Birthplace : Limber Magna 



the " Top House," and a few hundred yards further on you 

 come to a turn on the left which leads you (now, alas ! through 

 the beautiful Lych Gate, erected to John Maunsell Richardson's 

 memory by his Lincolnshire friends) to the old church, which, 

 like most of those in Lincolnshire, has a sturdy square tower, 

 and is full of interest, both inside and out, to the students of 

 the church architecture of that period. 



In our childhood, the old-fashioned square pews still filled 

 the body of the church. They have been carted off to the 

 rubbish heap long since, and the newer-fashioned, low, door- 

 less pews have been substituted. But somehow it always 

 seems to me that the old square pews — loose boxes as they 

 were often irreverently called — accorded better with the old 

 Norman arches and the grey old walls. 



When we were children one of these square pews was 

 assigned to the occupants of each of the large houses, with a 

 separate oblong pew at the back of it, for the servants of each 

 residence, giving a kind of feudal setting to the picture. 



Unfortunately for us children — consisting of my two 

 brothers and myself — our pew was situated directly under the 

 pulpit, and it was a fearsome sight when the clergyman looked 

 down upon us, with eyes which in our imagination boded ill 

 for our happiness — in this world at all events. 



He certainly managed to make our Sundays the most 

 dreary day of all the week — a day we detested with our whole 

 hearts, and the only one on which we were as sad to rise in 

 the morning as we were delighted to go to bed at night, which, 

 it goes without sayings was by no means our usual state of 

 mind. To be compelled to listen twice every Sunday, for a 

 whole hour, to the dreariest of discourses, was a penalty which, 

 thank goodness ! is not now inflicted as it was then on church- 

 tormented children. Truly, among the many fine traits in my 



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