The west end of the church overlooks the market, where there is always a gay scene on Mondays—stalls and cheap-jacks and crowds of market folk making it almost Oriental in life and colour.
The street runs along the south side of the church, across which is seen the excellent but not beautiful Sleaford almshouse.
North Transept, St. Denis’s Church, Sleaford.
EWERBY
Eastwards on the Swineshead road, and within half-a-dozen miles of Sleaford, is a cluster of especially good churches—Ewerby, Asgarby, Heckington, Howell, Great Hale and Helpringham. Four of these six have fine spires, and are seen from a long distance in this flat country. Ewerby is just on the edge of Haverholme Priory Park, and the building rooks who have chosen the trees at the village end of the park for their colony, gave, when we visited it, pleasant notification of the coming spring.
The tower is at the west end, engaged in the two aisles, and, adjoining the churchyard, a little green with remains of the old village cross leaves room for the fine pile of building to be seen and admired. The roof line of nave and chancel is continuous, and the broach spire, a singularly fine one, perhaps the best in England, is 174 feet high. It is probably the work of the same master builder who planned and built Heckington and Sleaford. The tower has a splendid ring of ten bells (Grantham alone has as many) for the completion of which, as for much else, Ewerby is indebted to the Earls of Winchelsea.
Internally, the walls are mostly built of very small stones, like those in a roadside wall. In the tower are good Decorated windows, in the lower of which, on the western face, is a stained glass window. This was struck by lightning in 1909, and all the faces of the figures were cut right out, the rest of the glass being intact. A lightning-conductor is now installed, but the faces are not yet filled in.
There is a most beautiful little window at the west end of the north aisle. Under the tower are three finely proportioned arches, and a stone groined roof. The ten bells are rung from the ground. The nave pillars are clustered, each erected on an earlier transition-Norman base; and the base of the font is also Norman. The porch is unusual in having a triangular string-course outside the hood-moulding. Besides the Market Cross, there are parts of two others, in the church and churchyard. There is a grand old recumbent warrior, probably Sir Richard Anses, with fourteenth century chain mail and helmet, and gorget, but the most interesting thing of all is a pre-Norman tomb-cover on the floor of the north aisle, with a rude cross on it, and a pattern of knot-work all over the rest of the slab. This is covered by a mat, but it certainly ought to have a rail round it for permanent protection, for it is one of the most remarkable stones in the county. An old oak chest with carved front is in the vestry. The whole church is well-cared-for, but at present only seated with chairs.
HOWELL PORCH