Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

At Fulney.

CHAPTER XXXIX
CHURCHES OF HOLLAND, EAST OF SPALDING

Weston—The Font—Fertile Country—Colman’s Factory—The Woad Plant—’Twixt Marsh and Fen—Moulton—The Spire—The Elloe Stone—Whaplode—Holbeach—Fleet—Gedney—The Mustard Fields—Long Sutton—Groups of Churches—Fossdyke Old Bridge—Kirton—Frampton—Wyberton—A Storm—Agricultural Statistics, 1913—A Legend of Holbeach.

The road which runs east from Spalding passes out of the county to reach King’s Lynn. But before it does so, it goes through a line of villages along which, within a distance of ten miles, are six of the finest churches which even Lincolnshire can show. Going out through Fulney we begin, less than four miles from Spalding, with Weston, where we find an unusually fine south porch with arcading and stone seats on either side. At the east end are three lancet lights of perfect Early English work and four slender buttresses. The nave dates from the middle of the twelfth century, and has stout round pillars in the south and octagonal in the north arcades, each set round with slender detached shafts as at Skirbeck, united under capitals carved with good stiff foliage. The aisles and transepts are later, and the tower later again.

The Early English font is a splendid specimen and stands on its original octagonal steps with half of the circle occupied by a broad platform for the priest. Two good old oak chests stand on either side of the tower arch, and near the south door two curious musical instruments of the oboe type are hanging, and seem to be worthy of more careful preservation.

‘MARSH’ AND ‘FEN’

The whole of our route to-day lies through a perfectly flat land, mostly arable and of extraordinary fertility. The corn crops at the end of May were standing nearly two feet high, and all around bright squares of yellow made the air heavy with the scent of the mustard flower. I lately went all over the great mustard factory of Messrs. Colman at Norwich, in which the beauty and ingenuity of the machinery for making and labelling the tins, for filling bags and boxes, or for sorting and folding up in their proper papers the cubes of blue (of which there is a factory contiguous) were a perfect marvel. The works cover thirty-two acres, and everything needed for the business is made on the premises. The mustard of commerce is a mixture of the brown and the white, both of which, and especially the best brown, are grown in the greatest perfection in the fields round Holbeach. It is a valuable crop. In October, 1912, I saw a quotation of 10s. 6d. to 13s. 6d. a bushel for brown, and 8s. to 8s. 6d. for white; 1913 was a much better year, and so I suppose prices ruled higher. But to return.

Here and there we passed a field with an unfamiliar crop of stiff purplish plants which showed where the cultivation of the Isatis tinctoria, the woad plant, which added so much to the attractiveness of our earliest British ancestors, was still kept going. This flat country is not without its trees, and near the villages park-like meadows, the remains of ancient manors, showed a beautiful wealth of chestnut bloom, whilst the cottage gardens were gay with laburnum and pink May. This was especially the case with the most easterly villages of Holbeach, Gedney and Long Sutton, but all along this line of road from Weston to Sutton there were, at one time, manors of the Irby, Welby, Littlebury, and other families, of which nothing now remains but this heritage of trees. The line of road is a very remarkable one, for it divides what once might have been described as the waters that were above from the waters that were below; in other words the Fen from the Marsh. If you look at a good map you will see to the north of the road, from west to east successively, Pinchbeck Marsh, Spalding Marsh, Weston Marsh, Moulton Marsh, Whaplode Marsh, Holbeach Marsh, Gedney Marsh, Sutton Marsh, and Wingland Marsh. The last of these lies between Sutton Bridge and Cross-Keys, on the county boundary; and since the new outfall of the river Nene was cut, a rich tract has been gained for cultivation where once the sea had possession, and just where King John lost his baggage and treasure in his disastrous crossing of the Cross-Keys Wash, at low tide, shortly before his death in 1216. There is now a good road there.

Now look at the map again and you will see to the south of this Holbeach road the same names, but with Fen instead of Marsh—Moulton, Whaplode, Holbeach, and Gedney Fen.