Over the last two years I have spent many days discovering the special nature of the southern Lincolnshire Wolds, which is often only revealed under the right conditions and often well away from any roads. This quest to understand the special qualities of this still unspoiled countryside was to help me write my blog tennysoncountry.com. […]
Tag: Lymndale
Discovering Tennyson Country
With studying and exploring the southern Lincolnshire Wolds in detail for tennysoncountry.com and researching many events through time, both geological and historical that created this intimate environment, this blog is as much about the landscape with which Tennyson was so familiar as it is about the great poet himself. These events not only moulded the […]
Hill Wapentake
When at school I had to learn a hymn that started “There is a green hill far away”. The only green hills I was interested in back then were the Wolds, which I visited at weekends with friends on our bikes looking for steep hills and clear streams. The green hill I am standing on […]
Damp Dale & Ashby Puerorum
Whereas Green Hill is made up of free draining chalk, as are the hills that surround it, just five miles away Damp Dale is a valley of impervious clay surrounded by ridges of drier sandstone. Along the boundary between the two types of strata many small streams issue from the ground and coalesce in the […]
Gone is “All the land in flowery squares”.
All the land in flowery squares, This is a line from Tennyson’s The Gardener’s Daughter a relatively early poem by the bard. It is referring to the countryside in May, which he was familiar with while growing up in Lymndale. The squares are small hedged fields filled with meadow flowers and much more. After then […]
Tennyson Knolls
In Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. he spends a significant amount of time reminiscing of days spent with his close friend Arthur Hallam at his family home in Somersby. It allows the reader to get a glimpse into life at the rectory, especially at Christmas, but there is one section (XCV) which he describes spent in […]
Langton Old Road
Langton is placed in the middle of an area once nick named “Spilsbyshire” for it was distinguished for having so many grand houses or halls in the locality. Many still stand today in Langton’s neighbouring villages but some have been lost like Eresby Hall, the grandest of them all, on the edge of Spilsby. […]
The mystery of the missing parishes.
Aerial surveys in the late twentieth century “have revealed that the density of settlements in Lower Lymndale is exceptional for the Wolds suggesting it was important during the Roman period. The strong funerary and ritual elements recorded in the area suggest that it was also important in the prehistoric era. The area was not […]
Trails through the Dales.
The Snake Trail. Of the remaining possibilities for walking in Tennyson’s footsteps I have picked out a route called the Snake Trail, which is a short walk and the Geology trail which gives a more comprehensive view of the area. Snake trail is called this because the dry warm sandy soils around Somersby would have […]
Somersby and Bag Enderby.
The two villages of Somersby and Bag Enderby tucked away in the middle of Hill Wapentake essentially form a single unit and two hundred years ago were ministered as one by Tennyson’s father Dr. George Clayton Tennyson. They are separated from the rest of the Wolds by distinct physical boundaries with the steep red chalk […]
Tennyson Country 