Читать книгу Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire онлайн

81 страница из 129

Hough-on-the-Hill.

A SAXON TOWER

The staircase turret has two oblong Saxon windows, like those at Barnack, about four feet by one, in the west face, three small round lights on the north, and four on the south, one square and one diamond-shaped and two circular. The turret is of the same date as the tower, but appears to have been built on after the tower was finished; and it almost obscures the two little west windows of the tower, one on each side of it, and near the top. A round-headed doorway leads from the tower to the turret, inside which the good stone steps lead up to a triangular-headed door into the tower, where now is the belfry floor, from which another similar doorway leads into the nave. Close to the top of the old Saxon tower walls are very massive stone corbels for supporting the roof. The Newel post of the old tower is a magnificent one, being eighteen inches thick. This, where the upper stage was added, is continued, but with only half that thickness.

There was once a porch with a higher pitched roof, as shown by the gable roof-mould against the aisle. On the stone benches are three of the solitaire-board devices, with eight hollows connected by lines all set in an oblong, the same that you see often in cloisters and on the stone benches at Windsor, where monks or chorister boys passed the time playing with marbles. It is a truly primitive and world-wide amusement. The natives of Madagascar have precisely the same pattern marked out on boards, seated round which, and with pebbles which they move like chessmen, they delight themselves, both young and old, in gambling.