CII.M-. V. .lollX MKTCALr. 1M).\D MAKKII. 233 



I lie neighbourhood <>f tlir city of Lincoln the communi- 

 cations were little U'tter, and there still stands upon 

 \\hat is called Lincoln Heath though a heath no longer 

 a curious memorial ol'tlie past in the shape of Dunstan 

 Pillar, a column seventy feet high, erected about the 

 middle of last century in the midst of the then dreary, 

 UtiTen waste, for the purpose of serving as a mark to 

 wayfarers by d;iy and a beacon to them by night. 1 At 

 that time the Heath was not only uncultivated, but it 

 was also unprovided with a road across it. When the 

 late Lady Robert Manners visited Lincoln from her 

 residence at Bloxholm, she was accustomed to send 

 forward a groom to examine some track, that on his 

 return lie might be able to report one that was practi- 

 cable. Travellers frequently lost themselves upon this 

 heath. Thus a family, returning from a ball at Lincoln, 

 strayed from the track twice in one night, and they were 

 obliged to remain there till morning. All this is now 

 (hanged, and Lincoln Heath has become covered with 

 excellent roads and thriving farmsteads. " This Dunstan 

 Pillar," says Mr. Pusey, in his review of the agriculture 

 of Lincolnshire, in 1843, " lighted up no longer time ago 

 for so singular a purpose, did appear to me a striking 

 witness of the spirit of industry which, in our own days, 

 has reared the thriving homesteads around it, and spread 

 a mantle of teeming vegetation to its very base. And 

 it was certainly surprising to discover at once the finest 

 farming I had ever seen and the only land lighthouse 

 ever raised. Now that the pillar has ceased to cheer the 

 wayfarer, it may serve as a beacon to encourage other 

 landowners in converting their dreary moors into similar 

 scenes of thriving industry." 2 



1 The pillar was erected by Squire heard of it, lie exclaimed, "What 

 Dashwooa in 1751; the lantern on what ! Lincolnshire ? All flats, fogs 

 its summit was regularly lighted lill and feus Eh, Eh ! " 

 1788, and occasionally till 1808, when 2 'Essay on the Agricultural Im- 

 it was thn>\vn down and never re- j>n >\enients of Lincolnshire.' By Phi- 

 placed. The Earl of Buckingham lip Pusey, M.P. 'Journal of the 

 afterwards mounted a statoe of GI Agricultural Society of England, 

 111. on the top. When the King 1843.' 



