The Little Book of Lincolnshire E-Book

Lucy Wood

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 266

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The Little Book of Lincolnshire is a compendium of fascinating information about this historic county, past and present. Contained within is a plethora of entertaining facts about Lincolnshire's famous and occasionally infamous men and women, its towns and countryside, history, natural history, literary, artistic and sporting achievements, loony laws, customs ancient and modern, transport, battles and ghostly inhabitants. A reliable reference book and a quirky guide, this can be dipped in to time and time again to reveal something new about the people, the heritage, the secrets and the enduring fascination of the county. A remarkably engaging little book, this is essential reading for visitors and locals alike.

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to my beloved late grandfather,

Ronald Limb –

my number one fan,

and I his.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Lincolnshire is the second largest county in England. To cover all of its majesty, mystery and more in one book is impossible but I hope this gives a snapshot of where I’m proud to call home.

I firstly pay credit to the plethora of authors who have chronicled the county over the years. The sizeable bibliography you’ll find at the end of this book lists only a handful of the tomes written about Lincolnshire, all of which I wholeheartedly recommend.

The Lincolnshire Archives and library service were invaluable too; such vital and necessary services ensuring our past, present and future are documented. Similarly, I have whiled away many pleasurable hours with the British Newspaper Archive; I think I could spend a decade with its wonderful catalogue and still only read a small percentage.

I’d like to thank my family and my publishers, The History Press, for their support, and Mr Lincolnshire himself, renowned journalist Peter Chapman, for kindly writing the Foreword.

Special mention is reserved for Dianne Clark (a proud Grimbarian) and her beautiful illustrations, and thanks finally to readers of The Little Book of Lincolnshire. Researching this book provided enough material to write a sequel, so if you’re interested in reading more, please visit http://lucywoodauthor.com. You’ll also find information about my first book with The History Press, The Grimsby Book of Days.

Lucy Wood, 2016

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Peter Chapman

  1    Lincolnshire Life

  2    Places and Landmarks

  3    Lincolnshire People

  4    Crime and Punishment

  5    Lincolnshire in Particular

  6    Curious Lincolnshire

  7    Customs, Folklore and More

  8    Lincolnshire at War

  9    Royalty, Religion and Politics

10    The Supernatural County

11    Sport

12    The Weather

13 On this Day in Lincolnshire

Bibliography

About the Author

Copyright

FOREWORD

Of a winter’s eve, the Almighty rings down a glorious curtain along the westwards reaches of Lincolnshire. It is an ever-changing marvel.

Lincolnshire people have become familiar to these sunset spectaculars.

But they have never tired of their vast county, vast skies and magnificent seaboard.

They face east, these Yellowbellies, awaiting the dawn ‘when morning gilds the skies’, grateful for their good fortune.

Their county is a mysterious place of fen and moor, of wold and marsh, a place of infinite variety.

People have said of Lincolnshire that it guards its secrets, that it is a private place.

Truth is that progress has not affected it overmuch. Add to that the incalculable benefit of the Great North Road which skirts it – seemingly to seal it off, making it not a place ‘in transit’. The railways came … but went.

The very late coming of the Industrial Revolution brought only slight modernity. With modest exceptions there were to be no satanic mills and the county stayed locked in its agricultural past.

Untrammelled by change the county survived, the toll bars, post houses and coaching inns remained in situ until modern times.

The only mills were powered by wind, tall, black flour-streaked giants, and they and the steeples of Anglicanism were the markers of time and place.

It comes as no surprise that nonconformity thrived here, that this is Wesley’s county and that recusants found space. The blandishments of establishment never doused the independent spirit.

So vast a county never appealed to the aristocracy. Famous families – and grand houses – were ever few and far between. But the squire and the artisan held sway and do so to this day … with the poacher on a shiny night!

And what of ‘this day’?

Lincolnshire is, above all, a welcoming county. No end of people down the centuries have found refuge here. They found a kindred out-of-step awkwardness in this county and those who stayed never regretted it.

From persecution and wars the county provided an embrace … for the Dutch, for Russian Jews, for homeless Poles … for the RAF.

These people, Indians, Icelanders, Danes and so on, married here and thrived. Their surnames survive.

And from stone-built Stamford to terraced Scunthorpe, from the Stump at Boston to the spire at Louth, this extraordinary county exerts its pull.

Those who leave, natives all, do so looking over their shoulders and remain, for the rest of their days, in two minds about what they have abandoned. Lincolnshire is to them as a magnet.

The author and I probably will never leave this place in which we ‘move and have our being’.

It is home, warts and all, to both of us.

But you are very welcome to explore it and its mysteries, and wrestle with its vagaries.

This book will prove your guide … and you will need one before the sun sets in majesty over these shining acres.

Peter Chapman

Journalist and Writer

1

LINCOLNSHIRE LIFE

RELIGIOUS POISONING! OR WAS IT INDIGESTION?

In August 1887, Louth hosted the United Methodist Free Church conference, where about 120 ministers and lay representatives began to suffer the symptoms of poisoning.

The police and doctors were immediately summoned and poisoning was presumed, but the cause was tracked down to their meal, which had contained fermented green peas.

Meanwhile, dodgy tummies galore tainted harvest time in Brigg in August 1859.

There was a widespread bout of chronic diarrhoea among all of the labourers. Men and women, crippled by the urge to go, had to relieve themselves in hedgerows!

A MYSTERIOUS RAILWAY DISASTER

One of the worst railway disasters ever to occur in the county – and one of the greatest mysteries in railway history – happened in Grantham.

On 19 September 1906, the 8.45 p.m. train from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley departed, made up of coaches, sleepers, mail and parcel vans.

It stopped at Peterborough as scheduled, with a crew and engine change, and left on time towards Grantham, where it was due at 11 p.m.

The points north of Grantham were set onto the sharply curved Nottingham line to accommodate a goods train, while the signals south were set at caution, and the signalman at Grantham North had his lights at danger. All was as it should have been.

That was, until passengers, postmen and railway staff waiting on the platform noticed the train was heading towards them at 50mph – apparently with no intention of stopping.

It whizzed through the station towards the Nottingham line, hit the points and lurched. The locomotive’s tender came off the track, dragging the carriages with it. Some carriages slid down an embankment while the rest were tangled on the line.

Fourteen people, including the fireman and driver, were killed. An inquiry was unable to establish whether the brakes had been applied, never mind a cause.

To this day, the tragedy remains an unsolved mystery.

WHO WAS SPRING-HEELED JACK?

Spring-Heeled Jack, the terrifying sensation of Victorian London, made an appearance in Lincolnshire.

Rumours began circulating in the south of the county that a creature, wearing animal skin and springs on his shoes, was seen jumping out of the darkness – petrifying passers-by – and leaping over small buildings and rooftops.

On 3 November 1877, the Illustrated Police News quoted a stringer (a rope, twine or cord-maker) from Lincoln, who said the creature could jump up to 20ft. ‘Jack’ even launched himself through a college window and terrified the ladies inside.

Groups formed to carry out night-time patrols. Two men shot at him as he leapt up Newport Arch, but the skin he was wearing somehow deflected the bullets.

Sightings of Jack were reported around the entire country for sixty-seven years. Was he an alien, an insane acrobat, an eccentric marquis, an escaped kangaroo, or a demon? These are just some of the theories put forward. It’s a mystery which causes intrigue to this day.

RESTING FAR FROM HOME

The death of a teenager from Lincolnshire is marked on a headstone far away in Lindisfarne Priory.

The boy, 13-year-old Field Flowers, was on board the steamship Pegasus on the night of 19 July 1843, which was undertaking its regular voyage from Leith to Hull.

He was with his sister, 11-year-old Fanny Maria, children of the Reverend Field Flowers, vicar of Tealby in Lincolnshire, and were among fifty-five people on board, including a crew of fourteen.

Six hours after embarking on its voyage, the Pegasus struck the Goldstone Rock and sank close to the Farne Islands. The steamer took just forty minutes to sink, and only two passengers and four crew members could be saved.

Field and his sister perished in the tragedy. The siblings had been attending Miss Banks’ Boarding School in Edinburgh and were coming home for the holidays in the charge of Miss Maria Barton, the daughter of medical practitioner Zephaniah Barton, from Market Rasen. She too lost her life, as did 27-year-old Robinson Torry, also from Rasen, who had been ‘taking a trip for the benefit of his health’.

Miss Barton’s body was recovered and received into the family vault the following month. Master Field’s body was found by French fishermen, who brought it to Lindisfarne about four weeks after the sinking. His sister’s body was never recovered.

THE COUNTY VILLAGE AND THE MATTERHORN

Adorning the church at Skillington are two windows commemorating the Matterhorn disaster of 1865.

Skilled oarsman Charles Hudson was ordained deacon in 1853 and priest the following year, becoming vicar of Skillington in 1860. He was a founder member and secretary of The Alpine Club. By the 1860s, the Matterhorn was the only major unconquered mountain.

Hudson – by now regarded as one of the world’s most accomplished mountaineers, who once walked 86 miles in twenty-four hours – was planning to make an attempt on the Matterhorn with 19-year-old Douglas Hadow and Swiss guide Michel Croz, and joined forces in 1865 with another group planning to do the same.

The party began their ascent on 14 July 1865, reaching the summit shortly after midday. While descending, Hadow slipped and fell onto Croz. The climbers were roped together and the impact knocked Hadow and Croz 4,000ft over a ridge, together with Hudson and another climber, Lord Francis Douglas.

Hudson, Hadow and Croz were buried at Zermatt. Lord Douglas’s body was never found.

BRITAIN’S WORST INDUSTRIAL EXPLOSION

Flixborough is a small village north of Scunthorpe. On 1 June 1974, it was the location of Britain’s worst ever industrial explosion. It had been home to chemical works since 1937, and in 1964, Nypro UK built a plant. Nypro UK was the country’s only producer of caprolactam, the main ingredient in the manufacture of nylon. There was a leak in a temporary pipe carrying cyclohexane and the air was filled with a vapour that ignited. The explosion was heard up to 30 miles away, spreading a chemical cloud over Lincolnshire. Twenty-eight people on the site died and more than 100 people – employees and local residents – were injured by flying glass. Every house in the nearby village was damaged and residents were evacuated due to the threat from poisonous fumes. Fire burned on the site for sixteen days following the explosion. Today the site houses an industrial estate.

RAILWAY TRAGEDIES

In 1922, Lincoln’s Boultham Chapel was the location of one of the city’s largest ever funerals.

On 11 May that year, four local young men – Thomas Pyrah (25), Fred Wheatley (23), Leonard Abell (19) and Arthur Briggs (17) – went out on a ratting trip. On the way home to Boultham, they approached the unmanned pedestrian railway crossing at Coulson Road. A noisy goods train passed, and none of them heard the approach of a passenger train from Nottingham. Their bodies were found a short time later by a passer-by.

Thousands of people lined the streets for their funeral, on 15 May, and the four friends were buried side by side.

Great Northern opened Utterby Halt on the line between Louth and Grimsby on 11 December 1905. It had a small waiting room, two short platforms and a crossing keeper’s house, and closed on 11 September 1961. Railway worker John Lancaster set off on a foggy January morning in 1953 to Ludborough Station, walking on the line due to the weather. Near Utterby Halt, he heard a train approaching from behind so stepped onto the adjacent track. The noise drowned out the sound of the approaching Cleethorpes to London train, and he was killed.

In December 1932 a shocking discovery was made on the LNER railway line near the Welholme Road crossing in Grimsby.

The decapitated body of a man was found by the guard of a goods train. He was later identified as a retired builder.

It was customary for such trains to stop at the crossing, and it was during this halt that the guard, Mr Flint, came upon the man’s severed head in a nearby six-foot. Other parts of his body were found elsewhere.

It was discovered that the deceased had tragically been struck by the onward-bound mail train, which arrived in Grimsby at 5.22 a.m. each day.

Tragedy struck at Melton Ross railway bridge in 1879. The structure had been unstable for some time and work began on its demolition and reconstruction.

Scaffolding was put in place in seventeen spots along the bridge to support explosives, but some failed to detonate and the workmen began taking down the bridge manually, despite the obvious danger.

At 3.30 a.m. on 3 February, an arch where more than a dozen men were working by oil lamp collapsed.

The rescue operation took seven hours. Ellis Hornsby, Edward Ambler and Thomas Robinson lost their lives, twelve of their colleagues were badly hurt and others suffered minor injuries.

A MOST DARING SEA RESCUE

An incident of endurance played out in complete darkness – and in the middle of a snow blizzard – on 12 February 1940.

Grimsby trawler Gurth found herself in trouble, and called on RNLI coxswain Robert Cross for help.

Two of the lifeboat crew were ill when they were called out to the Gurth, so it was manned by only six in total, and Cross couldn’t spare anyone to operate the searchlight. The rescuers were repeatedly knocked down by the sea and were only saved from being washed overboard by hanging on to the handrails. A rope which had washed overboard became tangled around the propeller and for some time only one engine on the lifeboat functioned.

Three-and-half hours later, the entire crew of the Gurth were safe on shore, albeit bruised and battered, and eternally thankful to Cross and his shattered men.

Cross won the RNLI gold medal for gallantry and the George Medal for the Gurth’s rescue, and his five-man crew each won the silver medal. He held the post of coxswain for thirty-one years, retiring in 1943 aged 67, and lived to the age of 88, having taken part in the rescue of 453 lives.

THE MURDEROUS MONKEY

In 1730 Sir Michael Newton, the owner of Culverthorpe Hall near Sleaford, married Margaret and they had a son. The family’s pet monkey climbed into the newborn’s cot while at their London home and carried the child to a balcony, throwing him onto the flagstones below and bringing to an end the male line of the Newton family. Lady Margaret hid her distress by being outwardly sociable, attending gatherings in expensive trademark blue clothes. Culverthorpe Hall is said to be haunted by a Blue Lady.

THE MAN WHO OFFICIALLY DIDN’T EXIST

In April 1932, Tom Lapidge, a mate on the Capricornus, vanished… or did he?

The Capricornus was heading home and the crew had turned in for the night. Lapidge was alone with the compass and at 4 a.m. he called for a cup of tea.

A deckhand went to the bridge – but there was no one there. Only Lapidge’s belt, sou’wester, oilfrock and his pipe remained. The deckhand roused the skipper and crew, and the ship was searched. They re-traced their path for 4 miles but nothing was found, so they headed for Grimsby.

An inquiry concluded Lapidge, from Healing, had been washed overboard and that was the end of the matter… until August, when he emerged – alive and well – at his daughter-in-law’s home.

‘He claimed that, officially, he didn’t exist,’ recalled a fellow fisherman. ‘He devised a plan to defraud an insurance company by faking his death. He hid away in the ship’s bunkers. When the ship docked, he sneaked ashore under cover of darkness and made his way to Hull, where he had arranged to meet his wife. He told me his wife duly drew the insurance – but instead of joining him, she made off with another man!’

A SCANDALOUS COUNTY

Passionate letters left in a hedge, a seduction followed by abandonment and a tragic pregnancy… it’s the stuff novels are made of, but happened in Lincolnshire more than 100 years ago.

When solicitor Sidney Bazalgette Carnley, of Norbury House, Alford, married Ellen in 1884, little did the couple know that Ellen would soon become an invalid. This unhappy state led to Sidney becoming friendly with Miss Florence Wilson, the daughter of the clerk to the Alford Justices, who resided in Bleak House, the adjoining property. By 1894, Ellen was completely bedridden and Sidney’s relationship with Florence developed to the point that Sidney promised to marry her as soon as he was free of his wife.

Sidney wrote love letters to Florence, leaving them in the hedge between the properties, but it was not until 1900 that he seduced the young miss – and immediately rejected her. Florence, now pregnant, fled from Alford to Southwell and then Wimbledon, where the child was born but survived for less than a week.

When she returned to Alford, Sidney declared his love for Florence, and although she spurned him at first, she tried to repair their friendship when she became worried about financial matters.

In January 1906 Ellen died and by now Sidney was not interested in Florence. Florence, however, had other ideas. She wrote to her former beau demanding marriage, threatening to expose his dishonour. She followed him around Alford, arranged to have photographs taken of him with other women and had the images printed on postcards with insulting messages attached. Obscene messages were scrawled with chalk on the walls and doors of Norbury House.

Eventually the argument went to court. Florence successfully sued for breach of promise, and Sidney’s defence that his promise of marriage was not legal as he was still wed at the time was also upheld. The result was that Florence was awarded £100 in damages and Sidney a farthing for being libelled.

Because of Sidney’s wealth, rumours about his personal conduct did little to affect his social standing. He became a prominent townsman in Alford and bred horses until about 1930. He died in 1947.

From modest beginnings, Ernest Terah Hooley became a famous English millionaire, at stages in his life owning stately homes Sudbrooke Holme and Temple Belwood, as well as making an attempt to purchase Tattersall Castle.

But it was the revelation that he was a swindler which brought him to notoriety.

He had the outward appearance of having keen financial skills, and was certainly able to spot opportunities before anyone else. For example, realising that cycling was becoming popular in 1894, he swiftly floated the Swift, Singer and Raleigh manufacturing firms. He also purchased Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company – one of his biggest coups.

But Hooley was declared bankrupt in 1897 and an expected knighthood and parliamentary candidature were withdrawn.

Two years along, while still an undischarged bankrupt, he purchased a concession from the Tsar of Russia to exploit Siberian goldfields. He paid £75,000 and sold it to a public company for £1 million – just one example of his entrepreneurial skills.

However, in 1904 Hooley was tried at the Old Bailey for conspiring to defraud a publican called Paine, who had invested £27,000 in the Siberian goldfields and received a piece of gold-bearing quartz in return. Hooley and his co-defendant, financier Henry John Lawson, were acquitted.

He spent time buying country estates and splitting up the land to sell on. Skip to 1912 and Hooley was again before the Old Bailey, this time on a charge of false pretences relating to the sale of a Nottinghamshire estate. This time he was jailed for twelve months, and when released led a quiet life until he was tempted to dabble in the rise of the Lancashire cotton industry.

In 1920, he was charged with conspiracy to commit fraud in connection with the purchase of shares of a cotton mill. The five-week trial, in which Hooley was branded as the swindling ringleader, saw him jailed for three years.

Following his release he lived in Derbyshire, making a living mainly by selling pigs. In 1939, aged 80, he was again made bankrupt. He died in a guesthouse aged 88 in 1947.

In 1923, a high society affair was revealed. Australian journalist Eugenia Stone, a 6ft 2in beauty of 28, swept widowed Sir George Doughty, Grimsby’s MP, off his feet.

She wed Sir George (53), who owned the Grimsby Evening Telegraph, and wrote a column in it, under her own name – in a high moral tone – on many subjects. But another side to Lady Doughty was revealed.

Following Sir George’s death in 1914, she left Grimsby for London, and was a frequent visitor to the Riviera.

Sir George’s great friend, T.G. Tickler, became infatuated with her, despite being married with four children, and by 1920 he was living half with his wife and half with Lady Doughty. He told his wife if she didn’t like it, she could leave. In 1923, Mrs Tickler discovered a bundle of erotic letters written to her husband, and decided to divorce him.

When the court was told Tickler had broken into his wife’s bedroom brandishing a loaded pistol and threatened to kill her and himself, the tone of the affair was confirmed.

The divorce was granted. Tickler never married Lady Doughty nor returned to Grimsby – he eventually re-married in 1955, to a Mrs Brown, whom he had known for thirty-three years.

LINCOLN’S LOST RAILWAY STATION

St Mark’s was the city’s first station and opened on 3 August 1846, with direct routes to London. It closed on 13 May 1985, making Lincoln’s central station the one and only for citizens.

To mark the closure Dr Philip Marshal, then Lincoln Cathedral’s organist, set to music an inscription from a memorial in Ely Cathedral. The memorial was to two railwaymen who died in an accident in 1845. The city cathedral’s choir sang the composition on the platform at the central station.

St Mark’s was marred by an accident of its own, when a small cannon in the station grounds burst during celebrations on the official opening day. Mr Paul Harding was struck by a piece of metal, forcing his leg to be amputated, and a boy was struck on the hand, causing the loss of two fingers.

DIVING PROFESSORS IN SKEGNESS

In days gone by, tourists would flock to the Lincolnshire coast to take in the attractions on offer.

In Skegness, a 90ft diving stage was constructed where divers – known as professors – would show off their sporting prowess. One of the earliest was Professor Capes, of Hull, followed by Professor Connell in the 1890s.

In 1904, Professor Leo Cranford, of Brooklyn Bridge – known for his feats in the US – travelled to the resort to thrill the crowds by riding a bicycle off a 70ft platform into the briny.

In the 1920s and ’30s, one-legged Professor F.C. Gadsby and his son, Dare Devil Leslie, attracted the attention of Daily Mirror columnist Maurice Lane-Norcott. Of the senior Gadsby, he wrote: ‘I can’t understand why the angels have never fetched him away long ago; he is always up to mischief. His latest amusement is to set himself on fire and jump off the Pier into a blazing furnace 4’9” deep. His is a busy life.’

Of Skegness itself, he wrote: ‘It is easily like a piece of Margate, and a slice of Ostend, and a little bit of Wembley and a morsel of the Lido, the whole being nicely flavoured with girlish sauce and well-baked in sunshine!’

In later years, Dare Devil Leslie played a major role in several sea dramas, coming to the rescue of tourists in distress.

HANDLE WITH CARE

In June 1854, porters on the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway at Grimsby were transferring property and goods from a London train when they found a package marked ‘Glass, with care’.

It was addressed to a reverend in a nearby village, but they thought the package looked suspicious and opened it. Inside they discovered the body of the reverend’s daughter. It was duly repackaged and sent to the gentleman, but with an extra bill for carrying a corpse.

It had been sent at a cost of £1 4s, when it should have been £8.

ONE OF THE FINEST AVIATION ACHIEVEMENTS

World record breaker Alex Henshaw’s education at Lincoln School from 1922 to 1927 inducts him into the Lincolnshire hall of fame.

While in Lincolnshire, his father, Albert, established one of the first holiday camps in the country, at the Trusville Holiday Estate near Mablethorpe, and aged 12, Alex was awarded a Royal Life-Saving Medal for saving a boy from drowning in the River Witham.

But it is for his airborne antics that Alex is remembered. He flew in a Mew Gull G-AEXF from Gravesend, Kent, to Cape Town and back – breaking all world records for solo or multi-crew flights.

He broke records set by Amy Johnson for the outward flight and the return journey by H.L. Brook by fifty-seven hours.

Alex’s outbound flight took 392 hours over 6,300 miles. He rested for twenty-eight hours in Cape Town and touched down on English soil on 9 February 1939, with just eleven minutes between his outbound and inward flight times.

This remarkable achievement is hailed by aviation historians as one of the finest ever made. In 1940, Alex was awarded the Britannia Trophy for the most outstanding flight by a British subject.

He served in the Second World War and received an MBE in 1945. In 1995, he was awarded a Spitfire Trophy on behalf of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

Incidentally, his son maintained connections with Lincolnshire by operating farms at Theddlethorpe, Mablethorpe, Sutton-on-Sea, Huttoft, Anderby and Chapel St Leonards.

THE LINCOLNSHIRE RISING

In 1536, some Lincolnshire folk were outraged that King Henry VIII planned to dissolve minor monasteries and raise taxes. They rebelled and this became known as the Lincolnshire Rising. Thomas Foster was a chairman in Louth, and one Sunday evening in 1536 sparked the rebellion by shouting as the vicar of Louth finished his sermon. His outburst caused turmoil and by the next day, Louth had declared itself openly against the government of Henry VIII, though not against the King himself.

The movement swept through the county; thousands of men began marching to London and for a short time, the monarchy was under threat.

The rising began in October of that year in Louth, Horncastle and Caistor, from where people marched to Lincoln. Feelings were so high that Dr Raynes, Chancellor of Louth, was dragged to Horncastle by a mob and clubbed to death.

A letter was sent to the King about their grievances, prompting the King to slate the county as ‘one of the most brute and beastly in the realm’.

A number of rebels were hanged. Thirty-six of the fifty-two monasteries in Lincolnshire were dissolved by August 1536.

THE LION’S MAKEOVER

A prank famous in Lincoln lore took place at The Arboretum in May 1909.

The Arboretum Lion was a life-size stone statue in the grounds of the pleasure garden, on a plinth 18ft high.

It had been presented in 1872 by the Mayor, Francis Clarke, who became wealthy through sales of his ‘Blood Mixture’ – a purifying tonic which claimed to cure diseases caused by blood impurities. Under cover of darkness, a gang gathered at The Arboretum, out-witted the superintendent and gave the lion a makeover. The statue’s feet and head were painted with red primer, its tail daubed in black and its body in yellow and red stripes.

The culprits were never caught but rumours spread. The Lincoln Leader reported it could have been ‘the work of some aggrieved representative of the unemployed or someone who had a spite against the Corporation. We have even heard the suggestion that German invaders have perpetrated the abuse as an “insult” to the British Lion.’

Critch’s Annual of 1909 published this ditty to mark the joke:

The prank was played at midnight,

When the pubs and clubs were closed.

And ’cos the lion couldn’t bite,

The deed was bravely posed.

2

PLACES AND LANDMARKS

A KINKY ROMAN ROAD

Roman roads are straight, and Ermine Street – running from Lincoln to the Humber – is no exception. Or is it? The Scampton kink is the only bend in the street’s route, and the cause was the Second World War. Brattleby Airfield opened in 1916 but closed in 1919. It was rebuilt in 1939 as its more famous incarnation, RAF Scampton, a base for Bomber Command. Vulcan bombers required a single 9,000ft runway, hence the Scampton kink was created.

ONE OF MANY DESERTED VILLAGES

Remains of the deserted village of Riseholme are visible today if you look hard. Believed to be of Saxon origin, the village was also home to Riseholme Hall, built in the late eighteenth century by the Chaplain family. It became the official residence for the Bishops of Lincoln from 1840 until 1887, when the estate was sold to Captain Wilson. Fast-forward to 1946 and it was sold to Lindsey County Council, which established an agricultural college. The estate also includes Caythorpe Court, which was built in 1903 for Edgar Lubbock.

TEN FAMILIAR LANDMARKS

One of the best-known sea marks of the Humber is the 309ft Dock Tower at Grimsby – taller than Lincoln Cathedral and made with about a million bricks. It was designed by J.W. Wild, who travelled widely in Egypt, Syria and southern Europe, gathering sketches of ideas, some of which he used in Grimsby. At its construction, it was the highest brick building in the country; its cast-iron spiral staircase of 350 steps is the longest in the world. Although it looks ornamental, it was built as part of the hydraulic lock gates system. About 247ft up is a 30,000-gallon capacity water tank. It was later used for washing down the fish markets and firefighting. On the north-west face is a plaque commemorating the men of the minesweepers who lost their lives in the Second World War. Unveiled in 1948, it is the only tribute of its kind to the minesweeping service, of which Grimsby was one of the largest bases.

The Humber Bridge was opened by the Queen on 17 July 1981, with a world record-breaking total length of 2,220m, and a centre span of 1,410m. It lost the record seventeen years later to a bridge in Japan, which centrally spanned 1,990m. With one part in Lincolnshire and the other in Yorkshire, the bridge spans two counties. The cables supporting the road are made of 14,948 strands of galvanised wire.

Old Clee Church, Grimsby’s oldest building, was dedicated on 5 March 1192 by St Hugh, the first Bishop of Lincoln, during the reign of Richard the Lionheart. The Saxon tower dates back to around 1050. The nave was rebuilt and the transepts added in Norman times.

Immingham Dock is among a handful of Britain’s ports built in the twentieth century. The Great Central Railway Company embarked on constructing the King’s Dock in 1906. It was officially opened by King George V seven years later.