Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/344



The twisting byeways lead from here back into the Skegness, Burgh, and Spilsby road. The Hall at Gunby is a fine brick mansion, the home of the Massingberds. A pretty little church stands in the park, in which are two very valuable brasses of the Massingberd family, one dated 1405, of a knight, Sir Thomas, in camail and pointed Bascinet, and his lady Johanna, in a tight dress and mantle. The other of William Lodyngton, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, in his judicial robes, 1419. The Massingberd brass has had its incised inscription beaten out, and, with a new inscription in raised letters, has been made to serve for another Thomas and Johanna Massingberd in 1552, the figures, costumed as in 1400, serving for their parsimonious descendants of 150 years later. A precisely similar case of appropriation by two Dallisons with dates 1400 and 1546 and 1549, may be seen in Laughton church near Gainsborough; and again on a stone slab of the Watson family in Lyddington, Rutland. About 1800 Elizabeth Massingberd, sole heiress of Gunby, married her neighbour, Peregrine Langton, son of Bennet Langton, the friend of Dr. Johnson, who on marriage took the name of Massingberd. Their grandson was the Algernon Massingberd, born 1828, who left England in 1852, and since June, 1855, was never again heard of. In 1862 his uncle, Charles Langton Massingberd, took possession of the estate.

From Gunby various small by-roads lead literally in all directions; you can take your choice of eight within half a mile of the park gates, and Burgh station, on the Boston and Grimsby line, is only just outside the boundary.