Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/412

 CHAPTER XXXIV

BARDNEY ABBEY

The Excavations—The Title "Dominus"—Barlings—Stainfield—Tupholme—Stixwould—Kirkstead Abbey—Kirkstead Chapel—Woodhall Spa—Tower-on-the-Moor—Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk.

The fens were always a difficulty to the various conquerors of England, and, probably owing to the security which they gave, they, from the earliest times, attracted the monastic bodies. Hence we find on the eastern edge of the Branston, Nocton, and Blankney fens, and just off the left bank of the Witham river when it turns to the south, an extraordinary number of abbeys. For Kirkstead, Stixwould, Tupholme and Bardney, with Stainfield and Barlings just a mile or two north of the river valley, are all within a ten mile drive. Of these, Kirkstead was Cistercian, and Stixwould and Stainfield were nunneries. They were all most ruthlessly and utterly destroyed by Thomas Cromwell at the dissolution, so it is only the history of them that we can speak about.

Stixwould and Kirkstead were originally as much in the fen as Bardney; but since the "Dales Head Dyke" was cut parallel with the Witham and about a mile to the west from "Metheringham Delph" to "Billinghay Skirth," the land between it and the river is known as the "Dales."

By far the oldest and the biggest and most interesting of the group was the great Benedictine Abbey of Bardney. This was founded not later than the seventh century. Some of the chronicles say by Æthelred, son of Penda, the pagan king of Mercia; but it may have been by his brother Wulfhere, who reigned before him. Æthelred's Queen Osfrida, niece of the