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THURLBY

Thurlby Church stands only a few yards from the ‘Carr Dyke,’ it is full of interesting work, and is curiously dedicated to St. Firmin, a bishop of Amiens, of Spanish birth. He was sent as a missionary to Gaul, where he converted the Roman prefect, Faustinian. He was martyred, when bishop, in 303, by order of Diocletian. The son of Faustinian was his godson, and was baptized with his name of Firmin, and he, too, eventually became Bishop of Amiens. Part of the church is pre-Norman and even exhibits “long and short” work. The Norman arcades have massive piers and cushion capitals. In the transepts are Early English arcades and squints, and there is a canopied piscina and a font of very unusual design. There is also an old ladder with handrail as in some of the Marsh churches, leading to the belfry. Three miles south is Baston, where there is a Saxon churchyard in a field. Hence the road continues to Market Deeping on the Welland, which is here the southern boundary of the county, and thence to Deeping-St.-James and Peterborough. Deeping-St.-James has a grand priory church, which was founded by Baldwin Fitz-Gilbert as a cell to Thorney Abbey in 1136, the year after he had founded Bourne Abbey. It contains effigies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Shameful to say a fountain near the church was erected in 1819 by mutilating and using the material of a fine village cross. Peakirk, with its little chapel of St. Pega, and Northborough and Woodcroft, both with remarkable houses built of the good gray stone of the neighbourhood, Woodcroft being a perfect specimen of a fortified dwelling-house, though near, are in the county of Northants.