The Manchester and Glasgow Road, Volume 1 (of 2): This Way to Gretna GreenHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Manchester and Glasgow Road, Volume 1 (of 2): This Way to Gretna Green
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
England -- Description and travel; Scotland -- Description and travel
In 1770, the income of the trust was £190 17_s._; and by 1863 it had
risen to £900, when the trustees successfully applied to the Court of
Chancery to vary the trust deed, for the purpose of expending a sum
of £5,000 upon necessary repairs to the three Langton churches, and of
applying a further sum to school purposes.
The church of Church Langton is a massive Early English structure on
a large scale, containing monuments of this singular projector and
successors of his kin. It has been very thoroughly renovated from the
funds released by sanction of the Court. Hanburys still preside here.
There is a good deal of interest in the immediately surrounding
country. Away across the meadows on the other side of the road are
Foxton Locks, on the Leicestershire and Northamptonshire Union
Canal. Every visitor to Harbro hears of Foxton Locks, and is bidden
go see them; and indeed they are remarkable achievements in modern
engineering, putting those of the old canal engineers to the blush.
They are visible quite a long way off, looking like the gear at
the mouth of a colliery, and consist of an elevated engine-house
installed with powerful machinery that raises or lowers the modern
lock—practically a large tank—with barges floating in it. This replaces
the remarkable old series of ten locks that scale the hill like some
Jacob’s ladder, and are now discarded. The new lock, completed in 1898
at a cost of £37,000, was undertaken for the purpose of saving water,
wasted in large quantities in the old order of things, but a great deal
of time is also incidentally saved by the new methods.
Proceeding again along the road, the church tower of Kibworth appears
among clustered woods on a height above the railway station of that
name. The Midland Railway and other moderns call the place “Kibworth”
merely, but it is properly Kibworth Beauchamp, while adjoining is the
infinitely more handsome twin-village of Kibworth Harcourt, which,
however, has no church of its own.
[Sidenote: “_A PLAGUE O’ BOTH YOUR HOUSES_”]
A quaint memorandum in the register of Kibworth Beauchamp, under date
of 1641, seems to have been made by the parson as the readiest means
of absolving himself from blame for not properly keeping his books. It
runs:
“Know all men that the reason why little or nothing is registered from
this year 1641 until the year 1649, was the Civil Wars between Charles
and his Parliament, which put all into a confusion till then; and
neither minister nor people could quietly stay at home for one party or
the other.”
There is a suspicion, in the wording of this, that the parson was
heartily sick of both sides.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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