Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/261

 CHAPTER XXI

LOUTH AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD

Louth Church—"The Weder-Coke"—The Pilgrimage of Grace—Letter read in Lincoln Chapter-House from Henry VIII—"The Lyttel Clause"—The Blue Stone—Turner's Horse-fair—The Louth Spire—Louth Park Abbey—Kiddington—Roads from Louth—Cawthorpe and Haugham—Dr. Trought's Jump—Well Vale—Starlings.

Louth spire is one of the sights of Lincolnshire; it is a few feet higher than Grantham, which it much resembles, and in beauty of proportions and elegance of design one feels, as one looks at it, that it has really no rival, for Moulton, near Spalding, though on the same lines, is so much smaller.

The way in which it bursts upon the view as the traveller approaches it from Kenwick, which lies to the southward, is a thing impossible to forget. Taking the place of originally a small Norman, and later a thirteenth century building, the present church of St. James dates from the fifteenth century. Louth once had two, if not three, other small churches, dedicated to St. John, St. Mary, and St. Herefrid; but no certain traces of these remain, and only the north and south doorways of the thirteenth century church are now visible. Excavations made at the last restoration in 1867 revealed the pillar bases of this church and some fragments of eleventh century moulding of the earlier one. The present building has nothing of interest inside—it is only the shell from which the living tenant has long been absent. Once its long aisles were filled with rich chapels, and the chancel arch was furnished with a rood-loft and screen, and the church was unusually rich in altars, vessels, vestments, and books, of which only the inventory remains. In the vestry an oak cupboard has medallions carved