The Brook is one of Tennyson’s best known poems and most assume it is about the little River Lymn, which flows close by his boyhood home. Tennyson himself says it is not a specific brook and when the poem is read in its entirety, including the deliberately contrasting sections about different characters and their lives, […]
Tag: Somersby.
Tennyson Trail
As the previous blog points out the similarities between the Bain valley and Lymndale are many but in one respect there is a fundamental difference which might affect a visitors enjoyment. This is that most of the villages in the Bain valley have pubs whereas these are sparse in Lymndale. Counter to this with being […]
After the Rains (Somersby)
For much of Autumn this year Lincolnshire has suffered far more rain than this normally dry county usually receives. This was due to a series of slow moving depressions passing over southern Britain pulling in winds off the North Sea. This meant that rather than being in the rain shadow of high ground to […]
A Golden Autumn Sunrise
Most of October had been mild, wet and sometimes windy until a ridge of high pressure passed through giving a brief window of calmer weather. Ahead was the weekend for changing the clocks so this made it a good time to get up before light as with the clocks due to go back it […]
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 […]
Green Hill – A history of gains and losses.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
