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
hood-mouldings which are carried up in lines ascending like a canopy to
the pinnacled parapet, it seems to satisfy the eye and the desire for
beauty and symmetry in the fullest possible measure.
The church has not a great number of monuments; that to Richard de
Salteby, 1362, is the earliest, and there is, besides the Malham tomb,
one of the Harrington family, and a huge erection to Chief Justice Ryder,
whose descendants derive their title of Harrowby from a hamlet close by.
There are two libraries in the church, one with no less than seventy-four
chained books. But a church forms a bad library, and many are gone and
some of the best are mutilated, for as Tennyson says in “The Village
Wife”:—
“The lasses ’ed teäred out leäves i’ the middle to kindle the fire.”
Only here it was not the lasses but the mediæval verger.
[Illustration: _Grantham Church._]
The bowl of the font has most interesting carved panels of the
Annunciation, the Magi, the Nativity, Circumcision, Baptism, Blessing of
Children, the Sacrifice of Isaac, and one other. The oak chancel screen
and the parcloses by Scott, the reredos by Bodley, and the rest of the
oak fittings by Blomfield, are all very good. The screen takes the place
of the old stone screen which is quite gone. There is some excellent
modern glass, and for those who understand heraldry, I might mention that
in the east window were once many coats of arms of which Marrat gives a
list with notes by Gervase Holles, from which I gather that the armorial
glass was very fine, and that the arms of “La Warre” are “G. crusily,
botony, fitchy, a lion rampant or.” It is pleasant to know this, even if
one does not quite understand it.
[Sidenote: THE MARKET CROSS]
The extending of the church westwards encroached upon the open space in
which stood the reinstated “Applecross,” at one time replaced by a quite
uncalled-for stone obelisk in the market-place, opposite the Angel, with
an inscription to say that the Eleanor Cross once stood there, which was
not true, as that was set up in the broad street or square called “St.
Peter’s Hill,” where now the bronze statue of Newton stands. In Finkin
Street the town, until ten years ago, preserved a splendid chestnut tree,
and other fine trees near the church add a beauty which towns now-a-days
rarely possess.
As at Lincoln, the Grey Friars first brought good drinking water to the
town, and their conduit is still a picturesque object in the market
square. It is on the south side, close to the Blue Sheep. Blue seems to
have been the Grantham colour, for there are at least twelve inns whose
sign is some blue thing—Bell, Sheep, Pig, Lion, Dragon, Boy, etc. Blue
pill is almost the only thing of that colour not represented.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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