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
Clarus imaginibus proavum, sed mentis honestae
Clarior exemplis, integritate, fide.
Una tibi conjux uni quae juncta beatas
Fecerat et noctes et sine lite dies.
Praemissi non amissi.
And a thing called on the monument an “Anigram,” which is past the
understanding of ordinary men, is also part of the inscription. The
extraordinary state of preservation of the whole group is a marvel.
Other inscriptions and brasses are in the church, though partly hidden
by the organ and the altar, one to the second wife of Anne’s father, Sir
William, along with others of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In
the churchyard is the stem of a cross.
Four miles further south the fine broad fifteenth-century tower of _Great
Cotes_ of rich yellow stone, attracts anyone who is passing from Goxhill
to Grimsby, and it is a church which well repays a visit.
[Sidenote: GREAT COTES]
In the churchyard, after passing under a yew-tree arch, you see a
magnificent walnut on a small green mound. There is no porch. You enter
by a small, deeply moulded doorway at the north-west end of the north
aisle. The pillars of the arcades are clusters of four rather thick
shafts, some with unusually large round capitals, but others various
in shape, and all of a bluish grey stone. There are four bays, three
big and one a small one next the tower at the west end. There is a flat
ceiling, both in nave and chancel, which cuts off the top of the Early
English tower arch; hence the nave and aisles are covered, as at Swaton,
near Helpringham, by one low, broad slate roof, reminding one of that at
Grasmere. The chancel arch, if it can be called an arch at all, is the
meanest I ever saw, and only equalled by the miserable, and apparently
wooden, tracery of the east window. The chancel, which is nearly as long
as the nave, is built of rough stones and has Decorated windows. On the
floor is a curious brass of local workmanship probably, to Isabella,
wife of Roger Barnadiston, _c._ 1420, and the artist seems to have
handed on his craft, for the attraction of the church is a singular
seventeenth century brass before the altar, to Sir Thomas Barnadiston,
Kt. of Mikkylcotes, and his wife Dame Elizabeth, and their eight sons and
seven daughters. The children kneel behind their kneeling parents, who
are, however, on a larger scale, and have scrolls proceeding from their
mouths. Above them is a picture of the Saviour, with nimbus, rising from
a rectangular tomb of disproportionately small dimensions, while Roman
soldiers are sleeping around. A defaced inscription runs all round the
edge of the brass, and in the centre is the inscription in old lettering:
“In the worschypp of the Resurrectio of o̅r Lord and the blessed sepulcur
pray for the souls of Sir Thos Barnadiston Kt. and Dame Elizabeth his wife
and of yʳ charite say a pʳ noster ave and cred
and ye schall have a C days of p~don to yoʳ med”
[Sidenote: GRIMSBY]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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