Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

It is interesting to know that a good deal of the carving in the church was done less than fifty years ago by a carpentry class of young men who took lessons for the purpose from a clever carver called Thomas Scrivener.

But we have one other road to speak of, which is the way from Spilsby to Sleaford.

The Boston road from Spilsby, after it reaches the edge of the green-sand, where it suddenly breaks down at West Keal into the level fen, divides at the foot of the hill, and the right-hand road goes westwards by Hagnaby, East Kirkby, Revesby, Coningsby, Tattershall and Billinghay to Sleaford. This is all a level road. Hagnaby Priory, two miles from West Keal, is the residence of Mrs. Pocklington Coltman. The house is modern, in fact, there never was a priory here, but near Alford there was once an abbey of Hagnaby, so the name is suggestive of Priors.

EAST KIRKBY

Another two miles brings us to East Kirkby; the turn to the right takes us to the church which, having been entrusted to the capable hands of Mr. W. D. Caröe, is a model of what church restoration should be. He has put square-headed clerestory windows in the chancel with good effect. The tower has a beautiful two-light early Decorated window. The piers of the nave are remarkably slender. There is a good font, and the early Perpendicular rood screen is a very graceful one. In the north wall of the chancel is a two-light low-side window and a curious recess, possibly an Easter Sepulchre. It is covered with diaper work, and with wild geranium, oak leaves and acorns excellently carved in stone, and below this, some half-figures of the three Maries, each holding a heart-shaped casket, of spices perhaps for embalming. A basin projecting from the front is thought to have been a receptacle for the Easter offerings. A similar basin, as Mr. Jeans in Murray’s Guide points out, is attached to the tomb of Edward II. at Gloucester. A little further on is the tiny church of Miningsby, only to be approached by footpaths over grass fields. It has in it a pre-Norman slab of very uncommon character with figure-of-eight intertwined knot work and a herring-bone border. A fragment with similar figure-of-eight work is in Mavis Enderby church, on a coped stone which has been cut to make a door-step, and a smaller bit like it is in Lusby church—probably all the work of the same Saxon mason. In a house near the church is a stone with the initials “L. G., 1544,” which must refer to the Goodrich family; for East Kirkby was the birthplace of Thomas Goodrich, Bishop of Ely, 1534, Lord Chancellor, 1550, and coadjutor in the first Communion Office with Cranmer.

REVESBY

The next place on the Spilsby and Sleaford road is Revesby Abbey (Hon. R. Stanhope), a fine deer park with a modern house, built by J. Banks-Stanhope, Esq., 1848. The previous house had been the residence of the great naturalist, Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S., who died in 1820, and took part with Rennie in devising and carrying out the drainage of the East Fen. The abbey, founded in 1143 by W. de Romara, Earl of Lincoln, was colonised from Rievaulx, and was itself the parent of Cleeve Abbey in Somerset. The abbey was a quarter of a mile south-east of the present church, in which are preserved the few fragments now extant of a building which was once 120 feet long and sixty feet wide. The Hon. Edward Stanhope in 1870 discovered the tombs and bodies of the founder and his two sons. The founder, who had become a monk, had requested to be buried “before the high Altar,” and his tomb was inscribed, “Hic jacet in tumba Wiellielmus de Romare, comes Lincolniae, Fundator istius Monasterii Sancti Laurentii de Reivisbye.” The site of his re-burial is marked by a granite stone. Among the abbey deeds is one by which the Lady Lucia’s second husband, Ranulph Earl of Chester, gives to the abbey “his servant Roger son of Thorewood of Sibsey with all his property and chatells.” I don’t suppose that Roger found the abbey folk bad to work for; they certainly did much for the good of the neighbourhood, notably in keeping up the roads and bridges, which was one of the recognised duties of religious houses; but all this came to an end when in 1539, like so many other Lincolnshire estates, it was granted by Henry VIII. to his brother-in-law the Duke of Suffolk. The Duke died in 1545, and was buried at Windsor; his two sons both died in one day, July 16, 1551, in the Bishop of Lincoln’s house at Buckden.

The road past the park gates is very wide, with broad grass borders on either side, and a fine row of wych elms bordering the park, at each end of which are some model farm buildings of the best Lincolnshire kind; and, to take us more than a thousand years back, we have two large tumuli quite close to the road. There were three, but one, after being examined by Sir Joseph Banks in 1780, was levelled in 1892; later the existing two were explored and one was found to contain a clay sarcophagus, which possibly once contained the remains of a British king.

MOORBY

Just past the tumuli is the inn, at the four cross-roads. That to the left runs absolutely straight for eleven miles to Boston; to the right is the Horncastle road through Moorby and Scrivelsby, with the barn-like church of Wilksby in a grass field behind Moorby. Both these churches have good fonts; that at Moorby is the later of the two, having two crowned and two mitred heads at the four corners, and with very remarkable figures of the Virgin and Child learning, with open book and scourge; the sun and moon being depicted on either side looking on complacently, evidently they had never heard of the Montessori system, also there are six kneeling figures and two angels watching the dead body of the donor. A stone in the vestry, about fourteen inches by eight, exhibits two women and a man vigorously dancing hand in hand to the bagpipes, all in fifteenth century head-dresses and costumes. Moorby is in the gift of the Bishop of Manchester, it having been assigned presumably by Carlisle when the new see was carved out of parts of older ones. How Carlisle came to have patronage here may be briefly told. On St. George’s Day, April 23—a day memorable as the birth and death day of Shakespeare, and the death day of Wordsworth—in the year 1292, John-de-Halton, who may well have come of the family who gave the name to Halton Holgate near Spilsby, being then Canon of Carlisle, was elected bishop. Within a month, a fire having destroyed the cathedral and all the town, he set to work and rebuilt the cathedral, and encouraged others to rebuild the town; and by the year 1297 Robert Bruce swore fealty to the king in his presence in the newly risen pile. He was a man of mark, and was mediator between Edward I. and John of Balliol in the claim to the Scottish throne. He planned Rose Castle, the palace of the Bishops of Carlisle. In 1307 he received at his cathedral, from the sick king’s hands, the horse-litter which had brought him to the north; and within a few days saw the king, who had bravely mounted his charger at the cathedral door, borne back a dead man on the shoulders of his knights from Burgh Marsh (pronounced Berg) on the Solway shore. In 1318 he was driven from his diocese by Robert the Bruce, and came to the manor of Horncastle, which, as mentioned above, had belonged to the see since 1230, and got the Pope to attach the living of Horncastle and with it that of Moorby and probably some others to his see as a means of support for him whilst in exile and poverty, and up to the middle of last century Horncastle so remained, whilst Moorby is now in the gift of the Bishop of Manchester. John de Halton died in the year 1324.