Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/285

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of chervil, or cow-parsley (Anthriscus), which, with its lace-like flowers, at times filled the space of grass between the road and the hedge with mile upon mile of its delicate white blossom, and in places lined every hedge, showing above the ordinary low-cut Lincolnshire fence, or, where the hedge was higher, whitening the lower half in lines of flowery loveliness. It nowhere encroached on the cultivated land, but every hedge and ditch and roadside was marked out by it in a profusion of soft white blossoms which was quite astonishing. We note that the "tender ash" is still, as our Lincolnshire poet has it, delaying 'to clothe herself when all the woods are green,' but a few days of such balmy sunshine will woo even her leaves from out the bud, and full summer will be with us. The red cattle are feeding in little herds, and the sheep, white from the hands of the shearer, are dotted about the fields. The labourers seem, most of them, to be at the same work, weeding the corn; but as we get further on to the heavy lands whence Holton-le-Clay so aptly gets its name, we see teams of four horses abreast harnessed to the "Drags," by which the great clods are broken up.

The first of the group of towers we look at is Waith, a small cruciform building in a churchyard thickly planted with trees, two fine cedars among them. There are some Early English arcades to the nave, but outside, the tower alone is ancient. This originally was just the width of the nave, and has no openings in the north and south walls. It is also built, not of rubble with quoins, but of dressed stones throughout, solidly but roughly built, with a tiny opening low down; and above the invariable string course, a double light of two small round-*headed arches supported by a stout mid-wall shaft with heavy impost. Coming away, we note on a tombstone the curious and possibly Roman surname 'Porcass.' Two miles south-*west is Grainsby where, as at Clee and Scartho, the stones bear the red marks of Danish fire, and where, inside the tower, is an old boulder stone. Two miles north, on the Grimsby road, is Holton-le-Clay, where the tower of the church is of similar antiquity, all but the top storey above the string-course. The west side has only one very small window, but it has on the east side a good tall Romanesque tower-arch, and there is an Early Norman or Saxon font. The rest of the church is of the poorest in all respects.