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 CHAPTER XXXVI

THE FEN CHURCHES—NORTHERN DIVISION

Friskney—Frescoes in the Church—Its Decoys—Wrangle—John Reed's Epitaph—Leake—Leverton—Benington—Frieston—The Font-Cover—Frieston Shore—Rare Flowers—Fishtoft—Skirbeck—Boston—The Church.

The two centres for "The parts of Holland" are Spalding and Boston. From the latter we go both north and south, from Spalding only eastwards, and in each case we shall pass few residential places of importance, but many exceptionally fine churches.

We will take the district north of Boston first.

Friskney, which is but three and a half miles south of Wainfleet, where we ended our south Lindsey excursion, is really in Lindsey. It stands between the Marsh and the Fen. The road from Wainfleet to Boston bounds the inhabited area of the parish on the east, and another from Burgh, which runs for ten miles without passing a single village till it reaches Wrangle, does the same on the west. Outside of these roads on the west is the great "East Fen," reclaimed little more than 100 years ago, and on the east is the "Old Marsh," along which went the Roman Bank, and east of which again is the "New Marsh," and beyond it the huge stretch of the "Friskney flats," over which the sea ebbs and flows for a distance of from three to four miles; the haunt of innumerable sea birds, plovers (locally pyewipes), curlew, redshanks, knots, dunlins, stints, etc., as well as duck and geese of many kinds and even, at times, the lordly swan.

Thus surrounded, Friskney stands solitary about half way between Wainfleet and Wrangle, and if only the northern boundary of Holland had been made the "Black Dyke" and