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
“Jane Chaplin, born 24th June, 1811, died 21st October, 1913”—
but during all that long life she was always cheerful and kindly and full
of interest, and up to the very last, within two hours of her death,
she was bright and happy, lively with talk and merriment, and in full
possession of all her faculties. On her 102nd birthday she received her
relatives and delighted them with her reminiscences of the days before
they were born, telling the writer how she remembered Alfred Tennyson
asking her to dance at the local ball, and adding that she was still
able to read and to paint, though she had of late years given up reading
by candlelight for fear of trying her eyes, and saying how thankful she
was that she felt so well and had no pains and was, in fact, much better
than she used to be fifty years ago. She had left Lincolnshire and lived
of late years at Bournemouth and then at Cheltenham, where she literally
‘fell on sleep’ and passed from this life to the next, without any
illness or struggle, in the happiest possible manner. Truly, we may say
with Milton—
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast.
CHAPTER XXIV
LINCOLNSHIRE BYWAYS
Willoughby and Captain John Smith—Grimoldby—South
Cockerington—Sir Adrian Scrope’s Tomb—Alvingham—Two Churches
in one Churchyard—Yarborough—The Covenhams—Hog-back
View—Milescross Hill to Gunby—Skendleby—South Ormsby and
Walmsgate—Belchford—Thorpe Hall—The Elkingtons.
The Romans had a road from the sea probably by Burgh and Gunby and then
on the ridge by Ulceby cross-roads to Louth, and so on the east edge of
the Wold north to the Humber.
It is not a particularly interesting route, but if at Gunby we turn to
the right we shall pass _Willoughby_ with its old sandstone church in a
well-kept churchyard, a somewhat rare thing on this route. The church
(St. Helen’s) has some Saxon stones in the south wall of the tower, and
a double arch on the north side of the chancel, a Norman arch in front
of a fourteenth century one. Here, in 1579, was born the redoubtable
Captain John Smith, president of Virginia and the hero of the famous
Pocahontas[13] story, a man whose life was more full of adventure than
perhaps any in history. The interest which Pocahontas created when she
came to England is evinced by the number of inn signs of “The belle
Sauvage.” The church has a singular slab with the head and shoulders of a
man, name unknown, in relief cut on it at one end—his feet showing at the
other, something after the fashion of a “sandwich-man.” The huge belfry
ladder is also noteworthy, being made of two trees, whole, with stout,
rough timber spiked to them for steps.
[Sidenote: GRIMOLDBY]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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