Returning to the Bluestone Heath Road turn left and take the gradual climb out of South Ormsby with the grand hall and park with its many trees to your left. The road eventually levels briefly where a lane drops away steeply down to Campaign Farm. From the top of this lane the view reveals to […]
South Ormsby Estate
Now in Hill wapentake we have left behind the busy main roads of the twenty first century and by the time we get to the quiet and secluded twin parishes of Tennyson’s Somersby and Bag Enderby it will feel like the twentieth century has been left behind as well as little has changed there since […]
Keal Hill & Ancient Meridian.
Just a kilometre from Calceby is the boundary between Calcewath and Hill wapentakes. Not that you would know as you passed through. This location is deceptive though in its ordinariness. From the top of Keal Hill just about two hundred metres to the north there is an impressive panoramic view especially for such an unremarkable […]
Calceby & the Domesday Book
The Heritage Gateway website describes Calceby in detail – Calceby is mentioned separately in Domesday and assessed in medieval tax records. In 1377 60 people paid poll tax and by 1563 18 families remained. A priest was last instituted in St Andrew’s church in 1540-70. The Norman church now survives as a ruin to […]
The Bluestone Heath Ridgeway.
The exit from the roundabout opposite the entrance to Gunby Hall is the A1028, which climbs steadily onto Long Rigg. This is confirmed when the road takes a sharp right after passing the entrance to a chalk quarry and then at a sharp left turn it joins up with the course of the old […]
Gunby Hall & Beyond.
The original site for Spilsby aerodrome might have been on the Gunby estate but at the time its owner was Field Marshal Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd who persuaded the RAF to relocate it a little to the south. Even so the shorter north south runway ended only just short of the park a kilometre from the […]
Candlesby and other Sokes.
Candlesby, in a sheltered spot on Lowgate at the foot of the Wolds overlooking the flood plain of the Lymn, was an important village in a small parish at the time of the DB. As its name implies it was probably close to the meeting place of the Candleshoe Wapentake but it was also […]
Halton Holegate & East Fen.
The parish of Halton forms a rough keyhole shape just over six kilometres long. The northern half is an irregular circle bounded by the River Lymn to the east and Spilsby to the west with a narrow northerly extension to Northorpe Bridge. It covers the eastern limit of the Spilsby sandstone ridge, which here only […]
What’s in a name?
Monksthorpe’s name immediately demands answers. Thorpe is a Danish word usually referring to a minor settlement but during the time of the Danelaw for two centuries before and for fifty years after the Norman conquest there were no monasteries in this part of the South Riding of Lindsey. So who were these monks? It turns […]
Monksthorpe Chapel
Monksthorpe Chapel must be one of the loneliest National Trust sites, relative to other trust sites, in England, which tend to come in clusters. There are only two other sites in the whole of Lindsey and none at all just to the south in the district of Holland. It may seem that it would be […]
Tennyson Country 