings of Lord Clinton towards the Saviles; how he over-ran the lands of Poolham with 60 men, armed with guns, cross-bows, and long bows; how he ill-treated their servants sent to Tattershall on domestic errands; incited the neighbours to send challenges to them; how he tried to entice into his park the younger Saviles, and laid ambushes for them; and various other proceedings which he would not for a moment
have tolerated in anyone else. It redounds, indeed, to the credit of the Saviles that Poolham was not made the scene of retaliation and bloodshed. [145]
In 1600 Sir John Savile sold Poolham to George Bolles, Esq. Of the Bolles family I have been able to find but scanty mention. Among Lincolnshire Gentry who supplied demy-lances and light horse, at the Louth Sessions, March, 1586–7, Charles Bolles is named as “Captaine,” furnishing “ij. horse”; and Richard Bolles “ij launces” and “ij horse”; while Richard Bowles, which is probably the same name, is mentioned along with Sir Willm. Skipwith, Mr. Willm. Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Andrewe Gedney, Sir William’s son-in-law, as the officials who presided at the “Spittle Sessions,” i.e., at Spittal in the Street, near Kirton in Lindsey.
The last of this family to occupy Poolham was Sir John Bolles, Bart., who conveyed it to Sir Edmund Turnor of Stoke Rochford. Sir John Bolles is connected with the pretty and interesting legend and ballad of “The Green Lady of Thorpe Hall,” which was his chief residence. The ballad is among Percy’s “Reliques,” and records how, while serving in Spain, the knight made captive a noble Spanish lady, who fell in love with her captor; but he had to check and chill her advances, in this language:—
“Courteous ladye, leave this fancy,
Here comes all that breeds the strife;
I in England have already
A sweet woman to my wife.”
To which, after craving pardon for her offence, she replies,
“Commend me to thy lovely lady,
Bear to her this chain of gold;
And these bracelets for a token:
Grieving that I was so bold.
All my jewels, in like sort, take thou with thee,
They are fitting for thy wife but not for me.”
The tradition, confirmed in recent years in correspondence by connections of the family (see notes to ballad, “The Spanish Lady’s Love,” vol. ii., p. 144, ed. 1848) affirms that, on Sir John leaving Spain for home, the lady “sent as presents to his wife, a profusion of jewellery and other valuables,” with a portrait of herself dressed in green. Hence she was named “the Green Lady.” It was said that she haunted Thorpe Hall, that her apparition was occasionally seen, and that it was long the custom
to have a plate laid for her at this table at mealtime. That this story does not belong entirely to the region of fiction is proved by the fact, known to the writer, and, doubtless, to many others, that a lady in this neighbourhood possesses, and at times wears on her person, one article from the “Green Lady’s” gift of jewellery.
We have one more moated mansion in our neighbourhood which should here be mentioned, viz., Halstead, or Hawstead, Hall, in the adjoining parish of Stixwould. This is the one instance, out of the several old residences I have mentioned, in which there still remains a substantial building above-ground. Doubtless the Hall, originally, was considerably larger than it is at present, since, at different periods, it has been occupied by members of leading county families; and I find, from a note, that the first Earl of Shaftesbury, who married a sister of Lord Coventry, at one time owner of Stixwould, used to visit here, and accommodation was found for himself and a large retinue. Foundations of further buildings have been found at odd times. The present Hall is a two-storied structure; the rooms not large, but lofty, their height on the ground floor being over 10ft., and on the upper floor more than 13ft.; with spacious attics above for stores. The walls are very substantial, being 2½ft. thick; while the windows, with their massive Ancaster mullions, would further indicate a much larger building. Outside the now dry bed of the moat stands a lofty building, at present used as stables and barn, which has stoneframed windows, the walls being of brick, smaller than the present-day bricks, and resembling those of Tattershall Castle and the Tower on the Moor, and, doubtless, made close at hand, where there is still a brickyard. The walls are relieved by diamond-shaped patterns, of black brick, those in the upper part being smaller than those below. [146] A very fine mantelpiece, formerly in Halstead Hall, is now at Denton House, near Grantham, the seat of Sir William Earle Welby Gregory, Bart.,
who is the present head of the family. It is after the fashion of the famous mantelpieces of Tattershall Castle. In recent times Halstead Hall has been chiefly known for the great robbery which occurred there on Feb. 2nd, 1829, and which has been related in Chapter II. of this volume. But, though no connected account of its early owners or occupants can be given, some interesting details have been brought together by the Rev. J. A. Penny, Vicar of Wispington, and formerly of Stixwould, which are given, with a sketch of the Hall, in “Lincolnshire Notes & Queries” (vol. iii., pp. 33–37). The estate was the property of Richard Welby of Moulton, being named in his will, 1465. He left it to a son “Morys,” from whom it passed to a brother Roger, and from one of his sons came the Welbys of Halstead. The will of one of them is preserved among the “Lincoln Wills (1st series) proved 18 August, 1524,” wherein he desired “to be buried in the Church of Stixwolde before the image of our Lady.”
In 1561, March 21, the representative of the Halstead branch of this one of our leading county families was granted the crest of “an armed arm, the hand charnell (i.e., flesh-coloured) yssvinge out of a cloud, azure, in a flame of fire”; and the arms are sable, a fess, between three fleur-de-lis, argent, with six quarterings. He, Richard Welby, was in that year Sheriff for the county.
In 1588, Vincent Welby is named in the list of gentry who subscribed £25 each to the loan for repelling the expected Spanish Armada, and at the muster at Horncastle, in 1586–7, he furnished “ij horse,” as also did his relative Mr. Welby of Gouphill (Goxhill) at “Castor.” The first entry of the Welbys in the Stixwould Registers was “Ann Welbie, christened May 28,” 1547; the last was in 1598. After them Halstead Hall was owned by a family of the name of Evington, one of whom, Richard, left “iiijli xs to be paid yearlie, at the discretion of my executors, to the poor of Stixwolde, on the 25 March and 29 Sept.” After them it was occupied by the Townshends. Of this family there are two notices in the parish register:—“Mr. George Townshend Esqr died att Halstead and was buryed att Waddingworth on Wensdaie night the 13th of Februarie 1627.” The other is, “Mr. Kirkland Snawden and Mrs. Francis Townshend married the 25th of December, being Christmas daie 1628.” Notice the Lincolnshire pronunciation Snawden for Snowden. No reason is given for the unusual burial by night; and special
attention is drawn to the marriage of the widow, by the sketch in the margin of a hand with outstretched fingers. This Kirkland Snowden was a grandson of a Bishop of Carlisle, his father being the Bishop’s son, and Vicar of Horncastle. They had a daughter Abigail, who married a Dymoke, from whom the present Dymokes are descended. This is one of two instances of a daughter of a Vicar of Horncastle marrying a Dymoke, since in the present century Miss Madeley, the only daughter of Dr. Clement Madeley, Vicar, married the late champion, Rev. John Dymoke. After these it was held by the Gibbons, of which family there are also a few entries in the registers. Another owner was Sir John Coventry, who was assaulted for using offensive language about King Charles II., asking in Parliament “whether the king’s pleasure lay in the men or women players” at the theatres. He wounded several of his assailants, but had his own nose cut to the bone; in consequence of which “The Coventry Act” was passed in 1671, making it felony to maim or disfigure a person, and refusing to allow the king to pardon the offenders. A later owner was Sir William Kite, Bart., who ran through a large fortune, and sold Halstead and Stixwould to Lord Anson, the distinguished navigator, and Lord High Admiral of England; some of whose exploits are recorded in “Anson’s Voyage Round the World,” by Benjamin Robins. In 1778 the property was sold to Edmund Turnor, Esq., and is still held by his descendants. This old house is well worth a visit; and visitors are courteously received by the family who now reside there.
I now propose to invite the visitor to Woodhall Spa to accompany me in thought (as not a few have done in person) to some of the places of interest, churches, or ruins, in the neighbourhood, as it may add a zest to his perambulations to know something about them. The descriptions will probably be brief, leaving a margin to be filled in by his own personal observation, thus affording him a motive for further enquiry, and an aim and object for the rambles, which may conduce to his health in the expansion alike of mind and of lung. Woodhall does not lie within what may be called the architectural zone of Lincolnshire. In the south, south-east, and south-west of the county, parish after parish possesses a large church, often beyond the requirements of the population, and of great and varied architectural beauty. There is probably no district in England so rich in fine
edifices. Much of the land was at one time held by powerful Norman knights and barons, whose energies were often spent in internecine feuds. The mediæval creed impressed them with the belief that their deeds of violence could be atoned for by the erection of costly churches for the worship, by others, of that God whom they themselves little honoured. Interested ecclesiastics fostered this feeling, [149a] which also fell in with the “Ora pro nobis” yearning of their own breasts, when suffering from what an old writer has called “the ayen-bite of Inwyt,” [149b] or, in modern parlance, “remorse of conscience.” But if, judged by the scale of expiation, made in endowment and embodied in stone, these high-handed lords would seem to have been sinners above their more ordinary fellows, we must at least gratefully allow that they have left to us of the present day a goodly heritage, which even our modern vastly increased wealth has not enabled us to emulate. These fine churches, in
our neighbourhood may be said to terminate at Coningsby and Tattershall.
In the villages immediately near us, and for several miles northward and eastward, the churches are small; yet several of them have features of considerable interest. Let us turn our steps northward. The road takes us in sight of a column, or obelisk, surmounted by a bust of the first Duke of Wellington. The history of this is told by the inscription on the pedestal: “Waterloo Wood was raised from acorns sown immediately after the memorable battle of Waterloo, when victory was achieved by the great Captain of the age, his Grace the Duke of Wellington, commanding the British forces, against the French armies commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte, the 18th June, 1815, which momentous victory gave general peace to Europe. This monument was erected by R. E. (Richard Elmhirst) 1844.” The bust faces to the north-east, in the direction of West Ashby, where Colonel Elmhirst resided. The property some years ago passed, by sale, into other hands. At about three miles distance from Woodhall we reach the small but well-built village of Stixwould (in Domesday Book, Stigesuuald, Stigeswalt, Stigeswalde). As to the name Stixwould, anyone, without being a wag, might well say, and with some apparent reason, “What more natural combination than these two syllables?” We naturally, in primitive life, go to the “wald,” or wood, for our sticks. Was not the liberty to gather “kindling,” as we now call it, a valued privilege, even like the parallel right of “turbage”—to cut peat—for the domestic hearth? The “sticks-wood” would be the resort of many a serf and villain, for purposes lawful, or the reverse. But, unfortunately, the most apparently obvious explanation is not necessarily the correct one. Whether the first part of this name has a reference to a staked-out ford on the Witham, corresponding to the “wath,” or ford, at Kirkstead, or whether it is from the old Norse “stigt,” a path, as some suggest, is uncertain. Streatfeild says, “The swampy locality would favour the idea of ‘stakes’” (“Lincolnshire and the Danes,” pp. 147–8). I may here notice that the old name of Dublin (Dubh-lynn, i.e. the black water) was Athcleath, or “the ford of the hurdles,” which seems a parallel instance (“The Vikings of Western Christendom,” by C. F. Keary, p. 83, n. 3). The latter half of the name would seem to refer to the woods of the district; and
visitors may see a very fine specimen of an ancient oak in the garden of the Abbey Farm at the farther end of the village; also a fine one at Halstead Hall, to the east of the village; and there are several more in the fields, relics, doubtless, of ancient woods. The church was rebuilt in 1831, not a favourable period in church restoration, but on the whole Mr. Padley, the architect, did his work fairly well, although some spoliation was perpetrated, stained glass being taken away from the windows; and the panels of the pulpit in Lea church are said to have been also taken from here. Some notes, still preserved in vol. ii. (p. 87) of Willson’s Collection (architect and surveyor, of Lincoln) would seem to imply that the former church was finer than the present. He says, “Stixwould church, spacious, and has been elegant, and is full of curious remnants; style Ed. IV. or Henry VII.; tower very handsome; . . . The interior has been very beautiful—lofty pointed arches, roof of nave and south aisle supported on rich carved figures of angels with shields; windows full of remnants of beautiful glass; old oak desks and benches carved . . . curious font . . . upper end of south aisle inclosed in two screens of oak . . . exquisitely rich and elegant. This is called the little choir, and belongs to Halstead Hall . . . both aisles have had altars. Base and pillar of churchyard cross remain.” He also mentions a curiously-carved stone in the churchyard in front of the tower, “like a clock face,” with unusual inscription; which the present writer has also seen there; but it is now removed to Lincoln. [151a]
The Rev. J. A. Penny, formerly Vicar of Stixwould, furnished the following description of the present church, when the writer, as local honorary secretary, conducted the “Lincoln and Notts. Architectural Society” round the neighbourhood in 1894:—“The figures and pinnacles on the tower are from the old tower; the choir screen was formed from that formerly round the small choir, but only one-third of the original, [151b] which was used as a pew by the
tenants of Halstead Hall. Under the stone slab nearest the screen, in the nave, were deposited the remains of a Mr. Boulton, who stabbed his mother to death in the little chapel outside the Priory gate, for which he was hanged at Lincoln. The stone face and wooden angels are from the former church, as also the bench ends on the south side. The royal arms, with date 1662, are in a wall in the Abbey farmhouse; and the holy water stoup is under the pump in the school yard. The fine slab, with cross, now under the tower, was dug up on the site of the Priory, also the stone coffin which stands there; and the rest in the vicarage garden. One of the bells is exactly the same as that in the Guildhall at Lincoln, and dates from 1370; it is dedicated to St. Katine, with foundry mark (Nottingham), founder’s initials, and merchant’s mark. The font is octagonal, with evangelic emblems, and names, on four sides; on the other sides, a monk seated in a chair and holding Y in his arms; next a man with arms akimbo, facing due east; next a monk, or Friar; and next a figure in flab cap, with sword, holding a rose in his left hand, his right resting on his belt. These four figures come between the emblems of St. Mark and St. Luke.”
Of the Religious House, or Priory, at Stixwould, the published accounts are not quite in accord. Stukeley and Dugdale [152a] place it among the Benedictine establishments, whereas Leland calls it Cistercian; [152b] this, however, is hardly a contradiction, since the Cistercians were “the straitest sect” of the Benedictines. [152c] It is said generally to have been founded by the Lady Lucia (“Comitissa Cestriæ et Lincoln”), widow of the great Norman Baron, Ivo Taillebois, who came over with the Conqueror and to have been further endowed by her two sons, Ranulph, Earl of Chester, and William de Romara, Earl of Lincoln. [152d] We may just observe here, in passing, that the figure cut into the stone which supports the credence table, in the chancel of
St. Andrew’s Church, Woodhall, is supposed to be that of this Countess Lucia, being brought from the ruins of Stixwould Priory. The Rev. Thomas Cox, in his “Lincolnshire” (1719), however, says that the founder was Galfred de Ezmondeys. Doubtless, various persons, and at different periods, endowed or enlarged the foundation, and so became entitled to be counted among the “fundatores.” By an Inquisition, taken at Stamford, 3 Ed. I., it was found that “the Master and Nuns” held divers lands at Huntington, of the gift of several benefactors, among them being Alexander Creviquer, Lucia, Countess of Chester, and her son Ranulph; and that “they had been so held for the space of one hundred years.” [153a] Ultimately it became a very wealthy institution, having, besides property in Lincoln, lands lying in 13 Deaneries, and in the Soke of Grantham in more than a dozen parishes; with the advowson of the Benefices of Stixwould and Wainfleet, a pension from Alford, and other property, one item being “two tofts in Horsington to provide lamps and tapers for the service of the altar.” [153b] The rules of this establishment were very strict. The lives of the nuns were to be devoted to prayer and works of charity. Their leisure hours were occupied in reading, or relating legends of Saints, in working tapestry, embroidering altar and pulpit cloths, and such like. [153c] The convent was so entirely shut in by walls, according to the old regulation, “as scarcely to leave an entrance for birds.” They were not allowed even to converse with each other without license from the Prioress. If strangers wished to communicate with them, it was only allowed through a grating, veiled, and in the presence of witnesses. They confessed periodically to the Incumbent of the parish, with a latticed window between them. By one of their rules they were not to go alone even into the garden, except under great necessity, and on festivals; and no flowers, except jessamine and violets, were to be plucked, without permission from the sacrist; and they could only leave the convent on account of illness, to console the sick, or attend funerals, except by episcopal dispensation.
Nevertheless, although nominally living thus under severe restraint, it would appear that certain relaxations were allowed. They were at times permitted to exercise the accomplishments of music, and even dancing. They had their processions and other monastic amusements, like the monks, and even patronized the feast of fools, and other absurdities of the times. [154a] We may even picture to ourselves the Prioress indulging in the sport of hunting, for she had charters of free warren over the Priory lands, [154b] and the Harleyan MSS., in the British Museum, have illuminated representations of buxom dames, riding with hounds, and shooting stags, and bears, with cross-bow; wearing sensible clothing and seated astride on their palfreys [154c]. The State Records speak of these devotional ladies as “the holy Nuns of Stixwold,” [154d] yet, at one time, public complaint was made that the Prioress of Stixwould had no scruples in so encroaching upon the waters of the Witham and diverting its course, that the vessels accustomed to ply on it with turf and faggots for the people of Lincoln, could now only do so at great peril. [154e] We may, perhaps, however, exonerate the “Lady Superior” and her nuns from all blame in this matter, when we remember that there was a “Master of the Nuns” [154f] and other male officials who, indeed, battened on the Priory in such numbers, that it was even said that they were more numerous than the sisters. [154g]
I have dwelt thus at some length on these details, because Stixwould is the next parish to Woodhall, and within easy access of the visitor to the Spa; further, this Priory, like that of Sempringham in the south of the county, occupies a peculiar position, being one of a limited number of such establishments, which harboured the two sexes, canons as well as nuns, within their walls; an arrangement of questionable wisdom and propriety. [154h] We have only
to add that this Priory was suppressed by Henry VIII., with other lesser monasteries, in the 28th year of his reign; but in the following year, out of the sincere devotion that he had to the Virgin Mary, and for the increase of virtue, and the divine worship, “he reconstituted it, as a Pre-monstratensian Monastery, to consist of a Prioress and Nuns, to officiate . . . for the good estate of him and of his most dear consort, Jane, Queen of England, while they lived, and after their deaths for their souls, and the souls of their children and progenitors,” and he re-endowed it with all the possessions which it had previously held. [155a] Unfortunately, as Henry’s love for his consorts was not remarkable for its stability, neither was the singular favour which he thus showed to the Priory, for, two years afterwards, he again, and finally, dissolved it, and granted it to John Dighton. Sic transit!
Other objects of interest have been found in Stixwould. My friend, the late Vicar, [155b] writes “I found two glass ‘bottle stamps,’ 1⅜ ins. in diameter; one of these has the figure of a dog, and ‘Rowles,’ in printed letters, beneath it; the other has ‘Anth. Boulton, Stixwo. 1722.’ The Boultons lived at the ‘Abbey farm’ for several generations, until the one (already mentioned) who committed murder. The bottles were made more like ship decanters, or the flagons of Australian wines, than our ordinary bottles. I also found many small pieces of mediæval pottery, some pieces of ‘puzzle jugs,’ with holes, and the neck of a ‘pilgrim’s bottle,’ of Cistercian ware, so called, as I was told by the late Sir Augustus Franks, of the British Museum, because it has only been found on the sites of Cistercian houses. The colour of mediæval pottery is as superior to the modern as ancient glass is to that of the present day, and it is sometimes tastefully ornamented with finger marks. The stone coffins, by the tower of Stixwould Church, were dug up where the Abbey Church formerly stood, in the field at the back of the present Abbey farm orchard.”
There are several large blocks of stone, at different farmyards, which came from the Abbey. The stocks, until a few years ago, stood in the centre of the junction of the Horsington and Woodhall Spa roads, at the east end of the village street.
Horsington.—About two miles from Stixwould, north-eastward, is Horsington, its name, probably, being compounded of the Saxon elements horse-ing-ton i.e., the village with horse-meadows; that the central syllable is not the patronymic “ing” is evident, since about a mile away we have, also, Poolham “Ings,” which are rich meadow lands on that, the adjoining, manor. The present church of Horsington is modern, having been built in 1860, of brick, with stone dressings, in place of a previous very poor thatched structure, into which one entered by a descent of two steps, with something of the feeling of descending into a dripping well. The present edifice is neat, but of no great architectural merit, and is already, in parts, becoming dilapidated, the stonework of the spire being much weatherworn. It is not, however, strictly speaking, the parish church, but rather a chapel of ease. The ancient church was “All Hallows,” the site of which is shewn by a mound in the fields to the south-west of the present village, at a point which is almost equi-distant from Stixwould in the south, Bucknall to the west, and Horsington village itself; and is said, traditionally, to have been the common church of all three parishes before their present churches were built. Separated from it now by a small drain is the old burial ground. Tradition connects this site with the Fire-ceremony of November, in British times, once prevalent in Asia, as well as Europe, and even in America. The beginning of the year was then fixed by the culminating of the constellation Pleiades, in November. On the first of the month bonfires were lighted, as they have been by the Welsh in quite recent times, and, along with the fire, the emblem of purity, offerings were made on behalf of the dead, the sacrifices of animals being so numerous on this and other days, that the month acquired the name of Blot-monath, i.e., Blood-month. The Venerable Bede, [156] tells us that, at the request of Pope Boniface, a.d. 611, the Emperor Phocas ordered, according to a general practice, that, on the site, in Rome, where “all the gods” had been worshipped, which was called the
Pantheon, the filth of idolatry being abolished, a church should be erected in memory of the Blessed Virgin and all Martyrs; and on this principle, in other places also, the site of the heathen worship, and the day of its special observance, were transformed into the occasion and place of observance of the Christian festival of “All Hallows,” or “All Saints” day; and in the course of re-corrupting time the offering on behalf of the dead by the heathen, and the commemorative ceremony of the early Christian, passed into “prayers for the dead,” which became general in a later age. Further, to give their sympathies a wider compass, the old “Golden Legend” tells us that “Saynt Odylle ordeyned that the feast and remembraunce of all them that ben departed (generally) out of this worlde sholde be holden in al monasteryes, the daye after the fest Halowen (All Hallows even); the wyche thynge was approved after all holye Chyrche.” [157] This is the old Christian black-letter festival of “All Souls,” generally, as distinguished from the red-letter, “All Saints day.” Such are some of the old traditions which hang, like evergreen garlands, round our sacred places. Children may once have “passed through fire to Molech” where now the heaving turf shrouds the skeleton of a decayed church.
On the walls of the church are tablets with the following inscriptions:—“To the beloved memory of Frederick Evan Cowper Smith, Lieutenant, Royal Artillery, eldest son of the late T. F. Smith formerly Rector of this Parish. He died of Fever, brought on by over-exertion in the discharge of his duty, while on active service in Afghanistan, with the Kyber Line Field Force, on July 26th, 1880, when he had just completed 19 years of earthly life. Jesu Mercy.” A second is as follows:—“Sacred to the memory of Arthur Monro Cowper Smith, Captain in the Royal Field Artillery, and graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge; he died at Beira, East Africa, on Sept. 28, 1898, in the 36th year of his age, of injuries received in a grass fire while shooting big game on the Pungwe River. He was the second son of the Rev. T. F. Smith, B.D., late Rector of this Parish.”
Another tablet is in memory of the Rev. T. F. Smith, B.C., “formerly Fellow of St. Mary Magdalen College, Oxford, and Rector of this parish, who died May 21, 1871, aged 50.”
A fourth is to the memory of Colonel Bonar
Millett Deane, second son of Rev. G. Deane, late Rector of Bighton. He died in South Africa, gallantly leading a column of the 58th Regiment, under General Colley, at the battle of Laing’s Nek, January 28, 1881, aged 46 years. “He fought a good fight, he kept the faith. Jesu Mercy.” He was a relative of the late Rector, the Rev. F. H. Deane, B.D., afterwards Rector of South Kilworth, Rugby.
A document in the parish chest shews that the burial ground was, at one time, re-purchased for a burial, and fenced in, while other papers shew how this came about, viz., that the duty of the parishioners to keep up the churchyard fence had been neglected (as has also occurred in other places in this neighbourhood), and so the land lapsed, and had to be recovered. In these papers, both church and chapel are named as distinct, which again is confirmed by the Will [158] of John Kele, parson of Horsington, 26 January, 1540, in which he directs that his body shall be “buryed in the Quire of All Hallows,” and bequeaths to “the church of Horsington on mass boke (one mass book), on port huse (Breviary), on boke called Manipulus Curatorum”; he adds, “I also wyll that on broken chalyce, that I have, be sold, and wared off the chancell of the chapell of Horsington; proved 17 Feb. 1540.” Here he is to be buried at All Hallows, and makes a bequest to the “Horsington Church,” this evidently again being All Hallows; but the money produced by the sale of the broken chalice is to be wared (note the Lincolnshire word, i.e., spent) on “the chancell of the chapell.” The pilgrim from Woodhall Spa can find his way by a pleasant walk of 2½ miles, mostly through the fields, northwards from the Bath-house, or along the Stixwould-road, re-entering the fields a little westward of “Miser’s Row,” and so by Halstead Hall, and to All Hallows. We now proceed to later incidents in Horsington history. There are the traces of two old moated mansions, one on the right of the road going from Woodhall Spa, about a quarter of a mile before reaching the village: there is now a small farmhouse within the moat, which is shaded by its sallows or willow trees. Nearly opposite, a cross cut in the turf by the road shews where a man was killed some years ago. The other traces are to be seen in the field just to the south of the present churchyard. The field is still called “Hall close,” and the moats, ponds, and
mounds cover some two acres. It has been the residence of a family of importance; and we find among the list of those gentry who contributed their £25 to the Armada Fund the name of Robert Smythe, --- of Horsington. In the register of burials is the entry, dated 1671, “Bridget Hall wiff of Robert Hall buried in her own yard Dec. 1st, 1671.” She lived at “Hall farm,” near the road from Horsington to Bucknall; and deeming it popish to lie east and west in a churchyard, she directed that her body should be buried north and south in her own garden. Some years ago the occupier, in digging a drain between the house and the road, came upon a skeleton lying north and south, presumably that of Bridget Hall.
Here is another odd circumstance. We now have our splendid county asylums for our lunatics, but the writer can remember the case of an unfortunate lunatic who was kept chained to the kitchen fire-place in a house in Horncastle, was never unchained, and slept on the brick floor. At Horsington the parish officers made special provision for the insane. In the parish chest there was, until quite recently, [159] a brass collar, to which was attached a chain for securing the unfortunate individual by the neck. The writer was lately informed by an old Horsington man, over 80 years of age, that the last occasion on which this collar was used was early in the 19th century. A villager then residing near the present blacksmith’s shop, and named Joe Kent, had two insane daughters, who had a very strong antipathy to each other, so that they had always to be kept apart, or they would have killed each other. My informant took me to what formerly was the garden of Kent’s house, and pointed out two spots where these two unfortunate creatures were, in fine weather, chained to the wall, one by the neck and the other by the waist, about 15 yards apart. When within doors they were similarly secured in separate rooms, treatment, surely, which was calculated to aggravate rather than alleviate their afflictions, but those were days in which rough remedies were too often resorted to.
Horsington was further connected with an incident which, had it not been nipped in the bud, might have had most serious national consequences, viz., what is known as “the Cato street conspiracy,” the leader of which was Arthur Thistlewood, a native of Horsington.
His proper name was Burnett, the name of his mother, he not being born in wedlock. She was the daughter of a small shopkeeper in the village. Thistlewood, his father, was a farmer, and Burnett was brought up with the rest of Thistlewood’s family. Possibly his peculiar position may have soured his temper. The following extracts taken from a recent publication give contemporary information as to the details of this dangerous and daringly-conceived plot. [160] The Earl of Hardwick, writing to Lady Elizabeth Stuart, then in Paris, Feb. 24, 1820, states that he had, in London, just received information of a plot to assassinate ministers as they came from dinner at Lord Harrowby’s. (The Duke of Berry had been assassinated in Paris, at the door of the Opera House, on Feb. 13th, 1820, only eleven days before.) Thirty men, his lordship says, were found in a hay-loft, all armed. Notice had been privately given to the police of the plot, and the dinner had been consequently postponed. These men had probably met to consider the cause of this postponement. Nine of the party were taken, the rest escaping by a rope ladder. Lord Hardwick, writing again at 4 p.m. the same day, says, “I have just seen the leaders of the horrible plot . . . Thistlewood was taken to the Treasury, where he was about to be examined. Townshend the police officer asked if I would like to see him . . . he was sitting over the fire without his hat; it was easy to distinguish him from the rest, by the character of ferocity which marked his countenance, which had a singularly bad expression . . . Sir Charles Flint took me to another room, where there were several of the arms taken; 7 pistols and bayonets, 4 daggers, or pike heads, two feet in length; and some muskets. A sergeant of the guard was wounded in the arm by a ball which had passed through his hand; he also received three balls in the crown of his hat.” Thistlewood was taken in White Cross Street, near Finsbury Square, in his bed. The place where the conspirators were discovered by the police was the loft of a stable at the “Horse and Groom” public-house, in John Street, Portman Square, which is between the square and Edgware Road. They were to have forced themselves into the house, at Lord Harrowby’s, while dinner was going on, which they could easily
have done by knocking at the door and then overpowering the footmen; or, according to another version, to have assassinated the ministers as they came away in a body.
The Countess of Caledon, writing, about the same date, to Lady Elizabeth Stuart, says, “Since the Gunpowder Plot there has been nothing so terrible. Sir Willm. Scott says there was a plan to set London on fire in twelve places. They only waited for the signal that the assassination had taken place at Lord Harrowby’s. Seven thousand persons were ready that night to act on the signal. We should never have escaped a Revolution.”
Truly the Horsington lunatic’s collar might well have been employed in curtailing the movements of this seditious native; but the public safety was more effectually secured by hanging him on May 1st in the same year, 1820. [161a]
The church bell bears the date 1754, with founder’s name, “Dan Hedderly.” I may add that one of the bells in St. Mary’s Church, Horncastle, has the inscription “Supplicem Deus audit. Daniel Hedderly cast me, 1727.” In the present churchyard at Horsington grows the St. Mary’s thistle referred to in a previous chapter, among the Flora. I find a note with reference to the same plant growing in a field near Somerford Grange, the farm of the monks of Christchurch. “It is supposed to have been brought from the Holy Land, and only found near Religious Houses.” [161b] The writer happens to know that, in this case, the plant was imported some 20 years ago from Kirkstead, where it is now extinct. Had it a tongue to speak with, it would appeal to the pity of the visitor in the words “Noli me tangere.”
* * * * *
Bucknall lies barely two miles from Horsington, to the west. The name (Buckehale in Domesday Book, or Buckenhall) would seem to indicate a former hall, or mansion, surrounded by beech trees; [161c] and in a field, still called “Hallyards,” to the south of the village, there are traces of such a residence, near the farm now occupied by Mr. W. Carter. This was probably the home of the Saxon Thorold, Sheriff of Lincoln,
and lord of the demesne, before the Conquest. His daughter, the Lady Godiva (or God’s gift), of Coventry fame, and probably born here, married Leofric, the powerful Earl of Mercia. She was a great benefactress to the Church. Thorold gave to the monastery of St. Guthlac at Croyland, “for the salvation of his soul,” land in Bucknall, comprising “1 carucate, [162] with 5 villiens, 2 bordars, and 8 soc-men, with another carucate; meadow 120 acres, and wood 50 acres.” The two principal features in the village are now the rectory house and the church. The former, a substantial old gabled building, standing in a large old-fashioned garden, probably dates back some 300 years. By a curious arrangement, in some of the rooms the fireplace stands in the corner, instead of in the centre of the room wall. The church, dedicated, like so many others in the neighbourhood, to St. Margaret, has no very striking features. Its architecture is mainly Early English, with some traces of Norman; embattled tower, with four pinnacles, and conical roof. It has been renovated and improved at various periods. In 1704 it was re-roofed and considerably altered. It was thoroughly restored in 1882, at a cost of about £1,500, the older features being judiciously retained. The late rector, Rev. E. W. Lutt, introduced a new Communion table, chancel rails, and lamps. In 1899 a handsome carved eagle lectern was given by his parishioners and friends. Under the present rector, Rev. W. H. Benson-Brown, a beautifully-carved oak reredos, of chaste design, was erected, and dedicated Sept. 17, 1902. Two coloured windows were presented, and dedicated Dec. 23, 1903, the subject of one being St. Margaret, the patron saint of the church; that of the other, St. Hugh, patron saint of the diocese. The inscription on the former is “To the glory of God, and in loving memory of Jessie Syme Elsey, who entered into rest May 1st, 1903. This window was given by her sisters Louisa Pepper and Nancy Margaret Richardson.” The inscription of the other window is “To the glory of God, and in loving memory of Robert Brown, who entered rest Nov. 21st, 1897, also of Mary Jane Brown, who entered rest March 22nd, 1903. This window was given
by their son, W. H. Benson-Brown, Rector.” Through the Rector’s efforts coloured glass is shortly also to be placed in the chancel east window. A processional cross was presented to the church as a thankoffering, by the Rector and Mrs. Brown, on the recovery of their son, Langton Benson-Brown, after a serious operation, Sept. 11th, 1899.
The churchyard was enlarged, and consecrated by the Bishop, May 22nd, 1900.
The general plan of the church is nave, with small north and south aisles, and chancel. At the east end of the south aisle, in the south wall, is a piscina; a slab of considerable size below it, indicating that this has been formerly a chantry, with altar at the east end, lit up by two small windows, one in the eastern wall, the other over the piscina. In the easternmost bay of the north arches, which now extends within the chancel, there is, at the base of the arch moulding, a nun’s head. This, however, is believed to be modern work, introduced at the restoration. The pulpit is of old oak, nicely carved, with peculiar Masonic-looking design, the money for its erection being left by Henry Taylor, Esq., of All Hallows, Barking, in 1646. The font is hexagonal, having a simple semi-circular moulding in the centre on four sides, the other sides being plain. There is a good old oak parish chest in the tower. The tower, externally, has two good original gurgoyles, the other two being modern.
The Communion plate was “the gift of Mrs. Hannah Ashley, 1786.” In the chancel is a pewter alms dish, with the name “Bucknall,” and the date, hardly legible, “1680.” The bell of the church is evidently ancient, and has several curious devices graven upon it, including a Tudor Rose, beneath which are four crosses, alternating with four capital S’s; besides these, there is a long cross, with upper end branching into a trefoil, its lower end forming a fork, resting on a circle, on each side being a smaller stem, slightly foliating at top.
On the east side of the south doorway is an old stone having a sundial graven on it; now built into masonry which must have come from some other part of the fabric. Opposite the porch, in the churchyard, slightly raised above the path, is a large, flat square stone, nearly a yard broad, and with some moulding below. This is called “the tithe stone.” It may have been the base of a churchyard cross; but, as in olden times the cross often served as a place of barter and business, it may well also have
received the tithes and other dues belonging to the rector. (See “Old Stone Crosses,” by Elias Owen, 1886.) I may add that there was a similar stone in the churchyard in the neighbouring parish of Waddingworth.
A list of non-jurors connected with this parish in 1715 has the following names:—“Susanna Smith, widow, £10 0s. 0d.; William Smith, gent, £30 0s. 0d.; Samuel Martin, gent., £36 0s. 0d.” (It may be remembered that non-jurors were subject to double taxation, although they erred in such company as the saintly Bishop Ken and other prelates.)
It may be further mentioned that in the reign of Charles I. an inhabitant of this parish, Mr. Thomas Toking (who was also of Ludgate Hill, London), presented a petition to the King’s Commissioners, showing that he held under the Bishop of Carlisle a lease of the manor of Horncastle, which had been sequestered through the default of his predecessor, Rutland Snowden, and praying for a commission of enquiry.—State Papers, Domestic. Chas. I. Vol. 345, No. 42.
The Rector has supplied me with a list of the Rectors of Bucknall, complete, with the exception of the period between 1608 and 1660. As there are but few parishes of which such a record is obtainable, I give this below, as interesting. We notice among them two members of the formerly well-known family of Dighton; also another known name in Robert Clifton. Evan Yorke Nepean, Rector 1859–1868, afterwards succeeded his uncle in the baronetcy, while the second Rector, who held office from 1227 to 1244 being named Eusebius, was probably a foreigner, and, possibly, as was common in those times, though enjoying the income, never resided in the parish, leaving his duties to be performed by a scantily-paid substitute.