Caistor is the centre from which roads radiate in all directions, so much so that if you describe a circle from Caistor as your centre at the distance of Swallow it will cut across seventeen roads, and if you shorten the distance to a two-mile radius, it will still cross eleven, though not more than four or five of them will separately enter the old Roman town. For the town has grown round a Roman “Castrum,” and the church is actually planted in the centre of the walled camp. A portion of the solidly grouted core of their wall shows on the southern boundary of the churchyard, and bits of it still exist to the east and west just beyond the churchyard boundary, and also a little further from the church on the north. Even the well which the Roman soldiers used, one of many springs coming out of the chalk, for Caistor is on the slope of the Wold, is still in use to the south-east of the church, and was included within the walls of the “Castrum.”

Dr. Fraser of Caistor, who takes a keen interest in the subject, kindly showed me a plan on which such portions of the wall as have been laid bare, in some half-a-dozen spots, were marked. He lives in a house belonging to the Tennyson family, the poet’s uncle and his brother Charles having both tenanted it. The place has a long history. It was a hill fort of the early Britons, then it was occupied by the Romans till late in the fourth century, and, after their departure, it was a stronghold of the Angles, who called it, according to Bede, Tunna-Ceaster or Thong-caster, which might refer to its being placed on a projecting tongue of the Wold, just as Hyrn-Ceaster or Horncastle is so named, because it is on a horn or peninsular, formed by the river. In 829 Ecgberht, King of Wessex, defeated the Mercians in a battle here, and offered a portion of the spoil to the church, if a stone dug up about 150 years ago with part of an inscription apparently to that effect can be trusted. Earl Morcar, who had land near Stamford, was lord of the manor in Norman times, and the Conqueror gave the church to Remigius for his proposed Cathedral.

For the present church inside the Roman camp goes back to probably pre-Norman times. The tower has a Norman doorway, and has also a very early round arch, absolutely plain, leading from the tower to the nave, and it shows in its successive stages Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular work. The lower part of the tower has angle buttresses and two string-courses, and, except the battlements, which are of hard whitish stone, the whole building is, like all the churches in the north-east of the county, made of a rich yellow sandy ironstone with fossils in it. This gives a beautiful tone of colour and also, from its friable nature, an appearance of immense antiquity. The north porch has good ball-flower decoration, but is not so good as the Early English south door with its tooth ornaments; here the old door with its original hinges is still in use. The octagonal pillars stand on a wide square base two feet high with a top, a foot wide, forming a stone seat round the pillar, as at Claypole and Bottesford. The nave arcade of four bays is Early English with nail-head ornament. Since Butterfield removed the flat ceiling and put a red roof with green tie-beams and covered the chancel arch and walls with the painted patterns which he loved, the seats, like the porch doors at Grimsby, have all been green! This, to my mind, always gives a garden woodwork atmosphere. In the north aisle is a side altar, and near it are the interesting tombs of the Hundon family, while in the south aisle, behind the organ, is a fine marble monument with a kneeling figure in armour of Sir Edward Maddison, of Unthank Hall, Durham, and of Fonaby, who died in his 100th year, A.D. 1553. His second wife was Ann Roper, sister-in-law to Margaret Roper, who was the daughter of Sir Thomas More, and who—

The Hundon tombs have recumbent stone effigies under recessed arches in the North wall, one being of Sir W. de Hundon cross-legged, with shield, and clad in chain-mail from head to foot. He fought in the last crusade, 1270. Another, in a recess massively cusped, is of Sir John de Hundon, High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1343, and Lady Hundon his wife, in a wimple and the dress of the period. Sir John is in plate armour, with chain hauberk, and girt with both sword and dagger, and both wear ruffs. She has a cushion at her head, and a lion at her feet. He lies on a plaited straw mattress rolled at each end, and wears a very rich sword-belt and huge spurs, but no helmet.

The singular cluster of very early church towers near Caistor are similar to those near Gainsborough, and to another group just south of Grimsby (see Chapter XXIII.). South of Caistor is Rothwell, which we hoped to reach in a couple of miles from Cabourn, but could only find a bridle road, unless we were prepared to go two miles east to Swallow, or two miles west to Caistor, and then make a further round of three miles from either place. The church, which keeps the register of marriages taken in Cromwell’s time before Theophilus Harneis, Esq., J.P., after publication of banns “on three succeeding Lord’s Days, at the close of the morning exercise, and no opposition alleged to the contrary,” has two very massive Norman arches, the western bays with cable moulding. The tower is of the unbuttressed kind, and exhibits some more unmistakable “Long-and-Short” work than is at all common in the Saxon-built towers of Lincolnshire churches, built, that is to say, if not by Saxon hands, at least in the Saxon style, and in the earliest Norman days. The village is in a depression between two spurs of the Wold, and a road from it, which is the eastern one of three, all running south along the Wold, leads to Binbrook. The middle road is the “High Dyke,” the Roman road from Caistor to Horncastle, and has no villages on it. The western one goes by Normanby le Wold, Walesby, and Tealby, and joins the Louth-and-Rasen road at North-Willingham. From this road you get a fine view over the flats in the centre of the county, as indeed you do if you go by the main road from Caistor to Rasen. This takes you through Nettleton, where there is another of these early towers, but not so remarkably old-looking a specimen as some. A buttress against the south wall of the tower is noticeable, being carefully devised by the mediæval builders so as not to block the little window. Usselby, three miles north of Rasen, lies hidden behind “The Hall,” and is the tiniest church in the county. It has a nave and chancel of stone, and a bell-turret, and hideous brick-headed windows. At Claxby, close by, some fine fossils have been found. The eastern main road to Grimsby has most to show us, for on it we pass Cabourn and Swallow, both of which have towers like Rothwell, as also has Cuxwold, which is half-way between Swallow and Rothwell. All these unbuttressed towers are built of the same yellow sandy stone, and generally have the same two-light belfry window with a midwall jamb. Cabourn was the only church we found locked, and we could not see why, and as the absence of the rector’s key keeps people from seeing the inside, so the presence of his garden fence, which runs right up to the tower on both sides, keeps them from seeing the west end outside—a horrid arrangement, not unlike that at Rowston. The tower has a pointed tiled roof, like a pigeon cote, a very small blocked low-side window is at the south-west end of the chancel, and the bowl of a Norman font with cable moulding, found under the floor of the church, has been placed on the top of the old plain cylinder which did duty as a font till lately. The view from Cabourn hill, which drops down to Caistor, is a magnificent one. To the north the lofty Pelham Pillar, a tribute to a family distinguished as early as the reign of Edward III., stands up out of the oak woods, a landmark for many a mile.

Swallow has no jamb to its belfry window. But it has a very good Norman door, and round-headed windows. The south aisle arches have been built up. During the recent restoration two piscinas, Norman and Early English, were found, the former with a deep square bowl set on a pillar. The next church has the singular name of Irby-on-Humber, though the Humber is eight miles distant. Here we find Norman arcades of two arches with massive central pillars, thicker on the north side than the south, and Early English tower and chancel arches. An incised slab on the floor has figures of John and Elianora Malet, of the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries. In the south aisle there is a blocked doorway to the rood loft, and a piscina. The east window is of three lancets. All the woodwork in the church is new and everything in beautiful order. Laceby Church, two miles further on, has a Transition tower, and an Early English arcade with one Norman arch in the middle. There are some blow-wells in the parish, as at Tetney. John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, was formerly rector here.

A mile to the left as we go from Irby to Laceby, lies the fine and well-wooded park of Riby Grove, the seat of Captain Pretyman, M.P. The Royalists won a battle here in 1645, in which Colonel Harrison, the Parliamentary leader, was slain. He was buried at Stallingborough. Riby of late years has been famous for the flocks and herds of the late Mr. Henry Dudding, which at their dispersal in July, 1913, realised in a two days’ sale 16,644 guineas. Over 1,800 Lincolnshire long-wool sheep were sold, the highest price being 600 guineas for the champion ram at the Bristol and Nottingham shows, who has gone to South America, in company with another stud ram who made eighty guineas, and several more of the best animals. But though the ram lambs made double figures, as the best had been secured before the sale the prices on the whole were not high, the sheep on the first day averaging just over £4 9s. Among the shorthorns 160 guineas was the highest price; this was given for a heifer whose destination was Germany. It is owing to men like Mr. Dudding that Lincolnshire farming and Lincolnshire flock and stock breeding has so great a name.

About five miles further, we come to the suburbs of Grimsby, and the road runs on past Clee to Cleethorpes.

It is curious how different localities, though in the same neighbourhood, have their own special and different terms for the same thing, thus: alongside the ridge north of Lincoln, each village has its bit of “Cliff,” and from Elsham to the Humber each has its bit of “Wold,” while on the continuation of the Wold near Caistor from Barnetby to Burgh-on-Bain the same thing is called neither “Cliff” nor “Wold,” but “top”; and we have Somerby, Owmby, Grasby, Audleby, Fornaby, Rothwell, Orby, Binbrook, Girsby and Burgh “top,” etc. There is an Owmby “Cliff” as well as an Owmby “top,” but the words sufficiently indicate the position of the villages—one (near Fillingham) on the Ermine Street, and one (near Grasby) north of Caistor.

There is no view, I think, in the county so wide all round as that from the top of the Pelham Pillar. It stands on one of the highest points of the Wold, from whence the ground falls on three sides. In front are the woods of Brocklesby and the mausoleum, with the Humber and Hull in the distance; on the right Grimsby, the Spurn Point, and the grand spire of Patrington in Holderness, and on the left the wide mid-Lincolnshire plain as far as “the Cliff.” Of the Wold villages between Caistor and Barnetby, where the Wold stops for a couple of miles and lets the railway and the Brigg-to-Brocklesby road through on the level, none affords a better view than Grasby. But the whole of this road is one not to be missed. As we pass along it we first reach Clixby, which shows, or rather hides, a tiny church in a thick clump of trees by the road side, where is a churchyard cross, restored after the model of Somersby. The little stone church has been once very dilapidated, and is now renewed with a double bell-turret in brick—no wonder it hides itself in the trees. There is also a remarkable modern graveyard cross of dark stone, of a very early primitive shape, such as is seen on some of the incised grave stones of Northumbria. North of Clixby is Grasby. This church was the home for over forty years of the poet’s brother Charles Tennyson-Turner, the author, with Alfred, of the “Poems by Two Brothers,” and afterwards of many sonnets written at Grasby. It would be difficult to surpass the charm of one called ‘Letty’s Globe’:

A white marble tablet of chaste design on the wall of the nave shows a couple of sprays of bay or laurel beneath the Christian monogram, bending to right and left over the inscription, on the left to “Charles Tennyson Turner, Vicar and Patron of Grasby, who died April 25, 1879.

and on the right to “Louisa his wife, died May 20, 1879.

They rest with Charlotte Tennyson in the cemetery at Cheltenham.” Charlotte was his brother Horatio’s first wife; his wife Louisa was the sister of Lady Tennyson, the two brothers having married two Miss Sellwoods, nieces of Sir John Franklin. Tennyson’s grandfather had married Mary Turner of Caistor, and Charles succeeded his uncle Sam Turner.

The church, with its low broached spire, has a nave and a north aisle, but has little of the old left in it, except the south doorway and some Early English clustered pillars, and a curious plain font set on four little square legs mounted on steps. The church was rebuilt, and the schools and vicarage built de novo by the Tennyson-Turners, for until his time the vicar had lived at Caistor. Under the east window outside is a stone let into the wall with three dedication crosses on it.

We must follow this Caistor and Brigg highway along the edge of the Wold to Bigby, where it turns to the left, and only a byway runs north to Barnetby le Wold which looks down on Melton Ross, so named from the Ros family to whom Belvoir came by marriage with a d’Albini heiress in the thirteenth century. Sir Thomas Manners—Lord Ros—was created Earl of Rutland in the sixteenth century.

Barnetby Church has a most ancient appearance; it stands high in a field by itself, the village lying below. A long, high wall of brick and stone, grey with lichen, a low tower and a flat roof and windows irregularly placed, make up a building of undoubted antiquity. Inside, and lately recovered from the coal-hole, is a Norman lead font, thirty-two inches across. This is unique in Lincolnshire, though twenty-eight others are known in other counties, the best being that at Dorchester-on-Thames. From Barnetby we must retrace our steps for a couple of miles to see Bigby, which is well placed on the edge of the Wold. The church has corbels all round, as at Grantham, under a parapet of later build and of a lighter-coloured and harder stone. The old thick tower is of the yellow stone, with a good two-light window to the west. The porch is of oak with panelled sides. The nave has an Early English arcade of three bays, with slender octagonal pillars. The tower arch is low, the chancel arch lofty. Here we find two fonts, not superimposed, as at Cabourn, but one in each aisle. One is low and formed of grey marble, the other has an old carved stone bowl of nine panels on a new pedestal. This number of sides is unique. Near it is placed an incised slab showing the figure of a lady of the Skipwyth family, 1374, and another lady of the same name has a recumbent effigy in the chancel, c. 1400. The nave and chancel roof are one,[10] and in the chancel are some more interesting monuments. On the floor a brass of Elizabeth Tyrwhit, wife of William Skipwyth of Ormsby, c. 1520. On the north side a large altar tomb with alabaster effigies of Sir Robert Tyrwhit of Kettelbie, 1581, and his wife. He is on a plaited mattress rolled at each end for his head and feet, and below his feet a wild man or “Wode-howse” on all fours and covered with hair. Two of these support the feet of Ralph Lord Treasurer Cromwell in the fine brass at Tattershall, and the Willoughby chapel at Spilsby shows one. His wife lies nearest the wall, with a lion at her feet and a cushion for her head; both wear ruffs, and he is in armour, but without helmet. In many respects the monument resembles the tomb of Sir John and Lady Hundon at Caistor, but is still more like the Ayscoughe tomb at Stallingborough.

On the two ends and front of the tomb are figures of their children, twenty-two in number, two or three infants in cradles, the rest all kneeling, and above them is the old metrical version of the 128th Psalm, running round three sides of the tomb. The front or middle portion bears the following lines:—

Inside the chancel rails is a mural monument with life-size figures of a man and his wife kneeling, but the lady’s head is gone. The man is Robert Tyrwhit, who made a runaway match with Lady Bridget Manners, maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, who was highly incensed at it, and doubtless used language appropriate to the occasion. At the back of the sedilia two or three little brasses have been inserted, one to Edward Nayler, rector 1632, with wife and seven children. He is described as “a painefull minister of God’s word.”

From Bigby four miles brings us to Brigg, passing near Kettleby, the home of the Tyrwhits, who kept up a blood feud with the Ros family till the beginning of the seventeenth century—not a very neighbourly proceeding—and as they only lived four miles apart their combats and murders were perpetual.

The road which runs north from Caistor goes along the top of the Wold as far as “Pelham’s Pillar,” where the real High Wold stops. It is then 460 feet above sea level. Caistor itself, on the western slope, is only 150 feet up, but the High Wold keeps rising south of Caistor till it attains its highest point between Normanby-le-Wold and Stainton-le-Vale, at about 525 feet. From “Pelham’s Pillar” the road forks into three, and runs down into the flat at Riby, Brocklesby, and Kirmington, where there is a church with a bright green spire sheathed with copper. Brocklesby, Lord Yarborough’s seat, has a deer park more than two miles long. It is entered on the west side through a well-designed classical arch, erected by the tenantry in memory of the third lord. Extensive drives through the woods planted by the first lord, who married Miss Aufrere of Chelsea, and was created Baron Yarborough in 1794, reach as far as the “Pelham Pillar,” some six miles from Brocklesby. On the pillar it is recorded that twelve and a half million trees were planted. The planter, who rivals “Planter John,” he who laid out the many miles of avenue at Boughton near Kettering, was an Anderson, whose grandmother was sister of Charles, the last of the Pelhams, hence the family name now is Anderson-Pelham.

The mausoleum on the south side, designed by Wyatt in 1794 in memory of Sophia, first Countess of Yarborough, is in the classical style, with a flat dome rising from a circular balustrade supported on twelve fluted Doric columns. It stands on an ancient barrow, in it is a monument by Nollekens, of the Countess. The house, part of which was rebuilt after a fire in 1898, has the appearance of a brick and stone Queen Anne mansion. In it are some of the exquisite wood carvings by Wallis of Louth, some of whose work was admired in the first “Great Exhibition” of 1851, attracting almost as much attention as the Koh-i-noor Diamond, then in its rough form, as worn by “Akbar the Great,” by Nadir Shah, and by “The Lion of the Punjab,” Runjeet Sing. It is now in the crown of the Queen of England, and, being re-cut, is much smaller, but far more brilliant. In addition to a fine hall and staircase there is a picture gallery built in 1807 to take the paintings and sculptures which had been collected by Mr. John Aufrere of Chelsea, father-in-law of the first Lord Yarborough. The gem of this collection is the antique bust of Niobe, purchased in Rome by Nollekens the sculptor, who has himself contributed a fine bust of the first earl’s wife. In a conservatory are portions of another once famous collection of antiques, tombs, altars, and statues, made by Sir Richard Worsley and kept as a kind of classical museum till 1855 at Appuldurcombe in the Isle of Wight.

Religious houses abounded here. Thornton Abbey is only five miles off, and here, outside the park to the north-west, is Newsham Abbey, 1143, perhaps the earliest Premonstratensian house in England. On the east was the Cistercian nunnery of Colham, and just at the south of the park, in the village of Limber, was an alien priory belonging to the Cistercian house of Aulnay in Normandy. Newsham abbey, which was worth twice what the other two were, became part of the spoil which was absorbed by Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. The gardens have some fine cedars, and the church with its curious tower and small spire is in the garden grounds. There are some Pelham monuments in it of the sixteenth and seventeenth century: one to Sir John and one to Sir William and Lady Pelham and their seventeen children. At her feet is the head of a king and the Pelham “Buckle,” commemorating the seizure by a Pelham of King John of France, at the battle of Poictiers.