THE PLAGUE-STONE
An inconspicuous little byway starts from near Alford station and runs parallel with the line about a mile northwards to Tothby, where it bends round and loses itself in a network of lanes near South Thoresby. At Tothby, under a weeping ash tree on the lawn in front of the old Manor House farm, is an interesting relic of bygone days. It is a stone about a yard square and half a yard thick, once shaped at the corners and with a socket in it. Evidently it is the base of an old churchyard, wayside, or market cross of pre-reformation times. And it has been put to use later as a plague-stone, having been for that purpose placed on its edge and half buried probably, and a hole seven inches by five, and two and a half inches deep, cut in the upper side. This was to hold vinegar into which the townspeople put the money they gave for the farm produce brought from the country in times of plague.
The great desire was to avoid contact with possibly plague-stricken people. So the country folk brought their poultry, eggs, etc., laid them out at fixed prices near the stone and then retired. Then the town caterer came out and took what was wanted, placing the money in the vinegar, and on his retiring in turn, the vendors came and took their money, which was disinfected by its vinegar bath. The buyers, of course, had to pay honestly or the country folk would cut off the supplies, and they probably appointed one of their number as salesman.
THE PLAGUE-STONE
On the whole the plan is said to have answered well enough, and the stone is an interesting relic of the time. There is one in situ at Winchester, not so big as this, and now built in as part of the basis to the Plague Monument outside the West Gate of the city. It is, I believe, plain to distinguish, being of a darker colour than the rest of the monument; but you cannot now see the hole in it any more. That stone was used in 1666, the year after the great plague in London. The Croft register speaks of 1630 as the plague year, but a plague seems to have visited Partney in 1616; at Louth 754 people died in eight months in 1631. At Alford the plague year was 1630. On the 2nd of July in that year the vicar, opposite the entry of Maria Brown’s burial has written “Incipit pestis” (the plague begins), and between this date and the end of February, 1631, 132 out of a population of about 1,000, died, the average number of burials for Alford being 19 per annum, so that the rate was 100 above normal for the nineteen months; indeed, for the rest of 1631 only eight burials are registered in ten months. July and August were the worst months, six deaths occurring in one family in eleven days. It has been said that the stone was placed on the top of Miles-Cross hill, whence the folk from Spilsby and the villages of the Wolds, when they brought their produce, could look down on the plague-stricken town from a safe distance. But that would be a long pull for the poor Alford people, and it is more likely that it was placed near where the railway now crosses the high road; certainly the Winchester stone was barely 100 yards from the Gate.
We can now go back to Alford and start again on the Louth road. To get to the fine Marsh churches of the east Lindsey district, four miles out we turn off to the right near Withern, and pass two little churches on the border of the district called Strubby and Maltby-le-Marsh. Each of these has, like Huttoft, a remarkable font, but that at Maltby is extraordinarily good—angels at each corner are holding open books, and their wings join and cover the bowl of the font, below an apostle guards each corner of a square base. There is in this church, too, a cross-legged effigy of a knight. In Strubby are some good poppy-head bench ends and a fourteenth century effigy without a head, and on the south wall near the door a curious inscription in old English letters hard to decipher. There is also a small re-painted Jacobean monument with effigies of Alderman W. Bailett, aged ninety-nine, his two wives and nine children.
Mablethorpe Church.
MABLETHORPE