Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/487

 crossing of the Cross-Keys Wash, at low tide, shortly before his death in 1216. There is now a good road there.

Now look at the map again and you will see to the south of this Holbeach road the same names, but with Fen instead of Marsh—Moulton, Whaplode, Holbeach, and Gedney Fen.

The Marsh country is far the most interesting, and it is clear both from the nature of the land and from the names of the places that the Wash used to come several miles further inland than it does now, running up between Algarkirk and Gosberton as far as Bicker, and penetrating up the Welland estuary to "Surfleet seas end," and up the Moulton river to "Moulton seas end," to Holbeach Clough, to Lutton Gowt, which is north of Long Sutton on the Leam, and to the Roman bank which is still visible at Fleet and again further east between Cross-Keys and Walpole. This bank probably came by ''Tydd St. Mary'', through which a Roman road from Cowbit also passed. But this was long ago, and many centuries elapsed before this Spalding and Lynn road, passing between Marsh and Fen, came into being, with its many magnificent churches, mostly the work of great monastic institutions between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and therefore built with exceptional magnificence.

After Weston less than two miles, through a country brightened by the many red and white chestnut trees in bloom, brings us to Moulton, lying a little to the south of the main road. Here we have a beautiful Perpendicular tower and crocketed spire, reminding one, by its graceful proportions, of Louth, though not much more than half the height. The nave has six bays of Transition Norman work with pillars both round and clustered, resting on large millstone-like bases, the two western piers having tall responds built into them, which probably supported the arch of an earlier tower. The Early English carved foliage on the capitals is like that at Skirbeck, or in the Galilee Porch at Ely and the transept of York Cathedral. Some most graceful old work has been restored in the lower part of the rood-screen, and a new and well-designed canopy added. The doorway to this rood-loft is on the south side. A curious old oak alms-box is near the south door, and against the western pier of the north arcade is a singular font which has been displaced by a modern square one of no particular merit. In the older one the bowl stands on the trunk of a tree