Chapter I: Preface

The following pages contain the chronicle of a leisurely and most enjoyable driving tour through a portion of Eastern England little esteemed and almost wholly, if not quite, neglected by the average tourist, for Lincolnshire is generally deemed to be a flat land, mostly consisting of Fens, and with but small, or no scenic attractions. We, however, found Lincolnshire to be a country of hills as well as of Fens, and we were charmed with the scenery thereof, which is none the less beautiful because neither famed nor fashionable. Some day it may become both. Lincolnshire scenery awaits discovery! Hitherto the pleasure-traveller has not found it out, but that is his loss!

We set forth on our tour, like the renowned Dr. Syntax, “in search of the picturesque,” combined with holiday relaxation, and in neither respect did we suffer disappointment. Our tour was an unqualified success. A more delightfully independent, a more restful, or a more remunerative way of seeing the country than by driving through it, without haste or any precisely arranged plan, it is difficult to conceive, ensuring, as such an expedition does, perfect freedom, and a happy escape from the many minor worries of ordinary travel--the only thing absolutely needful for the driving tourist to do being to find an inn for the night.

Writing of the joys of road-travel in the pre-railway days George Eliot says, “You have not the best of it in all things, O youngsters! The elderly man has his enviable memories, and not the least of them is the memory of a long journey on the outside of a stage-coach.” The railway is most excellent for speed, “but the slow old-fashioned way of getting from one end of the country to the other is the better thing to have in the memory. The happy outside coach-passenger, seated on the box from the dawn to the gloaming, gathered enough stories of English life, enough aspects of earth and sky, to make episodes for a modern Odyssey.” And so did we seated in our own dog-cart, more to be envied even than the summer-time coach-passenger, for we had full command over our conveyance, so that we could stop on the way, loiter, or make haste, as the mood inclined.

Sir Edwin Arnold says, “This world we live in is becoming sadly monotonous, as it shrinks year by year to smaller and smaller apparent dimensions under the rapid movement provided by limited passenger trains and swift ocean steamships.” Well, by driving one enlarges the apparent size of the world, for, as John Burrough puts it, “When you get into a railway carriage you want a continent, but the man in his carriage requires only a county.” Very true, moreover the man who steams round the world may see less than the man who merely drives round about an English county: the former is simply conveyed, the latter travels--a distinction with a vast difference!

In conclusion, I have only to express the hope that the illustrations herewith, engraved on wood from my sketches by Mr. George Pearson (to whom I tender my thanks for the pains he has taken in their reproduction), may lend an added interest to this unvarnished record of a most delightful and health-giving holiday.

J. J. HISSEY.

1898.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

The planning of our tour--Ready for the road--The start--One of Dick Turpin’s haunts--Barnet--A curious inn sign--In the coaching days--Travellers, new and old--A forgotten Spa--An ancient map 1

CHAPTER II

Memorial of a great battle--An ancient fire-cresset--Free feasting!--Country quiet--Travellers’ Tales--Hatfield--An Elizabethan architect--An author’s tomb--Day-dreaming--Mysterious roadside monuments--Great North Road _versus_ Great Northern Railway--Stevenage--Chats by the way--Field life--Nature as a painter--Changed times 21

CHAPTER III

A gipsy encampment--A puzzling matter--Farming and farmers, past and present--An ancient market-town--A picturesque bit of old-world architecture--Gleaners--Time’s changes--A house in two counties--A wayside inn--The commercial value of the picturesque 41

CHAPTER IV

Biggleswade--“Instituted” or “intruded”!--A poetical will--The river Ivel--A day to be remembered--The art of seeing--Misquotations--The striving after beauty--Stories in stone--An ancient muniment chest--An angler’s haunt--The town bridge--The pronunciation of names--St. Neots 58

CHAPTER V

The charm of small towns--The Ouse--A pleasant land--Buckden Palace--A joke in stone--The birthplace of Samuel Pepys--Buried treasure--Huntingdon--An old-time interior--A famous coaching inn--St. Ives--A church steeple blown down!--A quaint and ancient bridge--A riverside ramble--Cowper’s country--Two narrow escapes 73

CHAPTER VI

Cromwell’s birthplace--Records of the past--Early photographs--A breezy day--Home-brewed ale--Americans on English scenery--Alconbury Hill--The plains of Cambridgeshire--The silence of Nature--Stilton--A decayed coaching town--A medieval hostelry--A big sign-board--Old-world traditions--Miles from anywhere 97

CHAPTER VII

Norman Cross--A Norman-French inscription--A re-headed statue--The friendliness of the road--The art of being delightful--The turnpike roads in their glory--Bits for the curious--A story of the stocks--“Wansford in England”--Romance and reality--The glamour of art--“The finest street between London and Edinburgh”--Ancient “Callises”--A historic inn--Windows that have tales to tell 118

CHAPTER VIII

A picturesque ruin--Round about Stamford--Browne’s “Callis”--A chat with an antiquary--A quaint interior--“Bull-running”--A relic of a destroyed college--An old Carmelite gateway--A freak of Nature--Where Charles I. last slept as a free man--A storied ceiling--A gleaner’s bell--St. Leonard’s Priory--Tennyson’s county--In time of vexation--A flood--Hiding-holes--Lost!--Memorials of the past 139

CHAPTER IX

A land of dykes--Fenland rivers--Crowland Abbey--A unique triangular bridge--Antiquaries differ--A mysterious statue--A medieval rhyme--A wayside inscription--The scenery of the Fens--Light-hearted travellers--Cowbit--A desolate spot--An adventure on the road--A Dutch-like town 161

CHAPTER X

Spalding--“Ye Olde White Horse Inne”--An ancient hall and quaint garden--Epitaph-hunting--A signboard joke--Across the Fens--A strange world--Storm and sunshine--An awkward predicament--Bourn--Birthplace of Hereward the Wake--A medieval railway station!--Tombstone verses 186

CHAPTER XI

A pleasant road--Memories--Shortening of names--Health-drinking--A Miller and his mill--A rail-less town--Changed times and changed ways--An Elizabethan church clock--A curious coincidence--Old superstitions--Satire in carving--“The Monks of Old” 204

CHAPTER XII

A civil tramp--Country hospitality--Sleaford--A Lincolnshire saying--A sixteenth-century vicarage--Struck by lightning--“The Queen of Villages”--A sculptured anachronism--Swineshead--A strange legend--Local proverbs--Chat with a “commercial”--A mission of destruction--The curfew--Lost our way--Out of the beaten track--A grotesque figure and mysterious legend--Puzzling inscriptions--The end of a long day 226

CHAPTER XIII

The Fenland capital--Mother and daughter towns--“Boston stump”--One church built over another--The company at our inn--A desultory ramble--An ancient prison--The Pilgrim Fathers--The banks of the Witham--Hussey Tower--An English Arcadia--Kyme Castle--Benington--A country of many churches--Wrangle--In search of a ghost--A remote village--Gargoyles--The grotesque in art 248

CHAPTER XIV

Wind-blown trees--Marshlands--September weather--Wainfleet--An ancient school--The scent of the sea--The rehabilitation of the old-fashioned ghost--A Lincolnshire mystery--A vain search--Too much alike--Delightfully indefinite--Halton Holgate--In quest of a haunted house 268

CHAPTER XV

In a haunted house--A strange story--A ghost described!--An offer declined--Market-day in a market-town--A picturesque crowd--Tombs of ancient warriors--An old tradition--Popular errors--A chat by the way--The modern Puritan--A forgotten battle-ground--At the sign of the “Bull” 288

CHAPTER XVI

Six hilly miles--A vision for a pilgrim--The scenery of the Wolds--Poets’ dreams _versus_ realities--Tennyson’s brook--Somersby--An out-of-the-world spot--Tennyson-land--A historic home--A unique relic of the past--An ancient moated grange--Traditions 309

CHAPTER XVII

A decayed fane--Birds in church--An old manorial hall--Curious creations of the carver’s brain--The grotesque _in excelsis_--The old formal garden--Sketching from memory--The beauty of the Wolds--Lovely Lincolnshire!--Advice heeded!--A great character--A headless horseman--Extremes meet--“All’s well that ends well” 329

CHAPTER XVIII

A friend in a strange land--Horse sold in a church--A sport of the past--Racing the moon!--Facts for the curious--The Champions of England--Scrivelsby Court--Brush magic--Coronation cups--A unique privilege--A blundering inscription--A headless body--Nine miles of beauty--Wragby--At Lincoln--Guides and guide-books--An awkward predicament 352

CHAPTER XIX

“A precious piece of architecture”--Guest at an inn--A pleasant city--Unexpected kindness--A medieval lavatory--An honest lawyer!--The cost of obliging a stranger--Branston--A lost cyclist--In search of a husband!--Dunston Pillar--An architectural puzzle--A Lincolnshire spa--Exploring--An ancient chrismatory 372

CHAPTER XX

A long discourse--The origin of a coat-of-arms--An English serf--A witch-stone--Lincolnshire folk-lore--A collar for lunatics--St. Mary’s thistle--A notable robbery--An architectural gem--Coningsby--Tattershall church and castle--Lowland and upland--“Beckingham-behind-the-Times”--Old Lincolnshire folk 395

CHAPTER XXI

A cross-country road--A famous hill--Another medieval inn--“The Drunken Sermon”--Bottesford--Staunton Hall--Old family deeds--A chained library--Woolsthorpe manor-house--A great inventor!--Melton Mowbray--Oakham--A quaint old manorial custom--Rockingham Castle--Kirby 415

CHAPTER XXII

A well-preserved relic--An old English home--Authorities differ--Rooms on the top of a Church tower--A medieval-looking town--A Saxon tower--Bedford--Bunyan’s birthplace--Luton--The end of the journey 436