We can now go back to Alford and start again on the Louth road. To get to the fine Marsh churches of the east Lindsey district, four miles out we turn off to the right near Withern, and pass two little churches on the border of the district called _Strubby_ and _Maltby-le-Marsh_. Each of these has, like _Huttoft_, a remarkable font, but that at _Maltby_ is extraordinarily good—angels at each corner are holding open books, and their wings join and cover the bowl of the font, below an apostle guards each corner of a square base. There is in this church, too, a cross-legged effigy of a knight. In _Strubby_ are some good poppy-head bench ends and a fourteenth century effigy without a head, and on the south wall near the door a curious inscription in old English letters hard to decipher. There is also a small re-painted Jacobean monument with effigies of Alderman W. Bailett, aged ninety-nine, his two wives and nine children. [Illustration: _Mablethorpe Church._] [Sidenote: MABLETHORPE] The whole of the region between the Alford-and-Louth road and the coast is a network of roads with dykes on either side, which never go straight to any place, but turn repeatedly at right angles, so that you often have to go right away from the point you are aiming at. That point is always a church steeple standing up with its cluster of trees from the wide extent of surrounding pasture-land. The only direct road in the district is that which runs north-east to _Mablethorpe_, close on the sea. This is quite a frequented watering-place. Here, as at Trusthorpe and Sutton, the sea has swallowed up the original church, but the present one, half a mile inland, has some sixteenth century tombs and brasses; one notable one of Elizabeth Fitzwilliam, 1522, which represents her with long, flowing hair as in that of Lady Willoughby in Tattershall Church, and Sir Robert Dymoke at Scrivelsby. There is here a seaside open-air school for invalid children. [Sidenote: THEDDLETHORPE]