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
_Thornton Curtis_ is a place to be visited, because it possesses one
of the seven black marble Tournai fonts like those at Lincoln and
Winchester. This stands in a wide open space at the west end of the
church, mounted on a square three-stepped pedestal. The four corner
shafts, like those at Ipswich, are of lighter colour than the central
pillar and the top. The latter has suffered several fractures owing to
its having been more than once moved, and the base is much worn as if it
had been exposed to the weather. The sides are sculptured with griffins
and monsters, and on the top at each corner is a bird. Of the church
the groined porch has been renewed, but the doorway is old and good,
and part of the ancient oak door remains with the original fine hinges,
and a design in iron round the head of the door. On the floor near the
south-west corner of the church is a sepulchral stone slab with a half
effigy of a lady in deep relief showing at the head end. There is a fine
wide Early English tower arch, and the handsome arches of the nave are
borne on clustered pillars, which are all alike on the north side, but
of different patterns on the south side, and with excellent boldly cut
foliage capitals, the western capital and respond being especially fine.
The north aisle is very wide, and the church unusually roomy. The pine
roof and the oak seats were all new about thirty years ago. The light
and graceful rood screen is also new, and has deep buttress-like returns
on the western side, as at Grimoldby. The chancel has late twelfth
century lancets, one with a Norman arch, the others pointed, showing the
transition period; once the church was all Norman, but it was extended
westwards early in the thirteenth century. There are two charming
piscinas of the same period, with Norman pilasters and round-headed
arches, but the western one has had a later pointed arch, apparently put
on in more recent times.
In the north aisle wall there are three arched niches for tombs, and on
the north side of the chancel outside is a wide Norman arch with a flat
buttress curiously carried up from above the centre of the archway, as in
the Jews’ House at Lincoln. Near the south porch is a mural tablet carved
in oak, with old English lettering, which reads thus:—
In the yer yat all the stalles
In thys chyrch was mayd
Thomas Kyrkbe Jho Shreb
byn Hew Roston Jho Smyth
Kyrk Masters in the yer of
Our Lorde God MCCCCCXXXII.
In the churchyard is half of the shaft of a cross, octagonal, with
rosettes carved at intervals on the four smaller sides. Like the font, it
is mounted on a broad, square three-stepped pedestal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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