Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/485

 CHAPTER XXXIX

CHURCHES OF HOLLAND, EAST OF SPALDING

Weston—The Font—Fertile Country—Colman's Factory—The Woad Plant—'Twixt Marsh and Fen—Moulton—The Spire—The Elloe Stone—Whaplode—Holbeach—Fleet—Gedney—The Mustard Fields—Long Sutton—Groups of Churches—Foss-dyke Old Bridge—Kirton—Frampton—Wyberton—A Storm—Agricultural Statistics, 1913—A Legend of Holbeach.

The road which runs east from Spalding passes out of the county to reach King's Lynn. But before it does so, it goes through a line of villages along which, within a distance of ten miles, are six of the finest churches which even Lincolnshire can show. Going out through Fulney we begin, less than four miles from Spalding, with Weston, where we find an unusually fine south porch with arcading and stone seats on either side. At the east end are three lancet lights of perfect Early English work and four slender buttresses. The nave dates from the middle of the twelfth century, and has stout round pillars in the south and octagonal in the north arcades, each set round with slender detached shafts as at Skirbeck, united under capitals carved with good stiff foliage. The aisles and transepts are later, and the tower later again.

The Early English font is a splendid specimen and stands on its original octagonal steps with half of the circle occupied by a broad platform for the priest. Two good old oak chests stand on either side of the tower arch, and near the south door two curious musical instruments of the oboe type are hanging, and seem to be worthy of more careful preservation.

The whole of our route to-day lies through a perfectly flat land, mostly arable and of extraordinary fertility. The corn crops at the end of May were standing nearly two feet high,