The name Woodhall implies the existence, at one time, of a hall in a wood, and that of sufficient importance to give its name to the whole demesne. {126a} Of such a building we have the traces. The reader of these pages will have learnt that Woodhall Spa is but a modern creation, in what was, not long ago, an outlying corner of the parish from which it gets its name. The original village of Woodhall, comprising a few scattered farmhouses and cottages near the church, is distant some four miles from the Spa. The church will be more fully described in another chapter; it is here merely referred to as a landmark in connection with this “hall.” Immediately adjoining the churchyard, on the south and south-east, are a farmhouse and buildings of no great age; but directly south of these, and within 150 yards of the church, is the site of the ancient Wood-Hall. There is the hollow of a former moat, enclosing an area of about 120 feet by 90 feet, and beyond this can be traced the channel of a dike, which would seem to have connected the moat with a small, but limpid, stream, {126b} locally called, by the Norse term, “beck,” which rises in the gravel, some mile and a half distant eastward, in the parish of Thornton, not far from Langton hill; and which, passing Woodhall, finds its way, by Poolham and Stixwould, into the Witham. Covering a space of some two acres, there are mounds, beneath which, doubtless, was the _debris_ of what must, in their day, have been extensive buildings. They are dotted about with gnarled hawthorns of considerable antiquity; but otherwise the wood is now conspicuous only by its absence. Mr. Denton says (“England in the 15th Century,” p. 252, Bell & Sons, 1888), “the ancient hall or manor house was usually moated for the purpose of defence,” in times which were apt to be lawless; and in the case of the “Moated Grange” connected with a greater religious house, there was the further advantage of the ready supply of fish for the restricted diet of the monks, amongst whom, except for sick members, animal food was prohibited.