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
Till the early part of last century, a rent charge on some land in the
village provided a shilling each for seven old maids every Good Friday
for washing the recumbent effigy of a lady of the Tourney family which
is under the gallery, with water from “The New Well.” This singular
survival of the custom of washing an effigy of the dead Christ for a
representation of the entombment is now abandoned, as the land was sold
in 1852 without reservation of the rent charge on it. The effigy was
known as “Molly Grime,” a corruption of “Malgraen,” which means in some
ancient tongue or dialect the ‘Holy-Image-Washing.’ (“Lincs. Notes and
Queries.” I., 125.)
The church is rather a curiosity, being seated throughout with box pens
and having a gallery at the west end. Even the font is painted, and is a
cheese-shaped stone on three legs placed on a round block. The door is
old and has an unmistakable sanctuary ring on it, as at Durham, and the
porch has a pretty little two-light window on each side.
[Sidenote: THE TOURNAYS]
The Tournays of Caenby are one of the genuine old county families, having
held land in it certainly since 1328. John Tournay, in the sixteenth
century, married a Talboys co-heiress, and was brother-in-law to Sir
Christopher Willoughby and Sir Edward Dymoke.
The manor of Caenby-cum-Glentham, given in the thirteenth century
to Barlings Abbey, and at the dissolution, along with so many other
things, bestowed by Henry VIII. on Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was
purchased by Edward Tournay in 1675, but he had inherited another manor
in Caenby, or Cavenby through a long line of ancestors from the family
of Thornton, of whom one Gilbert de Thornton was Lord Chief Justice of
the King’s Bench, 1289-1295. The present representative of the Tournays,
or Tornys, who, to suit both spellings, have a tower for a crest and
a chevron between three Bulls for their coat of arms, is Sir Arthur
Middleton of Belsay Castle, Northumberland, who parted with the property
at Caenby in 1871.
Three miles beyond Glentham we reach “Bishops’ Bridge” inn. Here a
fourteenth century bridge crosses the stream at the junction of the River
Rase with the Ancholme. Thence, after several turns, the road reaches
_West Rasen_, where there is a most picturesque and interesting Pack
Horse Bridge of the same date, with three ribbed arches, placed at right
angles to the present road. The church has heavy embattled turrets and
some curious carved figures in the chancel.
[Sidenote: THE ‘GOOD OLD DAYS’]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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