Few indeed of these attractions can be claimed for Tattershall. A huge square pile of perhaps the most admirable mediæval brickwork in the kingdom (its only real rival being Hurstmonceaux), it can scarcely be called picturesque; its military history is of the slightest, and its plan and general arrangements are fairly well known. Still, from the great architectural charm of its construction and the many and various noble families who have been concerned in its building and possession, no “Memorials of old Lincolnshire” would be complete without some notice of its history. The word Tattershall is defined by Mr. Streatfield as meaning the house or hall of Teitr, a Scandinavian name, signifying blithe or gay, thus showing that before the Norman Conquest there probably was a Norse or Danish dwelling on this spot. But in Domesday it only appears as Thorp (now Tattershall Thorpe, a hamlet half a mile away on the road to Kirkstead). This manor was given by William the Conqueror to one of his attendant knights called Eudo, son of Spirewic. His son, Hugh Fitz-Eudo, who was also called Le Breton, erected the neighbouring Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead in 1139. A small fragment, part of the south transept apparently, alone is left, reminding one of the stately remains at Kirkstall and Roche, by its unadorned simplicity of style, which distinguished the early buildings of the Cistercian, itself a reformed branch of the Benedictine Order. The chapel (_Capella extra portas_, as it is termed), a few yards south of the abbey ruins, is described elsewhere in this volume, and is a most delightful and dainty specimen of Early English architecture. It contains the earliest wooden screen work (after that in the loft above the altar at Compton, Surrey) in the kingdom, and a Purbeck marble figure of an armed knight, which with its barrel helmet with perforations for the eyes, no breathing holes, the general character of the armour, and the foliage beneath the head, is dated somewhat between the years 1200 and 1225, and is most probably the effigy of Robert de Tatesale and Kirkstead (a grandson of Hugh le Breton) who died in 1212. In 1220 he obtained from King John, by present of a well-trained goshawk, a licence for a market on Fridays for Tattershall. The cross still exists, with arms of Tattershall and Cromwell on it. His son, also a Robert, obtained a licence from King Henry III. in 1230 to erect a castle of stone in Tattershall:—“Pro Roberto de Tatteshale—Rex concessit Roberto de Tatteshale quod libere et sine impedimento unam domum de petra et calce firmari faciat apud manerium de Tatteshal: et mandatum est vice comiti Linc. per literas clauses quod ipsam dictam domum firmare permittat sicut praedictum est. Teste ut supra.”—(Patent Roll, fifteenth year of the reign of King Henry III. m. 2.) Nine years afterwards he obtained the same King’s leave to embattle this house (“quod possit kernellare mansum suum.”—Patent Roll, 23 Henry III. m. 12). No remains of this