Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/176

 village anything architectural, more pleasing than Brant Broughton Church. The Ermine Street at Temple Bruer.

We passed through the village, visited the Coldron forge, and then by a road constantly turning first right then left, with fields of scarlet poppy or brilliant yellow corn-marigold on either hand, and with a stormy sky which ever and anon brought us a squall of rain, we drove across the flat country eastwards till we crossed the railway and reached the ridge. Climbing this, we come to Wellbourn, on the Grantham road, and going on eastwards over Wellbourn Heath we reach the Ermine Street, here only a wide grassy track. This we cross and go forwards through a well-cultivated, but almost uninhabited plain, till we see on the left a farm road leading over a field to a big farmyard, in the middle of which stands a solitary square-built Early English tower, with windows irregularly placed, and steps on one side. This is all that is left of a Preceptory of the Knights Templars, founded early in the thirteenth century in the reign of Henry II. by the Lady Elizabeth de Canz at Temple Bruer.

One does not always like to confess one's ignorance, but I am sure many people may read that word "preceptory" without