We again take to the main road, due eastward, and at the distance of another mile or so, we arrive at a steep descent, embowered in lofty trees; and, at the foot of this, “The Brook,” immortalized by the Laureate, winds its musical way beneath the road, under a bridge. To the left we see its course (where the writer has ofttimes “tickled” his trout), through a green meadow, as it issues from the wood named “Holy Well.” To the right it speeds onward through low-lying lands until it is lost in the distance.
Proceeding along the narrow lane,—so narrow, indeed, that only at certain points can two vehicles pass each other, and shut in by banks of sandstone,—we reach, on the right, a well in the rock, the latter green and grey with moss, lichen and fern, the water clear as crystal. It is, indeed, a lonely, quiet spot, fit place for musing meditation, in a poet’s wanderings. Just a cottage or two to remind one that there is a population, but not obtrusive. The rectory is the second, and larger, of two houses on the right, though now occupied as a farmhouse. It is a quaint, unpretending, old-time residence, uniting manor house and rectory in one. At its eastern end is a semi-ecclesiastical addition, with pointed windows having coloured glass of no particular merit. In the ground-floor apartment in this is a carved mantlepiece, the work of the Laureate’s father. Just beyond is a brick castellated building, “The
Grange,” said to have been designed by Vanbrugh. Its construction is massive, and its curious cellars and other details make it something of a “Romance in brick.” Certainly it is a fair example of that solid style of building which gave rise to his (suggested) epitaph,—
Lie heavy on him, Earth; for he
Laid many a heavy weight on thee.
One can hardly help feeling that it must have been a reduction from some original, more ambitious, design; and those gloomy cellars may well have harboured the smuggler, or his illicit hoards, in days when not only humbler boards, but the table of parson and squire, boasted unblushingly of the “Schiedam” which had not paid duty, and was thought the better of it. This house is the reputed home of Tennyson’s “Northern Farmer,” whose dialect, however, as given by the poet, is generally considered by experts, however picturesque, to be considerably overdrawn. [255] In Somersby itself, except for its secluded beauty, there would be little to interest the visitor were it not for its association with the early years of the Tennysons. And one of the present writer’s earliest recollections is, as a small boy, driving his sisters, in a donkey cart through the village; when they were accosted by two strollers on the road, one of whom was Alfred Tennyson, then on a visit to the rectory, and not yet Laureate.
The Church of Somersby has little of interest, beyond a small brass with kneeling figure of George Littlebury, dated 1612; a stoup in the porch, and over the porch a sundial, with the legend “Time passeth,” dated 1751. The tower, however, has two good mediæval bells. In repairing the tower in 1883, a fine window in its western face was removed and replaced by an inferior one (Saunders “Hist.,” vol. ii., p. 173). The modern restoration, with bright tiling of the floor, gives a brand-new appearance, rather out of keeping with the almost crumbling low tower, and rustic surroundings. The one really interesting feature is the churchyard cross. It is of Perpendicular date, tall, well designed, and with octagonal shaft gracefully tapering from the base to a corona, and having above that a cross, which, possibly owing to the very retired position of the village, has escaped the iconoclast. It has, on one side, the Crucifixion, and on the other the Virgin and Infant Saviour. It is almost unique in its very good
state of preservation, the Puritans having generally ruthlessly mutilated such erections. Several models of it, in bronze, were made some years ago to the order of the late Mr. C. J. Caswell, and were speedily sold off as memorials of Tennyson. It has also recently been reproduced in the churchyard of Huttoft, in this county, where the church was restored, in 1895, by Mr. W. Scorer, architect, of Lincoln.
One of the places visited should be Holy Well wood. It is a leafy dell, where tower up lofty trees still vigorous, while others are lying rotting on the ground.
Nature in her old wild way,
Life blending closely with decay.
The thin stream twines about their roots, or springs over sandstone bars, in sylvan, solitude. The spot was described, years ago, by Howitt in his “Homes and Haunts of English Poets.” A local authority says that, once upon a time, a series of steps led down to the well, where an upright post was fixed, and a cross-bar from it was secured to the rock. On this cross-bar was an iron ring and a cable, by which a bather could let himself down for a dip in the well; and an old servant of the Tennyson family could remember when numbers of people came to take the water, which was considered to have health-giving properties. [256]