The Church of Somersby has little of interest, beyond a small brass with kneeling figure of George Littlebury, dated 1612; a stoup in the porch, and over the porch a sundial, with the legend “Time passeth,” dated 1751. The tower, however, has two good mediæval bells. In repairing the tower in 1883, a fine window in its western face was removed and replaced by an inferior one (Saunders “Hist.,” vol. ii., p. 173). The modern restoration, with bright tiling of the floor, gives a brand-new appearance, rather out of keeping with the almost crumbling low tower, and rustic surroundings. The one really interesting feature is the churchyard cross. It is of Perpendicular date, tall, well designed, and with octagonal shaft gracefully tapering from the base to a corona, and having above that a cross, which, possibly owing to the very retired position of the village, has escaped the iconoclast. It has, on one side, the Crucifixion, and on the other the Virgin and Infant Saviour. It is almost unique in its very good state of preservation, the Puritans having generally ruthlessly mutilated such erections. Several models of it, in bronze, were made some years ago to the order of the late Mr. C. J. Caswell, and were speedily sold off as memorials of Tennyson. It has also recently been reproduced in the churchyard of Huttoft, in this county, where the church was restored, in 1895, by Mr. W. Scorer, architect, of Lincoln. One of the places visited should be Holy Well wood. It is a leafy dell, where tower up lofty trees still vigorous, while others are lying rotting on the ground. Nature in her old wild way, Life blending closely with decay. The thin stream twines about their roots, or springs over sandstone bars, in sylvan, solitude. The spot was described, years ago, by Howitt in his “Homes and Haunts of English Poets.” A local authority says that, once upon a time, a series of steps led down to the well, where an upright post was fixed, and a cross-bar from it was secured to the rock. On this cross-bar was an iron ring and a cable, by which a bather could let himself down for a dip in the well; and an old servant of the Tennyson family could remember when numbers of people came to take the water, which was considered to have health-giving properties. {256}