This old house is well worth a visit; and visitors are courteously received by the family who now reside there. I now propose to invite the visitor to Woodhall Spa to accompany me in thought (as not a few have done in person) to some of the places of interest, churches, or ruins, in the neighbourhood, as it may add a zest to his perambulations to know something about them. The descriptions will probably be brief, leaving a margin to be filled in by his own personal observation, thus affording him a motive for further enquiry, and an aim and object for the rambles, which may conduce to his health in the expansion alike of mind and of lung. Woodhall does not lie within what may be called the architectural zone of Lincolnshire. In the south, south-east, and south-west of the county, parish after parish possesses a large church, often beyond the requirements of the population, and of great and varied architectural beauty. There is probably no district in England so rich in fine edifices. Much of the land was at one time held by powerful Norman knights and barons, whose energies were often spent in internecine feuds. The mediæval creed impressed them with the belief that their deeds of violence could be atoned for by the erection of costly churches for the worship, by others, of that God whom they themselves little honoured. Interested ecclesiastics fostered this feeling, {149a} which also fell in with the “Ora pro nobis” yearning of their own breasts, when suffering from what an old writer has called “the ayen-bite of Inwyt,” {149b} or, in modern parlance, “remorse of conscience.” But if, judged by the scale of expiation, made in endowment and embodied in stone, these high-handed lords would seem to have been sinners above their more ordinary fellows, we must at least gratefully allow that they have left to us of the present day a goodly heritage, which even our modern vastly increased wealth has not enabled us to emulate. These fine churches, in our neighbourhood may be said to terminate at Coningsby and Tattershall.