Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/159

 CHAPTER XII

ROADS FROM LINCOLN, WEST AND EAST.—MARTON, STOW, COTES-BY-STOW, SNARFORD, AND BUSLINGTHORPE

West—The Foss-Dyke—Marton—Stow—Cotes-by-Stow. East—Fiskerton—Barlings Abbey—Gautby—Baumber—Snelland—Snarford and the St. Poll Tombs—Buslingthorpe—Early Brass—Linwood.

Of the eight roads from Lincoln one goes west, and, passing over the Foss Dyke by a swing bridge at Saxilby, crosses the Trent between Newton and Dunham into Nottinghamshire. The view of Lincoln Minster from Saxilby, with the sails of the barges in the foreground as they slowly make their way to the wharves at the foot of the hill, is most picturesque. Saxilby preserves some interesting churchwarden's accounts from 1551 to 1569, and, after a gap of fifty-five years, from 1624 to 1790. The "Foss Dyke" is a canal made by the Romans to connect the Witham with the Trent and deepened by Henry I. The road runs alongside of it from Saxilby for two miles. Consequently we get glimpses now and again of the low round-nosed barges with widespread canvas sailing slowly past trees and hedgerows; then we turn north and pass by Kettlethorpe Lodge and Fenton village, through lanes lined with oak trees or edged with gorse, and amidst fields brilliant with corn-marigold, and poppy, till we come, all at once, on a little fleet of barges waiting with their picturesque unfurled sails for a passage through the lock near Torksey, a place of some importance in Saxon times, having two monastic houses. Two miles beyond Torksey is Marton. This place is also approached by the old Roman road, now called "Till bridge Lane," which branched off from the Ermine Street ten miles above Lincoln, and went to Doncaster and York, crossing both arms of the river Till near Thorpe-in-the-*