Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

West of these Wolds is a belt of Fen-land lying between them and the ridge or ‘cliff’ on which the great Roman Ermine Street runs north from Lincoln in a bee line for over thirty miles to the Humber near Winteringham, only four miles west of the end of the Wolds already mentioned at South Ferriby.

PARALLEL RIDGES

The high ridge of the Lincoln Wold is very narrow, a regular ‘Hogs back’ and broken down into a lower altitude between Blyborough and Kirton-in-Lindsey, and lower again a little further north near Scawby and still more a few miles further on where the railway goes through the pass between Appleby Station and Scunthorpe.

From here a second ridge is developed parallel with the Lincoln Wold, and between the Wold and the Trent, the ground rising from Bottesford to Scunthorpe, reaching a height of 220 feet on the east bank of the Trent near Burton-on-Stather and thence descending by Alkborough to the Humber at Whitton. The Trent which, roughly speaking, from Newark, and actually from North Clifton to the Humber, bounds the county on the west, runs through a low country of but little interest, overlooked for miles from the height which is crowned by Lincoln Minster. Only the Isle of Axholme lies outside of the river westwards.

The towns of Gainsborough towards the north, and Stamford at the extreme south guard this western boundary. Beyond the Minster the Lincoln Wold continues south through the Sleaford division of Kesteven to Grantham, but in a modified form, rising into stiff hills only to the north-east and south-west of Grantham, and thence passing out of the county into Leicestershire. A glance at a good map will show that the ridge along which the Ermine Street and the highway from Lincoln to Grantham run for seventeen miles, as far, that is, as Ancaster, is not a wide one; but drops to the flats more gently east of the Ermine Street than it does to the west of the Grantham road. From Sleaford, where five railway lines converge, that which goes west passes through a natural break in the ridge by Ancaster, the place from which, next after the “Barnack rag,” all the best stone of the churches of Lincolnshire has always been quarried. South of Ancaster the area of high ground is much wider, extending east and west from the western boundary of the county to the road which runs from Sleaford to Bourne and Stamford.

Such being the main features of the county, it will be as well to lay down a sort of itinerary showing the direction in which we will proceed and the towns which we propose to visit as we go.

ITINERARY

Entering the county from the south, at Stamford, we will make for Sleaford. These are the two towns which give their names to the divisions of South and North Kesteven. Grantham lies off to the west, about midway between the two. As this is the most important town in the division of Kesteven, after taking some of the various roads which radiate from Sleaford we will make Grantham our centre, then leave South Kesteven for Sleaford again, and thence going on north we shall reach Lincoln just over the North Kesteven boundary, and so continue to Gainsborough and Brigg, from which the west and north divisions of Lindsey are named. From each of the towns we have mentioned we shall trace the roads which lead from them in all directions; and then, after entering the Isle of Axholme and touching the Humber at Barton and the North Sea at Cleethorpes and Grimsby, we shall turn south to the Louth and Horncastle (in other words the east and south) divisions of Lindsey, and, so going down the east coast, we shall, after visiting Alford and Spilsby, both in South Lindsey, arrive at Boston and then at Spalding, both in the “parts of Holland,” and finally pass out of the county near the ancient abbey of Croyland.

By this itinerary we shall journey all round the huge county, going up, roughly speaking, on the west and returning by the east; and shall see, not only how it is divided into the political “parts” of Kesteven, Lindsey and Holland, but also note as we go the characteristics of the land and its three component elements of Fen, Wold and Marsh.