Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

of our own Lincolnshire poet—all combine to make a very satisfactory picture to which the wonderfully wide extent which lies unrolled before us, lends enchantment; and always the eye reverts to rest with delight on that perfect spire standing so high above the trees by the banks of the river Lud.

At length we turn and pursue our way, but soon quit the Spilsby road and go down the hill to the left, past the entrance to Kenwick Hall, till we reach the Alford road, and, turning to the right, come to the pretty little village of Cawthorpe.

DR. TROUGHT’S JUMP

This is not a bad centre for country walks. You can walk on a raised footpath all along the side of the curious water-lane, and if you go out in the opposite direction the road to Haugham takes you through two miles of as pretty a road as you could desire; it is called “Haugham Pastures,” but it is really a road through a wood, without hedges, reminding one of the New Forest or the “Dukeries.” On the right, going from Cawthorpe, the trees extend some distance with oak and fern and all that makes the beauty of an English wood; on the other side it is only a belt of trees through which at intervals a grassy tract curves off from the road and leads to the fields; and as we passed in September we could see the corn-laden waggons moving up towards us or the teams going afield among the sheaves. No county could supply a prettier series of pictures of simple pastoral beauty than this byway through “Haugham Pastures.” A deep lane near the little brick-built manor-house is noticeable as the site of a famous jump. The roadway is about fifteen feet wide, with steep sides and a low hedge, the top of which is nine or ten feet above the roadway. Over these Dr. Trought of Louth, on a famed hunter, once jumped for a wager, flying from field to field, a distance of some twenty feet.

The Lud at Louth.

One of the charming peculiarities of Cawthorpe is that here the “Long Eau” stream runs between hedge-banks over a level sand and gravel bed and forms a water street, which extends for about a furlong. There is a similar thing at Swaby, six miles to the south, where the “Great Eau” runs along a street or road through the village. At Cawthorpe the water is always running and usually about six inches deep. The village lies in a hollow with curiously twisting little roads in it, and is very picturesque with its farms and trees and quaint little brick manor-house standing near the church at the three cross ways.

A BEAUTIFUL ROAD

Rising from the hollow, the small byway runs with here and there beautiful trees and often on the right a tall hedge or narrow strip of plantation, reminding one of the roadside “shaws” in Hampshire, while on the left there is always a view down over cornfields and beyond the tops of the Tothill oak woods right across the fertile belt of the marsh to the shining line of the distant sea. With many a twist the byway runs on through Muckton village to Belleau, where it crosses the above-mentioned Swaby or Calceby beck and looks down on the picturesque church, standing in the grassy meadows, and on the brick turret and groined archways of the old Manor-house, and so on to South Thoresby, where the broken ground and the fine trees tell of an old mansion which stood there till last century; and past Rigsby, till it meets the Spilsby and Alford highway just below Miles-cross-Hill, whence it runs on through the avenue of elms to Well. And all the way, as it has run along the top of the eastern escarpment of the Wold, it has afforded us an outlook over a wide expanse of the marsh such as none of the other roads on the high wolds can equal. True, the Lincoln cliff road gives a finer view and runs further, but I don’t think there is any prettier ten-mile stretch in the county than this ‘Middle road’ from Well to Louth.

At the entrance gate of Well Vale Hall the road divides, either route ending at Alford. Well Vale, a fine sporting estate and also a famous stronghold for foxes, the residence of Mr. Walter H. Rawnsley, is, I venture to think, the prettiest spot in the county. For a mile or more a grassy track descends from the top of Miles-Cross-Hill through a wooded valley where fine beeches stretch out their long arms, and pines and larch crown the chalky turf-clad sides, till the mouth of the Vale opens out into a park, whose rolling slopes are studded with handsome trees, and as you near the mansion, the front of which looks out across its brilliant flower-beds and quaint pinnacled gateway upon the little church flanked by branching elms on the summit of a grassy hill, you see a fine sheet of water fed by a copious chalk stream which passes the house and is then conducted to a still larger lake on the garden side, stretching with a double curve from the giant cedars on the lawn to a vanishing point, of which glimpses only are caught through the stems of the Scotch firs and oaks in the distance. The history of Well goes back to Roman times, and has been told fully by the Rev. E. H. R. Tatham, Rector of the neighbouring parish of Claxby, where the site of a Roman camp is still visible, another being at Willoughby, two miles off eastwards in the levels, where the marsh begins.