Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/298

 the road turns to the right and discloses a totally different scene. In front lies the snug village of Scamblesby, and behind it the south-eastern portion of the South Wolds, sweeping round from Oxcombe's wooded slope in a wide curve to Redhill, behind which the Louth and Lincoln railway emerges near Donington-on-Bain. It is a fine landscape.

We descend to the village, and passing in the wide valley the turn to Asterby and Goulceby on the left, set ourselves to climb the main ridge of the Wolds by Cawkwell. On the top of the hill we pass a cross road which runs for many miles right and left without coming to anything in the shape of a village; and naturally so, for the road like the Roman streets in the Lake District, keeps sturdily along the highest ground, and who would care to live on a wind-swept ridge?

To the right the Wold runs up to nearly 500 feet, but our road only crosses it, and after little more than a mile we see the level of the marsh and the tall spire of Louth five miles ahead of us. The road here forks, and forsaking the direct route by Raithby we will take the right-hand road and in a couple of miles find ourselves dropping to the village of Tathwell. This we circle round and arrive at the lane which leads to the church.

This little church, dedicated to St. Vedast, who was Bishop of Arras and Cambray (circa 500), was once a Norman building, but the Norman pilasters supporting the round tower-arch of the eleventh century are all that is left of that period, unless the four courses nearest the ground of large stones of a hard, grey, sandstone grit can be referred to it. Upon these now is built a structure of brick with a broad tower at the west and an apse at the east; but the charm of the place is its situation, on a steep little hill overlooking a good sheet of clear chalk-stream water. You look westwards across this to a pathway running up the slope opposite which is fringed with a fine row of beeches, and just below you at the edge of the little graveyard you see the thatched roof of a primitive cottage, whilst beyond it the ground is broken into steep little grass fields, the whole most picturesquely grouped.

We leave the secluded little village, and turning to the right, pass between the Danish camp on Orgarth Hill and the six long barrows on Bully Hill (the second hill of the name, the other being near Tealby). These are all probably of the same