Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/40

 CHAPTER III

STAMFORD TO BOURNE

Tickencote—"Bloody Oaks"—Holywell—Tallington—Barholm—Greatford—Witham-on-the-Hill—Dr. Willis—West Deeping—Market Deeping—Deeping-St.-James—Richard de Rulos—Braceborough—Bourne.

Of the eight roads which run to Stamford, the Great North Road which here coincides with the Roman Ermine Street is the chief; and this enters from the south through Northamptonshire and goes out by the street called "Scotgate" in a north-*westerly direction through Rutland. It leaves Lincolnshire at Great or Bridge Casterton on the river Gwash; one mile further it passes the celebrated church of Tickencote nestling in a hollow to the left, where the wonderful Norman chancel arch of five orders outdoes even the work at Iffley near Oxford, and the wooden effigy of a knight reminds one of that of Robert Duke of Normandy at Gloucester. Tickencote is the home of the Wingfields, and the villagers in 1471 were near enough to hear "the Shouts of war" when the Lincolnshire Lancastrians fled from the fight on Loosecoat Field after a slaughter which is commemorated on the map by the name "Bloody Oaks." Further on, the road passes Stretton, 'the village on the street,' whence a lane to the right takes you to the famed Clipsham quarries just on the Rutland side of the boundary, and over it to the beautiful residence of Colonel Birch Reynardson at Holywell. Very soon now the Ermine Street, after doing its ten miles in Rutland, passes by "Morkery Wood" back into Lincolnshire.

The only Stamford Road which is all the time in our county is the eastern road through Market Deeping to Spalding, this