We have dwelt at some length on Sleaford and its immediate neighbourhood, and not without cause, for there are few places in England or elsewhere in which so many quite first-rate churches are gathered within less than a six-mile square. They are all near the road from Sleaford to Boston, on which, after leaving Heckington, nothing noticeable is met with for seven miles, till Swineshead is reached, and nothing after that till Boston.
The north-eastern road from Sleaford to Horncastle passes over a flat and dull country to Billinghay and Tattershall, and thence by the interesting little churches of Haltham and Roughton (pronounced Rooton) to Horncastle. The road near Billinghay runs by the side of the Old Carr Dyke, which is a picturesque feature in a very Dutch-looking landscape.
KYME TOWER AND PRIORY
SOUTH KYME
This road crosses the Dyke near North Kyme, where there is a small Roman camp. The Normans have left their mark in the name of “Vacherie House” and Bœuferie Bridge, close to which is “Decoy House,” and two miles to the south is the isolated village of South Kyme. Here is the keep of a thirteenth century castle, which is nearly eighty feet high, a square tower with small loophole windows. The lower room vaulted and showing the arms of the Umfraville family, to whom the property passed in the fifteenth century from the Kymes by marriage, and soon afterwards to the Talboys family, and, in 1530, to Sir Edward Dymoke of Scrivelsby, whose descendants resided there till 1700. The castle was pulled down about 1725, after which the Duke of Newcastle bought the estate and sold it twenty years later to Mr. Abraham Hume. The existing tower communicated from the first floor with the rest of the castle. The upper floors are now gone.
Close by was a priory for Austin canons, founded by Philip de Kyme in the reign of Henry II., but all that now remains of it is in the south aisle of the church, which, once a splendid cruciform building, has been cut down to one aisle and a fine porch; over this is represented the Coronation of the Virgin. A bit of very early carved stonework has been let into the wall, and a brass inscription from the tomb of Lord Talboys 1530.
South Kyme.
The western road from Sleaford has no interesting features, till at about the fifth milestone it comes to Ancaster, the old Roman ‘Causennæ’; here it crosses the Ermine Street, which is a fine wide road, but fallen in many parts into disuse. The Ancaster stone quarries lie two miles to the south of the village in Wilsford heath on high ground; the Romans preferred a high ridge for their great “Streets,” but at Ancaster the Ermine Street descends 100 feet, and from thence, after crossing it, our route takes us by a very pretty and wooded route to Honington, on the Great North Road.
