Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/494

 the fine brass of a lady (1390), recently discovered, and the richly coloured alabaster monument of Adlard and Cassandra Welby (1590) are all worthy of notice; while the abbots' inscription over the door, "Pax Xti sit huic domui et omnibus habitantibus in ea, hic requies nostra," is to be contrasted with the worldly-wise motto of John Petty on the old bell-metal door lock, "Be Ware before, avyseth Johannes Pette." Let into the door is a very remarkable crucifixion in ivory.

As we left Gedney and looked back over the fields the tall and Italian-looking campanile, whose bells, however, cannot vie with the eight bells of Holbeach, made a unique and memorable picture. I doubt if there is anything quite like it in England. We passed on eastwards another three miles by Gedney Marsh, with its "Cock and Magpie" inn, while the strong summer scent of the brilliant mustard fields recalled the apt description of our great Lincolnshire poet:

"All the land in flowery squares, Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind, Smelt of the coming Summer."

As with Shakespeare, once let anything be described by Tennyson, and no other form of words can ever again seem so fit and inevitable. How often does one notice this!

But now we are at Long Sutton, or Sutton St. Mary's, and find there perhaps the most interesting of this wonderful sequence of exceptional churches.

Again we have a long nave of seven bays, with Norman pillars, both round and octagonal. A flat Norman arch to the chancel, and on each side of the chancel a slender column and two tall arches leading to chancel transepts. The rood staircase goes up from the pulpit on the north side, and above the nave arcades is a Transitional clerestory with arcading, which now serves as a triforium, being surmounted by another clerestory of the Perpendicular period; indeed the outside of the church, from its aisle and clerestory windows, has just the appearance of a Perpendicular building, so that when on entering one finds oneself in a fine Norman nave, the sight, as Mr. Jeans says, is quite startling.

At the north-east angle is a curious two-storied octagonal vestry, or sacristy, with a winding stair of fourteenth century