Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/225

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South Side, Old Hall, Gainsborough.

has a very picturesque and old-world effect. The great sight of the town is the Old Hall, which stands on a grassy plot of some two acres, with a very poor iron railing round it, and a road all round that. In the middle of this rough grass-grown plot in the heart of the town is a charming old baronial hall, rebuilt in the times of Henry VII. and Elizabeth, after its destruction in 1470, and still occupied as a private residence. There was doubtless a building here before the time of the Conquest, and here it would be that Alfred the Great stopped on the occasion of his marriage with Ethelwith, daughter of Ethelred, and here, too, it would be that Swegen died, and his son Canute held his court. The present building is of brick