Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/291

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houses. The road on either side of the rather town-like village of Wragby is uninteresting, till suddenly, at a distance of eight miles, the towers of Lincoln Minster appear, not in front, but away to the left, and then again disappear from view. But the road turns, and after four miles, lo! again the Minster, straight in front; and as you approach from the north-east you see all three towers at the end of the long road, getting ever finer as you approach and are able to make out the details of the architecture. Only too quickly you come to the top of the hill, and gaze at the splendid upper windows of the great bell tower, now close on your right, then sweep down the curve and, passing through the Minster yard by the Potter and Exchequer gates, go out northwards by the old Roman Ermine Street. We soon reach the turn to Riseholme, where from 1830, when Buckden was given up, the bishops resided, until Bishop King built the present house in the Old Palace grounds in Lincoln, and where in the churchyard are the tombs of her much-revered Bishops Kaye and Wordsworth, though their monuments are in the cathedral. After this we pass nothing, the road running straight on for over thirty miles, and on much the same level all the way. But we will only go to the thirteenth milestone and turn to the right at Caenby Corner, where the Gainsborough and Louth road crosses the Ermine Street, and so make our way back by Market Rasen. The first village we shall come to is Glentham, which contains in chancel and chantry several monuments of the Tourney family from 1452. It is believed that the church was originally dedicated to "Our Lady of Pity," hence, over the porch is a beautiful little carving of the Virgin holding the dead Christ, and the Tourney arms below it. A brass to Ann Tourney has the following play on words:—

"Abiit non obiit, preiit non periit."

Till the early part of last century, a rent charge on some land in the village provided a shilling each for seven old maids every Good Friday for washing the recumbent effigy of a lady of the Tourney family which is under the gallery, with water from "The New Well." This singular survival of the custom of washing an effigy of the dead Christ for a representation of the entombment is now abandoned, as the land was sold in 1852 without reservation of the rent charge on it. The