Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/165

 We recrossed the field, and passing between Ingham and Cammeringham, climbed the hill, and, getting on to the ridge, turned to the right for Lincoln, distant about eight miles. As we went along we looked down on Brattleby and Aisthorpe, on Scampton and the Carltons, and passed through Burton to the minster city.

The mists were rising in the flat country westwards, and the ripening corn gave a colour to the fields below us, and, as the sun set at the edge of the horizon, it seemed to us that it would be extremely difficult to find any road in England more striking, or from which so fine a view could be seen for so many miles on end.

Of the three eastern roads one goes by Greetwell and Fiskerton to Gautby and Baumber. Cherry Willingham lies just to the north where, till 1820, the vicarage was a small thatched house at the end of the village.

Fiskerton was given by Edward the Confessor to Peterborough, and the gift still holds. The charter was copied by Symon Gunton in his famous history of Peterborough, of which he was prebendary from 1646 to 1676, and at the same time rector of Fiskerton, where Dean Kipling was also rector in 1806. Only a few years ago what is either the original charter of the Confessor or an early copy was discovered in the cathedral library. The unique chronicle of the abbey and monastery called 'Swapham,' and written in MS., was saved from Cromwell's soldiers who were burning all the books, etc., by Gunton's son, who tucked it under his arm, saying that it was exempt from destruction being a Bible, as any fool could see. That, too, is now one of the treasures of the cathedral library. The Fiskerton Register is one of the earliest, beginning in 1559. In that book is the following entry for 1826:—

"The driest summer known for the last 20 years. Conduit water taken from Lincoln to Boston. No rain from April Fair 20th to the 26th of June. The river was deepened this summer, packet went to Boston by the drain; prayers for rain during Hay harvest."

Barlings Abbey lies three miles to the north-east, across Fiskerton Moor. It was founded in 1054 for Premonstratensian canons by Ralph de Hoya, and a grand tower, 180 feet high, was still standing in 1710. Half-way to Gautby we reach Stainfield, founded by Henry Percy at about the same time for Benedictine nuns.