In perusing the following pages, readers, who may be specially interested in some one particular parish with which they are connected, may in certain cases be disappointed on not finding such parish here described, as they have previously seen it, along with the others, in the columns of the “Horncastle News,” where these ‘Records’ first appeared. This may arise from one of two causes:—

(1) The volume published in 1899, entitled “Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood” (which was very favourably received), contained accounts of parishes extending from Somersby and Harrington in the east of the district, to Horsington and Bucknall in the west, with others between; as being likely to interest visitors to that growing health resort. These, therefore, do not find a place in this volume.

(2) Further it is proposed that in the near future this volume shall be followed by a “History of Horncastle,” already approaching completion, and with it accounts of the fourteen parishes within its “soke.” These, again, are, consequently, not here given.

The Records of all these different parishes will be found in the volumes to which they respectively belong.

In again submitting a work of this character to the many friends whom his former volume has gained for him, the author wishes to say that he is himself fully alive to its imperfections; none could be more so. In not a few instances it has, almost perforce, come short of his own aim and aspirations; the material available in connection with some of the parishes described having proved meagre beyond expectation. In many chains links have been lost; there are gaps—in some cases a yawning hiatus—which it has been found impossible to fill.Further, as the account of each parish was intended originally to be complete in itself, and several parishes have, at different periods, had the same owners, there will be found, of necessity, some cases of repetition as to individuals, their character, or incidents connected with them.

Anyone who reads the book will see that it has involved no small amount of labour; whether in visiting (always on foot) the many localities described (in all more than 70 parishes having been visited); or in the careful search and research, necessary in many directions, for the information required.

In both these respects, however, the task has been a congenial one, and of more or less engrossing interest, thus bringing its own reward.

It has been said by a thoughtful writer that no one can enjoy the country so thoroughly as the pedestrian who passes through it leisurely.

We all, instinctively (if not vitiated), have a love of the country. As Cowper has said:—

“’Tis born with all; the love of Nature’s works
Is an ingredient in the compound man,
Infused at the creation of his kind.”—(“The Task.”)

It is not, however, the cyclist, who rushes through our rural charms with head in the position of a battering ram, and frame quivering with the vibration engendered of his vehicle, who can dwell on these attractions with full appreciation. Nor is it his more reckless brother, the motorist, who crashes along our country roads, with powers of observation narrowed by hideous binocular vizor, and at a speed whose centrifugal force drives in terror every other wayfarer—chicken, child, woman, or man—to fly like sparks from anvil in all directions, if haply they may even so escape destruction. For him, we might suppose, the fascination must be to outstrip the thunderbolt, not to linger over mundane scenery. But to the man who walks deliberately, and with an observant eye for all about him, to him indeed nature unfolds her choicest treasures. Not only antiquities such as the British, Roman, or Danish camps on the hill sides above him have their special attractions; but the very hedge-rows and banks, with their wealth of flower and of insect life, the quarries with their different fossils, the ice-borne boulders scattered about, and even the local, and often quaint, human characters, whom he may meet and chat with. All these afford him sources of varied interest as well as instruction.

The process, again, of antiquarian investigation is absorbing and recuperative, alike to man and matter, bringing to life, as it were, habits and customs long buried in the “limbo” of the past, re-clothing dry bones with flesh, uniting those no longer articulate; like the kilted warriors springing to their feet, on all sides, from the heather, at the signal of some Rhoderick Dhu. Here also, albeit, the recording MSS and folios may be “fusty,” knights of old are summoned up, as by a long forgotten roll-call, to fight their battles over again; or high-born dames and “ladyes fayre,” may unfold anew unknown romances.

With our span-new Rural, Urban and County Councils, we are apt to fancy that only now, in this twentieth century, is our little world awakening to real activity; but the antiquary, as by a magician’s wand, can conjure up scenes dispelling such illusions; and anyone, who reads the following pages, may see that the humblest of our rural villages may have had a past of stirring incident, which must be little short of a revelation to most of its present occupants, “not dreamt of in their simple philosophy.”

Among the calls of other duties, to one whose occupations are by no means limited to this particular field of labour, the work had often, of necessity, to be suspended, and so its continuity was liable to be broken into a collection of disjecta corporis membra. Such, however, as they are, the author submits these ‘Records’ to future generous readers, in the confident hope that they will make due allowance for the varied difficulties with which he has had to contend.

He could wish the results attained were more worthy of their acceptance; but he has some satisfaction in the feeling that, in his humble degree, he has opened up, as it were, a new world (though still an old one) for their contemplation.

A popular writer has said: “To realise the charm and wealth of interest of a country side, even in one’s armchair, is an intellectual pleasure of no mean order.” If the old-time incidents found in the following pages enliven some of our modern “ingle neuks,” the author will, in some degree, have gained his reward.

J.C.W.