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.