Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

There are many aumbries in various parts of the church, and a tall, Decorated font, with grotesque faces in some panels, and in others sacred subjects oddly treated, such as our Lord crowned and holding a Chalice. In the south aisle is an old oak post alms-box resembling one at Halton Holgate.

A doorway leads out from the south side of the east end, an entrance probably to an eastern chapel. The two doorways, one on each side of the altar, at Spalding may have led to the same, or possibly to a vestry, as in Magdalen Chapel, Oxford.

The spire has a staircase, passing curiously from one of the pinnacles. A very massive broken stone coffin, removed from a garden, lies in the south chapel. The fine row of limes, and the ivy-grown walls of old Harlaxton Manor, add to the beauty of this quiet little village, and a group of half-timbered brick buildings, said to be sixteenth century, though looking more modern, which are near the church, are a picturesque feature.

BELVOIR CASTLE

Denton Manor, the seat of Sir C. G. E. Welby, Bart., is just beyond Harlaxton, and there one might once have seen a fine old manor house, now replaced by a large modern hall of fine proportions; the work is by Sir A. W. Blomfield, good in design and detail, and containing a notable collection both of furniture and pictures. St. Christopher’s Well, a chalybeate spring, is in the park, and in the restored church are a good recumbent effigy of John Blyth, 1602, and a figure of Richard Welby, 1713, with angels carefully planting a crown on his wig. After this the road passes into Leicestershire, so we turn to the right and in less than four miles, halfway between the Melton road and the Nottingham road, and more in Leicestershire than in Lincolnshire, we come to Belvoir Castle. The mound on which it stands is over the border and is not a natural height, but was thrown up on a spur of the wold as early as the eleventh century by Robert de Todeni, who thence became known as Robert de Belvedeir. Certainly the pile is grandly placed, and has a sort of Windsor Castle appearance from all the country round. It has been in possession of the Manners family now for four hundred years. The celebrated Marquis of Granby, a name well known in all the neighbourhood as a public-house sign, was son of the third Duke. He was “Col. of the Leicester Blues” in 1745, and General and Commander-in-Chief of the British contingent at Minden, where the English and German forces, under the Duke of Brunswick, defeated the French in 1759, and he distinguished himself in battle in each of the three following years. The castle, destroyed by order of Parliament in the civil wars, was rebuilt in 1668, and again in 1801, but a fire having destroyed part of it in 1816 it was restored at the worst of all architectural periods, so that at a near view it does not fulfil the expectation raised by its grand appearance when seen from a distance. As at Windsor there is a very fine “Guard Room,” and many large rooms hung with tapestry or pictures, and a picture gallery of unusual excellence. The Duchess’s garden in spring is one of the finest horticultural sights in the kingdom. The greater part of the castle is most liberally thrown open daily to the public.

Returning from Belvoir we can pass by Barrowby to join the Nottingham and Grantham road, which leaves the county at Sedgebrook, on either side of which are seen the churches of Muston and East and West Allington, where Crabbe, the poet, was rector 1789-1814. West Allington church stands in Mr. Welby’s park, and close by, a salt well is marked on the map. At Sedgebrook is a farm house which was built as a manor-house by Sir John Markham in the sixteenth century, when he was Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. He it was who received the soubriquet of “The upright Judge,” on the occasion of his being turned out of office by Edward IV., because of his scrupulous fairness at the trial of Sir Thomas Coke, Lord Mayor of London.

From Sedgebrook to Barrowby is three miles of level ground, and then the road rises 150 feet to the village, which commands a splendid view over the vale of Belvoir. Leaving this you descend a couple of miles to Grantham.

GONERBY HILL

At the outskirts of the town the road meets two others, one the northern or Lincoln road, and the other the north-western or Newark road. This is the Great North Road, and it starts by climbing the famous Gonerby Hill, the terror and effectual trial ground of motors in their earliest days, and described by “mine host” in The Heart of Midlothian as “a murder to post-horses.” The hill once gained affords a fine view eastwards, Foston and Long Bennington (which has a large church with a handsome porch, a good churchyard cross, and a mutilated market cross), are the only villages, till the road crosses the county boundary near Claypole, and runs on about four miles to Newark, distant fifteen miles from Grantham. Long Bennington is a mile north-east of Normanton Lodge, where Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire touch.

Stubton, a couple of miles to the east, has a fine group of yew trees growing round the tomb of Sir George Heron, one of the family from Cressy Hall, Gosberton, I suppose, who built the hall now occupied by G. Neville, Esq.