Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/477

 brick house, built on the site of a very ancient one. It had been a manor of the Creci family from Norman times, and passed from them to Sir John Markham, who entertained there the Lady Margaret, mother of Henry VII.

Dr. Stukeley, towards the end of the eighteenth century, saw the old oak bedstead on which she slept. It was then in a farm-house, called Wrigbolt, in the parish of Gosberton, and was very large and shut in all round with oak panels carved outside, two holes being left at the foot big enough to admit a full-grown person—a sort of hutch in fact. The property subsequently came to the Heron family, who lived there for three centuries. They kept up a large heronry there, and we read of as many as eighty nests in one tree, but since the family left the manor, at the beginning of last century, the birds have been dispersed.

The next village to Gosberton is Quadring, a curious name, said to be derived from the Celtic Coed (= wood). The western tower and spire are well proportioned, and the tower is quite remarkable for the way in which it draws in, narrowing all the way up from the ground to the spire. The rich embattled nave parapet and the rood turrets and staircase are also noticeable, and, as usual with these Lincolnshire churches, a fine row of large clerestory windows gives a very handsome appearance. This church has in it a fine chest; as have Gosberton and Sutterton. The latter very plain, and both with three iron straps and locks, while at Swineshead is a good iron chest of the Nuremberg pattern.

Four miles will bring us to Donington, once a market town and the centre of the local hemp and flax trade, of which considerable quantities were grown both here and round Pinchbeck. It was the flax trade that attracted the Custs to Pinchbeck in the fifteenth century.

Up to the last century Donington had three hemp fairs in the year, in May, September, and October, and the land being mostly wet fen, the villagers kept large flocks of geese, one man owning as many as 1,000 "old geese." These, besides goslings, yielded a crop of quills and feathers, and the poor birds were plucked five times a year. The sea shells in the soil indicate that before the sea banks were made the land was just a salt-*water fen, and it is probable that the men of Donington had a navigable cut to the sea near Bicker or Wigtoft, for the