Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/316

 Decorated font set on a reversed later font. This church, like so many in the Marsh, is only half seated, though even so it is too big for the population, as probably it always has been.

Within a mile to the north-east we pass Saltfleetby-St.-Clements, a church which has been moved from a site two fields off, and very carefully rebuilt in 1885, and shows an arcade of five small arches beautifully moulded resting on massive circular columns. It has also a good font on a central shaft with clustered columns round it, and in the vestry, part of a very early cross shaft. Hence we soon reach the sea at Saltfleet on a tidal channel, as the name indicates. Here is a remarkable old manor-house.

The parish church of Saltfleet is at Skidbroke, which stands in the fields a mile inland. In the churchyard is a tall granite cross in memory of Canon Overton of Peterborough. The church is of Ancaster stone which has a much longer life than the green-sand, but the parapets of the nave are of brick now, with stone coping. The belfry of all these churches is approached by rough and massive ladders. In the west of the tower is a good doorway. The chancel is a poor one.

Two miles through the rich meadows brings us to ''South Somercotes'', remarkable as having a spire, but of later date than the tower. Here the chancel is absolutely bare, with painted dado and red tiled floor and no fittings of any kind. It looks something like a G.N.R. waiting-room, without the table. There is a very elegant rood screen, and an exceptionally tall belfry ladder or "stee," also, as in the two churches just visited, ancient tablets in memory of the family of Freshney. The family still flourishes; and at the Alford foal show, September 1912, a Freshney of South Somercotes carried off several prizes. Unlike Skidbrooke, the church has houses and even shops close to it. We saw here a fell-monger's trolley drive up with a strange assorted cargo from the station of Saltfleetby-St.-Peters. There were several packages and, sitting amongst them, several people all huddled together. It stopped at the village corner to deliver a long parcel draped in sacking—it was a coffin.

A few miles north is Grainthorpe, the old roof lately renovated. The whole church well cared for, and in the chancel a mutilated but once very beautiful brass, with a foliated cross, probably in memory of Stephen-le-See, who was the