The town is a very old one, and the Welland going through it with trees along its banks and the shipping close to the roadway gives it rather a Dutch appearance. It is noteworthy as being the centre from which we shall be able to see more fine churches, all within easy distance, than we can in any other part of the county or kingdom. As early as 860 the fisheries of the Welland, together with a wooden chapel of St. Mary here, which became the site afterwards of the priory, were given by Earl Alfgar to Croyland. Ivo Taillebois, the Conqueror’s nephew, with his wife Lucia the first, lived here in the castle in some magnificence as Lord of Holland. They were both buried in the priory church, founded by Lady Godiva’s brother, Thorold of Bokenhale, and over possession of which Spalding and Croyland had frequent disputes. One of the priors subsequently built Wykeham chapel. The Kings Edward I. and II. stayed at the priory, and from Bolingbroke, John of Gaunt and Chaucer were not infrequent visitors. The building was on the south side of the Market-place, and a shop there with a vaulted roof to one of its rooms had probably some connection with it. At the dissolution it was valued at £878, a very large sum, and next only to Croyland, which was by far the richest house in the county and valued at £1,100 or £1,200. Thornton Abbey was only set at £730.
The river is navigable for small sea-going vessels, and many large barges may generally be found tied up along its course through the town, discharging oil cake and cotton cake, and taking in cargoes of potatoes, both being transhipped at Fosdyke from or into coasting steamers running between Hull and London.
But water carriage though cheap is limited in that it only goes between two points, whereas Spalding is the meeting-place of at least three railways, making six exits for Spalding goods to come and go to and from all the main big towns in Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire or Norfolk, as well as to all those in our own county. Thus there are twice as many ways out of Spalding by rail as there are by road.
Ayscough Fee Hall Gardens, Spalding.
AYSCOUGH FEE HALL
The Welland, carefully banked by the Romans, is now bridged for one railway after another, and runs with a street on either side of it and rows of trees along it right through the town. On your right as you enter from the south you see across the river, looking over the top of a picturesque old brick wall, the well-clipped masses of ancient yew trees which form the shaded walks in the pretty grounds of Ayscough Fee Hall. The house, built in 1429, but terribly modernised, is now used as a museum, and the grounds form a public garden for the town. Murray tells us that Maurice Johnson once lived in it, who helped to found the Society of Antiquaries in 1717, and founded in 1710 the “Gentleman’s Society of Spalding,” which still flourishes. Among its many distinguished members it numbered Newton, Bentley, Pope, Gay, Addison, Stukeley, and Sir Hans Sloane, and Captain Perry, engineer to the Czar, Peter the Great, who was engaged in the drainage of Deeping Fen.
SPALDING CHURCH
Close to it is the fine old church, the body of which is as wide as it is long owing to its having double aisles on either side of the nave. It was founded to take the place of an earlier one which was falling to ruins, in the market-place. It dates from 1284, and was once cruciform in plan, with a tower at the north-west corner of the nave. The transepts, which now do not project beyond the double north and south aisles, had each two narrow transept aisles, but the western ones have been thrown into the aisles of the nave. The inner nave aisles are the same length as the nave, but the outer ones only go as far west as the north and south porches, the tower filling up the angle beyond the south porch. The chancel is so large that it was used by Bishop Fleming (1420-30) for episcopal ordinations.