In the villages immediately near us, and for several miles northward and eastward, the churches are small; yet several of them have features of considerable interest. Let us turn our steps northward. The road takes us in sight of a column, or obelisk, surmounted by a bust of the first Duke of Wellington. The history of this is told by the inscription on the pedestal: “Waterloo Wood was raised from acorns sown immediately after the memorable battle of Waterloo, when victory was achieved by the great Captain of the age, his Grace the Duke of Wellington, commanding the British forces, against the French armies commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte, the 18th June, 1815, which momentous victory gave general peace to Europe. This monument was erected by R. E. (Richard Elmhirst) 1844.” The bust faces to the north-east, in the direction of West Ashby, where Colonel Elmhirst resided. The property some years ago passed, by sale, into other hands. At about three miles distance from Woodhall we reach the small but well-built village of Stixwould (in Domesday Book, Stigesuuald, Stigeswalt, Stigeswalde). As to the name Stixwould, anyone, without being a wag, might well say, and with some apparent reason, “What more natural combination than these two syllables?” We naturally, in primitive life, go to the “wald,” or wood, for our sticks. Was not the liberty to gather “kindling,” as we now call it, a valued privilege, even like the parallel right of “turbage”—to cut peat—for the domestic hearth? The “sticks-wood” would be the resort of many a serf and villain, for purposes lawful, or the reverse. But, unfortunately, the most apparently obvious explanation is not necessarily the correct one. Whether the first part of this name has a reference to a staked-out ford on the Witham, corresponding to the “wath,” or ford, at Kirkstead, or whether it is from the old Norse “stigt,” a path, as some suggest, is uncertain. Streatfeild says, “The swampy locality would favour the idea of ‘stakes’” (“Lincolnshire and the Danes,” pp. 147–8). I may here notice that the old name of Dublin (Dubh-lynn, _i.e._ the black water) was Athcleath, or “the ford of the hurdles,” which seems a parallel instance (“The Vikings of Western Christendom,” by C. F. Keary, p. 83, n. 3). The latter half of the name would seem to refer to the woods of the district; and visitors may see a very fine specimen of an ancient oak in the garden of the Abbey Farm at the farther end of the village; also a fine one at Halstead Hall, to the east of the village; and there are several more in the fields, relics, doubtless, of ancient woods. The church was rebuilt in 1831, not a favourable period in church restoration, but on the whole Mr. Padley, the architect, did his work fairly well, although some spoliation was perpetrated, stained glass being taken away from the windows; and the panels of the pulpit in Lea church are said to have been also taken from here. Some notes, still preserved in vol. ii.