Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/226

 and timber with a fine stone-built oriel on the north side, as the centre of a long frontage, and is of various patterns, having tall chimneys and buttresses on the west, and a brick tower on the north-east, and two wings on the south projecting from a magnificent central hall with much glass and woodwork, and a lantern. The large kitchen with its two huge fireplaces is at the end of this hall. Henry VIII. and Katharine Howard were entertained here by Lord Burgh, whose ancestor rebuilt the hall in Henry VII.'s time, c. 1480; and another of his Queens, Katharine Parr, was often here, being at one time the wife of Lord Burgh's eldest son.

The wide area round the hall, with its untidy grass and the miserable iron fence, gives a singularly forlorn appearance to a beautiful and uncommon-looking building. It is supposed that the famous master-builder, "Richard de Gaynisburgh," was born at Gainsborough, with whom, then styled "Richard de Stow," the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln in 1306 contracted "to attend to and employ other masons under him for the new work," at the time when the new additional east end or Angel Choir as well as the upper parts of the great tower and the transepts were being built. He contracted "to do the plain work by measure, and the fine carved work and images by the day." One of the Pilgrim Fathers was a Gainsborough man, and a Congregational Chapel has been built as a memorial to him.

From Gainsborough, going north, we come at once to Thonock Hall, the seat of Sir Hickman Bacon, the premier baronet of England, and Morton is just to the west, where the church has a very good new rood screen and five Morris windows, from designs by Burne-Jones. Between Morton and Thonock is a large Danish camp, called Castle Hills, with a double fosse. On the other side of the town the westernmost road of the county runs south by Lea, Knaith, and Gate Burton to Marton, and thence to Torksey, which in early times was a bigger place than Gainsborough, and so on to Newark, but another road branches off by Torksey to the left, for Saxilby and Lincoln, twelve miles distant.

Lea church stands high, and has a chantry in which is a cross-legged knight, Sir Ranulph Trehampton, 1300, and some good early glass of about 1330. Of Trehampton's manor-house only the site remains, but the hall, which is full of antiquarian