Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/206

 inaccessible islets, with which the Fenland at one time abounded; but now used chiefly of low-lying land apt to be flooded.

2. A wood of alder, ash, &c., in a moist boggy place, e.g., "Keal Carrs," near Spilsby.

A third meaning is less common, viz., the humate of iron or yellow sediment in water which flows from peaty land.

Of the four parishes above mentioned which meet at Brigg, Broughton on the Ermine Street is worth a visit. The pre-Norman church and tower, like Marton, has a good deal of herring-bone work, and, like Hough-on-the-Hill, an outer turret containing a spiral staircase. There is a small rude doorway, and as at Barton, the tower with its two apses probably formed the original church.

The present nave is built on the Norman foundation, and the cable moulding is visible at the base of two of the pillars. There is a chapel in the north aisle, and on the north side of the chancel a good altar tomb with alabaster effigies of Sir H. Redford and his wife, 1380, and a fine brass on the floor of about the same date. This chancel was once sixteen feet longer. In another meanly built chantry is a monument to Sir Ed. Anderson, 1660. In Broughton woods, as at Tumby, the lily of the valley grows wild. North of Broughton the Ermine Street becomes again passable, and, after running some miles through a well-wooded country, is crossed by the railway at Appleby Station, whence it becomes a good road again, but again falls into disuse when the road turns to the left for Winterton, a large village in which three fine Roman pavements were ploughed up in 1747. Here we have a large cruciform church with a very early tower. Afterwards the Street continues, a visible but not very serviceable track, to Winteringham Haven, the Roman "Ad Abum."

In Brigg we had hoped to see the old boat which was dug out near the river in 1886, it is forty-eight feet long and four to five feet wide, hollowed out of a single tree, and could carry at least forty men over the Humber, though not perhaps across the sea. Its height at the stern was three feet nine inches, and it was six inches thick at the bottom. The tree trunk was open at the thick or stern end, and two oak boards slid into grooves cut in the sides and bottom to make a stern-board. It probably had bulwark-boards also, certainly it had three stiffening thwarts, and the stern end had been decked, as a ledge still