Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/286



As we proceed, the tall windmill with six sails shows above the Waltham woods on our left, and we pass a roadside inn with the sign of "The Old Pop Shop." Three miles more and we reach Scartho, a village which is beginning to take the overflow of Grimsby and is full of new buildings. This is the only living in the north or east of England which belongs to Jesus College, Oxford. The church is very interesting on account of its tower, which is Saxon in all but the absence of "Long-and-Short" work. The stones of the tower are of all shapes and kinds, the quoins alone being of hewn stone. Below are only the tiny windows common to all Saxon towers, and above, the belfry has two-light windows with the usual mid-wall shaft. In the west of the tower is a doorway with a round head of large stones and massive imposts.

There is a deep, narrow archway from the nave into the tower, with a little window looking into the nave, and there have been originally tall arches in both the north and south walls, narrow of necessity so as to leave wall enough at each angle for the tower to stand on. A charming original font is there, but hideously placed on a modern inverted stone bowl. The tower and the font are the only things worth looking at, but both of these are of unusual interest. The parapet is Perpendicular and built of different stone, and it is easy to see from the red appearance of many calcined stones used in the tower that it has been rebuilt from the old materials after a former church had been burnt by that scourge of Lincolnshire—the Dane. The principal entrance is now through a big doorway, but in the thirteenth century was in the south wall of the tower.

Leaving Scartho we quickly reach the outskirts of Grimsby, and, turning to the right on the Cleethorpes road, we come in a couple of miles to the church of Clee. This is the best of the group we have been visiting. It is one of the earliest churches in the county, and is highly interesting, not only for the venerable antiquity of its tower, but for the fine and varied early Norman and Transition architecture in the body of the church. As a rule there is nothing left of any antiquity in these pre-Norman churches but the tower.

There is a narrow western doorway and a much taller one of similar character opening into the nave; each has Voussoirs set in double rows. Just above the belfry on the west face is a keyhole light made of top and side stones, and a circular