IRNHAM
To follow the “Glen” from its source in the high ground between Somerby and Boothby Pagnell to its most southerly point two miles below Braceborough, will take us through a very pleasant country. A tributary, the first of many, runs in from Bassingthorpe, whose church, like that of Burton Coggles, three miles to the south, is dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury. A beautiful little house, built here by the Grantham wool merchant, Thomas Coney, in 1568, has a counterpart at Ponton in the immediate neighbourhood, where Antony Ellys, also a merchant of the staple at Calais, built himself a charming little Tudor house about the same time. Augmented by the Bassingthorpe brook, the Glen goes on past Bitchfield, Burton-Coggles and Corby, and on between Swayfield and Swinstead to Creeton, where are to be seen many stone coffins, probably of the monks of Vaudey Abbey in Grimsthorpe Park, a corruption of Valdei (Vallis dei or God’s Vale). It then winds along by Little Bytham, and, passing Careby and Carlby, gets into a plain country, and turns north near Shillingthorpe Hall. The last place it sees before entering the region of the Bedford Levels is Gretford. But near the church of Wilsthorpe—in which is the effigy of a thirteenth century knight with the arms of the Wake family, who claim descent from the famous Hereward the Wake—we find another stream joining the Glen to help it on its straight-cut course through Deeping fen. We may well spend an afternoon in tracing this stream from its source some sixteen miles away. It flows all the way through a valley of no great width, and, with the exception of Edenham, undistinguished by any villages. A purely rustic stream, it is known as the Eden, though it has no name on the maps, and its only distinction since it left its source near Humby is that it divides the villages of Lenton or Lavington, where the author of “Verdant Green,” Rev. E. Bradley, best known as “Cuthbert Bede,” was once rector, and Ingoldsby, the village of Ingold or Ingulph, the Dane, which, however, has nothing to do with the well-known “Ingoldsby Legends.” A little to the south of Ingoldsby are the prettily named villages Irnham, Kirkby-Underwood, and Rippingale; of these Irnham has a picturesque Tudor hall in a fine park. This was built in 1510 by Richard Thimelby in the form of the letter L; the north wing was mostly destroyed by fire in 1887, but the great hall remains, and there is a priest’s hiding-place entered by a hinged step in the stairs in which was found a straw pallet and a book of hours.
The manor was granted by the Conqueror to Ralph Paganel along with others, e.g., Boothby Bagnell and Newport Pagnell, and there was even then, in the eleventh century, a church here. This manor passed by marriage in 1220 to Sir Andrew Luttrell, Baron of Irnham, whence, through an heiress, it passed to the Thimelbys. In the church is a fine brass to “Andrew Luttrell Miles Dominus de Irnham,” 1390. He is in plate armour with helmet, and has his feet on a lion. In the north aisle, which is sometimes called the Luttrell Chapel, is a beautifully carved Easter sepulchre, the design and work being much like that of the rood screen in Southwell Cathedral. This was really a founder’s tomb of the Luttrell family, and stood east and west under the easternmost arch on the north side of the nave, whence it was most improperly moved in 1858 and should certainly be put back again. Doubtless it was used as an Easter sepulchre, and it is of about the same date, 1370, as those at Heckington, Navenby, and Lincoln. In the pavement of the north aisle is an altar slab, with the five consecration crosses well preserved.
Since the Thimelbys, who followed the Hiltons, the house has been in possession of the Conquest, Arundel, and Clifford families. Not more than two miles to the east is a fine avenue leading to an Elizabethan house in the form of an E, called Bulby Hall. Later the stream goes through its one village of Edenham, passes near Bowthorpe Park with its great oak, fifty feet in girth, and so joins the river Glen at Kotes Bridge, near Wilsthorpe. Though the stream, Edenham excepted, has nothing particular on its banks, near its source are several interesting churches. Sapperton, which still exhibits the pulpit hour-glass-stand for the use of the preacher to insure that the congregation got their full hour; Pickworth, with chantry chapels at each end of the south aisle, a rood screen and a fine old south door; and Walcot, with its curious double “squint” from the south chantry and its beautiful little priest’s door, evidently once a low-side window, for its sill is two feet from the ground and is grooved for glazing. Here the economy of the Early English builders is shown by their use of the caps of an earlier Norman arcade to form the bases of their new pillars. Hard by is Newton with its lofty tower, Haceby, where once the Romans had a small settlement, and Braceby, which, with Ropsley and Somerby, complete an octave of Early English churches all near together.
SOMERBY
Somerby is within four miles of Grantham. The church contains a singular effigy, date 1300, of a knight with a saddled horse at his feet, and a groom wearing the hooded short cloak of the period, holding the horse’s head. Among the Brownlow monuments is the following inscription to Jane Brownlow, daughter of Sir Richard Brownlow of Humby, 1670,
She was of a solid serious temper, of a competent
Stature and a fayre compleaciton, whoes soul
now is perfectly butyfyed with the friution of
God in glory and whose body in her dew time