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RECORDS OF WOODHALL SPA AND NEIGHBOURHOOD;

HISTORICAL, ANECDOTAL, PHYSIOGRAPHICAL, AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL, WITH OTHER MATTER.

BY J. CONWAY WALTER,

HORNCASTLE: W. K. MORTON, HIGH STREET.

INTRODUCTION.

Circumstances have given me such opportunities--and enjoyed so long--of acquiring a knowledge of Woodhall Spa, and of most matters connected with it, that I am probably stating only the unvarnished truth, when I say that no one else living could bring together the varied details, however inadequately treated, which will here be found. Some of them may seem of small importance in the eyes of many--"caviare to the general"--but I have thought it better that even these minor details should not be consigned to the limbo of the forgotten, because unrecorded.

I have approached the subject from different points of view--historical, anecdotal, naturalist, and archaeological, so as to cater for the different tastes of readers.

Inheriting an interest in Woodhall Spa, hallowed by cherished associations, my aim has been so to unfold its many attractions, even in beast, bird, and flower, as to communicate an interest in it to others as well.

In publishing a third issue of these Records, I am bound in duty to thank a wide circle of readers for the interest so far taken in the work. I had now hoped to give it a more attractive form, but the low price at which a guide-book must be sold, in order to bring it within the reach of a general public, precludes a more expensive "get-up" of the volume. The only change, therefore, has been that the edition is brought "up to date" by a few necessary corrections and additions. To future readers I would only say, in Ovidian phrase:--

Si qua meo fuerint, ut erunt, vitiosa libello, Excusata, precor, Lector amicus, habe.

J. CONWAY WALTER.

It has been remarked that the discovery of many of our medicinal springs has been due to some romantic incident, or, in other cases, to some occurrence partaking almost of the ludicrous. At the famed Carlsbad, for instance, a princely hunter pursues his stag into the lake where it has sought refuge, whereupon the unusual cries of his hounds, too eagerly breasting the waters, speedily reveal to him the strongly thermal nature of the spring which feeds the lake, and the discovery has benefited the thousands who annually frequent that health-giving resort from almost every land. On the other hand, in the case of our own Bath, although well known to the ancient Romans--as also in the later case of Bolsover--tradition avers that an unhealthy pig, instinctively "wallowing in the mire" produced by the oozing spring, and emerging from the uncleanly bath cured of its ailment, was the humble instrument to demonstrate the health-restoring power of the water, to the subsequent advantage of suffering humanity. Other cases, more or less legendary, might be adduced; let these suffice.

The discovery, however, of the Woodhall water, if leas romantic, is no myth, shrouded in the mystery of a distant past, since it has the advantage of being, comparatively, of so recent a date, that the historian can consult the contemporary testimony of eyewitnesses still living, or of those to whom others have related the particulars from their own personal knowledge. The following account has been thus collected, and put into connected form:--

In the early years of this 19th century there lived a certain John Parkinson, Esquire, a scion of a family of position and wealth in the county, who owned, with other property, the estate of Woodhall. Being of a speculative and enterprising bent of mind, it is said that he became enamoured of three ideas or projects, which he thought he had the means and opportunity of carrying out. One of these was to sink a coal mine, a second was to plant a forest, and a third was to build a city. For the last purpose he purchased from the Crown a tract of fenland, situated between Revesby and Boston, being an outlying allotment of the original ancient parish of Bolingbroke. Here be built a street of houses, which he named New Bolingbroke. The speculation, however, proved a failure, probably owing to the loneliness of the position; and it was not till several years later, when the property had passed into the possession of J. Banks Stanhope, Esq., of Revesby Abbey, who spent much money on needed improvements, that the new "city" became a fairly populous village, as it is at the present time.

Mr. Parkinson's second project was the planting of a forest. For this purpose he secured a large tract of waste moorland, in the parishes of Roughton and Kirkby, lying to the south of the present road to Horncastle, and within some two miles eastward of Woodhall Spa. This land he planted extensively with fir and oak, and in course of time they became a dense wood. This growth has since then been largely destroyed by fire, or has yielded to the woodman's axe, and at the present time there are left not more than forty acres of the original "forest," the rest being chiefly open moor, the whole going by the name of "Ostler's Plantations," Mr. Ostler being the agent employed in the work and becoming himself eventually the proprietor. Thus of two eggs which Mr. Parkinson brooded over, and desired to hatch, one may be said to have been addled, and the other did not prove useful to himself:--

The best laid plans of mice and men Gang aft agley.

We now come to the third "incubation," which has, it may fairly be said, proved a "golden egg." It has been observed that he had conceived the idea of searching for coal. For this purpose he selected a spot which has since become the site of the Woodhall well. It is said that he was guided in this by the advice of a Mr. J. Clarkson, residing at that time at Moorby, not far from his residence at Bolingbroke, and who had had some previous experience among the Yorkshire coal mines. The boring was begun in the year 1811, and was carried on under the supervision of Mr. Clarkson. When the shaft had reached a depth of about 540ft., there occurred an inrush of clear, salt water, which compelled the excavators to retreat. The work was, however, afterwards resumed, a brick conduit for the water being constructed, and so, at the cost of great labour, and by shifts of men working day and night, without intermission, a depth of over 1,000ft. was attained. It is said that Mr. Parkinson and his agent were induced to go on with the boring to this extent, because the men brought up in their pockets fragments of coal , and the hopes of success were thus buoyed up. When, however, this depth of 1,000ft. had been attained, and no vein of coal discovered, the unfortunate proprietor was compelled, from lack of funds, to abandon the enterprise. The boring to such a depth was, of course, a work extending over a lengthy period, and the occasional exhibition of these fragments of coal by the labourers led to false reports of success being periodically circulated. It is said that there were frequent scenes of great excitement at Mr. Parkinson's residence; persons of all classes, even the poor, flocking thither to lend their money to him on the bare security of his notes of hand, hoping themselves to derive a large profit from the expected mine. On one occasion the bells of Horncastle Parish Church were rung in the night, announcing the joyful tidings that coal had been found. But, alas! all these hopes were illusory. Mr. Parkinson himself became a ruined man, and many a poor investor lost his all, sunk in the mine. The attempt thus proving abortive, the mine was closed, and remained so for several years, Mr. Parkinson himself disappearing from the scene, and his Woodhall property passing into other hands--the ancestors of the present owners of the estate. As the result of this collapse, other portions of Mr. Parkinson's property in the neighbourhood also changed hands. Mr. Ostler, who has been already mentioned, had advanced to him large sums of money, and in lieu of repayment he acquired the "Forest," since in consequence called "the Ostler Plantations," and which still remains the property of his representatives.

During the making of the shaft a serious accident occurred. Two men were below in the shaft working at the bore, a man being at the top to hoist them, by machinery, to the surface, to be out of danger whenever, in the process of boring, an explosion was about to take place. They had arranged their explosive for a blast, had lighted the fuse, and then gave the signal to be hoisted up; but the man at the mouth of the mine had gone to sleep, their signal was disregarded, and they were left unable to help themselves. The explosion took place; one of them, William East by name, was killed, and his body much mangled; the other man, Tyler, was seriously injured, but escaped with his life.

A poem was written on the occasion by Mr. John Sharpe, of Kirkstead, which I here give. The rural muse was somewhat unclassical in those days, and versions vary, but it was in the main as follows:--

This led to the re-opening of the mine shaft about the year 1824. In 1829, or 1830, a small protecting structure was erected, a windlass was put up, which was worked by a horse walking round and round, drawing the water from "the well," as it came now to be termed, and an open brick tank was constructed in which the poor could dip, a veritable modern Siloam.

In 1834 a bath house was erected by the late Thomas Hotchkin, Esq., the then owner of Woodhall, and in the following year the Victoria Hotel was built by him, his whole outlay amounting to some ?30,000. Provision was thus made for the reception of visitors, and the treatment of their ailments on a scale more than adequate for the public requirements at the time. Dr. Barton, Dr. Scott, and other medical practitioners successively resided at the Spa, but for some years longer the difficulty of access prevented any great influx of patients, such as we have seen in more recent times, and a primitive state of things still prevailed, such as in these days can be hardly realised, and Woodhall Spa was probably for some years little known beyond the neighbourhood, or the county.

An account of the well would hardly be complete without some particulars, so far as they can be obtained, of the geological strata which were pierced by the shaft. These are said to have been gravel and boulder clay, Kimmeridge and Oxford clays, Kelloway's rock, blue clay, cornbrash, limestone, great oolite, clay and limestone, upper Estuarine clay, Lincolnshire oolite, and Northampton sands, Lias, upper, middle, and part of lower.

Of the chemical ingredients of the water, as several accounts have been given by different authorities, it is sufficient to say here that its two most important elements are the iodine and bromine, in both of which it far exceeds any other Spa. The only known water which contains a greater proportion of bromine is that of the Dead Sea, in Palestine.

To those who visit Woodhall Spa, in its present advanced and advancing condition, it must be difficult to conceive the very different condition of the locality even in the middle of the 19th century. If the Victorian era has been a period of remarkable progress, nowhere has it been more so than at Woodhall Spa. The place was, in those days, only accessible with great difficulty. The roads, scarcely indeed worthy of the name, were so bad that the writer well remembers going there, as a boy, with his father, for the first time, when the ruts were so deep that the pony carriage, a four-wheeled vehicle, broke in the middle, and had to be abandoned by the roadside, and they had to return home to Langton, distant about five miles, on foot. The road passed, for a mile or more, over a tract of sandy moorland, and when the ruts became too deep for traffic on one track, another was adopted, and that, in turn, was abandoned when it became impassable. It was indeed a veritable Sahara on a small scale. The road to Tattershall was fairly good, having probably been an old Roman highway. Such roads are locally called "rampers," i.e., ramparts. The road to "Kirkstead Wharf," or ferry, where now a fine bridge spans the river Witham, was also in fairly good condition. The road which now runs from St. Andrew's Church by the blacksmith's shop and Reed's Beck to Old Woodhall and Langton was just passable with difficulty. A small steam packet plied on the river Witham, between Boston and Lincoln, calling at Kirkstead twice a day, going and returning, and a carrier's cart from Horncastle struggled through the sand once a day, each way, in connection with it. The condition of the road remained but little altered till shortly before the opening of the "loop line" of railway between Boston and Lincoln in 1848. In preparation for this event the Horncastle-road was put into a fairly good state of repair. In connection with the railway two rival coaches were run from the Bull and George Hotels at Horncastle, calling at Woodhall Spa, en route to Kirkstead Station. As yet, however, the traffic was lacking to make the enterprise remunerative. The brace of coaches were then merged in one, but, for the same reason, that arrangement was presently abandoned, and for some years there remained only the carrier's cart, slightly accelerated in speed, and even that was sometimes precarious in its journeys. The writer has found it necessary, on arriving at Kirkstead Station on a dark night, to shoulder his own portmanteau and carry it himself, for lack of other means of transport, from Kirkstead to Langton, a distance of six miles. At length, in 1855, the line between Kirkstead and Horncastle, with a station at Woodhall Spa, was opened, which has proved to be one of the most paying amongst railway ventures in the kingdom, and has opened up communication between Woodhall Spa and all parts of the country. From these particulars it will be seen that, although the whilom owner of the Woodhall Estate had spent large sums of money in building the bathhouse and hotel in 1834-5, yet the establishment for several years laboured under great disadvantages owing to its difficulty of access. Indeed, persons wishing to visit the Spa from a distance had, for the most part, to bring their own carriages; or, if arriving by the ordinary means of transit, and wishing to move beyond the immediate precincts of the hotel, they had to hire a conveyance from the Victoria Hotel, where the supply was very limited. Moreover, in those days some of the lighter kinds of carriage now in vogue, such as the modern dog-cart, were unknown. The chaise and the gig, large or small, were the conveyances in common use, the days not being yet past when the farmer's wife rode to market on a pillion behind her husband.

In the year 1884, the late Stafford Hotchkin, Esq., proprietor of the Woodhall Estate, expended a considerable sum in re-furnishing the Victoria Hotel, and making other improvements, in a costly style; and in 1887 the hotel and bathhouse, with about 100 acres of the estate, were purchased by an influential syndicate, who have since laid out a very great amount in the enlargement of the hotel and grounds, the improvement of, and additions to, the bathhouse, in supplying expensive automatic machinery for the well, and other developments for the convenience or entertainment of visitors. This gave a great impetus to the growth of the place generally. Another hotel, the "Eagle," was erected, which is excellently conducted. A very large establishment, the Royal Hotel, with winter garden, etc., has been built by Mr. Adolphus Came, embracing an area of 1,000 square yards, covered by a glazed roof, and holding out many attractions during the season; while streets of lodging houses, semi-detached or single villas, and handsome residences have sprung up in all directions. With the growth of the population came a need for enlarged church accommodation; and the present St. Peter's Church was erected by subscription at a cost of over ?1,800, and was opened by the Bishop on Sept. 14th, 1893, the foundation stone having been laid in the previous year by the Right Honble. E. Stanhope, M.P., Secretary for War. It comprised, at first, only nave and South aisle; in 1904 chancel, organ chamber and vestry were added, and the church was consecrated by the Bishop on St. Peter's Day, June 29, in that year; the total cost being about ?3,700. There is a fine organ, and peal of tubular bells. The interior fittings are mainly the gifts of generous friends. The altar rails and sanctuary carpet were given by Mrs. Randolph Berens, of London, a frequent visitor to the Spa. The very ornate reredos, occupying the whole width of the east end, was presented by Mrs. Cator, of Fairmead Lodge, in memory of her husband, the late Colonel Cator. It is of oak, richly pinnacled and crocketted. The centre panel contains a basso relievo representation of the triple Crucifixion, with the Virgin and St. John in niches on either side. Above are the emblems of the four Evangelists. The buttresses are crowned by the four Archangels, SS. Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel. Over the super-altar is the inscription, in raised letters, "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me"; the inscription on the wings being "Ad Majorem, Dei gloriam, et in piam memoriaun Thomoe Gulielmi Cator, qui in Christo obdormivit die xiv? Januarii. A.S. MDCCCC." This is the work of Messrs. Hems and Sons, of Exeter. The pulpit, of handsome carved oak, executed by the same artists, was presented by Lieutenant Stafford Vere Hotchkin, of the 21st Lancers Regiment, in memory of his father, the late T. J. Stafford Hotchkin, lord of the manor.

The writer, while incumbent of Woodhall Spa, in conjunction with Mr. R. Cuffe, M.R.C.S., then lessee of the Victoria Hotel, commenced, in 1873, a Cottage Hospital for the poor, on a small scale, which was largely beneficial, patients being admitted almost literally from Land's End to John o'Groats' house. Some left their crutches behind them, nailed to the walls of the bathhouse; and it may be added, as shewing the efficacy of the water, that cases occurred of patients who, on their arrival, could only get about painfully on crutches, but who yet, before leaving, ran in foot races at the village sports. The cottage then rented has of late years been superseded by the much larger Alexandra Hospital, a substantial building, under the patronage of the Princess of Wales, erected through the exertions of the Rev. J. O. Stephens, rector of Blankney, on a site presented by the syndicate. It was opened in 1890, and has conferred large benefits on the suffering poor. The medical officer is Dr. Williams, L.R.C.P., Ed., Brookside Cottage, by whom patients are treated with great skill. He has published a pamphlet on the Woodhall water and treatment. He is ably assisted by Mr. H. W. Gwyn, L.S.A. A pamphlet on the same subject was also published by the late Mr. A. E. Boulton, M.R.C.S., Horncastle. Mr. R. Cuffe, M.R.C.S., Surgeon-Major, has also a large residence, the Northcote House Sanatorium, for the reception of high-class patients, who are under his own supervision. He has had a large and long experience in every variety of ailment for which the Woodhall treatment is adapted, having been sole lessee of the Spa establishment from 1866 to 1883; he has written much on the subject; was himself mainly instrumental in founding the British Balneological and Climatological Society, which has as its members the leading physicians of the chief watering places in the kingdom; and at his hands patients receive the most scientific treatment, he having been the first to introduce, many years ago, the electrolytic treatment, so effective in internal cases.

A "Home for Gentlewomen," in reduced circumstances, and needing the Woodhall treatment, was established in 1894 by the present writer, in co-operation with Mr. Cuffe, as hon. medical officer. It is under the patronage of his Grace the Duke of Rutland, and other distinguished persons. It was at first located in two bungalows, but now occupies a roomy residence on the Horncastle-road. It has been very generously supported, and has proved a great boon in many needy cases.

The annals of the Woodhall neighbourhood are not without their tragic features; and deeds of lawlessness have occurred equal to anything of the kind recorded in modern times.

On June 22nd, in the year 1822, a young man named Stennet Jeffrey was returning from Horncastle Fair to the farm of his employer, Mr. Warrener , when, as he was passing along the footpath through a part of Whitehall Wood, called "the Wilderness," he was attacked by, as was supposed at the time, two men against whom he had given information of their poaching. They were accompanied by a female named Sophy Motley, still remembered by some of my informants as a big, masculine woman. After a desperate struggle for his life, a track being trampled down round the tree, by which he tried to elude them , he was overpowered and foully done to death. His body was found thrown into the ditch near at hand, with the throat cut. They carried off his watch, which he had bought at the fair that day, and his money. A sovereign was found near the spot a few years afterwards by a man who was ploughing in the adjoining field. The present writer remembers being told in after years, by a man living at Woodhall, who was at the time working in a field not far off, that he heard cries for help, but did not know what they meant, and so the poor fellow was left to struggle unaided in the unequal conflict. The tree has been seen by the writer, round which he tried to escape. It stood at the south-west end of the path through the wood, about two miles from Woodhall Spa, and was inscribed with the rudely-cut names of many a visitor to the spot. The parties to the murder were supposed to have come from Coningsby Moor, and this was confirmed by the fact that they afterwards stopped for refreshment at a small public house kept by Mrs. Copping, at Fulsby, which lay in the direction of Coningsby Moor. Near there some bloodstained clothes were found concealed in a hedge. A reward of ?100 was offered for their apprehension. The woman Copping, at the public-house, was, it is said, fully aware of their guilt, but dared not say anything about it. The two men were convicted, and transported for life. The woman Motley was arrested on suspicion, but there was not sufficient evidence to convict her. In after years a man at Coningsby, named Paul Tomline, confessed on his deathbed that he had been a third party to the murder, having assisted in holding Jeffrey down while his throat was being cut. It is further stated that the woman, Sophy Motley, on her deathbed, said that the stolen watch would be found at the bottom of her box.

In the forties and fifties poaching was carried on in so openly defiant a manner, and on so formidable a scale, as is seldom heard of in these days. The writer was a party concerned in the following incident, not, be it said, in the immediate neighbourhood of Woodhall, although within easy reach of it. While he was visiting a worthy baronet for the purpose of shooting with him, they were informed by the head-keeper, as they met him one morning after breakfast, that he had received a private intimation that a gang of poachers, living in a neighbouring town, had chartered a special train to bring them down, on the following evening, to shoot some of the preserves, the line of railway skirting the property. We at once decided to give them a warm reception. This was not an entirely new thing for which we were unprepared, and the keeper had a most powerful mastiff, a monster Cerberus, who could plant his forepaws on the stoutest man's shoulders and pull him down. The baronet's only son, the writer's great friend, with whom he had walked many a league in the Alps, and many a mile--with its "bittock"--over the Scotch moors, was "keen for the fray." No less so was the writer. As the estate comprised three parishes, and it was not known at what point the poachers would "detrain," it was evident that we should have an extended frontier to protect, and it was decided at once to despatch a messenger to the owner of an adjoining estate, the M.P. for the Division, asking for the loan of his keepers, to co-operate with our own. Watchers were to be sent to various points, swift-footed vedettes, to come into immediate touch with the enemy on their arrival, and to report the direction taken by them, and their number. Everything was arranged in good time before the morning was over. It was settled that the keeper was to come to the hall at 9 p.m., when the son and the writer would be ready to join them. We were none of us to take firearms, but to be furnished with stout sticks. The evening passed slowly, in our eagerness for the "joust." But at nine o'clock the keeper came with a look of disappointment on his countenance. News had got abroad of the preparations we had made for the gang's reception; an ally, lurking near, had telegraphed that it would not be safe for them to venture on their raid, and the train had been countermanded. Since then the genial baronet has "crossed the bar," as a Lincolnshire poet hath it; but of late the writer has had the pleasure, almost annually, of meeting her ladyship at Woodhall Spa. She was brought up in a parish closely connected with Woodhall, and she may almost be said to return to her "native heath" to renew her years.

The reader will please excuse this digression, as it illustrates the condition of things under which occurred the incident of local history which I am now about to give.

A no less atrocious murder than that in the Wilderness was committed, within less than a mile of the same place, at Well-Syke Wood, which again is about two miles from Woodhall Spa. The shooting of the wood belonged to the Rev. John Dymoke, afterwards the champion, who rented it from Lord Fortescue. In the year 1850, the head keeper, Richard Tasker, received a written intimation that a gang of poachers intended to visit the wood on a certain night, and the writer of the letter recommended him, for his own sake, to keep away. Tasker, however, was lodging not far from the wood, with a small farmer named Emanuel Howden, who also occasionally acted as a watchman; and the two men, accompanied by the "rabbiter," James Donner, went to the wood, to protect their master's pheasants. Howden hung back, not liking the undertaking; Donner went off to watch the wood from another point. Presently a shot was heard, and on Howden and Donner coming to Tasker, they found him lying on the ground severely wounded, and he died the following day. It was a bright moonlight night, and Donner tried, for a time, to follow the poachers, but they eluded him. This occurred in a field just outside Well-Syke Wood, at the north-west corner, then occupied by William Hutchinson, grandfather of the present tenant, whose house adjoins the Horncastle-road, some two miles from Woodhall Spa. Most of the poachers were believed to have come from Horsington; two of them, brothers, named Bowring, and a third, Pearson Clarke, and another named Hinds; a man named Stennet was also arrested on suspicion; but they were all eventually discharged, there being no means of identifying them, as the murdered man was the only one who came to close quarters with any of them. Along with these, it is believed there was also a man named Joseph Kent, from Tattershall Thorpe, who is supposed to have fired the fatal shot. As Tasker approached the wood, this man came forward and recommended him to go home. Tasker called out that he was not yet going home, and that he knew him, whereupon Kent, finding that he was recognised, fined the shot.

The following is a less exciting incident. A few years later a man, representing himself as a beggar, called at Kirkstead Hall, about a mile from Woodhall Spa, asking for relief. Something was given to him, but it not being sufficient to satisfy his desires, he indulged in threatening language, unless he was treated more liberally. At length he became so violent that the door was closed in his face, and he was told that they would fetch the constable, whereupon he went off. The female inmates, being afraid that he might return, if they were left alone, thought it safest to send for the constable, and he, with the keeper, followed the man and apprehended him. He was handcuffed, his feet tightly tied together, and put by them into a cart, in which the constable, without the keeper, drove off to Horncastle, to place him in the lock-up, then called "The Round House." As they journeyed on their way, near the "Tower on the Moor," the man, lying at the bottom of the cart, complained to the constable that the cords on his legs were cutting into the flesh; "Would he take them off?" adding that the handcuffs secured him fast enough. The constable accordingly got down from his seat, and took off the cords. As he was remounting, the man slipt out of the cart behind, and, bounding off into the wood, "Ostler's Plantations," close by, turned, as he mounted the boundary bank, defying the constable to follow him. The latter could not leave his horse, and, the man being very powerfully built, he also knew that he was more than a match for him single handed. The man disappeared. Some one coming up assisted the constable to tie up his horse and make a search for the prisoner; but all they found were the handcuffs, which he had wrenched off, lying inside the wood not far away. Two present inhabitants of Woodhall saw the constable pass their house, driving the cart with the man lying in it.

There are some good historic names among the older residents of the Woodhall Spa district. Howard is one, a name, which still stands high in the peerage of England. Gaunt is another frequent name; some of the members of the family, in the fine build of their bodily frame and their dark hair and complexion, seeming to indicate descent from ancient Norman blood. Fynes, or more properly Fiennes, is another; implying a connection with the Ducal House of Newcastle; the father of the present generation having been named Charles Pelham Fynes. Monuments of the Fiennes family are common in neighbouring parishes, and they still hold considerable property in the surrounding district.

The great charm of Woodhall Spa is its "Rus in Urbe" character. The visitor can hardly go for ten minutes in any direction from his hotel or lodgings but he finds himself by the woodside, among the hedgerows or on the heath, where the jaded spirit, or the enfeebled frame, may draw fresh energy from the bracing air, richly charged with ozone, and even at times perceptibly impregnated with the tonic flavour of the iodine. The author of a recent publication who visited Woodhall Spa, in 1897, says: "Woodhall is as unlike the usual run of fashionable watering places as one can well imagine. It is a charming health resort--situated on a dry, sandy soil, where fir trees flourish--there are wild moors, purple with heather, and aglow with golden gorse; a land of health, and the air deliciously bracing. I do not think there is a purer or more exhilarating air to be found in all England, or for that matter out of it."

Of the surrounding scenery it need hardly be said that we are not in the land of "the mountain," though we have the "brown heath, and shaggy wood," and occasionally, not far off, "the flood," sung of by Scotia's bard. But within sight are the Wolds, whose precipitous sides have, to my knowledge, astonished strangers, who, judging from the country traversed by the railway from Peterborough, expected to find the whole county as level as a billiard table. The flatness of the country, however, is amply made up for by other redeeming features. Within a mile of the Spa a view is obtained stretching more than 20 miles, with the grand Cathedral crowning the "steep" hill of Lincoln on the horizon. "'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view," says the poet Campbell; and this prospect, slightly undulating, with extensive woods barring it at intervals, and village spires rising from their midst, seen through the marvellously clear atmosphere which we often enjoy, is a sight worth seeing.

An old writer describes the air as being "crass, and full of rotten harrs"; and Drayton, in his "Polyolbion" speaks of the "unwholesome ayre, and more unwholesome soyle"; but that condition of things has long ago passed away. Another charming effect of these distant prospects is the glorious sunsets. Kingsley, in his "Hereward the Wake," truly says, the "vastness gives such cloudlands, such sunrises, such sunsets, as can be seen nowhere else in these isles." A writer, whom I have already quoted, says, "I am inclined to think the sky scenery, if I may be allowed the term, the finest and most wonderful in the world." As to "its gorgeous sunsets, you look upon an atmosphere saturated with colour, so that it becomes opalesque; and the sinking sun, seen through the vibrating air, is magnificent. From the slopes of far California I have looked down upon the sun dipping into the wide Pacific, amid a riot of colour, but nothing like this." Nor is this any exaggeration. The visitor to Woodhall may see it for himself, and the writer has often gazed upon it. Towards evening the soft blue of the distance becomes gradually lit up by the lowering sun with the most gorgeous and varied shades of purple, gold, and ruby, until he sinks below the horizon in a blaze of crimson glory. Then follow, softer, more mellowed tints of violet, pink, emerald green, exquisite greys, and varying hues of the most delicate kinds, until they slowly fade away into the shades of night, or the silvery sheen of the moon.

For the student of nature, there are special attractions in the botany of the neighbourhood; scarcely less in its ornithology. The wild, four-footed creatures also are in unusual variety; and within easy reach the antiquarian will find objects of very special interest.

In these pages it would be impossible to treat of all these subjects fully.

The following plants have been mentioned by different authorities as among those which are be found. The Rev. E. Adrian Woodruffe Peacock, secretary to the Lincolnshire Naturalists' Union, says: "We may expect to find some of the following rare plants--Ranunculus Hederaceus, Corydalis claviculata, Raphanus Raphanistrum, Silene Quinque-Vulnera , Silene Anglica , Vicia Bobartii, Cotyledon Umbilicus, Sedum Villosum, Sedum Reflexum, Drosera Anglica, Epilobium Tetragonum, Campanula Ranunculoides. At a meeting of the Alford Naturalists' Society the secretary exhibited the following plants, obtained from the Woodhall district, presenting a striking difference to the plants found about Alford, owing to the sandy moorland soil of Woodhall:--Calluna Erica , Erica Tetralix , Artemisia Vulgaris . Marrubium Vulgare , Teucrium Scorodonia , Hydrocotyle Vulgaris , and the Hardfern ; also fruiting specimens of Solidago Virgaurea , Lepidium Campestre , Cotyledon Umbilicus ."

I conducted the members of the Lincoln Natural History and Archaeological Society round the neighbourhood a few years ago, in the month of April, and they reported 39 plants as being then in flower, the most interesting being Saxifraga Tridactylites , Draba Verna , Erodium Cicutarium , Cotyledon Umbilicus , and the Tussilago Petasites , Stellaria Holostea ; also Parietaria Officinalis , not yet in bloom, and in a pond Stratiotes Aloides in great abundance.

There are several different mosses, and a great variety of fungi.

This varied flora conduces to a corresponding variety of insect life. On one of the occasions referred to above, the following beetles were found:--Loricera Pillicornis, Geotrupes Spiniger, G. Stercorarius, Elaphras Cupreus, Leistotrophus Nebulosus, Hister Stercorarius, Aphodius Foetens, A. Fimitarius, A. Sordidus, 22-Punctata, and Sphoeridium Bi-pustulatum.

Of butterflies there is not a great variety. The Papilio Machaon used to be common about the reedy pools and bogs near the Moor; but owing to drainage and clearance none have been seen for several years. The huge heaps of the aromatic ant were formerly very common in the woods close to the Spa, but the eggs being a favourite food for the pheasant, and collected by the keepers for that purpose, there seems to be none left.

I now proceed to speak of some of the birds of the locality. And again it may be said, as in the case of the wild flowers, that, from the variety of soils, there is a corresponding abundance in the species frequenting the neighbourhood of Woodhall. Unfortunately another remark made of the flowers also applies to the birds. "Ichabod" may be written in large characters over the records of several. In the writer's youth, an old couple lived close to the Tower on the Moor, about a mile from the Spa, in a cabin of their own construction, made chiefly of sods, then locally called "bages." Old Dawson, or "Tabshag," the soubriquet by which he was more commonly known, lived with his wife the rather wild existence of a squatter, on the waste, under sufferance from the owner. He kept a pig, and was wont to boast that he possessed the highest pigsty and the lowest barn in the country, because the sty was a structure of his own erection, in the old brick tower, above the level of the surrounding ground; while his straw was stored in an excavation several feet below. At that time between the Tower and Bracken Wood there was a stretch of waste land, several acres in extent, consisting of bog, interspersed with tussocks of coarse grass, and straggling alders and birches, still known by the name of "The Bog's Nook," or corner. On this ground the common green plover--Vanellus cristatus--then commonly called the "Pyewipe," bred in large numbers; the eggs were, as they are still, regarded as a delicacy, and old "Tabshag" used to make a considerable sum of money every year by sending hampers of these eggs by coach up to London for sale. So familiar he was said to be with the habits of the bird that he could tell by its cry how many eggs were in the nest. This land is now under cultivation, and the plaintive cry of the plover is heard no more, or only seldom. The plover, indeed, is still with us, but in numbers lessening every year. There are probably not now as many plovers' nests in the whole parish as there formerly were in a single ploughed field. The writer, as a boy, was somewhat of an expert in finding these nests. He has watched the birds making them, which they do by turning round and round, with the breast or belly on the ground, thus forming a saucer-shaped hollow, in which they sometimes place two or three fibres of twitch as a lining. One bird makes three or four of such nests, and finally selects the one which, presumably, she deems most unnoticeable.

Sixty years ago black game were found on the moorland called now "The Ostler Plantations," but though one still heard of them "in the forties," they were then either extinct or a rapidly vanishing quantity. At the same time also the "boom" of the bittern might still be heard in the marshy parts of the same ground, but they are also now among the has been's.

No more shall bittern boom, No more shall blackcock crow: For both have met their doom, The sport of human foe.

From the character of the Ostler ground, formerly a very secluded tract of mixed wood, moor, and morass, it has been frequented by a great variety of birds. The heron bred there within the last twenty years, a solitary nest remaining in a clump of trees in the south-west corner next to Tattershall, until it was blown down by a gale, and, the particular tree being shortly afterwards felled, the bird never returned. Drainage and the destruction of trees by the woodman's axe, or by accidental fires, have so dried the ground as to reduce greatly the numbers of certain birds of aquatic or semi-aquatic habits. The coot "clanking" in the sedgy pools is no more heard. The moor-hen with those little, black, fluffy balls which formed her brood scuttling over the water to hide in the reeds, is rarely seen. The wild duck has, indeed, in one or two instances nested near a still-surviving pool within the last ten years; a nest was once found by the writer among the branches of a pollard willow, overhanging a pool, some five or six feet from the ground. He has also shot teal on odd occasions lying in the open; but both these birds are now rarely seen, and the same may be said of the snipe, "jack" and "full." The latter were once plentiful, so that it was a common occurrence to put up a "whisp" of them, whereas now one seldom sees more than three or four in a whole season. A delicate little bird, very palatable on the table, was the waterrail, now almost extinct. The writer used to have permission to shoot along the "ballast ponds" beside the railway, and he has frequently shot them there. The woodcock is still with us. The poet painter, Dante Rosetti, kept one as a favourite pet; we of Woodhall are more prosaic, and like to see the bird rise out of the bracken before us, and fall to our shot, eventually to appear nicely cooked on a toast before us at table. But of late years drainage has reduced their numbers. Although we could, of course, never at Woodhall, compete with the shooter on the Irish bogs, where as many as 100 or 200 are sometimes shot in a day; yet I could at one time almost always get a brace when I wanted them by trying certain spots which were their regular resort, and among my notes I find this: "Nov. 16, 1872, shot Bracken wood, got five woodcock, making 20 in three days." Some years ago certain sportsmen in this neighbourhood used to go to the sea coast every year, in October, at the time of the arrival of the first flight of woodcock , and shot them in considerable numbers, when they were resting, exhausted by their flight; hardly a creditable practice, and unworthy of a true lover of nature. A wood in Kirkstead, named "Bird-Hag Wood," was formerly a favourite haunt of the woodcock, and I have shot many in it; but it was cleared away in the seventies. Woodcock occasionally breed on the moor, and a nest was found some years ago within 80 yards of the road to Horncastle, opposite the Tower on the Moor. Among my notes I find this: "Dec. 5, 1872, we saw about a dozen woodcock in Bird-Hag Wood, but only three were shot."

I have just mentioned Bird-Hag and its woodcock. Pleasant memories of that wood have lingered with more than one sportsman. A former poetic owner of Kirkstead has written of it thus :--

A few words may be said on the pheasants and partridges; and first of the former. The breed on the Ostler ground have a history. The late Sir Henry Dymoke, of Scrivelsby Court, used to rear, in large numbers, a white breed of pheasant, and as, with the exception of the Ostler ground, he, with his brother, had almost the whole of the shooting, extending from Scrivelsby to the Witham, they spread over that ground, and sought a kind of asylum in the dense cover of the Ostler plantations. Further, the writer's father-in-law imported an Indian breed, called the "Kalege" pheasant, a very handsome bird; and these two strains have affected the breed on that ground, and, doubtless, have also had their effect on pheasants in the neighbourhood generally. White broods of pheasants are from time to time hatched on the ground; also piebald varieties are not uncommon. In the year 1898, a cream-coloured specimen was shot. Some of the cocks have at times a decided fringe of blue or purple in their plumages from the Kalege mixture.

There are some rather curious facts in connection with the brown English partridge and the French variety. Though different in their habits, and, it is said, even hostile to each other, they yet, in some instances, consort. I once shot on the moor three brown and one red-leg, out of the same covey, all young birds. They had evidently been reared together in one brood, and the old birds were of the brown species. Mentioning this to a friend of large experience, he told me that he had known several instances where the eggs of the two kinds had been found laid in the same nest. The eggs are, of course, easily distinguishable, those of the common partridge being of a greenish drab colour, while those of the red-leg are of a dull, cream colour, covered with small brown spots. I have been informed by another authority that the eggs of the red-leg have also been found in the nest of an outlying pheasant. A curious provision of nature, conducing to the preservation of the species, may be here mentioned as interesting; the partridge, while sitting on her eggs, has no scent. On one occasion a man was consulting me about a tombstone at St. Andrew's Church, Woodhall. We walked into the churchyard together, and stood conversing opposite the grave in question. I was aware that a partridge was sitting on her nest concealed in the grass between that grave and the next, and therefore would not approach very near. Suddenly I perceived that he had a terrier with him, which was very busily hunting over the churchyard. I begged him to keep it in. He was rather indignant, and replied that it could do no harm in the churchyard. I remarked that he was not aware that within eight or ten feet of us a partridge was on her nest, and I did not wish her to be disturbed. He thereupon called in his dog, but that only brought his dog nearer to the nest, hunting the while; and the dog actually passed over the nest without scenting the bird. The eggs were hatched the next day, and that doubtless accounted for her sitting so closely. Whether or not from an instinctive consciousness of this safeguard is not for me to say, but the partridge is rather given to selecting her nesting place near a highway or a footpath. I have known several instances of this, and only last year I repeatedly saw both the parent birds sitting on their nest together, on a bank close to a public footpath which was daily traversed.

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