Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/54

 Heckington, and three or four miles further on another to the left to run on the higher ground to Folkingham, whilst it keeps on its own rigidly straight course to the Roman station on the ford of the river Slea, passing through no villages all the way, and only one other Roman station which guarded a smaller ford at Threckingham.

This place is popularly supposed to be named from the three Danish kings who fell in the battle at Stow Green, between Threckingham and Billingborough, in 870; but the fine recumbent figures of Judge Lambert de Treckingham, 1300, and a lady of the same family, and the fact that the Threckingham family lived here in the fourteenth century points to a less romantic origin of the name. The names of the Victors, Earl Algar and Morcar, or Morkere, Lord of Bourne, survive in 'Algarkirk' and 'Morkery Wood' in South Wytham.

Stow Green had one of the earliest chartered fairs in the kingdom. It was held in the open, away from any habitation. Like Tan Hill near Avebury, and St. Anne de Palue in Brittany, and Stonehenge, all originally were probably assembling-places for fire-worship, for tan = fire.

But as we go to-day from Bourne to Sleaford, we shall not use the Roman road for more than the first six miles, but take then the off-shoot to the left, and passing Aslackby, where, in the twelfth century, as at Temple-Bruer, the Templars had one of their round churches, afterwards given to the Hospitallers, come to the little town of Folkingham, which had been granted by the Conqueror to Gilbert de Gaunt or Ghent, Earl of Lincoln.

He was the nephew of Queen Matilda, and on none of his followers, except Odo Bishop of Bayeux, did the Conqueror bestow his favours with a more liberal hand; for we read that he gave him 172 Lordships of which 113 were in Lincolnshire. He made his seat at Folkingham, but, having lands in Yorkshire, he was a benefactor to St. Mary's Abbey, York, at the same time that he restored and endowed Bardney Abbey after its destruction by the Danes under Inguar and Hubba.

The wide street seems to have been laid out for more people than now frequent it. The church is spacious and lofty, with a fine roof and singularly rich oak screen and pulpit, into which the rood screen doorway opens. It was well restored about eighty years ago, by the rector, the Rev. T. H. Rawnsley, who was far ahead of his time in the reverend spirit with which he handled