Highways and Byways in LincolnshireRawnsley, W. F. (Willingham Franklin)
History
Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire
Rawnsley, W. F. (Willingham Franklin)
Lincolnshire (England) -- Description and travel
From Gainsborough, going north, we come at once to _Thonock_ Hall, the
seat of Sir Hickman Bacon, the premier baronet of England, and _Morton_
is just to the west, where the church has a very good new rood screen
and five Morris windows, from designs by Burne-Jones. Between Morton
and Thonock is a large Danish camp, called Castle Hills, with a double
fosse. On the other side of the town the westernmost road of the county
runs south by _Lea_, _Knaith_, and _Gate Burton_ to _Marton_, and thence
to _Torksey_, which in early times was a bigger place than Gainsborough,
and so on to _Newark_, but another road branches off by _Torksey_ to the
left, for _Saxilby_ and Lincoln, twelve miles distant.
[Sidenote: SIR CHARLES ANDERSON]
_Lea_ church stands high, and has a chantry in which is a cross-legged
knight, Sir Ranulph Trehampton, 1300, and some good early glass of
about 1330. Of Trehampton’s manor-house only the site remains, but the
hall, which is full of antiquarian treasures, was the home of that
well-known Lincolnshire worthy Sir Charles Anderson, Bart., the county
antiquarian, 1804-1891. He was a charming personality. The following
story, referring to him, was told me by that delightful teller of good
stories, the Very Rev. Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester. At the time when
a railway was being cut (between Lincoln and Gainsborough probably, for
that passes through Lea), but at all events in a part of the county in
which Sir Charles took a great interest, he was visiting the works, when
an insinuating Irish navvy stopped and looked at him and then said, “So
you’re Sir Charles Anderson, are ye? Sure now there’s scores of Andersons
where I come from; there’s one now in Sligo, a saddler. Ach! he’s a good
fellow is that; the rale gintleman. He gives without asking.” Then, after
a pause, “You’ve a look of ’em.” The Andersons lived in Lincolnshire from
the days of Richard II., first at Wrawby then at Flixborough, temp. Henry
VII.
[Illustration: _Gainsborough Church._]
_Knaith_ is noticeable as being the birthplace, in 1532, of Thomas
Sutton, the founder of the Charterhouse in London, where he is buried.
The church has what is not at all common in English churches, a
baldacchino over the altar, but in fact it is not an ordinary church,
being just a part of an old Cistercian nunnery, founded by Ralph Evermue,
about 1180.
[Sidenote: THE CHARTERHOUSE]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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