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.