jo Lincolnshire Notes & Queries. 



interesting churches dating from early Saxon times down to 

 the close of the Perpendicular period at the end of the I5th 

 century. Perhaps the most remarkable among many is the 

 c Mother of Lincoln,' the Saxon church at Stowe, which for 

 some time was the throne of the Bishops of Lindisse, before 

 removal to Lincoln. Lincoln itself at one period contained 

 fifty-two churches, reduced in the reign of the sixth Edward 

 to thirteen. At Boston the magnificent tower of the parish 

 church, 260 feet high, the c stump,' as it is called, predominates 

 the fens, and it is a prominent object both by sea and land 

 from an immense distance. In times of fen floods the bells 

 were rung to warn the district of the impending danger.* 

 The spire of the church at Louth, in North Lincolnshire, 

 is 294 feet high, and yields to none in England for symmetrical 

 proportions and beauty of decoration. An interesting feature 

 of this church is the weathercock, which was placed in position 

 on Holy Rood-eve, 1515, being made out of a copper basin 

 taken two years previously from the Scottish king by the men 

 of Lindsey, at the battle of Flodden.f St. Guthlac's Abbey 

 of Crowland was entirely destroyed by the Danes in 870 ; but, 

 as some compensation, on its rebuilding it was richly endowed 

 with gifts by Canute not the least remarkable of these being 

 the skins of twelve polar bears for the altars, so that the feet of 

 the officiating priests might be kept warm.J Crowland at one 

 period had six bells, the 'sweetest in all England.' Much of 

 the beauty and durability of Lincolnshire churches is due to 

 the Barnack-ragstone, which in mediaeval times was carried by 

 water from the quarries of that name in Northamptonshire to 

 every part of the county. It is a coarse-grained shelly oolite, 

 and probably the most durable freestone in England. The 

 working of the stone appears to have been almost entirely 

 abandoned before the commencement of the I5th century, 

 probably from the exhaustion of the quarries. 



* Miss Ingelow, herself a Lincolshire worthy, in her poem The High Tide on 

 the Coast of Lincolnshire (1571), graphically pictures the perils of fen life in flood 

 time, when the great bells of Boston rang out night and day to the warning tune of 

 * The Brides of Mavis-Enderby.' 



f Lincoln Pocket Guide, p. 72. 



J Monasticon Anglicanum, Dugdale, Vol. II, p. 96. 



See Miller and Skertchly, The Fen/and Past and Present, 1878, pp. 78, 79. 



