Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/245

 the many miles of sidings can hold 11,600 waggons, carrying 116,000 tons of coal or more, besides finding room for empties. The coal is brought from Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Notts, and Lincolnshire, and not far short of 3,000,000 tons of coal will be now sent out of England from this port alone. It seems to the writer that to send away at this tremendous rate from all our big coaling ports the article on which all our industries virtually depend is a folly which no words are too strong to condemn. With coal England has the means of supplying all her own wants for many generations, but it is not inexhaustible, and when it is gone, where will England be? Will anything that may be found ever take its place? And, unless we are able to reassure ourselves on this point, is this not just a case in which a wise State would step in and prohibit export, and not allow the nation to cut its own throat like a pig swimming? Large store sheds are now (1914) being built for wool to be landed direct from Australia. Thus Immingham will compete with Liverpool, where I have seen bales so tightly packed that when you knock with your knuckles on the clean-cut end of one it resounds like a board.

Going on south from Immingham village we come, after three miles, to Stallingborough.

The old church having fallen, the present brick parallelogram, with tower and campanile, was built in 1780. Inside, though destitute of any touch of church architecture, it is beautifully clean, and if you penetrate up to the very end you will be rewarded by seeing what the organ absolutely obscures till you reach the altar rail—a really wonderful alabaster tomb of the Ayscoughe, Ayscugh, or Askew family, at the north-east corner, inside the chancel rail. Above is part of a bust of Francis, the father, who lived at South Kelsey, near Caister, and who so basely, in terror for himself, betrayed his sister Anne's hiding-place, which resulted in her being first tortured and then burnt at Smithfield in 1546, her crime being that she had read the Bible to poor folk in Lincoln Minster. The whole story is too horrible to dwell upon. This cowardly brother is portrayed half length, in a recess, leaning his head on his left hand and holding in his right a spear. From this it will be seen that this is no ordinary sepulchral monument, but a work of