Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/492

 as we saw it early in June. Like Moulton, the parish is a very large one, containing, according to Murray, 21,000 acres of land and 14,000 of water. Somewhere in this huge parish was born, in 1687, William Stukeley, the antiquarian, who became in his later years the rector of Somerby, near Grantham.

The "Legend of Holbeach" was probably unknown to him, but it is of some antiquity, and it is printed at the end of the chapter in the rhyming form which was given to it more than a hundred years ago by Thomas Rawnsley of Bourne, D.L.

A mile off the road to the right, is seen the spire of Fleet church. This, too, is mainly in the Decorated style with Early English arcades and a Perpendicular west window. The tower stands apart from the rest of the church at an interval of fifteen feet. Other instances of detached towers are at Evesham in Worcestershire, at Elstow near Bedford, and, I think, at Terrington in Norfolk; but a detached spire is very rarely seen.

All the churches on the main road are at intervals of three miles, and that distance will bring us to the tall slender Giotto-like tower of Gedney, ninety feet high with very small buttresses. This, like Whaplode, was built, by the abbots of Croyland. The spacious nave has twelve Perpendicular three-light clerestory windows of unusual beauty, divided by pinnacles rising above the parapet. There are six lofty bays and a fine Early English tower arch. As at Holbeach and Sutton, there is a parvise over the south porch. The tower was to have had a spire instead of its present little spirelet, but only the base of it was built. Possibly this was because the foundations were not trustworthy, and, indeed, it may be said to have no foundations but to be built on a raft in the peat bog on which it floats securely, as did Winchester Cathedral before the deep drainage trench was cut along the north side of the close. At Gedney, if you jump on the floor of the porch you will distinctly perceive the vibration of the ground.

It is enriched at the first stage by lancet windows, then by an arcading with pointed arches, above which come beautiful twin windows, each with two lights; and the upper, Decorated, stage of the tower—above the line where the Black Death so obviously and effectually stopped the work, as described in the next chapter—has two lofty canopied and transomed windows in each face, which give a very handsome appearance. There is no west door.