My soul like smoke is soaring to the bles’t.
There is a charming old grey stone grammar school, possibly the very building in which Robert De Brunne taught when “Magister” at the abbey at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The station-master’s house, called “Red Hall,” is a picturesque Elizabethan brick building once the home of the Roman Catholic leader, Sir John Thimbleby, and afterwards of the Digbys. Sir Everard Digby, whose fine monument is in Stoke Dry Church near Uppingham, was born here. Another house is called “Cavalry House” because Thomas Rawnsley, great grandfather of the writer, was living there when he raised at his own expense and drilled a troop of “Light Horse Rangers” at the time when Buonaparte threatened to invade England. Lady Heathcote, whose husband commanded them, gave him a handsome silver goblet in 1808, in recognition of his services. He died in 1826, and in the spandrils of the north arcade in Bourne Abbey Church are memorial tablets to him and to his wife Deborah (Hardwicke) “and six of their children who died infants.”
CHAPTER IV
ROADS FROM BOURNE
The Carr Dyke—Thurlby—Edenham—Grimsthorpe Castle—King’s Street—Swinstead—Stow Green—Folkingham—Haydor—Silk Willoughby—Rippingale—Billingborough—Horbling—Sempringham and the Gilbertines.
Bourne itself is in the fen, just off the Lincolnshire limestone. From it the railways run to all the four points of the compass, but it is only on the west, towards Nottingham, that any cutting was needed. Due north and south runs the old Roman road, keeping just along the eastern edge of the Wold; parallel with it, and never far off, the railway line keeps on the level fen by Billingborough and Sleaford to Lincoln, a distance of five-and-thirty miles, and all the way the whole of the land to the east right up to the coast is one huge tract of flat fenland scored with dykes, with only few roads, but with railways fairly frequent, running in absolute straight lines for miles, and with constant level crossings.
One road which goes south from Bourne is interesting because it goes along by the ‘Carr Dyke,’ that great engineering work of the Romans, which served to catch the water from the hills and drain it off so as to prevent the flooding of the fens. Rennie greatly admired it, and adopted the same principle in laying out his great “Catchwater” drain, affectionately spoken of by the men in the fens as ‘the owd Catch.’ The Carr Dyke was a canal fifty-six miles long and fifty feet wide, with broad, flat banks, and connected the Nene at Peterborough with the Witham at Washingborough near Lincoln. From Washingborough southwards to Martin it is difficult to trace, but it is visible at Walcot, thence it passed by Billinghay and north Kyme through Heckington Fen, east of Horbling and Billingborough and the Great Northern Railway line to Bourne. Two miles south of this we come to the best preserved bit of it in the parish of Thurlby, or Thoroldby, once a Northman now a Lincolnshire name. The “Bourne Eau” now crosses it and empties into the River Glen, which itself joins the Welland at Stamford.
THURLBY
Thurlby Church stands only a few yards from the ‘Carr Dyke,’ it is full of interesting work, and is curiously dedicated to St. Firmin, a bishop of Amiens, of Spanish birth. He was sent as a missionary to Gaul, where he converted the Roman prefect, Faustinian. He was martyred, when bishop, in 303, by order of Diocletian. The son of Faustinian was his godson, and was baptized with his name of Firmin, and he, too, eventually became Bishop of Amiens. Part of the church is pre-Norman and even exhibits “long and short” work. The Norman arcades have massive piers and cushion capitals. In the transepts are Early English arcades and squints, and there is a canopied piscina and a font of very unusual design. There is also an old ladder with handrail as in some of the Marsh churches, leading to the belfry. Three miles south is Baston, where there is a Saxon churchyard in a field. Hence the road continues to Market Deeping on the Welland, which is here the southern boundary of the county, and thence to Deeping-St.-James and Peterborough. Deeping-St.-James has a grand priory church, which was founded by Baldwin Fitz-Gilbert as a cell to Thorney Abbey in 1136, the year after he had founded Bourne Abbey. It contains effigies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Shameful to say a fountain near the church was erected in 1819 by mutilating and using the material of a fine village cross. Peakirk, with its little chapel of St. Pega, and Northborough and Woodcroft, both with remarkable houses built of the good gray stone of the neighbourhood, Woodcroft being a perfect specimen of a fortified dwelling-house, though near, are in the county of Northants.
EDENHAM CHURCH