To the right the Wold runs up to nearly 500 feet, but our road only crosses it, and after little more than a mile we see the level of the marsh and the tall spire of Louth five miles ahead of us. The road here forks, and forsaking the direct route by Raithby we will take the right-hand road and in a couple of miles find ourselves dropping to the village of Tathwell. This we circle round and arrive at the lane which leads to the church.
This little church, dedicated to St. Vedast, who was Bishop of Arras and Cambray (circa 500), was once a Norman building, but the Norman pilasters supporting the round tower-arch of the eleventh century are all that is left of that period, unless the four courses nearest the ground of large stones of a hard, grey, sandstone grit can be referred to it. Upon these now is built a structure of brick with a broad tower at the west and an apse at the east; but the charm of the place is its situation, on a steep little hill overlooking a good sheet of clear chalk-stream water. You look westwards across this to a pathway running up the slope opposite which is fringed with a fine row of beeches, and just below you at the edge of the little graveyard you see the thatched roof of a primitive cottage, whilst beyond it the ground is broken into steep little grass fields, the whole most picturesquely grouped.
We leave the secluded little village, and turning to the right, pass between the Danish camp on Orgarth Hill and the six long barrows on Bully Hill (the second hill of the name, the other being near Tealby). These are all probably of the same date; the latter in a field adjoining the road. A mile more and we turn to the left at Haugham, where is another and larger tumulus, after passing which, on the left, we soon come to the main Louth and Spilsby road.
The number six seems to have been a favourite one with the Vikings. Eleven miles to the west of Bully Hill is “Sixhills,” between Hainton and North Willingham, and another place of the same name near Stevenage in Hertfordshire shows a fine row of six tumuli close to the road side.
JANE CHAPLIN
On October 25 there was a funeral in the Tathwell churchyard, when, in presence of her surviving grand-children and great-grandchildren Jane Chaplin was laid to rest beside the husband who had died forty years before. She was not only of a remarkable age—it is seldom that a coffin plate bears such an inscription:—
“Jane Chaplin, born 24th June, 1811, died 21st October, 1913”—
but during all that long life she was always cheerful and kindly and full of interest, and up to the very last, within two hours of her death, she was bright and happy, lively with talk and merriment, and in full possession of all her faculties. On her 102nd birthday she received her relatives and delighted them with her reminiscences of the days before they were born, telling the writer how she remembered Alfred Tennyson asking her to dance at the local ball, and adding that she was still able to read and to paint, though she had of late years given up reading by candlelight for fear of trying her eyes, and saying how thankful she was that she felt so well and had no pains and was, in fact, much better than she used to be fifty years ago. She had left Lincolnshire and lived of late years at Bournemouth and then at Cheltenham, where she literally ‘fell on sleep’ and passed from this life to the next, without any illness or struggle, in the happiest possible manner. Truly, we may say with Milton—
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast.