Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood: Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other MatterWalter, J. Conway (James Conway)
History
Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood: Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter
Walter, J. Conway (James Conway)
Woodhall Spa (England)
Of one of the latter, now gone, the writer has a rather
gruesome recollection. In the reckless hardihood of youth, there were
few parts of the castle which were not reached by himself and his not
less daring companions; and, in a moment of heedless adventure, on
jackdaws’ eggs intent, he walked across one of these beams from the
eastern gallery to the western wall, with nothing but empty space between
him and the ground, 70 or 80 feet below. He performed this feat safely,
but a few days afterwards the beam fell. At that time, in the forties,
{233} three of the corner turrets had conical roofs covered with lead.
The writer’s name was cut in the lead of the most inaccessible of these,
as well as on several other places, still to be seen. The lead has been
sold, and the roofs removed, long ago. Within these roofs was a
complicated network of supporting beams, crossing and re-crossing each
other, among which pigeons, and even owls, nested. A schoolfellow of the
writer clambered up into one of these, bent on plunder, but the beams
were too rotten to bear his weight, and he fell to the floor, some 15 or
18 feet, on to the hard bricks. No bones, fortunately, were broken, but
he sustained such a shock that he was confined to his bed for some weeks.
But a more remarkable escape occurred at a later date. Visiting the
castle, a dozen or more yeans ago, while the writer was looking down to
the basement from the topmost gallery, close to the foot of the small
staircase which leads to the flat roof of the south-eastern turret, the
son of a farmer in the parish came up to him and said, in the most
unconcerned manner, “Sir, my brother fell from here to the bottom
yesterday.” I replied, with surprise, “Was he not killed on the spot?”
“No,” was the answer, “he was only a little shaken.” The boy, probably
about 10 or 11 years old, was wearing a smock frock, loose below, but
fastened fairly tight about the neck. In search of eggs, I presume, he
sprang across the open space below him, from the eastern gallery to a
ledge running along the south wall, but, in attempting to do this, his
shoulder struck the brickwork of the corner turret, which spun him round,
and he fell. His smock frock, however, filled with air, and buoyed him
up, thus checking the rapidity of his descent, and he alighted on the
ground upon a heap of small sticks and twigs dropped by the jackdaws, and
the result was little more than a severe shaking. We have noticed the
handsome mantelpieces, which are referred to and engraved in several
publications. They are ornamented with the Treasurer’s purse and the
motto “N’ai j’ droit,” and other heraldic devices of the Tattershall,
Driby, Bernak, Cromwell, D’Eyncourt, Grey of Rotherfield, and Marmyon
families, a study for the genealogist. Nor may we forget the vaulted
gallery on the third floor, with bosses of cement and beautifully-moulded
brickwork in its roof. This fine old ruin has not only suffered from the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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