Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/148

 Bailgate, perhaps, the baths at the town of Bath alone excepted, the finest Roman building in England. Figure to yourself a building 250 feet long by seventy feet wide, with a triangular pediment rising from a row of pillars thirty feet high, something like what we still see at Milan. Alas! that only the pillar bases of this fine hall have been found. The pillars ran along the west side of Bailgate facing east.

As we pass down the High Street we shall see on our left the Saxon towers of St. Mary le Wigford and of "St. Peters at Gowts." The "gowts" or sluices were the two watercourses for taking the waters of the "Meres" into the Witham, originally there were small bridges on either side over each, with a ford between them for carts. These towers are tall and without buttresses, having the Saxon long and short work and the upper two-light window with the mid-wall jamb, and only small and irregularly placed lights below. They are in style much what you see in Italy, though the Italian are higher, but certainly none in England are so uncompromisingly plain as the towers at Ravenna and Bologna. St. Andrews in Scotland comes nearest, and bears a really extraordinary likeness to that of St. John the Evangelist at Ravenna. Near St. Mary le Wigford is the picturesque little remnant of a beautiful but disused church, called St. Benedict's; only the ivy-clad chancel, a side chapel and the recent low tower are left, a very picturesque and peaceful object in the busy town. Its original tower held a beautifully decorated bell, called "Old Kate," the gift of the Surgeon Barbers in 1585, it used to ring at 6 a.m. and 7 p.m., to mark the beginning and end of the day's labour. It now hangs in the tower of St. Mark's.

The name of 'le Wigford,' Wickford or Wickenford, indicates the suburb south of the river. In the days when kings used to wear their crowns, an uneasy belief in the old saying—

"The crownéd head that enters Lincoln walls, His reign is stormy and his Kingdom falls,"

made the monarch take it off on passing from Wickford to the city, and certainly of all the kings who were crowned in the cathedral none wore the crown outside except Stephen, and he, as we have seen, soon had cause to repent it. It has been supposed that both these early Lincoln churches were built by a Danish citizen called "Coleswegen," who is mentioned in