1. The moat-like places which originally surrounded the inaccessible islets, with which the Fenland at one time abounded; but now used chiefly of low-lying land apt to be flooded.
2. A wood of alder, ash, &c., in a moist boggy place, e.g., “Keal Carrs,” near Spilsby.
A third meaning is less common, viz., the humate of iron or yellow sediment in water which flows from peaty land.
BROUGHTON AND BRIGG
Of the four parishes above mentioned which meet at Brigg,[6] Broughton on the Ermine Street is worth a visit. The pre-Norman church and tower, like Marton, has a good deal of herring-bone work, and, like Hough-on-the-Hill, an outer turret containing a spiral staircase. There is a small rude doorway, and as at Barton, the tower with its two apses probably formed the original church.
The present nave is built on the Norman foundation, and the cable moulding is visible at the base of two of the pillars. There is a chapel in the north aisle, and on the north side of the chancel a good altar tomb with alabaster effigies of Sir H. Redford and his wife, 1380, and a fine brass on the floor of about the same date. This chancel was once sixteen feet longer. In another meanly built chantry is a monument to Sir Ed. Anderson, 1660. In Broughton woods, as at Tumby, the lily of the valley grows wild. North of Broughton the Ermine Street becomes again passable, and, after running some miles through a well-wooded country, is crossed by the railway at Appleby Station, whence it becomes a good road again, but again falls into disuse when the road turns to the left for Winterton, a large village in which three fine Roman pavements were ploughed up in 1747. Here we have a large cruciform church with a very early tower. Afterwards the Street continues, a visible but not very serviceable track, to Winteringham Haven, the Roman “Ad Abum.”
OLD BOAT OF BRIGG
In Brigg we had hoped to see the old boat which was dug out near the river in 1886, it is forty-eight feet long and four to five feet wide, hollowed out of a single tree, and could carry at least forty men over the Humber, though not perhaps across the sea. Its height at the stern was three feet nine inches, and it was six inches thick at the bottom. The tree trunk was open at the thick or stern end, and two oak boards slid into grooves cut in the sides and bottom to make a stern-board. It probably had bulwark-boards also, certainly it had three stiffening thwarts, and the stern end had been decked, as a ledge still shows on either side on which the planking rested. One very interesting feature in it was that the boat had been repaired, with a patch of oak boarding six feet by one foot, on the starboard side, the board being bevelled at the edges and pegged on with oak pins. A similar boat made out of a huge oak tree is in the portico of the British Museum. In this, which is fifty feet long and four feet wide, tapering off a little at either end, both the ends and two thwarts are left solid. The latter are not more than six inches high, but sufficient to add considerably to the strength of the hull. The boat is three inches thick at the gunwale and possibly more at the bottom, and has no keel. But this most interesting relic of Viking days has been removed from Brigg, for what reasons I know not, to the Museum at Hull, and is no longer in the county. A British corduroy road or plank causeway was also found below the mud from which the boat was dug out, and is therefore probably of greater age, though such a mud-bearing stream as the Humber can make a considerable deposit in a very short time. This fact is illustrated by the process of “warping,” which is described in the chapter on the Isle of Axholme.
Brigg, without its old boat, has little to detain us, so we can pass to Wrawby, and then desert the main road, which goes east through a gap in the Wold to Brocklesby, and turn northwards to Elsham, where we come up against the most northerly portion of the “Wolds” as distinguished from the “Cliff” or Ridge which lies more to the west. The main road or highway to Barton runs right up the hill and crosses the Wold obliquely, and, as usual, being on the high ground, exhibits no villages in the whole of its course, but we will turn sharp to the left and take a byway which goes by “the Villages” of which we shall pass through no less than half a dozen in the six miles between Elsham and the Humber.
At Elsham is the seat of Sir John Astley. The church has a rich tower doorway with curious sculptured stones on either side.