On the same occasion the ringing of the Curfew bell, which had been continued till 1890, was given up, and a clock with four faces put up instead, which strikes the hours, but is not at all the same thing. Thus one more interesting and historic custom has disappeared, which is much to be regretted in this utilitarian and unimaginative age.
THE D’ARCY FAMILY
Domesday Book tells us that Nocton was divided in unequal shares between two landlords, Ulf and Osulf; on the land of the former there was already a church with a priest in 1086. These owners had given place to one Norman de Ardreci, written later de Aresci, and finally D’Arcy, a companion of the Conqueror. Norman D’Arcy’s son granted the churches of Nocton and Dunston to the Benedictines of St. Mary’s Abbey, York, also some land to the Carthusians of Kirkstead Abbey, and himself founded a priory at Nocton for canons of the Orders of St. Augustine, who first settled in England in 1108. The buildings are quite gone, but the site is still called the Abbey Field, and the vicarage is called the Priory; the Priory well, whose water was said to be “remarkably good,” in 1727, was only filled up about fifty years ago. Why couldn’t they have let it alone, one wonders. To follow up the history of Nocton: in 1541 Henry VIII. and Katharine Howard slept there.
The D’Arcy family and their descendants in the female line, whose married names were Lymbury, Pedwardine, Wymbishe and Towneley, held the property for three and twenty generations till the middle of the seventeenth century—a good innings of 600 years. But the losses which the Civil War brought about made it necessary for Robert Towneley, at the Restoration in 1660, to sell the estate to Lord Stanhope, from whom it soon passed by sale to Sir William Ellys, about 1676, and in 1726—by the marriage of Sir Richard Ellys’ widow—to Sir Francis Dashwood; after whom, in 1767, it descended to a cousin, George Hobart, eventually third Earl of Buckinghamshire. He altered Nocton considerably, pulled down the church, which was too near the house, and set up a poor structure further off, where the present church stands. He also spent much in draining Nocton fen, and erected a windmill pump which raised the water and sent it into the Witham, and worked well for forty years till it was superseded in Frederick Robinson’s time (1834) by a forty-horse-power steam engine which was found to pump the water faster than the fens could supply it. The earl died in 1804; ten years later his daughter, Lady Sarah Albinia, carried the estate to Frederick John Robinson, second son of Lord Grantham, who became Prime Minister and was created Viscount Goodrich in 1827, and Earl of Ripon in 1833; and, as a member of Sir Robert Peel’s cabinet, moved in the House of Lords the second reading of the Bill for the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. In 1834 the house at Nocton was burnt down, and the earl’s young son, afterwards Marquis of Ripon, laid the foundation stone of the present house in 1841. The earl died in 1859, and his widow, who survived him eight years, built in his memory the present fine church, which was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. In 1889 Lord Ripon sold the estate to Mr. G. Hodgson of Bradford.
It is interesting to hear of a school being set up in 1793 at Nocton; first as a private school by John Brackenbury of Gedney, grandson of Edward Brackenbury of Raithby, near Spilsby, which was continued for forty-six years after her father’s death in 1813, by his daughter Justinia, who became Mrs. Scholey. In her time it was an elementary school which Lady Sarah financed and managed, the children paying a penny a week.
DUNSTON PILLAR
Another thing that was set up was a land lighthouse on Dunston Heath. This was a lonely tract where inhabitants had not only been murdered by highwaymen, but had even been lost in the storms and snow-drifts on the desolate and roadless moor. Here then Sir Francis Dashwood set up the Dunston Pillar, ninety-two feet high with a lantern over fifteen feet high on the top. The date on it is 1751. The fourth Earl of Buckinghamshire, who as Lord Hobart was Governor of Madras, took down the lantern on July 18, 1810, and set up in its place a colossal statue of George III. to commemorate the king’s jubilee.
NOCTON HALL
The granddaughter of the third earl, whose father (The Very Rev. H. L. Hobart) lived at the Priory, being, inter alia, vicar of Nocton and Dean of Windsor, and also of Wolverhampton, tells me that the mail coaches used to pass the pillar and leave all the letters for the neighbourhood at one of the four little lodges close by. She has several interesting specimens of the work done by the Nocton School of Needlework under the guidance of Justinia, whose family were remarkable for their Scriptural as well as “heathen Christian names,” e.g., Ceres and Damaris. Justinia herself always, as they say in Westmorland, used to “get” Justina. These specimens include a very clever and faithful copy in black silk needlework of an engraving by Hoylett from a picture by Thos. Espin of old Nocton Hall, which was burnt down in 1834. The needlework artist has done one of the trees in the picture most beautifully, but has given the rein to her imagination by working in two fine palm trees in place of the oaks of the picture. There is a sampler done at the vicarage by the dean’s daughter, and inscribed:—
“Nocton Priory, 1839.
Louisa C. Hobart.”