SAXBY AND HORKSTOW in varied charm to this western edge of the Wold, which goes farthest north, and ends on the plateau which overlooks the Humber near South Ferriby. On this route the first village from Elsham is Worlaby, and whereas Elsham had once a small house of Austin Canons founded by Beatrice de Amundeville before 1169, and given by Henry VIII. at the Dissolution to the all devouring Duke of Suffolk, Worlaby had its benefactor in John, first Lord Bellasyse, who founded in 1670 a hospital for poor women, of which the brick building still exists. The twisting road with its wooded slopes and curving hollows is here extremely pretty. We next reach Bonby, and soon after come to Saxby All Saints. This is a really delightful village, and evidently under the care of one owner, for all the houses are extremely neat and, with the exception of two proud-looking brick-built houses of the villa type, all have tiled roofs and buff-coloured walls. That the village is grateful to the landlord and his agent, and is also, like Mrs. John Gilpin, of a thrifty mind, is quaintly testified by the inscription on a drinking fountain in the village, with a semicircular seat round one side of it which tells how it was set up "in honour of the 60th year of Queen Victoria's reign, and of Frederick Horsley, agent for 42 years on Mr. Barton's estate." Each of these parishes extends up on to the Wold, and down across the fen, and the map shows this and marks Saxby or Elsham "Wolds" as well as Saxby or Elsham "Carrs"; and in each village a signpost points west "to the bridge," which goes over the land drain and the Weir Dyke.
In the next village of Horkstow, a big elm stands close to the gates of the churchyard and parsonage. Here the fine air and the bright breezy look of sky and landscape fill one with pleasure, and the snug way in which the churches nestle against the skirt of the wold give a charming air of peace and retirement. The church here is singular in its very sharp rise of level towards the east. You mount up six steps from the nave at the chancel arch, further east are two more steps and another arch, and again further on, two more and another arch. It looks as though the ground had been raised, for the capitals of the pillars on which these last two arches rest are only four feet and a half from the floor. The north arcade is transition Norman, the arches on the Norman pillars, instead of round, being slightly pointed.
