ON THE FENS IN WINTER.
If ever a river could be reproached with not knowing its own mind it would be the Witham. Rising in the extreme south of Lincolnshire, it wanders northward along the western side of the county, and at one place seems almost minded to fall into the Trent, from which it is separated only by a belt of land slightly higher than the bed of either river. So slight, indeed, is the division between the present valleys of the Witham and the Trent that it has been urged by a very competent authority that the great gap traversed by the former river at Lincoln really represents the ancient channel of the Trent, which has only adopted the present course towards the Humber at a very late epoch in its geological history.[5] But the Witham at last, after submitting for a time to the influence of a limestone plateau, which rises to a considerable height on its eastern bank, suddenly alters its course, though low and level ground still continues along the same line, and cuts its way through the upland, which is severed by a fairly wide and rather deep-sided valley. Thus it gains access to the broad lowland tract between these hills and the wolds, which is here in immediate communication with the fenland, and along this it pursues a south-easterly course until it reaches the Wash.
The streams which presently unite to form the Witham traverse more than ordinarily pretty pastoral scenery—a region now shelving, now almost hilly, of meadow and pasture, cornfield and copse, where is many a mansion pleasantly situated in its wooded park, and many a comely village clustered round a church, which is often both interesting and beautiful—till we arrive at Grantham, once a quiet market town, now rapidly developing into a very important manufacturing centre. The situation of the town on gently undulating ground sloping down to the Witham is rather pretty, though its rapid increase during the last quarter of a century has not made it more acceptable to the artist. The steeple of its church is beautiful, even for a county unusually rich in fine churches. Tower and spire are almost the same height, together giving to the capstone an elevation of 273 feet. The lower part is in the Early English style, the remainder and the body of the church, which is not unworthy of the steeple, belong to the Decorated and the Perpendicular styles, but a considerable part of the spire was rebuilt, without, however, any change being made in the design, in the year 1661. The Angel Hotel is “one of the three mediæval inns remaining in England,” and within its walls Richard III. signed the death-warrant of the Duke of Buckingham. Grantham once had a castle, but this has disappeared, and so has a Queen Eleanor Cross, but some traces of its religious houses yet remain.
MAP OF THE RIVERS OF THE WASH.
Quietly and lazily, after leaving Grantham, the Witham works its way along a broader valley, cut down into the blue clays of the lias formation, and bounded on its eastern side by the low upland plateau formed by the harder limestone beds of the lower part of the oolite, which farther to the south are noted for their stone quarries. Little, however, calls for special notice till a triple group of towers looms up against the sky, and tells of our approach to the turning point in the river course, where for many a century the cathedral and the fortress of Lincoln have kept watch and ward over the gap in the hills, through which, as already stated, the Witham finds an outlet towards the fenland and the sea.
Durham Cathedral only, of all those in England, excels that of Lincoln in the beauty of its situation, for even Ely on its island hill, overlooking the wide Cambridgeshire fens, must be content to take a lower place. Like Durham, Lincoln occupies a site which seems to be indicated by Nature for a place of defence and offence in war, for a centre of commerce and industry in peace. Thus full eighteen centuries since it was crowned by a fortified camp, and eight centuries since it was chosen as the more fitting site of the bishop’s stool, in a diocese which at that time was the largest in England. Told as briefly as possible and to the barest outline, this is the history of Lincoln. On the south-western angle of the limestone plateau, guarded on the one side by the steep slope which falls down to a level plain—that which prolongs in a northerly direction the valley of the Witham—on the other by the yet steeper slope which descends to the marshes fringing its actual course through the upland, the Romans established a great fortified camp. Of this, portions of the defences both in earth and masonry remain to the present day. It has been argued with probability that in the name, given by these invaders, Lindum Colonia, from which the present one has descended, there is evidence that the site was already in British occupation, the first word being compounded from Llyn a pool, and dun a hill fortress; thus signifying the hill by the pool in the marshy expanse of the Witham. Fragments of wall and a gate, the basements of pillars, probably belonging to a great basilica, a sewer, a tesselated pavement, and sundry other relics, remain to this day as memorials of the Roman occupation. From Lincoln also radiate the lines of five main roads, constructed, where they cross the marshes, on solid causeways. Of these the most important are the Fossway and the Ermine Street, which unite just south of Lincoln, then scale the steep slope below the ancient south gate, along the line of the present High Street, and pass out northward beneath the ancient archway, which still, such is the irony of time, retains its ancient name of Newport.
