Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood Part 11

John Mahen de Chipping Norton 1318

Richard de Norton ----

Ralph de Saleby 1330

Roger Sutton ----

Richard Starkie 1399

Richard de Crumwell 1406

Thomas de Grenley 1410

John Glaster 1421

John Endrik ----

John Arthur 1470

John Archer ----

Robert Clifton 1503

John Galyn ----

John Sheffield 1520

John Robynson 1530

John Thorpe 1546

Robert Grawd 1549

Arthur Wright 1566

Edward Wright 1607

No record from 1608 to 1660

Everard Dighton 1661

William Dighton 1677

Benjam. Brown 1702

Edmd. Whitehead 1706

Wm. White 1738

Thomas Willis 1783

Richard Vevers 1791

John Myddelton 1804

John Fendal 1834

Evan Yorke Nepean 1859

Annesley Paul Hughes 1868

Edward Kefford Lutt 1886

William Henry Benson-Brown 1898

Tupholme Abbey ruins, about two miles from Bucknall, stand on the left side of the road leading westward from that place to Bardney. These require a short notice. This was a Praemonstratensian House, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and founded by Robert, or, as some say, Ranulph, Nova Villa, or Nevill, who held lands _in capite_ of the King, from the Conquest, the foundation being further augmented by Alan de Nevill and Gilbert his brother, temp. Henry II. Tanner states that at the time of its dissolution by Henry VIII. there were "nine religious" in the House, and the contemporary Leland, in his "Collectanea," names two works which he saw in the Tupholme Library, viz., Fulcherii Historia and Historiolae de Britannia fragmentum. {165} The properties of the Abbey were very considerable, lying in the parishes of Tupholme, Gautby, Langton, Franthorpe (where there was a Grange farm), Stixwould, Metheringham, Lincoln, Boston, Middle Rasen, Ranby, West Ashby, Brokelesby, Stourton, Great Coates, Louth, with the advowson of Stratton Church, and other places. These ample possessions seem to have bred in the Priors a spirit of independence, and even of lawlessness; for, at an Inquisition, held at Lincoln in the 13th century, it was stated that the Prior of the day had refused to pay his Crown quit rents, and indulged in other illegal proceedings, besides claiming "free warren" over these different manors, which of right belonged to the King. Another Prior was accused of forgery and counterfeiting the coin of the realm, {166a} with which he purchased corn and wine and disposed of them again at a profit. He was also charged with carrying on an extensive traffic in horn, {166b} and it is not a little curious, in connection with this last charge, that a Mr.

Pell, whom the writer, as a boy, knew well, residing at Tupholme Hall, found, while his men were digging in the Abbey field, great quant.i.ties of the pith, or core, of bullocks' horns, all of which had been divested of the outer coating. Henry II. granted to the Prior, by Charter, a ca.n.a.l to the Witham; the course of similar ca.n.a.ls can be traced at Stixwould Priory and Kirkstead Abbey, and thus articles of illegal traffic could be smuggled down the Witham to foreign lands. At the dissolution the site of the Abbey was given to Sir Thomas Heneage.

The remains of the Abbey are now small, forming one end, running north and south, of some farm buildings, with a small modern house attached, which helps to keep them standing; for, otherwise, they are so worn away at the lower part, by the cattle rubbing against them, that they would be in danger of falling; and of late years such a contingency has been evidently thought not unlikely, as a railing is now put up outside to keep the cattle out of danger. There are southward five upper Early English windows in the remaining fragment, probably the wall of the Refectory; and two more ornamental windows of a small chamber, northward, with a small narrow round-headed window, deeply let in, at the end; with eight round arched recesses below, one of these being perforated, and forming an entrance to the refectory from the outside. Fragments of carved stones are also inserted in a modern wall at the north end. A local tradition survives, that the place is haunted by a headless lady; and an instance is related by a labourer formerly living close by, who, when beating his wife, was so terrified by an apparition, which in his ignorance he took to be "the Old Lad," _i.e._, the Devil, that he henceforth became a reformed character, and never belaboured his wife again.

There is a short cut over the fields from Stixwould to Tupholme Priory, available for the pedestrian, but transit for the carriage is doubtful, as the cart track is a private accommodation road, though possibly the proverbial "silver key" may open the locks. On the opposite side of the ruins is Tupholme Hall, a large substantial brick building, with some fine timber about it. The age of this house I do not know, but some spouting bears date 1789. Tupholme can be reached by train to Southrey station, with a walk of about a mile and a half, or from Bardney about two miles.

We now pa.s.s over two miles in thought, and reach Bardney. Here we have the largest church (St. Lawrence) in this neighbourhood; and though for a long time it was left in a wretched condition, it was restored in 1878 at a cost of 2,500, and is now in a very good condition. Its chief features of interest are as follows:-In the south wall of the chancel there is a piscina; in the pavement north of the Communion table is a flat slab of Purbeck marble, with a cross and the initials C.S., with date 1715. The present Communion table is formed of a ma.s.sive slab of Lincoln limestone, 9 feet long, 4 feet in width, and 6 inches in thickness. Inscribed on this are seven crosses, three at each end and one in the front centre; they have evidently been scratched with a rude instrument and are doubtless of early date. The number of these crosses, seven, would imply that it was dedicated to some sacred purpose. The stone was found under the floor of the nave, while operations were going on for the restoration. It is supposed to have been brought from the Abbey (of which we shall speak presently), and to have been the tombstone of King Oswald of Northumbria, who, as the Venerable Bede states (Book iii.. c. vi.), was buried in the Abbey under the High Altar; although it is known that with the exception of one hand (which is said to have acquired miraculous powers) his remains were afterwards removed to Gloucester. The chancel is built of bricks, which resemble those of Tattershall and Halstead Hall, and commonly called "Flemish;" but it is likely that, as in the case of the two other buildings just named, they were made in the neighbourhood, where there have been very extensive brick and tile kilns, of so old a date as to have given its name to a small stream, which is called "Tile-house Beck." The chancel has angels between the main beams of the roof. In the chancel arch south wall, on the eastern side, are initials scratched, with dates 1443 and 1668. The nave has north and south aisles with five bays, and Early English arches and columns, the plinths of these columns being unusually high-over three feet, and those on the south being slightly higher than those on the north. The aisle windows are debased. The timber beams in the roof are of strong good oak; plain, except a central floriated device; the general boarding being of pine. The east window has five lights, with fourteen divisions above, within the low arch. The register dates from 1653. The Communion plate is good, its date 1569. The tower is ma.s.sive, broad, and low, with here and there a relic of Norman zigzag work built into the walls. There are four bells, large, and of good tone, the weight of the largest being just short of one ton. Their inscriptions are as follows:-

(_a_) Soli Deo gloria (Churchwardens) T. T. & W. K. 1644.

(_b_) W. S. (with Fleur de lys) Deus . . . 1670.

(_c_) Sanctus Dominus . . . 1663.

(_d_) Jhesus be our spede. E. E. R.R. a Rose. 1615.

The Abbey of Bardney, of which now nothing remains _in situ_ except a sepulchral barrow, dates from the Saxon Heptarchy, being one of the oldest in the kingdom. It was first built, says Dugdale {168a} by King Ethelred, who himself, in 705, quitted his throne of Mercia, and, retiring to Bardney, became its Abbot for the last 13 years of his life.

The name of the actual founder, however, is lost in obscurity. Leland says {168b} that the monks themselves did not know it. The barrow referred to is called, to this day, the "coney-garth" or "King's enclosure," and Ethelred is supposed to have been buried there. The Abbey was destroyed in 870, by the Danes, under their leaders Inguar and Hubba, and 300 monks slaughtered before the altar. It was re-built 200 years later, and re-endowed, by Gilbert de Gaunt, the powerful Norman baron whose bounteous acts we have referred to more than once; and his son, Walter de Gaunt, in 1115, confirmed "to the church and monastery of St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Oswald, all those lands and possessions which his father had given in pure and perpetual alms to the same." And all this was afterwards confirmed by Henry I. {169a} It was a very wealthy establishment of the Benedictine order. The superior was one of the twenty-five mitred Abbots in England; he was called the "Lord of Lindsey," had a seat in the House of Lords, and a palace in London. At the time when the body of Oswald, King of Northumbria, was buried here, there were 300 monks in the Abbey, says Dugdale. I have mentioned that when the body of King Oswald was afterwards transferred to Gloucester, a hand was retained, which acquired miraculous powers; the versions as regards this vary, but there is a legend that Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne was dining with Oswald, there being a silver dish on the royal table, well replenished, when the king's almoner announced "that there was a crowd of mendicants begging at the gate. The king immediately ordered the whole of the meat, and the dish itself, to be divided among them. This generosity so struck the bishop that he grasped the king's right hand, exclaiming that "it was impossible that a hand so munificent should ever perish," and the monks a.s.sert that it never did.

After his death it was deposited as a holy relic in St. Peter's Church at Bebba, now called Bamborough. Thence it was purloined by a monk of Peterborough (says William of Malmsbury) and deposited in the Abbey there, where it is said, by Nicholas Harpsfield, to have remained in a perfect state till after the Reformation. {169b}

In the Record "Testa de Nevill" (p. 338) it is stated that, besides the lands given to the Abbey by Gilbert de Gaunt, in Bardenay, Surraye (Southrey), An-Goteby (Gautby), and elsewhere, Roger de Marmion (ancestor of the Dymokes of Scrivelsby) also endowed it with certain lands. The Abbots held the advowsons of, or pensions from, the churches of Bardney, Barton-on-Humber, Sotby, Falkingham, Wlacot, Skendleby, Partney, Frisby, Lusby, Baumber, Edlington, and half a dozen more.

Of Bardney I have only one more particular to mention, a modern miracle:-In the year 1898, in the hamlet of Southrey, an outlying part of the parish, a church was built, where there had been none before, to accommodate 90 people; the builders, as in the historic case of St. Hugh of Avalon, carrying his hod at the erection of his own cathedral, were the clergy, a.s.sisted by the parishioners generally, all carting being done by the farmers; and the greatest zeal and interest being shewn by all parties. It is a wooden structure, on a concrete foundation. The font was brought from the vicarage, probably being of the 15th century.

As I stand on this barrow, "coney-garth," with the remains mouldering beneath me, blending with their kindred earth, of the saintly Ethelred, who in his singular devotion exchanged the crown of a king for the mitre of an abbot, I command a view, probably unrivalled in the world. In the near distance north-east are the buildings which occupy the site of the vaccary of Bardney Abbey, still called Bardney Dairies, and said to have been the original position of the abbey itself, before its destruction by the Danes. North-westward, beyond the woods, between two and three miles away, are the crumbling remains of Barlings Abbey, whose last abbot, Macharell (under the name of Captain Cobbler), headed the Lincolnshire Rebellion, in the reign of Henry VIII., and for his offence was executed, along with the contemporary Abbot of Kirkstead. In the next village but one to the west formerly stood the Priory of Minting, of which only mounds and ponds survive. To the north of this was the Priory of Benedictine Nuns at Stainfield; while a few short miles again beyond this to the east was Bullington Priory; and crowning the north-western horizon stands the majestic Cathedral of Lincoln, around which cl.u.s.tered in its immediate proximity fourteen monasteries; truly a region once rich beyond compare in monastic inst.i.tutions; the homes of devotion, if also, unhappily, of error and superst.i.tion; but the almost sole sources in their day "of light and leading"; but for whom we should now know but little or nothing of the distant past, since it was the monks who made and preserved for us our historic records, {171} they who multiplied our old MSS., they who were our great agriculturists, and they above all who handed down to us the Word of Life. Not far off to the east is a wood, commonly called "Horsetaker wood," but the term is really "Auster-acre,"

the eastern-acre or field (Latin, Australis ager); as at Bawtry there is land called by the similar name, "Auster-field," and we have most of us heard of the battle of Austerlitz, when Napoleon conquered the forces of Austria and Russia, in 1805. To the north lies another wood, known as "Hardy-gang" wood, a name derived from the following local tradition:-Once upon a time a wild man lived in the fastnesses of this wood (the woods about here were, within the writer's recollection, much more extensive than they now are); he wore no clothing; was covered with hair; and was the terror of the neighbourhood, raiding the sheep and cattle, and carrying off occasionally a child. At length his maraudings became so excessive that a number of men banded together, binding themselves not to rest until they had rid the country of this monster in human form. They had a hard task to perform, but at length they did it, and their name of "the hardy gang" was pa.s.sed on to the wood itself.

Continuing our ramble, a walk of some five miles eastward, partly through fields, by a wide and evidently ancient footpath, trod, doubtless, by many a monk of old, and skirting the above-named Auster-acre wood, we arrive at the small and scattered village of Gautby, the property of the Vyners. We are here in a region of fine and stately timber, a suitable position for a large, and handsome residence; but the hall was demolished several years ago, and only the gardens remain, enclosed by a high wall.

In such a place, and under such patronage, we should expect to find the church a handsome fabric, but, on the contrary, the visitor will be surprised to see a mean, brick, small structure, with no pretensions whatever to architectural beauty. The old square pews are still retained, with some open sittings, all of oak, but without ornament; pulpit and reading-desk, in keeping with these; the font is of wood with marble basin, small, and of no beauty. A small wooden gallery, for singers, over the west door, reminds one of the days when our country choirs were accompanied by hautboy, clarionet and fiddle, and almost the only hymns were "Tate and Brady." The chancel is almost entirely paved with tombstones of the Vyners. One of these records the murder of F. G.

Vyner, Esq., by brigands in Greece, in the year 1870. On the north and south sides of the Communion table are raised monuments, on which are semi-rec.u.mbent figures in stone. The inscription on the northern sepulchre runs as follows:-"At the instance of Thomas Vyner, Esqvire, Clerke of the Patents, piously desiring to preserve the memorie of his dear Father, Sr Thomas Vyner deceased, His Executor Sr Robert Vyner, Knight and Baronet, caused this monument to be set up Anno. Dom. 1672."