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SLEAFORD CHURCH

Six roads go out of Sleaford, and five railways. Lincoln, Boston, Bourne and Grantham have both a road and a railway to Sleaford, Spalding has only a railway direct, and Horncastle and Newark only a road. At no towns but Louth and Lincoln do so many routes converge, though Caistor, Grantham and Boston come very near. The southern or Bourne road we have traced from Bourne, so we will now take the eastern roads to Boston and Horncastle. But first to say something of Sleaford itself. The Conqueror bestowed the manor on Remigius, first Bishop of Lincoln. About 1130 Bishop Alexander built the castle, together with that at Newark, which alone in part survives. These castles were seized by Stephen, and here King John, having left Swineshead Abbey, stayed a night before his last journey by Hough-on-the-hill to Newark, where he died 1216. Henry VIII., with Katherine Howard, held a council here on his way from Grimsthorpe to Lincoln, 1541, dining next day at Temple-Bruer, which he gave in the same year to the Duke of Suffolk. He had here in 1538 ordered the execution of Lord Hussey. Murray’s guide-book tells us that Richard de Haldingham, 1314, who made the famous and curious “Mappa Mundi,” now kept in Hereford Cathedral, was born at Holdingham close by. The church is one of four in this neighbourhood dedicated to St. Denis. The lower stage of the tower dates from 1180. The spire, a very early one, built about 1220, being struck by lightning, was taken down and put up again by C. Kirk in 1884. It is only 144 feet in height. As at Grantham and Ewerby the tower is engaged in the aisles; its lower stage dates from 1180. The nave has eight three-light clerestory windows, with tall pinnacles rising from the parapet. The aisles have a richly carved parapet, without pinnacles; but the beauty and extreme richness of the western ends of the aisles, where they engage with the massive tower, surmounted as they are by turrets, bellcots and pinnacles, and niches, some still containing their statues, is not surpassed in any church in England.