Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/184

 font stands on a pedestal of slender columns. The roof of both nave and aisles is painted. The clerestory, added later, has five three-light windows. The east window is filled with white glass, slightly toned, and is half hidden by a tapestry screen used as a reredos, by no means beautiful, and twice as high as it need be. The Jacobean pulpit and the fine copy of an old brass eagle lectern, as at Brant Broughton, are to be noticed; but the main glories of the church are in the chancel, where, besides the splendid windows, there are, on the south side, three rich sedilia and a piscina; and on the north, just east of the canopied arch for the founder's tomb, in which is now placed a trefoiled stone with Lombardic lettering of Richard Dewe, priest, is a priest's door and a very beautiful Easter Sepulchre. This is only surpassed by those at Heckington, Lincoln, and Hawton, near Newark. It has only one compartment, with three Roman soldiers, with mutilated heads, below the opening, and above it, amongst the delicately carved foliage of the canopy, are two figures of women. Few churches can give more pleasure to the lover of church architecture than this; and its fine position on the edge of the cliff, with the wide view over the plain westward, makes a visit to Navenby very memorable.

Going on northwards along the cliff road we pass ''Boothby Graffoe, where the old church was actually blown down, or, as the Wellingore register has it, "extirpated in a hurricane," in 1666—and come to Coleby''. Here is an early unbuttressed tower with a rude original arch over the door of the tower staircase, and with two keyhole windows in the south side, as in the early Lincoln towers or those at Hough-on-the-Hill, and Clee. Part of the original tower arch is visible inside the tower, which is entered from the nave through a very tall narrow arch supported by two very small pilasters with plain rectangular caps.

The two arches of the north arcade are Transition Norman; those on the south Early English, with good stiff foliage. The tall, plain porch had once a room over it, and retains its richly moulded Transition doorway. The font is of the same date, being a massive cylinder with Norman arcading cut on it, and with four equidistant pillars which give it a square appearance. The crocketed spire is a good one, Perpendicular in style, and of better stone than the tower. The three lancet windows at the east end are filled with good glass, and the seats are of oak with poppy-heads throughout. The fellows of Oriel College, Oxford,