CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. page
Part I—Prehistoric. Horncastle—its infancy [1]
Part II—The Dimly Historic Period [3]
CHAPTER II.
Records of the Manor, &c., from the Norman Conquest [11]
CHAPTER III.
St. Mary’s Church [33]
CHAPTER IV.
The Church of Holy Trinity [57]
CHAPTER V.
Nonconformist Places of Worship.
The Wesleyans [64]
The Primitive Methodists [71]
The Independents [77]
The Baptist Chapel [84]
The New Jerusalem Church [86]
CHAPTER VI.
Educational Institutions—The Grammar School [91]
CHAPTER VII.
Watson’s Free School [108]
The Lancasterian and the Bell Schools [111]
The Science and Art School [112]
CHAPTER VIII.
The Dispensary [119]
CHAPTER IX.
The Canal [126]
The Railway [130]
CHAPTER X.
Workhouse or Union [133]
The Court House [135]
The Stanhope Memorial [136]
The Clerical Club [137]
The Mechanics’ Institute [139]
The Corn Exchange [140]
The Whelpton Almhouses [142]
The Drill Hall [145]
CHAPTER XI.
Horncastle Worthies, &c. [151]
Oddities [160]
Publichouses [161]
APPENDIX.
Thimbleby [165]
West Ashby [176]
High Toynton [180]
Mareham-on-the-Hill [183]
Low Toynton [185]
Roughton [188]
Haltham [190]
Mareham-le-Fen [192]
Moorby [198]
Wood Enderby [201]
Coningsby [203]
Wilksby [207]
Langriville [209]
Thornton-le-Fen [210]

ILLUSTRATIONS.

page
Mammoth Tooth [5]
Hammer Head [7]
North-east corner of the Castle Wall [9]
Plan of Horncastle, 1819 [15]
Plan of Horncastle, 1908 [23]
St. Mary’s Church [35]
Brass of Sir Lionel Dymoke in St. Mary’s Church [42]
Ancient Scythes in St. Mary’s Church [48]
The Old Vicarage [55]
Holy Trinity Church [59]
Wesleyan Chapel [65]
Wesleyan Day Schools [69]
Interior Congregational Chapel [79]
The New Jerusalem Church [87]
Rev. Thomas Lord [90]
The Grammar School [93]
Lord Clynton and Saye [97]
Successive Head Masters of the Grammar School, from 1818 to 1907 [101]
The Seal of the Grammar School [105]
The Market Place [109]
St. Mary’s Square [113]
Bridge Street [117]
High Street [121]
The Bull Ring [123]
The Canal [127]
On the Canal [129]
The Court House [135]
The Stanhope Memorial [137]
Watermill Road during the Flood, Dec 31, 1900 [141]
West Street during the Flood, Dec. 31, 1900 [143]
Conging Street during the Flood, Dec. 31, 1900 [145]
The Stanch [147]
Old Thatched Inn in the Bull Ring [163]
St. Margaret’s Church, Thimbleby [171]
The Manor House, West Ashby [177]
All Saints’ Church, West Ashby [179]
St. John the Baptist’s Church, High Toynton [181]
St. Peter’s Church, Low Toynton [187]
St. Helen’s Church, Mareham-le-Fen [193]
Wesleyan Chapel, Mareham-le-Fen [197]
St. Michael’s Church, Coningsby [205]

CHAPTER I.

PART I—PREHISTORIC. HORNCASTLE—ITS INFANCY.

In dealing with what may be called “the dark ages” of local history, we are often compelled to be content with little more than reasonable conjecture. Still, there are generally certain surviving data, in place-names, natural features, and so forth, which enable those who can detect them, and make use of them, to piece together something like a connected outline of what we may take, with some degree of probability, as an approximation to what have been actual facts, although lacking, at the time, the chronicler to record them.

It is, however, by no means a mere exercise of the imagination, if we assume that the site of the present Horncastle was at a distant period a British settlement. [1a] Dr. Brewer says, “nearly three-fourths of our Roman towns were built on British sites,” (Introduction to Beauties of England, p. 7), and in the case of Horncastle, although there is nothing British in the name of the town itself, yet that people have undoubtedly here left their traces behind them. The late Dr. Isaac Taylor [1b] says, “Rivers and mountains, as a rule, receive their names from the earliest races, towns and villages from later colonists.” The ideas of those early occupants were necessarily limited. The hill which formed their stronghold against enemies, [1c] or which was the “high place” of their religious rites, [1d] and the river which was so essential to their daily existence, of these they felt the value, and therefore naturally distinguished

them by name before anything else. Thus the remark of an eloquent writer is generally true, who says “our mountains and rivers still murmur the voices of races long extirpated.” “There is hardly (says Dr. Taylor [2a]) throughout the whole of England a river name which is not Celtic,” i.e. British.

As the Briton here looked from the hill-side, down upon the valley beneath him, two of the chief objects to catch his eye would be the streams which watered it, and which there, as they do still, united their forces. They would then also, probably, form a larger feature in the prospect than they do at the present day, for the local beds of gravel deposit would seem to indicate that these streams were formerly of considerably greater volume, watering a wider area, and probably having ramifications which formed shoals and islands. [2b] The particular names by which the Briton designated the two main streams confirm this supposition. In the one coming from the more distant wolds, he saw a stream bright and clear, meandering through the meadows which it fertilized, and this he named the “Bain,” [2c] that word being Celtic for “bright” or “clear,” a characteristic which still belongs to its waters, as the brewers of Horncastle assure us. In the other stream, which runs a shorter and more rapid course, he saw a more turbid current, and to it he gave the name “Waring,” [2d] which is the Celtic “garw” or “gerwin,” meaning “rough.” Each of these names, then, we may regard as what the poet Horace calls “nomen præsente notâ productum,” [2e] they are as good as coin stamped in the mint of a Cunobelin, or a Caradoc, bearing his “image and superscription,” and after some 17 centuries of change, they are in circulation still. So long as Horncastle is watered by the Bain and the Waring she will bear the brand of the British sway, once paramount in her valley.