Besides these three roads going east from Lincoln, there are three great roads which run along “the ridged wold” northwards, and two going south; but these two, as soon as they are clear of Lincoln, branch into a dozen, which, augmented by five lines of railway, all radiating from one centre and all linked by innumerable small roads which cross them, form, on the map, an exact pattern of a gigantic spider’s web. Of this dozen the three trunk roads southwards are the Foss Way to Newark in the flat country, and the Sleaford road over “the heath,” both of which roads avoid all villages (though the Sleaford road passes through Leasingham, described in Chap. VIII., about two miles north of Sleaford, and has that curious erection, the Dunston pillar, at the roadside about eight miles out from Lincoln, described in the chapter on Nocton); and thirdly, the Grantham road, on the ridge between the two, which has a village at every mile. Others run, one to Skellingthorpe, one to Doddington with its interesting old Hall, which we will revert to shortly; one all down the Witham valley to Beckingham on the border, going by Basingham with its ninth-century Saxon font, and Norton Disney with its fine Disney tombs and remarkable brass, also to be described later; and one to Brant Broughton.

A sign-post in Lincoln points to this village, because, though twelve miles distant, there is nothing on the way; indeed you may follow up the valley of the Brant River another six miles to its source near Hough-on-the-Hill, and then go on another six as it curves round into Grantham, and not pass through anything but Marston, and there is nothing to see there but the old seat of the Thorold family, Marston Hall, now a farmhouse. All these are on the low ground to the west. Then on the ridge itself is “the Ermine Street,” and east of the Sleaford highway is a desolate road over “Lincoln Heath” to Scopwick, where a stream, crossed by several single planks, runs right through the village. East of this, another somewhat important road goes across the low and once swampy ground south of Lincoln, where the Witham gets through the gap in the cliff ridge to Canwick. Here the church, which has a rich Norman chancel arch and arcade, and an Early English arcaded reredos in the vestry, once a chantry chapel, rises, without any other footing, from a Roman pavement; here, too, from the grounds of Mr. Waldo Sibthorp’s house, Canwick Hall, where the cliff begins again, you get a most beautiful view of the minster about two miles distant; indeed, those who live near Lincoln and can see the minster may boast of a view which for grandeur has few equals in the land. This walk from Lincoln is a favourite one, and passes a well-planted cemetery of twenty-five acres, part of which was taken from the common, which rejoices in the delightfully bucolic name of “the Cowpaddle.” The road is really the continuation of the Wragby road, and, curving down Lindum road passes into Broadgate, then crossing the Witham and the Sincel dyke and the intersection of the Midland and Great Northern Railways, crosses yet two more lines before it reaches the cemetery. After Canwick the road goes through Branston and passes, near Nocton, Dunston, and Metheringham, to Blankney. The hall here, the home of Mr. Henry Chaplin, than whom no Lincolnshire man is better known or more popular, is now occupied by Lord Londesborough. The church has a curious tomb-slab to John de Glori, with a bearded head looking out of a cusped opening, and a beautiful sculpture by Boehm of Lady Florence Chaplin. This is one of the few churches in which the ringing of the Curfew-bell still obtains. After Blankney the road passes Scopwick and curves round through Digby, Donnington and Rushington to Sleaford. Of these villages Digby is worth seeing, and so is Rowston, lying one mile north of it. At Digby the village cross has been restored, but with a very indifferent top, and at the other end of the village is a curious stone lock-up, like a covered well-head, and hardly capable of holding more than one man at a time. Lingfield in Surrey has a larger one called ‘Ye Village Cage’; it has two steps up inside, and is capable of holding a dozen people. The tower has three stages, Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular. The south door is transition Norman, the north arcade aisle and chancel Early English, the south arcade and aisle Decorated, and the font, screen and clerestory Perpendicular. In this the six tall two-light windows are distributed in pairs. Rowston, which is dedicated to St. Clement, has a spire rising from a tall tower, so little wider than itself that it may safely be said to cover less ground than any tower in England, for it measures only five and a-half feet inside; it is blank except for a rather heavy window in the upper stage. The first thing that strikes you on entering is the extraordinary loud ticking of the clock. It has to be stopped during service, as no one can compete with it. The next thing is that the thirteen windows are all filled with painted glass and of the same type, striking in design, though not of quite first-rate excellence. One window has figures of the three Lincolnshire saints—St. Guthlac, St. Hugh, and St. Gilbert. The church is in very good order, having been recently restored, and some Saxon stones with interlaced work have been built into the outside wall of the chancel. It would have been better to have put these inside. But there is inside a very good head of a churchyard or village cross, and the base and broken shaft of one, possibly the same, is just outside the churchyard. This head is of the usual penthouse form, with a carved figure on either side; it was found quite recently built into a cowshed. In the nave the pillars are all different. The vestry was over the burial chapel of the Foster family; later it was, as was so often the case, used for a school. A beautiful bit of an old carved oak screen separates it now from the north aisle. A heavy timber floor cuts across the top of the tall tower arch, and below a very curious pillar stands against one side of the arch. An Early English priest’s door, with a flat-arched lintel, is in the south wall of the chancel. It is impossible to walk round the slender tower, as a garden wall runs into it on both the north and south sides, leaving part of the tower in a neighbouring garden, the owner of which once claimed half the tower as his property, and considered that he had a right to pierce a door through it for easier access to his pew.

We have now but one road south of Lincoln to describe—for what we have to say about Norton Disney and Nocton can come afterwards; this is the Grantham road, a road curiously full of villages mostly perched on the western edge of the ridge, whilst the Ermine Street running so near it on the east has no villages at all on it, and the Sleaford road over “the Heath,” a little to the east of the Ermine Street, is, as we have said, just as bare. The number of roads in Lincolnshire which have no villages on them is very remarkable, though not hard to explain. We have already, in treating of the roads from Grantham, through the villages of Manthorpe, Belton, Syston, Barkstone, Honington, Carlton Scroop, Normanton, Caythorpe and Fulbeck, brought the account of this road northwards as far as Leadenham. Here the Sleaford and Newark main road crosses it, and Leadenham spire is a fine landmark for all the neighbourhood. It is to be noted that, common as the Danish termination ‘by’ is in all parts of the county, the Saxon ‘ton’ just about here and on the west side generally, is even more frequent.

This spire is crocketed, but has no flying buttresses. The nave and arcades are lofty, with bold clustered columns, and the doorways, which are quite different in style, are both very good. There is some good Flemish glass, and a stone monument of the Beresford family has long been in use as an altar. Wellbourn, on an Early English tower, has one of those ugly, Perpendicular “sugar loaf” spires, with a sort of bulge in the middle, and that to a worse degree than at Caythorpe. The nave and aisles are the work of John of Wellbourn, the munificent treasurer of Lincoln in the middle of the fourteenth century.

To the right and left of Wellbourn are two places which should not be missed. Brant Broughton, with its beautiful spire, and Temple Bruer, where are the remains of a preceptory of the Knights Templars. The church of Brant Broughton (pronounced Bruton) is a beautiful structure, and all in perfect order, the magnificent lofty chancel having been built to match the rest of the church by Bodley and Garner in 1876. To take the woodwork first, the tall handsome screen and the chancel stalls are in memory of the late rector, Canon E. H. Sutton, as is also the lofty carved font cover, whose doors open and display three carved and coloured figures, one being St. Nicholas, the patron saint, with the three children in a pickling tub, whom he is said to have raised to life after their murder by a butcher, as is so quaintly represented in the famous black font in Winchester Cathedral. The roof, which in the first instance was of a higher pitch, as seen by the string course, is an exact reproduction, both in shape and colour, of the old Perpendicular one which it replaced, and is in appearance upborne by figures of angels with outspread wings. The three tall arches of the aisle arcades and chancel are Early English, two of the pillars are octagonal. These arches are very high, though not so high as those in Hough-on-the-Hill, which are of about the same date. The three-light clerestory windows, five on each side, and the roof to the nave, were added with the upper stages of the tower in 1460, and the Perpendicular aisle windows are large and handsome, and have a transom running across the tracery in the head of each. They are filled with most interesting glass, good in design, and mostly good in colour, all of which was made in the village by the late Canon Sutton, who also filled several windows in Lincoln Minster. The ironwork in the church was also made by Mr. F. Coldron and Son at the village forge, where excellent work is always being done and sent to all parts of the country. All the work inside the church, and the chancel in particular, is beautifully finished in every detail, and bears the impress of being all the work of one mind, and as that mind was Bodley’s, and he took the utmost pains with it, it need hardly be said that it comes very near perfection.

Among the things to notice are the long stone responds of light clustered pillars between each clerestory window, which support the roof timbers. This is seen in other churches in this part of the county, but is otherwise by no means common. Another is that at intervals on the outer moulding of some of the doors and windows are carved rosettes which give a very rich effect and are, I believe, unique. The excellent lectern eagle is a copy of one at Oxborough in Norfolk, and a similar one is in the neighbouring church of Navenby. Thus far I have spoken of the inside, but it is the outside of the church which gives the greatest delight, for it is a very perfect specimen, built of good stone, of the finest proportions, and richly ornamented. The nave and chancel have each an ornate parapet, while the nave is also embattled and pinnacled. The tower has the most glorious base-mouldings, and the pinnacled and crocketed spire soars up 175 feet. Both tower and spire date from about 1320, the period of the Flowing Decorated style. But the two porches, which are a little later, are absolute gems of architecture. They have groined roofs, their parapets are pierced and ornamented, thickly set with gargoyles, and supported by canopied buttresses. Over the entrance of the south porch is a figure of Christ seated, and in the north porch is an ornamental roof ridge of carved stone. These porches are as beautiful as anything can well be; altogether it would be hard to find in a country village anything architectural, more pleasing than Brant Broughton Church.

We passed through the village, visited the Coldron forge, and then by a road constantly turning first right then left, with fields of scarlet poppy or brilliant yellow corn-marigold on either hand, and with a stormy sky which ever and anon brought us a squall of rain, we drove across the flat country eastwards till we crossed the railway and reached the ridge. Climbing this, we come to Wellbourn, on the Grantham road, and going on eastwards over Wellbourn Heath we reach the Ermine Street, here only a wide grassy track. This we cross and go forwards through a well-cultivated, but almost uninhabited plain, till we see on the left a farm road leading over a field to a big farmyard, in the middle of which stands a solitary square-built Early English tower, with windows irregularly placed, and steps on one side. This is all that is left of a Preceptory of the Knights Templars, founded early in the thirteenth century in the reign of Henry II. by the Lady Elizabeth de Canz at Temple Bruer.

One does not always like to confess one’s ignorance, but I am sure many people may read that word “preceptory” without at all knowing what it may mean, or what the difference is between a Preceptory and a Commandery. So we may as well say something about the Templars, and the kindred order of the Hospitallers. And here I may say that I am indebted for my facts to a paper read at Lincoln by Bishop Trollope in 1857.

The first, then, of these, in point of time, were the Hospitallers. But as they long outlived the Templars we will take the history of the Templars first. This famous order, half-religious and half military, was founded in 1118, during the first Crusade, by nine French knights, whose object was to protect pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. At first they were bound by laws of poverty, and were termed “Poor Knights,” but Baldwin II., having given them lodging in a part of his palace at Jerusalem, the abbot of the Temple Convent, which adjoined the palace, gave them further rooms to live in, and from this they got the name “Templars.” In 1128 they adopted a white distinctive mantle, to which a red cross on the breast and on their banner was added in 1166. The fame of their feats of arms and chivalry induced many members of noble houses to join the society, and land and treasure were so freely offered them that they became known for their wealth, as at first for their poverty. Their head was termed “Grand Master,” and their headquarters were in Palestine, until they moved, in 1192, to Cyprus. In other countries each section or “Province” was governed by a “Grand Preceptor.” They first came to England in the early part of Stephen’s reign, and had a church in London, near Southampton Buildings, called “The Old Temple,” from which they migrated in 1185 to the spot where the circular Temple Church still stands. Their wealth was the cause of their downfall, morally and physically; and the monarchs, both of France and England, becoming jealous, Philip IV., in 1307, seized and imprisoned every Templar in his dominion, 200 in number, on the vague charges of infidelity, sorcery, and apostasy, and eventually confiscated all their property and burnt more than fifty of them alive, relegating the rest to perpetual seclusion in some monastic house. Edward II. did much the same here, except that there were no burnings or executions. Old Fuller, the historian, was probably thinking of those in France when he says in his inimitable way: “Their lives would not have been taken if their lands could have been got without; but the mischief was, the honey could not be got without burning the bees.” In 1312 the Pope, Clement V., who was under Philip’s thumb at Avignon, and had helped him to coerce Edward II., abolished the order, which was found to be possessed of no less than 9,000 manors and 16,000 lordships, besides lands abroad. Grants were made to favourites, and also to those who had claims for some benefaction to any Templar’s estate. Thus Robert de Swines (Sweyne’s)-thorp was to receive 3d. a day for food, and another 3d. for himself and 2d. for his groom; and his daughter, Alice Swinesthorpe was to have for life (and she drew it for thirty years) “7 white loaves, 3 squire’s loaves, 5 gals of better ale, 7 dishes of meat and fish on Saturday for the week following, and an extra dish (interferculum) of the better course of the brethren, at Xmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, Midsummer, The Assumption, and Feast of All Saints, and 3 stone of cheese yearly and an old gown of the brethren.”

Twelve years later Edward granted the whole of their property to the similar society of “Knights Hospitallers.”

This society came into existence some fifty years before the Templars, and originated in a band of traders from Amalfi, who got leave from the Caliph of Egypt to build a church and monastery for the Latins near the Holy Sepulchre, in order to look after the sick and poor pilgrims who used to come in large numbers to Jerusalem. Soon a hospital, or guest house, was added, and a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist; but the society did not take the distinctive name of Hospitallers, or guest receivers, until 1099, when Jerusalem was in the hands of the Christians. They then assumed a white cross as their badge, and were termed Knights of the Hospital, Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John.

In 1154 they procured a Papal bull, relieving them from payment of tithes, and exempting them from all interdicts and excommunications, and giving them other privileges, but binding them never to leave the order. These marks of Papal favour seem to have made them presumptuous, and great complaints soon arose of their insolence. They were accused before the Pope, but they managed to clear themselves and to keep their privileges. Hence we find that Temple Bruer, which came to them after the destruction of the Knights Templars, still remains exempt from the payment of tithe, and from episcopal jurisdiction, as being extra parochial.

The head of the order had the title of “Grand Prior,” and when the Christians were expelled from Palestine, the Knights retreated to Cyprus, after which they took from the Turks the island of Rhodes, which they held against the Sultan until 1522, when Solyman II., after a long siege, forced them to capitulate. A few years after that, the Emperor Charles V. gave them a home in Malta, and they thenceforth were commonly called Knights of Malta. They fortified the island, and imported soil to make it productive, and putting to sea with their galleys they made constant war upon all Turkish vessels. Solyman at length determined to drive them out of Malta. He despatched a fleet of 180 galleys, carrying 30,000 men. The Turks took the fort of St. Elmo, but with a loss of 8,000 men; and when the Emperor sent an army to assist the Knights, La Valette, the Grand Prior, a famous leader, drove the Moslems off. After this they remained in Malta until the order was dissolved at the close of the eighteenth century by order of Napoleon, when most of the Knights took service in the French army. Whilst the society existed it had branch establishments in England, where the chief or Prior took precedence of all the barons, and had a seat in Parliament. Their establishments were called “commanderies”—while those of the Templars, who were ruled by “Grand Preceptors,” were called “preceptories.” Of these there were three in Lincolnshire: at Willoughton, four miles south of Kirton in Lindsey; at Aslackby, two miles south of Falkingham; and at Temple Bruer; all three situated close to the Ermine Street or “High Dyke” as they call it, on Lincoln Heath, and it is from the heath that one of them gets its name Templum de la bruère, or the temple on the heath, shortened into Temple Bruer.

The lands of these Knights Templars, which were handed over by Edward II. in 1324 to the Knights Hospitallers, were all sequestrated in England at the time of the dissolution of the monastic and religious houses in 1538, and, like so many other Lincolnshire estates, granted by Henry VIII. to his relative, Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. Henry, with his wife, Katherine Howard, dined at Temple Bruer when on his way to Lincoln in 1541. The buildings then were of considerable size, and the circular church, whose pillar bases have been laid bare, a little to the west of the existing tower, was fifty feet in diameter. It is modelled on the plan of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, having, as may still be seen in London, Cambridge, and Northampton, a corridor running round between the circular arcade of the church and the outer wall. The existing tower is of the Early English period, fifty feet high, and having three storeys; the walls of the lower storey are decorated by arcading on two sides, and the rising levels of the floor indicate that an altar was placed at the east end, so that it was probably the domestic chapel of the Grand Prior. The roof of this and the next storey is vaulted, and above the third storey was a parapet. The rooms were reached by a winding staircase in the north-west angle. A well nine feet in diameter, and never dry, was in the precincts, and another, discovered in the eighteenth century, was found to have in it three large bells. The Earl of Dorset, who owned this interesting property in 1628, sold it to Richard Brownlow of Belton, whose daughter and co-heiress carried it to the family of Lord Guildford, and he sold it to the ancestors of Mr. Chaplin of Blankney.

It shows that the interest in the Order of the Knights of Jerusalem is not yet extinct when we read the following, which appeared in The Times of December 21, 1913:—

From Temple Bruer we return to the “High Dyke,” and, crossing it, make westward for the Grantham road; but before we go along it, by Boothby Graffoe to Navenby, we must pause on the Ridge, or “Cliff,” as they call it there, and look down on a solitary round tower on a slight elevation about a mile across the flat plain which extends westward from the Wolds to the Trent. This tower and its grassy mounds are all that is left of a once fine stronghold, built, about 1281, by Antony Bec, Archdeacon of Durham, second son of Walter Bec, Baron d’Eresby. He was consecrated Bishop of Durham in the presence of Edward I., on January 9, 1284, and he was wise enough, a few years later, when his growing magnificence excited the jealousy of his sovereign, to present Somerton to Edward I., and it remained a royal castle for some three centuries, passing afterwards through several families, among whom were the Disneys of Norton and Carlton. Edward, son of Thomas Disney of Carlton-le-Moorland having purchased it from Sir George Bromley, and being succeeded in 1595 by his son Thomas, who having lost both his sons, sold it to Sir Ed. Hussey. Hence we find that his son Charles, afterwards Sir Charles Hussey of Caythorpe, is described in his marriage licence, April 10, 1649, as Charles Hussey, Esq., of Somerton.

After the battle of Poictiers, in 1356, John, son of Philip of Valois, King of France, was brought captive to London, together with his third son Philip. Hence, after a short residence at the Savoy Palace, they went to Windsor as guests of the King and Queen Philippa, and were subsequently sent to Hertford Castle. Edward III. soon thought it wiser to transfer them to Somerton, where they were placed under the custody of William, Baron d’Eyncourt of Blankney, during the years 1359 and 1360. The expensive furnishing of the castle (see Chap. XXXVII.) and the provision made for the maintenance of the large number of the king’s French suite, and of the officers and men who were appointed to guard the prisoners, and the style of life there, the tuns of French claret, and the enormous amount of sugar to make French bon-bons, together with the subsequent history of King John, who, on being set at liberty, returned in the most honourable way to England in 1363, because his son Louis, Duc d’Anjou, had broken his parole as a hostage and left England for France, is fully related by Bishop Trollope. King John died in 1364, at the palace of the Savoy.

Somerton Castle, which we must now visit, was a fortified dwelling-place with outer and inner moats, and with round towers at each corner of an irregular parallelogram, only one remains now at the south-west angle. This is forty-five feet high, and has three storeys—the lower one vaulted, the highest covered with a conical roof and having two chimneys, rising well above the plain parapet, which is still perfect, and springs from a bold and effective moulding. Each floor is lit by small lancet windows, the middle one much enlarged of late years, for it is still inhabited, together with some building adjoining it on the east, as a farm house. The large earthworks around the castle, which are especially noticeable on the south, are very remarkable, and must be much earlier than the castle, which seems to have been planted inside these rectangular embankments, of which the northern side has been levelled, probably at the time of the building. The earthworks are not Roman in character, and are probably of very great antiquity. Outside these are at least two round artificial hills, which have not been as yet explained with certainty.

Leaving the castle, and driving over the rough field road which leads to it, we regain a highway which takes us up “the cliff” to the village of Navenby. This is situated on a spur jutting out from the edge of the cliff, with a deep little valley sweeping round on the south side and breaking down into the plain. Nestling in the curve of the hill are some picturesque farm buildings and stacks, and above is an old windmill; whilst over the horizon peeps through the trees the spire of Wellingore Church. The chancel of Navenby Church, as at Heckington, is as long as the nave, and almost as high; indeed, this Decorated chancel is as fine as any to be found, no other being built on at all so magnificent a scale, except Hawton in Notts, and Heckington and perhaps Merton at Oxford. The tower, which probably had a spire, fell in the eighteenth century, and the whole church was restored about forty years ago, by Kirk of Sleaford, who made the chancel roof of too high a pitch, and kept the nave roof too low. The pillars in the nave, of which there are two on each side, have shafts clustered round a central column, four shafts of coursed masonry alternating with four light detached monolithic shafts, all united under a circular capital. But the north-west pillar is thicker than the others, and belongs to the latter part of the twelfth century. The tower arch is a low one; the fine Decorated east window of six lights, restored in 1876, has superb tracery, and is nearly as fine as that at Heckington. There are four large chancel windows, and a good Early English window in the south aisle. There is also a rood-loft staircase, and a rood-loft with canopy, or ‘hang over,’ and a modern rood-beam above bearing a large crucifix and two almost life-size figures carved and painted. An octagon panelled font stands on a pedestal of slender columns. The roof of both nave and aisles is painted. The clerestory, added later, has five three-light windows. The east window is filled with white glass, slightly toned, and is half hidden by a tapestry screen used as a reredos, by no means beautiful, and twice as high as it need be. The Jacobean pulpit and the fine copy of an old brass eagle lectern, as at Brant Broughton, are to be noticed; but the main glories of the church are in the chancel, where, besides the splendid windows, there are, on the south side, three rich sedilia and a piscina; and on the north, just east of the canopied arch for the founder’s tomb, in which is now placed a trefoiled stone with Lombardic lettering of Richard Dewe, priest, is a priest’s door and a very beautiful Easter Sepulchre. This is only surpassed by those at Heckington, Lincoln, and Hawton, near Newark. It has only one compartment, with three Roman soldiers, with mutilated heads, below the opening, and above it, amongst the delicately carved foliage of the canopy, are two figures of women. Few churches can give more pleasure to the lover of church architecture than this; and its fine position on the edge of the cliff, with the wide view over the plain westward, makes a visit to Navenby very memorable.

Going on northwards along the cliff road we pass Boothby Graffoe, where the old church was actually blown down, or, as the Wellingore register has it, “extirpated in a hurricane,” in 1666—and come to Coleby. Here is an early unbuttressed tower with a rude original arch over the door of the tower staircase, and with two keyhole windows in the south side, as in the early Lincoln towers or those at Hough-on-the-Hill, and Clee. Part of the original tower arch is visible inside the tower, which is entered from the nave through a very tall narrow arch supported by two very small pilasters with plain rectangular caps.

The two arches of the north arcade are Transition Norman; those on the south Early English, with good stiff foliage. The tall, plain porch had once a room over it, and retains its richly moulded Transition doorway. The font is of the same date, being a massive cylinder with Norman arcading cut on it, and with four equidistant pillars which give it a square appearance. The crocketed spire is a good one, Perpendicular in style, and of better stone than the tower. The three lancet windows at the east end are filled with good glass, and the seats are of oak with poppy-heads throughout. The fellows of Oriel College, Oxford, to whom the living belongs, helped in its restoration by Bodley and Garner in 1901. The wall at the west end of the south aisle, which runs up to the tower and also forms the west side of the porch, as the aisle has no window, is one long blank face, which has a singularly ugly look outside. Inside, there are some good bench-ends, and there is an inscription by Sir John Coleridge to the Rev. Trevenen Penrose, who spent the greater part of a long life as vicar of the parish.

The Hall is a gabled house of 1628, built by Sir W. Lester, now the property of the Tempest family, and having classic temples in the grounds, one of them adapted from the Rotunda in the baths of Diocletian at Rome.

Harmston, the next village, has a tower of the pre-Norman type, with a mid-wall shaft to the window of the belfry in which are eight bells. A brass plate commemorates Margaret Thorold who had a family of eight sons and eleven daughters, and lived to be eighty.

Waddington has some very good Early English work in its clustered columns and carved capitals. Here the string of villages, one at every milestone, ceases, and we go on for three miles seeing the beautiful minster tower in front of us on the height, and arrive at Bracebridge, a very dark church, but with some most interesting Long-and-Short work in the tower, in the angles of the nave, and in the south porch, and a Norman west door to the tower, which is a very early one with mid-wall shaft to the belfry window. The Norman north door is now blocked. There is a curious rectangular opening, twice as wide as its height, in the south aisle, near the porch, which allows a view between the pillars and through the hagioscope or “squint” on the right of the chancel arch to the altar. Another squint is on the left side of the chancel arch, which is a very narrow and early one, through a thick wall.

The nave pillars, two on each side, are cylindrical with four banded shafts attached. The north aisle and transept are modern. A fine Transition Norman font is mounted on a new base, and on the pulpit is still to be seen the old hour-glass stand, as at Leasingham; though there and at Belton in the Isle of Axholme it is attached to a pillar, at Sapperton and Hammeringham it is on the pulpit. There is also an old cracked Sanctus bell.

The road over the heath unites with the Grantham road near Bracebridge, and runs into Lincoln by the Stonebow, and on up to the Minster Hill.

So much for the roads east, west, and south. The roads north of Lincoln demand another chapter. But a few words about Nocton and Norton Disney shall come first.