[80a] This fine specimen of the salmo fario was bought by the late Rev. J. W. King, of sporting celebrity, to put into the lake at Ashby-de-la-Launde, to improve the breed of trout there.
[80b] In one part of “The Brook,” the Laureate has taken a “poetic licence,” when he says:
“I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing.
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling.”
There are no grayling in the Somersby beck.
[81] For brothers “of the cloth” with piscatorial proclivities, who visit Woodhall, the writer would point to this means of healthful relaxation, which he can recommend from experience. Any qualms of the clerical conscience as to the legitimacy of such an avocation—a wholesome calling away from graver duties—may be set at rest on episcopal, and even archi-episcopal, authority. The late Archbishop Magee was an ardent fisherman, and would go on flogging on Irish lough or river, even though he did not get a single rise. (See “Life of W. Connor Magee,” by J. C. McDonnell.) And the writer once read, with much enjoyment, an article on salmon fishing in the “Quarterly Review,” which was attributed to the versatile pen of the Bishop of Winchester, better known as “Samuel of Oxford,” who sought occasional relief from his almost superhuman labours on the banks of a Highland river.
[84a] The exception to which allusion is here made is the village of South Scarle, about six miles from Lincoln, where a deep boring was made in 1876, in search of coal. The depth attained was 2,029 feet, or nearly twice that of the Woodhall well; but as only the upper layer of the coal measures was thus reached, and it was calculated that actual coal would be some 1,600 feet lower still, or a total depth of 3,600 feet, the boring was abandoned. The strata passed through were found to be as follows: Alluvial or drift, 10ft.; lower lias clay and limestone, 65ft. rhœtic beds, 66ft.; the three triassic formations, new red marl (Keuper), lower keuper sandstone, new red sandstone, 1,359ft.; upper permian marls, upper magnesian limestone, middle permian marls, lower magnesian limestone, permian marl slates, with basement of breccia, 619ft.; and upper coal measures, 10ft.; total, 2,029ft.
[84b] See end of Chapter I. on The History of the Well.
[85a] We have the testimony of two of the labourers employed in the shaft (Cheeseman and Belton) who agree in giving this depth. They also state that the particular stratum was 54ft. thick; that the set of the current was from south-east to north-west, running from a crack in one side of the shaft into a corresponding crack in the opposite side, and that they both assisted in making a brick and cement lining to the shaft, leaving a channel behind for the water to run round half the circumference, from crack to crack.
[85b] We may further add that it is at the junction of the Northampton sand with the underlying lias, that we find numerous springs in other parts of the county; as at Navanby, Waddington, Lincoln, Blyborough, Kirton, and several other places. The Government “Geological Survey Memoir” for the country around Lincoln (p. 208) agrees in saying that the Woodhall water comes from the “inferior oolite” which comprises the Northampton sands.
[87a] “Life of Nansen, 1881–1893,” by W. C. Brögger and Nordahl Rolfsen. (Longmans, 1896, pp. 350–357).