Inside the chancel rails is a mural monument with life-size figures of a man and his wife kneeling, but the lady’s head is gone. The man is Robert Tyrwhit, who made a runaway match with Lady Bridget Manners, maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, who was highly incensed at it, and doubtless used language appropriate to the occasion. At the back of the sedilia two or three little brasses have been inserted, one to Edward Nayler, rector 1632, with wife and seven children. He is described as “a painefull minister of God’s word.”
From Bigby four miles brings us to Brigg, passing near Kettleby, the home of the Tyrwhits, who kept up a blood feud with the Ros family till the beginning of the seventeenth century—not a very neighbourly proceeding—and as they only lived four miles apart their combats and murders were perpetual.
BROCKLESBY
The road which runs north from Caistor goes along the top of the Wold as far as “Pelham’s Pillar,” where the real High Wold stops. It is then 460 feet above sea level. Caistor itself, on the western slope, is only 150 feet up, but the High Wold keeps rising south of Caistor till it attains its highest point between Normanby-le-Wold and Stainton-le-Vale, at about 525 feet. From “Pelham’s Pillar” the road forks into three, and runs down into the flat at Riby, Brocklesby, and Kirmington, where there is a church with a bright green spire sheathed with copper. Brocklesby, Lord Yarborough’s seat, has a deer park more than two miles long. It is entered on the west side through a well-designed classical arch, erected by the tenantry in memory of the third lord. Extensive drives through the woods planted by the first lord, who married Miss Aufrere of Chelsea, and was created Baron Yarborough in 1794, reach as far as the “Pelham Pillar,” some six miles from Brocklesby. On the pillar it is recorded that twelve and a half million trees were planted. The planter, who rivals “Planter John,” he who laid out the many miles of avenue at Boughton near Kettering, was an Anderson, whose grandmother was sister of Charles, the last of the Pelhams, hence the family name now is Anderson-Pelham.
The Welland, near Fulney, Spalding.
THE KOH-I-NOOR
The mausoleum on the south side, designed by Wyatt in 1794 in memory of Sophia, first Countess of Yarborough, is in the classical style, with a flat dome rising from a circular balustrade supported on twelve fluted Doric columns. It stands on an ancient barrow, in it is a monument by Nollekens, of the Countess. The house, part of which was rebuilt after a fire in 1898, has the appearance of a brick and stone Queen Anne mansion. In it are some of the exquisite wood carvings by Wallis of Louth, some of whose work was admired in the first “Great Exhibition” of 1851, attracting almost as much attention as the Koh-i-noor Diamond, then in its rough form, as worn by “Akbar the Great,” by Nadir Shah, and by “The Lion of the Punjab,” Runjeet Sing. It is now in the crown of the Queen of England, and, being re-cut, is much smaller, but far more brilliant. In addition to a fine hall and staircase there is a picture gallery built in 1807 to take the paintings and sculptures which had been collected by Mr. John Aufrere of Chelsea, father-in-law of the first Lord Yarborough. The gem of this collection is the antique bust of Niobe, purchased in Rome by Nollekens the sculptor, who has himself contributed a fine bust of the first earl’s wife. In a conservatory are portions of another once famous collection of antiques, tombs, altars, and statues, made by Sir Richard Worsley and kept as a kind of classical museum till 1855 at Appuldurcombe in the Isle of Wight.
THE PELHAM BUCKLE
Religious houses abounded here. Thornton Abbey is only five miles off, and here, outside the park to the north-west, is Newsham Abbey, 1143, perhaps the earliest Premonstratensian house in England. On the east was the Cistercian nunnery of Colham, and just at the south of the park, in the village of Limber, was an alien priory belonging to the Cistercian house of Aulnay in Normandy. Newsham abbey, which was worth twice what the other two were, became part of the spoil which was absorbed by Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. The gardens have some fine cedars, and the church with its curious tower and small spire is in the garden grounds. There are some Pelham monuments in it of the sixteenth and seventeenth century: one to Sir John and one to Sir William and Lady Pelham and their seventeen children. At her feet is the head of a king and the Pelham “Buckle,” commemorating the seizure by a Pelham of King John of France, at the battle of Poictiers.