Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

SPITAL-ON-THE-STREET

A little lonely hermitage it was,

Down in a dale, hard by a Forest’s side,

Far from resort of people that did pass

In travel to and froe: a little wyde

There was a holy chappell edifyde,

Wherein the hermite duly went to say

His holy things each morne and eventyde.

Spenser, Faerie Queene. I. I. 34.

Spital-on-the-Street is an ancient hospital situated twelve miles north of Lincoln on the Roman Ermine Street, which had its origin in a Hermitage. The Hermits or “Eremites,” dwellers in the Eremos or wilderness, commonly placed their habitats in remote spots, though some stationed themselves near the gates of a town where they could assist wayfarers with advice and gather contributions at the same time for their own support; others dwelt by lonely highways in order to extend hospitality to benighted wayfarers. A hermitage on the “Ermine Street” between Lincoln and the Humber would be of the latter sort. For the Street runs in a bee line for two-and-thirty miles through an absolutely tenantless country. Villages lie pretty continuously a few miles distant on either side, but with the exception of Spital itself the Street passes through nothing till it arrives within five miles of its termination. The hermitage would therefore be a welcome asylum to a belated traveller on a stormy night and the sound of the chapel bell, or the gleam of the hermit’s rushlight through the darkness would be just salvation to him. Probably such a picture was in Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote:—

How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

The chapel attached to the hermitage was one of four churches in Lincolnshire dedicated to St. Edmund King and Martyr.[4] A licence was granted by Edward II. for land and rent to be appropriated by the Vicar of Tealby for the payment of the chaplain; and, by a document signed at Tealby in the year 1323 and witnessed by nearly all the dignitaries of the Cathedral of Lincoln, the foundation was placed under the jurisdiction of the Lincoln Dean and Chapter. Ten years later we find the hermitage called “Spital-on-the-Street,” so that its uses had already been enlarged, though we have no documentary evidence of this. All we know of, is the building of a house for the chaplain by John of Harrington in 1333.

THOMAS DE ASTON

In 1396 Richard II., “at the request of his dear cousin John de Bellomonte, grants to Master Thomas de Aston, Canon of Lincoln, leave to newly build a house adjoining the west side of the chapel of St. Edmund the King and Martyr at Spitell o’ the Street, for the residence of William Wyhom the Chaplain and of certain poor persons there resident and their successors,” and before the end of the fourteenth century it had buildings sufficient for the maintenance of these poor persons. As such it escaped in Henry VIII.’s time, but in the sixteenth century the property was seized by Elizabeth for her own use in the most barefaced manner and sold by her. The Sessions for the Kirton division of Lindsey were for many years held in the chapel, but subsequently it fell into disrepair and was pulled down by Sir William Wray in 1594, and a new sessions house built close by, on which was this Latin couplet,

Hæc domus odit amat punit conservat honorat

Nequitiam pacem crimina jura bonos.

In 1660 Dr. Mapletoft, of Pembroke College, Cambridge, being appointed Sub-Dean of Lincoln and also Master of the Spital Hospital, at once rebuilt the chapel and set to work to improve the revenue, and when he became Dean of Ely in 1668, he retained his Mastership of Spital, and so well did he and his next-but-one successor, Chancellor Mandeville do their work, that, whereas it had sunk to a master and two poor persons to whom he paid 2s. each, they restored it to its complement of seven poor people and bought land for it, which so increased in value that, when the Charity Commissioners took the Spital in hand in the reign of Queen Victoria, the revenues were estimated at £959, which was nearly all of it being misappropriated.

Wykeham Chapel, near Spalding.

THE NEW SCHEME

MAPLETOFT’S INSCRIPTION

In 1858 a new scheme was drawn up, and now seven alms-people of each sex receive £20 a year, and besides other annual payments £5,500 has been spent out of the Spital funds on the Grammar School at Lincoln and on founding and maintaining a middle-class school at Market-Rasen called after the Spital’s founder The De Aston School. Of the old hospital at Spital only the chapel built by Mapletoft in 1662 remains; a plain structure with its east end to the road where the entrance door is, the altar being at the west end. Below the small square bell-cot is a stone bearing this inscription:—

Fui Aᵒ Dni	1398	⎫	Domus Dei et Pauperum
Non Fui	1594	⎬
Sum	1616	⎭

Qui hanc Deus hunc destruat.
G.P. 1830.

This means:—

I was in	1398	⎫	The House of God and of the poor
I was not in	1594	⎬
I am in	1616	⎭

Whoever destroys this house may God destroy him.

This means that it was founded by De Aston as a chantry and hospital in 1398,[5] pulled down by Wray in 1594 and rebuilt by Mapletoft in 1661. The mason who carved the date has transposed the two last figures in 1661.

G.P. should be J.P. for John Pretyman, the last “Master.”

CHAPTER XVI
ROADS NORTH FROM LINCOLN

Kirton-in-Lindsey—The Carrs—Broughton—Brigg—The North Wolds—Worlaby—Elsham—Saxby-All-Saints—Horkstow—South Ferriby—Barton-on-Humber—St. Peter’s and St. Mary’s—Greater care of Churches.

Of the three roads north from Lincoln we have spoken of the road on the ridge which is the continuation of the Cliff road on which we travelled from Navenby to Lincoln. The view is the notable thing on this road, for, though it looks down on a series of small villages below its western slope, Burton, Carlton, Scampton, Aisthorpe, Brattleby, Cammeringham, Ingham, Fillingham, Glentworth, Harpswell, Hemswell, Willoughton, Blyborough and Grayingham, all in a stretch of fourteen miles, it passes through nothing of importance but Kirton-in-Lindsey. This Kirton is a very old place, the manor being once held by Piers Gaveston, the favourite of Edward II., and later by the Black Prince. The office of Seneschal was filled at one time by the Burgh family of Gainsborough. The church is an interesting one, and has a richly carved and moulded west doorway. Leading from the nave to the tower is a very massive double Early English arch, resting on a large circular pillar, and two thick responds. The south doorway is like the western one, richly carved with tooth moulding. The porch is used as a baptistry. On the north wall of the nave is a wall-painting representing the seven sacraments and blood flowing from the crucified Saviour to each.

“CLIFF” AND “CARR”

The road east of Ermine Street goes through any number of villages, for it goes on the low ground, and each parish runs up to the Ermine Street and has its portion of high ground or “cliff.” Normanby Cliff, Owmby Cliff, Saxby Cliff, etc., and from the west side each village does the same, so that we have in succession Brattleby, Ingham, and Hemswell Cliff. The winds on the ridge apparently, which “extirpated” the church of Boothby Graffoe, have always deterred people from building on the height; but none of the places on this low road which occur regularly at intervals of two miles are of any special importance except Glentham, which will be noticed later. We will therefore run along the middle road, the grand old Roman Street, which begins at Chichester and, as seen on the map, goes through the county north of Lincoln as straight as an arrow for over thirty miles. At the twelfth mile we pass Spital, and when, after eighteen miles we get to the latitude of Kirton-Lindsey on the cliff road, we shall find that the branch road to the right, which goes to Brigg, takes all the traffic, and the Ermine Street for seven or eight miles is disused. So, turning off, we pass Redbourne Hall and Hibaldstow, the place of St. Higbald, who came to Lincolnshire across the Humber with St. Chad to bring Christianity to the Mercians in the seventh century. This parish runs up to the ridge, and in the middle of it is an old camp at Gainsthorpe on the “Street.” At Scawby Park, with its fine lakes, the property of the Sutton-Nelthorpes, we turn eastwards and reach Brigg. This, once a fishing place on the Ancholme River, is now the one market town of all this low-lying neighbourhood. Roads from the four villages of Scawby, Broughton, Wrawby and Bigby unite here, and the great Weir Dyke or “New River Ancholme” which runs from the river Rase to the Humber goes through it. It is eleven miles from Bishopsbridge on the Rase to Brigg, and seven from Brandy Wharf, whence boats used to run to meet the Humber boats at Ferriby Sluice, ten miles north of Brigg. Hereabouts the fens are called “carrs.” We noticed the term “carr dyke” for the Roman drain near Bourn, which runs from the Nene to the Witham; and the map along the whole course of the Ancholme, which runs north for twenty miles, is covered with “carrs.” The villages are at the edge of the Wold generally, but they all have their bit of fen and all are called by this name, Horkstow carrs, Saxby carrs, Worlaby carrs, Elsham carrs, etc.

Carr is a north country word, and has two distinct meanings in Lincolnshire.

1. The moat-like places which originally surrounded the inaccessible islets, with which the Fenland at one time abounded; but now used chiefly of low-lying land apt to be flooded.

2. A wood of alder, ash, &c., in a moist boggy place, e.g., “Keal Carrs,” near Spilsby.

A third meaning is less common, viz., the humate of iron or yellow sediment in water which flows from peaty land.

BROUGHTON AND BRIGG

Of the four parishes above mentioned which meet at Brigg,[6] Broughton on the Ermine Street is worth a visit. The pre-Norman church and tower, like Marton, has a good deal of herring-bone work, and, like Hough-on-the-Hill, an outer turret containing a spiral staircase. There is a small rude doorway, and as at Barton, the tower with its two apses probably formed the original church.

The present nave is built on the Norman foundation, and the cable moulding is visible at the base of two of the pillars. There is a chapel in the north aisle, and on the north side of the chancel a good altar tomb with alabaster effigies of Sir H. Redford and his wife, 1380, and a fine brass on the floor of about the same date. This chancel was once sixteen feet longer. In another meanly built chantry is a monument to Sir Ed. Anderson, 1660. In Broughton woods, as at Tumby, the lily of the valley grows wild. North of Broughton the Ermine Street becomes again passable, and, after running some miles through a well-wooded country, is crossed by the railway at Appleby Station, whence it becomes a good road again, but again falls into disuse when the road turns to the left for Winterton, a large village in which three fine Roman pavements were ploughed up in 1747. Here we have a large cruciform church with a very early tower. Afterwards the Street continues, a visible but not very serviceable track, to Winteringham Haven, the Roman “Ad Abum.”

OLD BOAT OF BRIGG

In Brigg we had hoped to see the old boat which was dug out near the river in 1886, it is forty-eight feet long and four to five feet wide, hollowed out of a single tree, and could carry at least forty men over the Humber, though not perhaps across the sea. Its height at the stern was three feet nine inches, and it was six inches thick at the bottom. The tree trunk was open at the thick or stern end, and two oak boards slid into grooves cut in the sides and bottom to make a stern-board. It probably had bulwark-boards also, certainly it had three stiffening thwarts, and the stern end had been decked, as a ledge still shows on either side on which the planking rested. One very interesting feature in it was that the boat had been repaired, with a patch of oak boarding six feet by one foot, on the starboard side, the board being bevelled at the edges and pegged on with oak pins. A similar boat made out of a huge oak tree is in the portico of the British Museum. In this, which is fifty feet long and four feet wide, tapering off a little at either end, both the ends and two thwarts are left solid. The latter are not more than six inches high, but sufficient to add considerably to the strength of the hull. The boat is three inches thick at the gunwale and possibly more at the bottom, and has no keel. But this most interesting relic of Viking days has been removed from Brigg, for what reasons I know not, to the Museum at Hull, and is no longer in the county. A British corduroy road or plank causeway was also found below the mud from which the boat was dug out, and is therefore probably of greater age, though such a mud-bearing stream as the Humber can make a considerable deposit in a very short time. This fact is illustrated by the process of “warping,” which is described in the chapter on the Isle of Axholme.

Brigg, without its old boat, has little to detain us, so we can pass to Wrawby, and then desert the main road, which goes east through a gap in the Wold to Brocklesby, and turn northwards to Elsham, where we come up against the most northerly portion of the “Wolds” as distinguished from the “Cliff” or Ridge which lies more to the west. The main road or highway to Barton runs right up the hill and crosses the Wold obliquely, and, as usual, being on the high ground, exhibits no villages in the whole of its course, but we will turn sharp to the left and take a byway which goes by “the Villages” of which we shall pass through no less than half a dozen in the six miles between Elsham and the Humber.

At Elsham is the seat of Sir John Astley. The church has a rich tower doorway with curious sculptured stones on either side.

SAXBY AND HORKSTOW

Any road which runs by the edge of a curving range of hills is sure to be picturesque; and the continuation of the Wolds south of Elsham, after the Barnetby Gap, where the railway line gets through the Wolds without tunnelling, with the string of villages all ending in “by,” Bigby, Somerby, Searby, Owmby, Grasby, Clixby, Audleby, and Fonaby, which lead the traveller to Caistor, affords pleasant travelling. But it does not come up in varied charm to this western edge of the Wold, which goes farthest north, and ends on the plateau which overlooks the Humber near South Ferriby. On this route the first village from Elsham is Worlaby, and whereas Elsham had once a small house of Austin Canons founded by Beatrice de Amundeville before 1169, and given by Henry VIII. at the Dissolution to the all devouring Duke of Suffolk, Worlaby had its benefactor in John, first Lord Bellasyse, who founded in 1670 a hospital for poor women, of which the brick building still exists. The twisting road with its wooded slopes and curving hollows is here extremely pretty. We next reach Bonby, and soon after come to Saxby All Saints. This is a really delightful village, and evidently under the care of one owner, for all the houses are extremely neat and, with the exception of two proud-looking brick-built houses of the villa type, all have tiled roofs and buff-coloured walls. That the village is grateful to the landlord and his agent, and is also, like Mrs. John Gilpin, of a thrifty mind, is quaintly testified by the inscription on a drinking fountain in the village, with a semicircular seat round one side of it which tells how it was set up “in honour of the 60ᵗʰ year of Queen Victoria’s reign, and of Frederick Horsley, agent for 42 years on Mr. Barton’s estate.” Each of these parishes extends up on to the Wold, and down across the fen, and the map shows this and marks Saxby or Elsham “Wolds” as well as Saxby or Elsham “Carrs”; and in each village a signpost points west “to the bridge,” which goes over the land drain and the Weir Dyke.

In the next village of Horkstow, a big elm stands close to the gates of the churchyard and parsonage. Here the fine air and the bright breezy look of sky and landscape fill one with pleasure, and the snug way in which the churches nestle against the skirt of the wold give a charming air of peace and retirement. The church here is singular in its very sharp rise of level towards the east. You mount up six steps from the nave at the chancel arch, further east are two more steps and another arch, and again further on, two more and another arch. It looks as though the ground had been raised, for the capitals of the pillars on which these last two arches rest are only four feet and a half from the floor. The north arcade is transition Norman, the arches on the Norman pillars, instead of round, being slightly pointed.

QUAINT EPITAPHS

A Colonel of the sixty-third regiment, who died in 1838, has a mural tablet here, which tells us that “In the discharge of his publick duties he was firm and just yet lenient, and as a private gentleman his integrity and urbanity endeared him to all his friends.” This is almost worthy to be placed beside that of the man who on ending “his social career” is stated to have “endeared himself to all his friends and acquaintances by the charm of his manner and his elegant performance on the bassoon.” Curious, what things people used to think proper to put up in churches! One of the oddest is at Harewood in Yorkshire, where, under a bust of Sir Thomas Denison, who is represented in a wig, his widow writes that “he was pressed and at last prevailed on to accept the office of Judge in the Kings Bench, the duties of which he discharged with unsuspected integrity.” Doubtless she meant with an integrity which was above suspicion, but it reads so very much as if those who knew him had never for a moment suspected him of possessing the virtue mentioned. For other examples see Chapter [V.]

After Horkstow we come to South Ferriby, where a chalk road leads along the edge of the cliff towards a little landing stage on the water’s edge, giving a pretty view over the wide estuary to the Yorkshire continuation of the Wold, and the little village of North Ferriby opposite.

The church of South Ferriby, which is dedicated, as many coast churches are, to St. Nicholas, the patron Saint of children and fishermen, has its nave running north and south, and a bit railed off at the north end for the altar, though that is now placed at the south end.

The name suggests a ferry over the Humber, but the locality seems to forbid this, for in no place is the Humber wider until you have almost reached Grimsby, and from Barton to Hessle, about three miles further down stream, it is only about half the width, and there, no doubt, there was a ferry. The reason of this great width is that the Humber has made inroads here and washed away a good deal of land which used to be between Ferriby Hall and the water. This being partly deposited on the “old Warp” sand bank, once the breeding place of many sea birds, has formed a permanent pasture there, now claimed by the Crown and called “Reads Island.”

THE BARTON HOY

A hundred years ago the ‘hoy,’ a sloop-rigged packet, used to take passengers from Barton Waterside Inn, just north of Barton, to Hull; and Sir J. Nelthorpe notes in his pocket book, under date August 9th, 1793. “arrived at Scawby after a very bad passage over the Humber, having been on the water five hours, and at last forced to run on shore in Barrow Haven, not being able to make Barton, owing to the negligence of the boatmen in not leaving Hull in time; my horses, seven in number, remained in the boat from four o’clock in the morning till seven at night, before they could be landed.”

Coming back from the Cliff Edge road, we turn up the hill for Barton-on-Humber, and from the top of the Wold, which here comes to an end, we get a really beautiful and extended view in all directions. But we must now speak of Barton, with its two old churches.