South Kyme Church.
We will now go back to Sleaford and trace out the course of its other western road to Newark, leaving the north or Lincoln Road to be described from Lincoln.
HOUR-GLASS STANDS
This road starts in a northerly direction, but splits off at Holdingham before reaching Leasingham, of which Bishop Trollope of Nottingham, who did so much for archæology in our county, was rector for fifty years. The church has a fine transition tower with curiously constructed belfry windows and a broach spire. Two finely carved angels adorn the porch, and the font, of which the bowl seems to have been copied from an earlier one, though only the stem and base remain, exhibits very varied subjects, among them The Resurrection, Last Judgment, The Temptation, The Entry into Jerusalem, Herodias and Salome, and the Marriage of the Virgin. Fixed to one of the pillars is the old hourglass stand, of which other specimens, but usually fixed to the pulpit, are at Bracebridge near Lincoln, Sapperton near Folkingham, Hameringham near Horncastle, and Belton in the Isle of Axholme.
But the Newark road holds westwards, and, leaving the tower of Cranwell, with its interesting “Long and Short” work, to the right, climbs to the high ground and crosses the Ermine Street by Caythorpe Heath to Leadenham, eight miles. Here it drops from “the Cliff” to the great plain, drained by the Wytham and Brant rivers, and at Beckingham on the Witham reaches the county boundary. The Witham only acts as the boundary for two miles and then turns to the right and makes for Lincoln. Half way between this and the lofty spire of Leadenham the road passes between Stragglethorpe and Brant-Broughton (pronounced Bruton), which is described later.
CHAPTER IX
LINCOLN, THE CATHEDRAL AND MINSTER-YARD
The city of Lincoln was a place of some repute when Julius Cæsar landed B.C. 55. The Witham was then called the Lindis, and the province Lindisse. The Britons called the town Lindcoit, so the name the Romans gave it, about A.D. 100, “Lindum Colonia,” was partly Roman and partly British. The Roman walled town was on the top of the hill about a quarter of a mile square, with a gate in the middle of each wall. Of their four roads, the street which passed out north and south was the Via Herminia or Ermine Street. The east road went to “Banovallum”—Horncastle (or the Bain)—and “Vannona”—Wainfleet—and the west to “Segelocum”—Littleborough. The Roman milestone marking XIV miles to Segelocum is now in the cathedral cloisters.
ROMAN ARCH
This walled space included the sites of both cathedral and castle, and was thickly covered with houses in Danish and Saxon times. We hear of 166 being cleared away by the Conqueror to make his castle. The Romans themselves extended their wall southward as far as the stone-bow in order to accommodate their growing colony. Their northern gate yet exists. It is known as “Newport Gate,” and is of surpassing interest, as, with the exception of one at Colchester, there is not another Roman gateway in the kingdom. Only last October the foundations of an extremely fine gateway were uncovered at Colchester, the Roman “Camelodunum”; apparently indicating the fact that there were two chariot gates as well as two side entrances for foot passengers. The Newport Gate is sixteen feet wide, and twenty-two feet high, with a rude round arch of large stones without a key, the masonry on either side having stones some of which are six feet long. On each side of the main gate was a doorway seven feet wide for foot passengers. A fifth Roman road is the “Foss Way,” which came from Newark and joined the Ermine Street at the bottom of Canwick Hill, a mile south of Lincoln.