Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood / Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter

I have known a hare, when hard pressed by the harriers, enter a tunnel under a field gateway; but here instinct rather fails her; for, too often, it is only avoiding one mode of death by courting another.  If there is water in the ditch, running through the tunnel, the obstruction caused by her body makes the water rise, and she is drowned; or, if she stays any time in the tunnel, her cramped limbs get so stiff after her exertions, that she cannot get out.

This incident leads me to speak of the pertinacity of our weasels in hunting their prey, say a hare, as above, or a rabbit.  On one occasion, as I was riding by the side of a strip of low whinbushes and long grass, a rabbit rushed out just in front of me, its fur apparently curled with perspiration, uttering a kind of suppressed cry, and evidently in a state of the greatest terror.  I pulled up in order to discover the cause of this alarm.  The rabbit re-entered the cover a few yards further on; but presently, where it had emerged, I saw a weasel; and then I became aware that a number of these creatures were working through the grass.  I watched their movements, following them at a distance, till they had about reached the spot where the rabbit re-entered.  Then, feeling a keen sympathy for the poor persecuted rabbit, I charged into the midst of the pack, and by dint of plunging up and down among the startled company, and striking at them with my whip, I succeeded in dispersing them.  At the same moment the rabbit, which had no doubt been crouching near, half paralysed with fear, darted out, and passing by me, went away at a great pace, as if rejoicing in the rescue.  I pursued the weasels for some distance, and should say there was not less than a dozen.  I was much astonished at the enormous leaps which they made in their flight, their long, lithe bodies contracting, and then expanding with a sudden jerk which threw them forward several feet at a time.  As to the habit of weasels hunting in a pack, Waterton, the naturalist, mentions that he has seen two old stoats with five half-grown young ones hunting together. [69]  Richard Jefferies, in his book, “Round about a Great Estate,” mentions having seen a pack of five stoats hunting in company, and says that a poacher told him that he had seen as many as fourteen so engaged.  In the above case, which came under my own observation, the weasels were all apparently full grown and equally agile.

CHAPTER VI.  REPTILES, FISHES, INSECTS.

Walking along the path through the wood, from the cross roads, near St. Andrew’s Church, towards the Victoria Hotel, the writer, on one occasion, observed a lady poking with her parasol at some object lying on the ground close to her feet.  On coming to the spot he found that she was playing with an adder, which had crossed her path, apparently quite innocent of the danger she was incurring, the serpent still, evidently, having some attractive power for this, too curious daughter of Eve.  He at once, by a blow on the head with his walking stick, despatched it, and then explained to her that it was lucky for her that it had not bitten her on the ankle.  The adder or viper (Vipera Berus) is, fortunately, not common about Woodhall, but it exists there, and may be seen at times, basking on a sunny bank, or lying among the dead and dry foliage near a path, or on the open heath, where the unwary pedestrian is liable to tread upon it.  It is the more dangerous because it is apt to vary in colour, according to the locality which it frequents, and therefore is the less easily observed.  The colour is always some shade of brown, from a dull yellow to an olive tint; but it may be specially known by the zigzag, black markings along the back, and its broad head, with V-shaped mark in the centre.  Its length is from a foot to a foot-and-a-half, although specimens have been killed as long as four feet.  (“Naturalist,” 1895, p. 206.)  The female is larger than the male.  Its bite is made with great rapidity, so that there is little opportunity to escape it.  The poison is very virulent, and we are told that in some cases it has proved fatal, but that was probably in the case of a naturally inflammatory subject.  The writer has killed several at different times, on the Moor, near Woodhall.  On one occasion, on a hot day in September, when a friend was shooting with him, the dog of the friend was bitten.  It immediately howled, and seemed to be in considerable pain.  He was in time to see the adder and to kill it.  He then hurried off with the dog and caught a train to Horncastle, where a dose of Eau de Luce was administered, and the dog recovered.  Olive oil, also, well rubbed into the bitten part, is said to be an effective remedy, and is often more easily obtainable.  Another variety of snake found here is what is commonly called the “slow worm” or “blind worm” (Anguis fragilis), which is generally seen in moist meadow ground.  It is from 10 to 16 inches in length, and quite harmless.  Strictly speaking, it is a lizard, not a snake.  The only other kind is the common grass snake (coluber natrix).  This is fairly common.  The writer has seen three linked together, lying on a bank in Kirkby-lane, a favourite walk near Woodhall.  If taken unawares, without time to escape, it will hiss and make a show of fight, but it is perfectly harmless and defenceless, and usually endeavours to escape as quickly as possible, and will bury itself in the long grass, the hedge bottom, or underground with marvellous rapidity.  Like the late Poet Laureate, Lord Tennyson, the writer has more than once kept a tame snake of this species, and has even carried it about in his coat pocket, to the astonishment of urchins who have seen its head peeping out.  In a state of nature they hybernate; but when kept in a room, a favourite resort in cold weather was among the ashes under a fire-grate.  If a hot coal fell from the grate into the ashes, the snake would rush out hissing, but presently return to its warm retreat again.  Held out by the tail, they will try to climb up their own body, and snap, as if to bite at one’s hand; but their only real mode of defence is to inflate the body with air to its utmost power of expansion, and then emit it again, charged with a strong odour, repulsive enough to drive most things from it. [71a]  They are found in length from one foot and a half to three feet; and the writer has seen one killed, from which 32 unhatched eggs were taken, each egg about an inch long.  The question of snakes swallowing their young, to shelter them from danger, though asserted by several authorities, I have never been able to prove or disprove, although I have often watched them. [71b]

The Lizard (Zoctoca vivipara) is found in sandy parts of the moor, and sunny banks, but is not very common.  Many a time, as a boy, I have caught it, and found, immediately afterwards, nothing left in my hand but the tail, the rest of the creature darting away over the ground, as if none the worse; or, rather, as one might imagine, moving more freely when relieved of the incumbrance.  This “casting” of the tail would seem, really, to be an interesting, self-protective effort.  As the partridge shams lameness in its movements, to draw away an intruder from its young; or, conversely, as the Russian traveller, pursued by wolves, flings away his children, that he may escape himself; so the captured lizard, as a last resource, casts off its tail, and leaves it, wriggling, to attract the captor’s attention, while its own bodily “better half” seeks safety in concealment.

On some of these fishes I may here make a few remarks.  The grayling, “Thymellus,” or “thyme scented” fish, is not indigenous, but has, of late years, been imported from the small river Eau, at Claythorpe, near Alford; and it is now breeding in the river Bain.  It is also called the “umber,” or “shadow” fish, because it does not lie near the surface, like the trout, but deeper down, and darts up at the fly, like a grey, dim shadow in the water.  A recent angling author, referring to this habit of the fish, speaks of casting his fly “on the surface of a deep pool on the Doon, in which the shadowy form of the grayling could be seen three feet below.  A fish would shoot up with a rush, seize the fly, and drop backward to the bottom.”  (“Angling Holidays,” by C. W. Gedney, pp. 8, 9.)  The special month for grayling fishing is August, and onward through the winter.  The rudd, found in the Witham, is not unlike the roach, but a thicker fish, with sides and back almost of a green tinge.  It has been taken up to 2½lb., but from 1 to 1½lb. is a commoner weight.  It acquires its name from its red (ruddy-coloured) eyes.  The blick is like the dace, but smaller and lighter in colour; very quick in taking the fly.  Its average size is four to five inches.  The stickleback, or “blue-eyed sailor,” is found almost everywhere—in pond and stream.  It is remarkable for building a nest, almost like that of a bird, attached to the stem of a reed or some other aquatic plant, which the male fish defends with great pugnacity “against all comers.”  It may be said to occupy a place among our fishes, analogous to that of the kingfisher among our birds, as being decked with brighter colours than any other kind; especially is this the case in time of excitement, as when defending the nest.  It then darts about, with all its spines erect, and flashing with green and gold and red.  Anyone who thrusts a stick into the water near the nest may witness this for himself.  “Sticklebacks were formerly found in such large quantities in fen waters that they were made a source of considerable profit, being boiled down for the oil they contained, and the refuse sold as manure.”  (Thompson’s “Boston,” p. 368.)  The miller’s thumb is about the size of a gudgeon, to which it is allied, but has a head broader than its body, whence it gets its other name of “bull-head.”  The burbot has something of the flavour of the eel.  The lamprey gets its name of the “nine-eyed eel” from nine orifices along the side of the throat, through which the water passes from the gills.  It is sometimes said to be poisonous, but the Germans eat them as a delicacy.  Carp, of the “Lake” variety, were put into the Witham several years ago, and they are occasionally taken 10lb. or 12lb. in weight.  The ordinary pond carp is no longer known near Woodhall, but they survive in a pond, where the writer has caught them, at Wispington.  They are a somewhat insipid fish, although at one time highly esteemed.  There was an old saying that the “carp was food fit for an abbot, the barbel for a king.”  Tench were found in great numbers in a pond which formerly existed on the site now occupied by “Oranienhof” Villa, within 150 yards of the Victoria Hotel.  They have also been taken in the river Witham, but are now thought to be extinct.  Very large tench were formerly abundant in a moat surrounding the house where the writer now lives.  They are difficult to take with worm or paste, as, by continual sucking, they get the bait off the hook without being caught.  The largest, sometimes weighing 3lb. or more, were taken in a wickerwork trap, of the shape of a dice-box, some 3ft. long, with the willow withes pointing inwards at each end.  This was baited with a peony, or any gay-coloured flower; attracted by which, the tench found their way inwards, but could not get out.  Every pond in Kirkstead has its fish; fish doubtless of ancient lineage, the descendants of those on which monks and abbotts once fattened.  In an early blackletter edition of Chaucer, there is a fragment of a poem, called “The Pilgrym’s Tale,” which begins with these lines:—

which might well apply to the “hows,” or monastery, of Kirkstead.  Every such Religious House had its “fish stews,” or ponds, keeping, as Chaucer says, “Many a bream, and many a luce (pike) in stew, and many a fat partrich eke in mewe.”  The Cistercian rules of diet were very severe, allowing only one meal a day, and none but the sickly were permitted to partake of animal food.  Consequently, fish were in great demand, and the greater the variety, the more toothsome would be the monastic fare. [74]  Roach abound in the Witham, and attain a very fair size, not unfrequently up to 1¼lb.; and the artizans of Sheffield, and elsewhere, brought by special trains, in hundreds, often carry away with them very fair baskets.  Bream of both kinds are very abundant in the Witham.  I am told by one angler that he has seen the water crowded with shoals of them, and they are caught up to 6lb. in weight, and even more.  I have before me the paper-cut shape of a bream caught near Tattershall, which weighed 5¼lb., was 21 inches in length, and about 20 inches in girth.  Chub in the river Bain, between Horncastle and Roughton, and again between Tattershall and Dogdyke, are caught weighing several pounds.  They are a wary fish, but, when hooked, fight hard for a while, and then suddenly collapse.  The writer has often, in the early morning or late evening, sat by the river fishing for them with black slug, and seen two or three big fish, 1½ft. in length, slowly rising and sinking in the stream, as they examined the bait.  A chub was taken in the Bain, in 1898, with the spoon-bait, weighing 4lb. 10oz.  The Pike attains a good size in some of the ponds in the neighbourhood, and also in the river Witham.  In a large pond, about three-quarters of a mile from the Bath-house, at an abandoned brickyard known as “Jordan’s Pond,” a near relative of the writer, a few years ago, landed a pike weighing between 13lbs. and 14lbs.  It was currently reported for several years that there was a much larger pike in this pond, which those who had seen it estimated at 20lbs. weight.  A resident near has told the writer that he has seen it, holding across its jaws a captured fish fully a foot long.  This pike disappeared, it is believed in the night, in the year 1897.  Doubtless the nocturnal marauder has kept his own counsel from that day to this.  There is an old laconic expression, “Witham pike, none like,” which is only a condensed form of an older adage,

Walter de Gaunt (a.d. 1115) granted to the Abbot of Bardney eight fisheries on the Witham, and a fishery on the Witham at Dogdyke (Dock-dike) was granted to the Abbot of Kirkstead by Philip de Kyme (a.d. 1162), which were privileges, in those times, of considerable value.  (Reliquiœ galenœ, Introd., p. xxiii.).  Records in the Archives of Lincoln state that when Henry VII. visited Lincoln, in 1486, keeping his Easter there, and “humbly and christenly did wesh the feet of 30 poore menne with his noble hands,” he was entertained at a banquet, to which the Mayor contributed “12 grete pykes, 12 grete tenches, and 12 salmons”; [76a] and on a second visit, after his victory at Stoke field, the Corporation presented him with “2 fatte oxen, 20 fatte muttons, 12 fatte capons, and 6 grete fatte pykes.”  “Pike have been taken in the Fens,” says Mr. Skertchly, in his “Fenland” (p. 398), “from 20lbs. to 24lbs.  The largest known was taken when Whittlesea Mere was drained.  It weighed 100lbs., and was given to the late naturalist, Frank Buckland.”  There are fine pike in the lake at Sturton Hall, where permission to fish may generally be obtained; and the present would seem to be an opportunity for placing on record that when, early in this century, the lake, of some eight acres in extent, was first formed by damming the stream which ran through the Park, it was stocked with pike and other fish from the moat which then enclosed the residence of the present writer, Langton Rectory.  I find among my notes on Witham pike fishing, that in 1890 one angler [76b] took, in two hours, five fish, weighing altogether 31lbs.; the largest scaling over a stone (14lbs.), measured 35½ inches in length and 19 inches in girth.  A few days later he landed fishes of 7lbs. and 5lbs., while another angler, about the same date, secured a pike of 16lbs.  But a Horncastle fisherman, [76c] in the same week, captured one of 18lbs. in the Witham near Tattershall.  One of our greatest anglers states that his largest pike, taken in the Witham, was 16¼lbs.; that he has landed 23 pike in one day, of all sizes, and 20 the next day, making 43 fish in two days.  In the closing week of the season 1898–1899, a season below the average, a pike was taken in the Witham, near Tattershall, weighing 22lbs.

The late vicar of Tattershall, the Rev. Mortimer Latham, to whose memory the writer would here pay his tribute of regard and respect for as genuine, and withal as genial, an angler as Isaac Walton himself, “knew,” as we might say, “by heart,” the Witham, its finny occupants, and their haunts; and many a fine fish he landed, the shapes of which he kept, cut out in brown paper, in his study.  The largest pike he ever took weighed 19½lbs.  I have before me, as I write, the paper-cut shape of this fish, lent to me by his daughter; who writes: “It may interest you to know that it was conveyed home in a bolster slip, and was on view in the vicarage courtyard, to the great entertainment of the whole village.”  Its length was 38 inches, girth about 21 inches.  She further adds: “My father, at one time, caught several tench (now supposed to be extinct in the Witham), and I am proud to say that the last one known to be captured was taken by myself, for being one of the keenest fishermen that even Lincolnshire ever produced, he made us as ardent fisherfolk as himself.”  I have also the shape of a perch caught by him, weighing 2½lbs., length 15½ins., girth about 12ins.

On one occasion, a well-known angler tells me, he fished three long hours in a gale of wind, which nearly carried him into the river, without stirring a fin, and then, an unaccountable change of mood coming over the “water wolves,” through the next hour and a half they “took like mad,” and he landed 42½lb. weight.  At the time two Sheffield men were fishing close by, who had been at the work for three days, and had landed only a few bream or roach, and one small jack.  Under their very noses he landed three splendid pike, while they looked on thunderstruck.  Such are the fortunes of war with fishermen.  On another occasion, when the day was dull and calm, and there was nothing, one would have thought, to stir the fish to any animation, he landed at the same spot one pike of 16¼lb., and three of 9lb. odd each.  “In fact,” he says, “pike are unaccountable.”  In December, 1898, a boy caught a pike of 16lb. weight in the Horncastle Canal, at Tattershall, 3½ feet in length and 9 inches in girth; and another of 11lbs. was taken in the Witham, shortly after; and other cases of 14lb., and so on, are recorded.  Pike, as is well known, are exceedingly voracious, and not very particular as to what they eat.  A writer in the “Naturalist” [78] states that a pair of Shoveller ducks nested in a disused brickpit, and brought off their young; but a pike in the pit gradually carried them off, one by one, taking one when it was large enough to fly.  The same fish destroyed nearly the whole of another brood of ducks, hatched at the same pit.  The present writer has himself witnessed a similar occurrence.  He at one time kept (as he does still) wild ducks, which nested on the banks of the moat surrounding the house.  There were large pike in the moat, and he has frequently heard a duck give a quack of alarm, has seen a curl on the water, and on counting his ducklings, found that there was one less.  And if pike are not particular as to their diet—all being grist that comes to the mill—neither are they particular as to the bait, if they are in the humour.

The writer, in a day’s fishing for trout, in a Scotch river, the Teviot, where he took perhaps a score or two in the day, would vary the sport on coming to a deep pool by taking off his flies, putting on stout gimp tackle, with a single large hook, which was run through the body of a small trout, or parr; and would often, in this way, land a good pike or two.  Sometimes when drawing in the pike too hastily, it would disgorge the bait and hook, but on his making another cast, and letting them float down the pool again, the pike would return to the charge, unwarned by experience, and be eventually captured.  On one occasion, rowing leisurely in a boat on Loch Vennachar, with his rod over the stern, and line trailing behind him, a trout, of a pound weight or so, took the fly, and hooked itself.  This was immediately seized by a good-sized pike, and after a hard fight he secured both with gut tackle.  Dining with the Marchioness who owned the above river, he was regaled on a 10lb. or 12lb. pike, which the Lady Cecil had caught that day, her boat being pushed along the river by a gillie, himself walking in the water, and she fishing with a single large hook, baited with a piece of red cloth.

We have quoted the lines celebrating the pike of the Witham, and the eels of the Ancholme (also a Lincolnshire river), but eels were, at one time, abundant also in the Witham.  Large tubs containing hundreds of them used to be taken to Horncastle on market days, or were hawked about to the country houses.  It is said that as many as 16,000 eels have been taken in one year.  If you bought eels from these hawkers, they were brought to your kitchen door alive, and, being difficult creatures to handle, your cook generally got the seller to skin them alive, and they were often put into the pan for stewing before they had ceased wriggling.  Hence the phrase to “get accustomed to a thing; as eels do to skinning.”  But an eel can only be once skinned in its life, and even the skin, stript from its writhing body, was supposed to possess a “virtue.”  If tied round a leg or an arm, it was considered a remedy, or preventive, for rheumatism; and your cook would sometimes preserve the skin for a rheumatic friend.  In these days the eels brought to market are few, and not half the size they used to be.  Eels, from 2ft. to 3ft. long, and as thick as one’s wrist, were formerly quite common.  Eels are supposed to migrate to the sea, and, in the year 1903, a large eel was found, early in the morning, about 100 yards from a large pond, in the parish of Wispington, travelling across a grass field, towards a stream, by which it might eventually reach the sea.

The only other fish which I have to remark upon is the trout.  They are not found in the Witham; but the Bain trout are handsome; both the golden, or rich yellow kind, with pink spots, and the purple or mauve-coloured variety, but the former are much finer in flavour.  For some years the swans on the Horncastle Canal made great havoc among the young trout and spawn [79a] in the neighbouring river Bain, but the last swan died in 1897.  Further, there is now an artificial breeding tank established at Horncastle, managed by Mr. Rushton, for keeping up the supply.  Some very fine fish have been taken at different times.  My notes record as follows:—In April, 1896, one of the anglers already referred to [79b] caught a trout in the Bain, close to Horncastle, weighing 4lb. 6oz., 23in. in length.  The same fisherman, in July, 1888, took another, within half a mile of the same place, weighing 4lb. 10oz., 23in. in length.  The son [79c] of a quondam veteran angler, and himself one of our keenest fishermen, tells me that he, several years ago, assisted his father to land a male trout of 7lb. weight, from the watermill pool at Horncastle.  It fought so hard that he and his brother had to rush into the water and take it in their arms, their father’s tackle not being intended for such a monster. [80a]  This, however, was surpassed by a trout taken by the late Mr. Robert Clitherow, of Horncastle, a beau ideal disciple of the gentle craft, which weighed 8lbs.

Probably the handsomest trout in the neighbourhood, though not the largest, are those of the Somersby “beck,” “The Brook,” rendered for ever classical by the sweet poem of the late Poet Laureate.  In years gone by the writer has enjoyed many a picnic on its banks, when we used to pull off our shoes and stockings, and turn up our trousers—gentlemen as well as boys—to catch the trout by the process called “tickling” them, while hiding in their holes; which the ladies afterwards cooked on a fire extemporised on the bank.  The music of the rippling stream haunts one still, as one reads those liquid lines of the poet, themselves almost a runnel:

I chatter over stony ways,
   In little sharps and trebles;
I bubble into eddying bays,
   I babble on the pebbles. [80b]

Twenty-five or thirty years ago, the dykes in the Fens, near the Witham, abounded in fish of the coarser kinds, with some goodly pike among them.  As a boy the writer has caught many a pike by the process called “sniggling,” i.e., a noose of wire, or gimp, attached to the end of a stiff rod, or stick, which is deftly slipt over a fish’s head, as he basks among the water weeds, and, when thus snared, he is jerked ashore.  When shooting in the Fens he has also killed, at one shot, five or six fish crowded together in a dyke.  But climatic alterations, and over-perfect drainage, have changed all this.  The water now runs out to sea so rapidly that the Fen drains are dry for a great part of the year, and the fish are no more.

Enough has now been said to show that the visitor to Woodhall Spa, who has a taste for “the contemplative man’s recreation,” [81] may find some employment in its vicinity.  Most of the ponds can be fished on asking the farmers’ permission.  As to the Witham, although there are angling clubs at Boston and Lincoln, the river is practically open to every one, in the season.  It may be added that close to Tattershall station there is a large “ballast pond” containing good pike, and a letter to the shooting tenant, or to Lord Fortescue’s agent, would probably obtain permission to fish.  At Revesby there is a reservoir, the source of the water supply of Boston, a large piece of water, which abounds in fish of various kinds.  Bream, both of the silver and the carp kinds, are plentiful, running up to 4lb. in weight.  Very large eels are taken there.  Roach are of a fair size.  Rudd are numerous; as also are perch, but small.  Gudgeons are plentiful, serving for bait.  Pike are abundant.  In one case three were taken by the same rod within twenty minutes, one of them weighing 13lb.  Another rod took two of 16lb. and 10lb., and it is commonly said that there is one occasionally seen “as long as a rail.”  Permission may be obtained to fish here from the agent of the Hon. Mrs. Stanhope, Revesby Abbey.  There is good accommodation at the Red Lion Hotel.

As, in the next chapter, I am to enter upon a different branch of my subject, passing roughly speaking, from the organic to inorganic—from the living to the dead—I will here give a few particulars, recently received, which may interest the entomologist.  In the month of August, 1898, I conducted the members of our county Naturalists’ Union from Woodhall Spa to Tumby, through a varied tract of country.  The following is a list of the Lepidoptera which were found by one of the members:—

CHAPTER VII.  GEOLOGICAL NOTES.

In a county like Lincolnshire, mainly agricultural, in which the operations of man are, for the most part, confined to the earth’s crust, in ploughing and sowing, and, as some one has said, in “tickling” the earth’s surface into fertility,—in such a county we are not led ordinarily to explore the inner bowels of the world; as is necessary in mining districts such as certain parts of Yorkshire, Durham, Cornwall and elsewhere.  Yet, with regard to our knowledge of its geological features, Woodhall may be said to compare favourably with a large majority of places.  With one exception [84a] it is the spot, par excellence, in this part of the kingdom, where the earth’s hidden resources have been tapped, and tapped to considerable purpose, in the unique commodity for which it is famed—its mineral water.  The book of Nature, so often “sealed,” has here been opened and its contents indexed.  We have in the strata of the Woodhall well sundry chapters in the earth’s past history unfolded, at least to the initiated.  The writer is not going to attempt here a systematic disquisition on a subject so abstruse (for which, indeed, he is not qualified), beyond touching upon some of its more salient, or more interesting features.  The geological records of the Woodhall well have already been given [84b] in the very concise form in which they have been preserved for us.  Whether they are to be entirely depended upon is questionable, but we may here repeat them:—Gravel and boulder clay, 10 feet; Kimeridge and Oxford clays, 350; Kellaways rock, blue clays, cornbrash, limestone, great oolite, clay and limestone, upper Estuarine clay, 140; Lincolnshire oolite, and Northampton sand, 140; lias, upper, middle, and lower, 380 feet; total, 1,120 feet.  The mineral spring is said to have issued from a stratum of spongy rock lying at a depth of 540ft. [85a]  This would probably be in or near the ferruginous Northampton sand, the lowest layer of the oolite, and lying immediately above the upper lias. [85b]

In the year 1897 a boring was commenced within 500 yards of the original well by the artesian engineers, Messrs. Isler and Co., on behalf of the Rev. J. O. Stephens, on the west side of the Stixwould road, with a view to obtaining a second supply of the Woodhall water; this was carried to a depth of 700 feet.  The engineers furnished me with a register of the strata so far pierced by the bore, but, as they are not described in the technical terms of geology, it is rather difficult to compare them with those of the old well.  At a depth of 490 feet, sandstone with iron pyrites was pierced; this would probably be the ferruginous Northampton sand of the Oolite.  It is at a less depth than the same stratum at the Spa well; but that was to be expected, as geologists state that all the geological strata “dip” eastward, and this bore being to the west, the stratum would naturally tilt upward.  This born was ultimately abandoned.  According to the records of the Spa well, derived from Dr. Snaith, of Horncastle, who knew the well from its birth, the saline spring was found at 540ft.; but Dr. Granville, who visited Woodhall, and wrote his version, in 1841, puts it at 510ft.  It is difficult to say which of these two doctors, who differ, should be accepted as the more trustworthy; and in 1841 Dr. Granville would still certainly be able to find plenty of persons familiar with the well and its details.  But in the ferruginous sand, or near it, the spring was to be expected; and there it would seem Messrs. Isler, in the new boring, found saline water, though only in small quantity.  The depth, according to their computation, was, as we have said 490ft., which is 20ft. above the Spa spring’s level, according to Granville’s version, and 60ft. above the depth given by Snaith.  The paucity of the supply of the saline water in the Isler boring may probably be accounted for thus: The trend of the current found in making the Spa well was said to be from south-east to north-west, whereas this new bore is very nearly due west from the Spa well.  If, therefore, the stream is of narrow width, this later boring is scarcely in the position to catch more than the side soakage of the current, and it would seem that the main stream can only be tapped either by another boring further north, or by a lateral shaft from the present bore running northward till it encounters the current.  There remains, of course, the further and open question as to whether the saline stream formerly passing through the Spa shaft, still continues its former north-westerly course, after having the outlet afforded by that shaft.  Would it not be more in accordance with the law of nature that the stream should take the course of least resistance by rising in the well, and not flowing further along the bed of its special original stratum?  If that be so, the only chance of another well would be to bore south-eastward of the Spa; and probably the shaft sunk by the late Mr. Blyton beside Coalpit Wood, if it had been continued, would have proved a safer venture than any other as yet attempted.  At some future time we may have the wolf disturbing the stream, above the lamb represented by the original well, to the detriment of the latter.  It may be here noticed that in the Scarle boring, as we are told, there was found a strong spring in the upper part of the lower Keuper sandstone at the depth of 790ft., and a still stronger spring at the base of that formation at 950ft.  In that case, therefore, as also at Woodhall, the water was found in sandstone, but at a much greater depth, and also in sandstone of a different character, viz., the Keuper at Scarle, the Northampton at Woodhall.  Another difference is that in the Scarle strata we pass at once from the surface drift to the lower Lias; the Kimeridge clay and all the Oolite formations, which are found at Woodhall, with a thickness of some 630ft., being entirely absent.  These differences, of course, illustrate the fact that, owing to abrasion and other causes, not only do the strata underlying the surface drift vary in different localities, but their several thicknesses vary; while, as at Harrogate, the mineral properties of the water also vary at a distance of only a few yards.  Pass beyond the limits of the particular stream, and, below ground as well as above it, you are not “in the swim.”

I now proceed to remark upon some of the geological strata, as found at Woodhall.  And first, after the mere surface gravel, we have the Boulder clay.  This has a very interesting history.  In the “Life of Nansen,” the Arctic traveller, it is stated [87a] that the geological strata of the Arctic regions show that at some remote period the climatic conditions were the reverse of those which prevail now.  Throughout those regions, at present of intense cold, there was quite a southern climate, in which walnut trees, magnolias, vines, etc., flourished; while, on the other hand, there was also a period during which our own country, and large parts of the Continent, lying in the same latitude, were buried under vast ice-fields with an Esquimaux climate.  It is there further stated [87b] that boulders are found scattered over Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, which have been transported thither on glaciers, from regions still further north.  In like manner glaciers at one time also spread over what are now Scotland and a great part of England, bringing along with them boulders from Norway, and Scandinavia generally.  The present condition of Greenland, with its vast glaciers, pouring through its valleys, down to the water’s edge, on the sea shore, illustrates the condition of our own country at that remote period. [88a]  As regards this country, these ice-streams may be classed under two distinct heads, (a) the native, inland glaciers, and (b) the north-eastern, Scandinavian glacier.  To speak first of the former.  As the climate, from causes into which we cannot here enter, [88b] gradually became coldier, glaciers were formed among the rugged hills in the present lake country of Cumberland and Westmoreland, some of which pushed their way westward, literally inch by inch, until they debouched in the Irish Sea, and filled it to overflowing, for it is only shallow.  From Borrowdale, Buttermere, Eskdale, and other head centres, they also streamed southward and eastward.  There was an immense central stream, which forced its way over the wild tract of Stainmoor (named doubtless from the thousands of boulders with which it is strewn); then, fed by lateral branches from many directions, it traversed Teesdale, turned towards the coast, passing by Scarborough, and so on to Holderness and the Humber, a branch also filling up Airedale and the Vale of York. [88c]  From Holderness it passed the Humber, into Lincolnshire.  Its most eastern limb would doubtless have debouched in the North Sea, and filled it; but here the north-eastern glacier, to which I have alluded, came into collision.  Taking its rise in Scandinavia, it had spread into a vast sheet in parts 3,000ft. thick, [89a] filled up the shallow North Sea, and the Baltic, a veritable mer de glace, and over-run northern Germany, its thickness even at Berlin being supposed to have been 1,300ft.  Impinging on our eastern coast of Scotland and of northern England, it spread over a great part of Holderness, meeting and blending with the inland native glacier on the Humber; and the vast united ice-stream thence pursued its onward southern course, enfolding everything in its icy embrace, to the Thames and to the Severn. [89b]  These great ice-streams created the geological formation called “The Drift,” or boulder-clay, which we have at Woodhall.  The clay is simply the detritus, produced by the grinding, through long ages, of the rocks under the vast and weighty ice-fields slowly moving over them, and the abrasion of the hill-sides which they scraped in their course.  The boulders are detached fragments, which fell from various rocky heights overhanging the ice-stream, rested on the surface of the ice-sheet, were borne along by it through hundreds of miles, and when, in the course of ages untold, the climate became milder, and the glaciers gradually shrunk and eventually disappeared, these fragments, often bearing the marks of ice-scraping, and oftener rounded by ice-action, fell to the soil beneath, and remain to this day, to bear their silent witness to the course once taken by the giant ice-stream.  The period through which this process was going on has been variously computed, from 18,000 years, according to the estimate of Major-General A. W. Drayson, F.R.A.S., who gives elaborate astronomical statistics in support of his views (Trans. Victoria Institute, No. 104, p. 260), to 160,000, as calculated by Mr. James Croll (“Climate and Time”).  It is now generally held that there were more than one ice-age, with inter-glacial breaks.  These boulders are abundant in our neighbourhood, and of all sizes.  They may be measured by inches or by yards.  There is a good-sized one in the vicarage garden at Woodhall Spa, which the present writer had carted from Kirkby-lane, a distance of a mile and a half.  There is a larger one lying on the moor, near the south-east corner of the Ostler Ground.  The writer has one in his own garden, a large one, more than 6ft. in length by 3½ft. high, and 2½ft. thick.  It took five horses to drag it from its position, a quarter of a mile distant.  There are six visible in the parish of Langton, two or three large ones near Old Woodhall Church; several large ones in Thimbleby, Edlington, and elsewhere.  Smaller ones are often to be seen placed at turns in the roads to prevent drivers running their vehicles into the bank, or used as foundations to old cottages or farm buildings; and still smaller specimens may be constantly picked up by the pedestrian, or the sportsman, in his rambles through the fields.  Much interest has of late years been taken in these boulders, arising from the distinct classes of glaciers to which I have referred, and the consequent difference between the nature of the boulders, as well as the source from which they have come, according as they belong to the one class or the other; and our Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union have now a special “boulder committee” engaged in the investigation of this subject.

The late Professor Sedgewick, of Cambridge (whose lectures the writer attended), was the first to notice that along the Holderness shore there were (as he says) “an incredible number of blocks of granite, gneiss, greenstone, mica, etc., etc., resembling specimens derived from various parts of Scandinavia.” [90]  These, we now know, were dropped by the great Scandinavian glacier; and, along with the kinds of stone here named, there are also boulders of Rhombporphyry (the “Rhomben porphyry” of Norwegian geologists, from the neighbourhood of Christiana), Augite syenite, and several more, not of British origin.  These boulders are now being searched for, and found in our own neighbourhood.  On the other hand, there is the different class of boulders which were brought down by the native inland glaciers.  These consist largely of igneous kinds.  The rugged hills of the Lake district owe their origin to fire; and the boulders which the glaciers have transported correspond.  The shap granite, for instance, which is probably one of the commonest of this class, comes from the shap granite bed of Wastdale, in Cumberland.  Boulders of this rock, as Mr. Kendall tells us, “passed over Stainmoor in tens of thousands,” [91a] to visit us in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.  Other kinds are Felspar porphyry from Eskdale, in Cumberland, Andesite from Borrowdale, Granophyr from Ennerdale and Buttermere, Quartz, Basalt, and several more from the crystalline formations in the Lake district.  Several boulders of these rocks have also been found in our own neighbourhood; and doubtless more remain to reward the explorer. [91b]  I have dwelt at some length on this particular formation—the boulder clay—because it is the most ready to hand; it lies on the surface, in many parts around us, within the ken of the ordinary visitor to Woodhall Spa.  It may give an additional interest to his rambles in search of health, to know that he may, at any moment, pick up a boulder which has travelled further, and passed through more strange vicissitudes, than he can well have done himself; perhaps, with Shakespeare, to read “Sermons in Stones,” and to moralise on the brevity of human life, with all its ailments, compared with those ages untold, through which the pebble in his hand slowly [91c] travelled on its long, laborious journey, to rest at length as a constituent element of the locality, where he himself is seeking relief and recreation.

To the west of Woodhall Spa, beyond the Stixwould-road, near the vicarage, and northward, the surface sand, in some parts, at the depth of a foot, or slightly more, hardens into an ironstone, so compact that tree roots cannot penetrate it.  In root-pruning or manuring apple-trees, I have found the tap-root stunted into a large round knob, further downward growth being prevented by this indurated formation.  This oxide of iron also pervades the sandy soil, in parts, to a depth of four or five feet, impregnating the water with ferruginous properties, so that it “ferrs” bottles, or vessels, in which it is allowed to stand for any length of time.  In consequence, the water frequently has a dull appearance, although the iron may probably make it a wholesome tonic.

The Kimeridge clay, named as the next stratum in the bore of the Woodhall well, crops up first about Halstead Hall in Stixwould, and continues through Woodhall to Horncastle, and so on to Wragby and Market Rasen.  It abounds in fossils.  Mr. Skertchly [92] found in the first of the pits just named, that this clay was divided into three layers, the upper being a line of Septaria (or nodules) full of serpulæ one foot in depth, then soft dark-blue clay, 6ft.; and below that another course of Septaria; and Professor J. R. Blake records from this pit the following fossils[93a]:—Belemnites nitidus, Ammonites serratus, Rissoa mosensis, Avicula ædiligensis, Cyprina cyreneformis, Ostrea deltoides, Lima ædilignensis, Thracia depressa, Arca, Serpula tetragona.  In other pits in the neighbourhood several other fossils have been found. [93b]  [For a list of fossils found about Woodhall see Appendix II.]  A peculiarity of this stratum is that the upper part of it contains bands of “inflammable shales,” being blue, laminated, bituminous clays, which burn readily.  It was the presence of these which has tempted explorers to throw away their money in search of coal; as in the case at Donington on-Bain, where Mr. Bogg drove a bore to the depth of 309ft., but only found clay and thin bands of inflammable schist. [93c]  In the case of Woodhall Spa, the money thrown away on one purpose has brought health and wealth to others, from a source then undreamt of in man’s philosophy.  We cannot leave the Kimeridge clay without noting that its presence at Woodhall, in the position where it is, as the first geological formation below the surface drift, opens to us a vista—reveals to us a yawning hiatus—which embraces a vast expanse of time.

In the normal order of geological strata, the whole series of cretaceous formations have to be passed through before reaching the Oolite formation, of which the Kimeridge clay forms almost the upper layer.  But at Woodhall and the surrounding district the whole of this series of rocks and soils is wanting.  Their absence is eloquent, and tells a tale of widespread destruction.  Standing near the Tower on the Moor we can see in the distance, stretching from north-west to south east, the range of hills called the “Wolds,” which, with a “cap” of marls, or sandy and flinty loams, are composed almost entirely of chalk; from them, near Cawkwell Hill (the hill par excellence of chalk), comes the water supply of Horncastle and Woodhall.  They extend for a length of some 45 miles, with a width of some six miles to eight.  The actual depth of the chalk is not exactly known, but a boring made through it, near Hull, reached the Oolite beneath at 530ft.  We may perhaps, therefore, put the average at 500ft. [94a]  Doubtless, at one period, this cretaceous formation extended over the whole tract of country, but southward and westward from the foot of the present wolds it has since been swept away.  And this must have taken place before the glacial period, because the glacial boulder clay lies upon the Kimeridge clay, which normally underlies the chalk.  Mr. Jukes Brown (“Geological Journal,” No. 162, p. 117) says: “The Boulder clay is bedded against the slope of the chalk, shewing that this escarpment had retired to its present position in pre-glacial times.”  By what precise process this was effected must be left to our savants to decide; but the remarkable fact remains, that a solid stratum, or rather series of allied strata, from 500ft. to 1,000ft. in thickness, has, by one process or another, been wiped out of existence, over the large area now coated by the Kimeridge clay.  Through ages of enormous length the chalk was forming as the bed of a sea; a deposit consisting of inconceivable myriads of beautiful minute shells, mainly of the foraminifera, which can be detected by the microscope; and its destruction probably occupied as long a period as its formation.

Mr. Jukes Brown, whom I have just quoted, says: “The Wold hills must have been, in some way, exposed to a severe and long-continued detrition, when erosive agencies were very active.”  Active, indeed, they must have been, to efface from an area so extensive a solid formation from 500ft. to 1,000ft. in thickness.  And this boulder clay, as Mr. Jukes Brown further observes, has forced its way up the sides of the chalk, in places, to a height varying from 300ft. to 400ft.

The Oxford clay, which lies next below the Kimeridge, is a deep sea deposit, dark blue, with brown nodular stones; some of the fossils found in it are Nucula Ornata, Ammonites Plicatilis, A. Rotundus, Cucullæa, Gryphæa Dilatata, Leda Phillipsii, Annelida Tetragona, and A. Tricarinata, Avicula inequivalvis. [94b]

Kellaway’s rock, which lies just below, so called from a village in Wiltshire, near Chippenham, is a mixture of yellowish and buff sands, with brown and buff sandstone.  The chief fossils are Gryphæa Dilatata, and G. bilobata, Belemnites in abundance, and Avicula Braam-buriensis. [95a]

The Cornbrash, which succeeds (so called also from a district in Wiltshire, favourable to corn), is a light grey, fine-grained limestone, often so hard as to need blasting.  It abounds in fossils.  Among them are Avicula Echinata, Ostræa Sowerbyi, Clypeus Ptotii, Ammonites Macrocephalus, A. Herveyi, Nucula Variabilis, Astarte Minima, Trigonia (of four kinds), Modiola (of four kinds), Myacites (five kinds), Cypricardia, Corbicella Bathonica, Pholadomya (two kinds), Cardium (three kinds), Pecten (six kinds), and several more. [95b]

The great Oolite (so named from the Greek Oon, an egg, referring to the number of small stones, like fish-ova, found in it) is divided into Oolite clays and O. limestone.  The clays are mottled green and bluish, with bands of ironstone, and concretions of lime.  They indicate a shallow sea, as contrasted with the Oxford clay.  Fossils are not numerous, but Rhinconella Concinna, Gervillia Crassicosta, Modiola Ungulata, Ostræa Gregaria, O. Sowerbvi, O. Subrugulosa, Perna Quardrata, Trigonia Flecta, and Palate of Fish are found. [95c]  These beds correspond to the so-called Forest Marble of the South of England.

The Oolite limestone beds consist of white soft limestones, having at intervals bands of marly clay.  This formation burns well, and makes good lime.  Its chief fossils are Serpula, Rhynconella, Terebratula, and T. Intermedia, Avicula Echinata, Corbicella, Lima Rigida, Lucina, Modiola Imbricata, Myacites Calceiformis, Mytilus Furcatus, Ostræa Sowerbyi, Pecten Vagans, Pteroperna plana, Trigonia, T. costata, T. flecta, T. striata, T. undulata. [95d]

The Estuarine deposit, underlying the great Oolite limestone, is composed of light blue, green, and purple clays, intersected by soft bands of sandstone, and having at its base a band of nodular ironstone.  It is not very fossiliferous, but the following are found:—Rhynconella Concinna, Modiola Imbricata, Ostræa Sowerbyi, Monodonta. [95e]  The sandstone bands contain plant-markings in considerable numbers.  As its name implies, this formation was produced as the bed of an estuary or tidal river.

The next lower formation is the Lincolnshire limestone.  This enters largely into the making of what is called “the Cliff,” which is the high land running south from Lincoln (visible from Woodhall) to the west of the Witham Valley and the Fens.  It is a hard building stone, though once the muddy bed of a sea.  It is sub-divided into the Hibaldstow and Kirton beds, so called because these strata are exposed in those parishes.  Dipping to the east, it underlies the Fens and other upper strata to be found in the Woodhall well.  It abounds in fossils, there being as many as 340 species classified, [96a] and consists, indeed, very largely of the hard parts of shells and corals compressed into a solid mass.  To a Lincolnshire person, it is sufficient to say of this stone that our grand Cathedral is mainly built of it.  We can only give here a few of the more frequent species of fossils:—Three kinds of Echinus, Coral (Thecosmilia gregarea), Serpula socialis, Lima (five kinds), Ostræa flabelloides, Pecten (two kinds), Hinnites abjectus, Astarte elegans, Cardium Buckmani, Ceromya Bajociana, Cyprina Loweana, Homomya Crassiuscula, Isocardia, Cordata, Rhynconella (four kinds); among the bivalves are Avicula Inequivalvis, and A Munsteri, Lima (three kinds), Lucina Bellona, Modiola Gibbosa, Mytilus Imbricatus, Pholadomya (two kinds), Trigonia costata; of univalves, Natica (two kinds), Nerinea Cingenda; of fishes, Strophodus (two kinds). [96b]  This is a most useful stone for building purposes.  The so-called “Lincoln stone” is largely used in our churches; whilst the “Ancaster quarries,” which also belong to this formation, are famous.  The commissioners appointed in 1839 to report on the building stones of England, for the new houses of Parliament, stated that “many buildings constructed of material similar to the Oolite of Ancaster, such as Newark and Grantham churches, have scarcely yielded to the effects of atmospheric influences.”  (“Old Lincolnshire,” vol. i., p. 23.)  The well-known Colly-Weston slates are the lowest stratum of this rock.  The fine old Roman “Newport Arch,” which for some 700 years has “braved the battle and the breeze,” a pretty good test of its durability, is built of this stone.

The base on which this lowest Oolite lies is the Northampton Sands, an irony stratum of red ferruginous sand and sandstone, the upper portion of it also being called the Lower Estuarine deposit.  It is from this stratum so many springs arise in various parts of the county, as already mentioned, and among them the Woodhall well water.  Its fresh water conditions show it to have been the bed of a great river, but a tidal river, as among the fossils which it contains some are marine shells.  In this formation is found the iron-stone, which is worked at Lincoln.  Its commoner fossils are Lima duplicata, L. Dustonensis, Hinnites abjectus, Astarte elegans, Cardium Buckmani, Modiola Gibbosa, Ammonites Murchisoniæ, Belemnites Acutus.  Its ferruginous layers are (as given by Capt. Macdakin), [97a]  Peroxide bed, clay ironstone, hard carbonate of iron, hard blue carbonate peroxidised band, blue ferruginous sand, ironstone nodules, bed of coprolites with iron pyrites.

And this brings us to the Lias formation, in which lies the lower part, amounting to rather more than a third, of the Woodhall wells.  It is divided into the upper Lias of clay and shale; the middle Lias of Marlstone rock bed, clay, and ironstone; and the lower Lias of clays, ironstone clays, limestones. [97b]  This formation, with a thickness of from 900 to 1,000 feet, runs across England from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire down to the coast of Dorset.  The upper Lias of the Woodhall wells also helps to form the slope from 100 feet to 150 feet in thickness of the escarpment called “the Cliff,” to the west of the Witham Fens, and to the north of Lincoln, by Fillingham, and so on.  Lincoln itself stands on Lias beds, with a capping of the lower Oolite limestone. [97c]  It contains many Belemnites, Lucina, Ammonites Bifrons, A. Serpentinus, A. Communis, A. Heterophillus, Nucula Hammeri, Pleuromyæ, [97d] and especially the Leda Ovum, which distinguishes it from other strata.  The middle Lias, which underlies the upper, contains Ammonites Spinatus, A. Margaritatus (in great abundance), Rhinconella, Icthyosauri, Plesiosauri, and fossil wood, etc. [98a]  The lower Lias contains Ammonites Capricornus, with many pyrites, A. Ibex, A. Jamesoni, A. Armatus, A. Oxynotus, A. Obtusus, A. Semicostatus, A. Bucklandi, A. Angulatus, A. Planorbis, Gryphœa incurva very abundant, and fossils of many other kinds. [98b]  This brings us to the base of the Woodhall Spa wells.  For a full list of the fossils so far found at Woodhall, the reader is referred to Appendix II. at the and of this volume.

These strata are shewn in the diagram given at the head of this chapter.

In giving the history of the well in Chapter I., the writer did not state the properties of the Woodhall water; but as these depend upon the geological elements, from which it originates, this seems to be the proper place to state them.  The official analysis made by Professor Frankland, F.R.S., 1875, is as follows:—[98c]

The water contains unusually large proportions of Iodine and Bromine.—E. Frankland.