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Barholm Church, near Tallington, has some extremely massive Norman arches and a fine door with diapered tympanum. The tower was restored in the last year of Charles I., and no one seems to have been more surprised than the churchwarden or parson or mason of the time, for we find carved on it these lines:—

“Was ever such a thing

Sence the creation?

A new steeple built

In the time of vexation.

I. H. 1643.”

FORDS OF THE WELLAND

An old Hall adds to the interest of the place, and another charming old building is Mr. Peacock’s Elizabethan house in the next parish of Greatford, or, as it should be spelt, Gretford or Gritford, the grit or gravel ford of the river Glen, just as Stamford should be Stanford or Staneford, the stone-paved ford of the Welland. Gretford Church is remarkable if only for the unusual position of the tower as a south transept, a similar thing being seen at Witham-on-the-Hill, four miles off, in Rutland. Five of the bells there are re-casts of some which once hung in Peterborough Cathedral, and the fifth has the date 1831 and a curious inscription. General Johnson I used to see when I was a boy at Uppingham; he was the patron of the school, and the one man among the governors of the school who was always a friend to her famous headmaster, Edward Thring. But why he wrote the last line of this inscription I can’t conceive:—