Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/335

 The Barrows were an old and notable family, one of them was Master of the Rolls and Keeper of the Great Seal, 1485. They were long settled at Winthorpe, and in 1670 Isaac Barrow was Bishop of St. Asaph, and his nephew was well known to history as the Master of Trinity, 1672-1677, and a celebrated divine.

One of Robert Palmer's descendants, Elizabeth of Winthorpe, married George Sharpe, who was Archbishop of York in 1676, so Winthorpe furnished a bishop and an archbishop's wife in the same decade.

William Palmer was apparently part donor of the south porch of Winthorpe, which is very like those at Addlethorpe and Hogsthorpe, having a gabled and crocketed parapet carved with graceful flowing foliage; and on the two stones, lettered in Early English as at Hogsthorpe, are the lines:—

Robert Lungnay and Wyll' P alm': thay payd for thys God in hys mercy bryng them to his blys.

Over the east gable of the nave is a sanctus bell-cot, and in the tower are four good bells, three of which are thus inscribed:—

1. 1604 I sweetly tolling do men call to taste of meat that feeds the soul.

2. Jesus be our speed.

3. Antonius monet ut Campana bene sonet.

In the west of the south aisle is the well-carved head of the churchyard cross, of which, as usual, only half of the shaft remains. On the head is a crucifixion, and on the other side the Virgin and Child. This head was found in 1910 a mile and a quarter from the church. It closely resembles that still standing intact at Somersby.

Opposite, in the west end of the north aisle, are two bases of columns belonging to a former church of the thirteenth century, which church is first mentioned in the donation of it by William de Kyme to the abbey of Bardney, 1256.

The registers of the church begin in 1551.

From the foregoing it will be seen how extremely interesting these Marsh churches are, and these four are not the only ones in this part of the Marsh, Croft and Burgh being both within three or four miles of Winthorpe. Theddlethorpe, north of these, is a finer building, as is Burgh-le-Marsh; but I doubt