Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

Of the eight roads from Lincoln one goes west, and, passing over the Foss Dyke by a swing bridge at Saxilby, crosses the Trent between Newton and Dunham into Nottinghamshire. The view of Lincoln Minster from Saxilby, with the sails of the barges in the foreground as they slowly make their way to the wharves at the foot of the hill, is most picturesque. Saxilby preserves some interesting churchwarden’s accounts from 1551 to 1569, and, after a gap of fifty-five years, from 1624 to 1790. The “Foss Dyke” is a canal made by the Romans to connect the Witham with the Trent and deepened by Henry I. The road runs alongside of it from Saxilby for two miles. Consequently we get glimpses now and again of the low round-nosed barges with widespread canvas sailing slowly past trees and hedgerows; then we turn north and pass by Kettlethorpe Lodge and Fenton village, through lanes lined with oak trees or edged with gorse, and amidst fields brilliant with corn-marigold, and poppy, till we come, all at once, on a little fleet of barges waiting with their picturesque unfurled sails for a passage through the lock near Torksey, a place of some importance in Saxon times, having two monastic houses. Two miles beyond Torksey is Marton. This place is also approached by the old Roman road, now called “Till bridge Lane,” which branched off from the Ermine Street ten miles above Lincoln, and went to Doncaster and York, crossing both arms of the river Till near Thorpe-in-the-fallows. One mile from Marton this road passes out of the county at Littleborough ferry, the “Segelocum” of the Romans. The ferry is the main means of crossing the Trent where it touches Lincolnshire, as there are but two bridges in twenty miles, one at Gainsborough, and one between Dunham and Newton-on-Trent, where the view from the cliff with the bridge below is very picturesque.

Lincoln from the Witham.

There is a ferry at Laneham, between Newton and Torksey; and below Gainsborough are half a dozen, at Stockwith, Ouston, Althorpe, Keadby, where a bridge is now being built, Flixborough, and Burton Stather, but the latter only takes foot passengers, and the others are all, I believe, of the same calibre. It is just the same on the Ouse, across which Yokefleet and Ousefleet look at each other about a mile apart, but to drive from one to the other is a matter of more than thirty miles.

MARTON

HISTORY OF THE DIOCESE

Marton is a tiny place, but has a very interesting church, with unbuttressed tower and heavily embattled parapet to both nave and chancel. The tower up to the upper stringcourse is entirely built in Norman “Herringbone” work, this is now plastered over outside, but you can trace the herring-bone through the plaster, and inside the tower it is plain to see, and shows courses of thin stone laid horizontally at frequent intervals. Above the stringcourse is the usual two light window with mid-wall jamb, which, like the Long-and-Short work at the angles of the tower, we generally describe as Saxon. Several Saxon stones with interlaced work, parts of a cross probably, are built into the west end of the south aisle at about two feet from the ground outside. I always want to see these very old stones inside, for their better preservation. Above the present nave roof, but below the mark of the earlier and high-pitched roof, is a door which once opened from the tower into the church. The chancel arch is Norman, as are the two lofty bays of the north arcade. The rest of the church is Early English. In the chancel south wall is a large niche with a pedestal, evidently intended for a figure, perhaps of St. Margaret, the patron saint, and there is also a low-side window of one light with a two-light window above it. But the most interesting thing in the chancel is a little stone, nine inches by eleven, now in the north wall, which was lately found in part of the wall where it had been used as building material; this has on it a very early attenuated figure of the crucified Saviour, clothed in long drapery. It might have been part of a cross-head; certainly it is a very remarkable figure, and of very early date. There is a tall cross-shaft and pedestal, now in the churchyard, but this is said to have been a market cross originally. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings were called in to do the work of repairing and, as usual, their work has been done in an inexpensive manner and on conservative lines. They found that the foundation of the old walls, only two feet below the surface, was just a trench filled with loose pebbles and sand. Three miles to the east of Marton stands the church which, next to the Minster, we may put at the head of the list of all the churches in the county. This is what Murray rightly speaks of as “The venerable church of St. Mary at Stow, the mother church of the great Minster.”

STOW

Stow is thought to be identical with the Roman Sidnacester, and the first church was built there in 678 by the Saxon King Egfrith, husband of Etheldred, the foundress of Ely, at the time when Wilfrid’s huge Northumbrian diocese was divided. From 627, when Paulinus, Bishop of York, preached at Lincoln, baptized in the Trent and built the first stone church in Lincolnshire, to 656, the province of Lindisse, or Lindsey, was under the Bishop of York. From 656 to 678 it was under the Bishops of Mercia, whose “Bishop-stool” was at Repton, and after 669 at Lichfield. In 678 King Egfrith of Northumbria established the diocese of Lindsey, with Eadred as first bishop, with its “Bishop-stool,” and a church of stone built for the See at Sidnacester or Stow. This lasted for 192 years; then, in 870, the Danes overran Mercia and burnt Stow church and murdered Bishop Berktred. Then from 876, when England was divided between Edmund Ironside and Canute, Lincoln became an important Danish borough. This period is marked by the number of streets in Lincoln called ‘gates,’ and by the enormous number of villages in the county ending in the Danish ‘by,’ which we find side by side with the Saxon terminations ‘ton’ and ‘ham.’ The Danes held Lincoln certainly till 940, during which time the province had no bishop. In 958 Lindsey was united with Leicester, and the “Bishop-stool” was fixed at Dorchester-on-Thames till, in 1072, it was transferred to Lincoln, and the province of Lindsey became part of the diocese of Lincoln under Remigius, the first Bishop of Lincoln. Stow being burnt in 870, remained in ruins till about 1040, when Eadnoth, seventh Bishop of Dorchester, rebuilt it, using the materials of the older church as far as they would go, as may be seen in the lower part of the transept walls. He probably built the massive round-headed tower arches. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife, Godiva, helped liberally both with the building and the endowment. The Early Norman nave, and the upper parts of the transepts are probably the work of Bishop Remigius (1067-1093) who, we are told, “re-edified the Minster at Stow.” The chancel is late Norman, of the best kind, and, together with the rich doorways in the nave, may be assigned to Bishop Alexander (1123-1147) whose great west doorway at Lincoln is of similar workmanship. A few Early English windows, and the Perpendicular central tower, are all that has been added later, so that the church is of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The tower rests on pointed arches, whose piers come down inside the angles formed by the old Norman arches, which remain, and are visible below and outside the pointed arches, and give the very remarkable appearance of double arches supporting the central tower.

COTES BY STOW