“ But at Branston, south of Lincoln, the builders have not borrowed ornament. Like the masons at Broughton with their abortive recessed arch, they have tried to copy what they have heard of, what some of them at any rate have seen, and have covered the lower part of the west wall of their tower with arcaded panelling, with rounded arches and cushion capitals. This, and the central doorway with shafting and rudely foliated capitals, have been inspired from a source quite distinct from that which brought into being the strip-work panelling of Barton-on-Humber. ”

“ TATTERSHALL CASTLE AND CHURCH By the Editor
The ancient castles of this country, almost without exception, are full of interest to all sorts and conditions of men and women. The remote antiquity of the rude hill-top fortresses of Cornwall, Wiltshire, and Wales; the huge earthworks of Old Sarum; the story of a gallant defence like Newark; the close association with history of the Tower of London, and with the magic of romance like Conisboro’, Kenilworth, and Carlisle, find devotees for each. ”

“ These are all within no long distance from the town, and all, except Belvoir, within the county. For those whose acquaintance with Lincolnshire is limited to its legendary reputation of flatness, fogginess, and, if one may use the word, fenniness, there could be no better object-lesson than the climb along the lane from Great Ponton to Bassingthorpe, or the walk from Harlaxton to Grantham, with the great spire of St. Wulfran’s framed, like the vignette on the title-page of a book, within the arches formed by the intervening trees. ”

“ The spire of the mother church of Salisbury was not to be completed for many years: the spire of Newark was not taken in hand till the second quarter of the century. More than a century later, Grantham spire would be surpassed in height and grace of proportion by the great lantern-tower at Boston: two hundred years later, the spire of Louth would challenge both. But in beauty of detail, whatever may be their advantages in design, neither Louth nor Boston can compare with Grantham; and in this respect the one steeple in England which has ever surpassed it is the “Broad” Tower of Lincoln. ”

“ So far the workman does not commit himself as to the date of his work: its character is not inconceivably that which a mason more skilled than usual might have given to his work before the Conquest. But the high archway of the intervening entrance, with its edge-roll, its lesser mouldings, and its hood, its jamb-shafts with their voluted capitals, is unmistakably a copy—rough, but not inaccurate—of the lesser archways which flank the western doorways of the Norman west front at Lincoln, and occur again on the returned sides of the Norman wall. ”

“ The first settlement of Grantham must have been dictated by the sight of a potentially fertile valley. It grew up, so far as we know, neither round an abbey nor beneath a castle, but as a community of agriculturists. The church, which grew to such proportions in its midst, grew probably with the prosperity of the town; while of the castle, which stood on the east side of the town, between it and the river, we know nothing but the name. Grantham was not one of those fortified river towns, like Stamford and Nottingham, which played a part in the campaigns of Edward the Elder and his sister. ”

“ Know all men present and to come, that I, William son of Erneis, by the permission of Nicholaa, my wife, give and grant and by this my charter confirm, to God and S. Mary of Acre and the monks serving God, three acres in Sutton, in the field which is called ‘the old fenland,’ near a road, to build a parish church, as a free and perpetual gift for the salvation of my soul and of Nicholaa, my wife, and for the soul of my father, Robert son of Erneis, and the soul of my mother, and for the souls of all my ancestors, and for the soul of Richard de Haia, and for the souls of all his ancestors. ”

“ Except in the great Perpendicular structures of East Anglia, it is comparatively rare to find a parish church built at one effort, in one style, and untouched by subsequent accretions, as at Heckington—so rare, in fact, that the picturesqueness and irregularity arising from the association of various styles and dates in the majority of our churches has almost come to be looked upon as an essential part of our Gothic architecture, and one of its leading characteristics ”

“ Any stranger visiting the district must be struck with the size and magnificence of the village churches of Pinchbeck, Moulton, Whaplode, and Gedney, which have always been out of all proportion to the requirements of the inhabitants of those various places. It was not the needs of the people that prompted the erecting of these four beautiful village shrines; but the church-building rivalry that existed between the two wealthy abbeys of Croyland and Spalding. ”

“ Lord Willoughby retreated on Lincoln; but he decided that the defences of the city were too slight for successful resistance, and so retired to Boston, whence he wrote despairingly to Cromwell:—
“Since the business of Gainsborough the hearts of our men have been so deaded that we have lost most of them by running away.... If the enemy get this town, which is now very weak for defence for want of men, I believe they will not be long out of Norfolk and Suffolk.” ”

“ Turning now to Civilians, Lincolnshire has several brasses of great merchants, though more might be expected in what was in the Middle Ages one of the chief trading counties with the Continent. The finest of these probably was the great brass of Walter Pescod, 1398, now in the sacrarium of Boston Church, though it has lost the wife’s effigy altogether, the feet of the merchant himself, the inscription (happily recorded by Gervase Holles) , and part of the superb canopy. ”

“ Simple—as the beginnings of all artistic work are—are the earliest chancel-screens of this country, and the progress from simple forms to the very rich and complex ones of the Perpendicular Period is as evident in wooden screen-work as it is in the history of tracery in stone. ”

“ Flat and low though her shores may be, yet there is a fascination in the great extent of “yellow sands”; and there is a recompense for the level plain of marsh or fen in the vast expanse of sky, where “The incomparable pomp of eve, And the cold glories of the dawn,” are seen at their finest.
And the views are wonderful: from Alkborough, over the junction of the Trent, the Ouse, and the Humber; from Lincoln, over the plateau eastwards to the wolds, or westwards over the valley of the Trent to the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire hills ”

“ All that we see is inaccurate copying. The life, the independence of thought and aim, the power of adaptation, the force of structural genius, which characterise the works of a transitional period, are all to seek. Yet, in spite of these drawbacks, on which men enlightened by contact with Norman art cannot have been slow to comment, the survival of the Saxon type of tower in Lincolnshire till quite late in the Norman period is a remarkable fact. The tower of Branston Church is of the traditional Saxon form and of much the usual Saxon proportions. ”

“ The northern and southern ends of the screen are chamfered off, and there are traces of some pedestal and tabernacle work in the broken stonework about the height of the string-course, and again below the spring of the arches. The whole of this west front is finished off with a cresting of Tudor flowers. The central doorway takes up one of the recesses, the oak doors being mainly original, though great hooks for hinges still exist in the stonework behind them. ”

“ All Saints’ Church is favoured by its open situation, having in this respect a great advantage over the majority of the Stamford churches. Though alluded to in a document of the twelfth century, as stated above, no portion of the present fabric can be assigned to a date earlier than the thirteenth century. Of the latter period are the nave and chancel arcades and the remarkable arcading on the outside of the south and east walls. The pillars of the south nave arcade are singularly beautiful, having foliage caps surmounting banded, detached shafts. ”

“ Traces of fire in the ruined villas of Scampton, Worlaby, and other places betray the work of a ruthless, uncivilised foe. The owners may have escaped to the towns, or even, if wealthy, have reached the Continent. But their industry was doomed, and many miles of cultivated land must have passed back into mere prairie. The banks and drains were neglected, and much of the fenland, so laboriously won, returned to its former flooded state. If we could recover the story of one large town, such as Lincoln, in the fifth and sixth centuries, many a dark problem would be solved. ”

“ If we may trust the “Ravenna” list of towns, the only “coloniæ” in Britain were Colchester, Lincoln, and Gloucester, and this was perhaps the order of their foundation. These colonies formed in themselves so strong a nucleus [28] of Roman civilisation that they were seldom or never made garrison towns. The three headquarters of the legions—York, Chester, and Caerleon—were not colonies; [13] and there is no trace of a colony among the military stations on Hadrian’s Wall. The small number of these towns in Britain, and their intimate connection with Rome, indicate the great importance of Lindum. ”

“ They can reproduce details of armour and costume with a delicacy which is scarcely possible in the most sumptuous stone or marble monuments. The great majority are of such convenient size that they can be rubbed on a single large sheet of paper; and, unlike altar-tombs, can be studied all at once. And furthermore, for these and other reasons, brasses have long attracted a special body of devotees among antiquaries, some of whom will rub and record a brass with loving zeal, while they will hardly look at the church which contains it, or at any of its other records in tomb or window. ”

“ The ecclesiastical history of the town is equally peaceful. The church was invaded by galleries and box-pews; the rood-screen, if it had not already gone, was taken down; the western part of the nave was left unused, and glass screens to shut out the draught closed in the eastern bays of the nave and the chancel. The ringing gallery, which blocked up the lower part of the tower, was removed in 1752; and, though one cannot regret the opening out of the noble western arch, it is probable that other woodwork in the church might have been better spared. ”

“ Mary’s Church occupies a striking position at the top of the hill leading from the Welland Bridge to the centre of the town. The thirteenth-century tower, surmounted by a beautiful fourteenth-century spire of the broach type, forms what many would consider Stamford’s fairest architectural possession. The arcading on the belfry and the elegant tracery in the spire lights are among the many exquisite features of this part of the building. The nave appears to have been rebuilt in the Perpendicular Period, though the material is largely of thirteenth-century date. ”

“ The naves of Sleaford, Silk Willoughby, Billingboro, Swayton, and Helpringham, [115] and the whole Church of Ewerby, were rising white from the masons’ chisel in the new and graceful Curvilinear style; but it was at Heckington that this local school, through the resources of the rich and powerful abbey, were able to crown their work by one of the finest and most complete parish churches to be found in this or any other one period. ”

“ We may study their angles to our heart’s content, and discover “long-and-short” work with the eye of faith, but we shall actually see it in only one instance, and there in the jambs of a western doorway of the tower, rather than in the quoining of the tower itself. In this instance, at Rothwell, near Caistor, the south-west quoining of the adjacent church has been left standing, like a small rectangular buttress, against the junction of the twelfth century nave and south aisle. ”

“ The King in his reply, which was read by Sir John Monson, states as the object of his coming to assure the people of his intention to defend their religion, laws, and liberties, and to certify them that the pretended Militia Ordinance is unwarranted by his authority. If any should presume to execute it, he should treat them as actual rebels and in arms against himself. He speaks most bitterly of the action of Sir John Hotham in excluding him from Hull, but bids the people still their fear that their county will be the seat of war. ”

“ From the facts presented by geology and a careful study of the county, it would appear that, while Paleolithic Man existed in the south of England, north of an imaginary line from the Wash to the Severn no traces of mankind have been found relating to the Paleolithic Period. It is probable that the great glaciers covered what is now known as Lincolnshire and Northern Britain in that period, and formed an inaccessible barrier to the progress of mankind. ”