THORNTON CURTIS the western capital and respond being especially fine. The north aisle is very wide, and the church unusually roomy. The pine roof and the oak seats were all new about thirty years ago. The light and graceful rood screen is also new, and has deep buttress-like returns on the western side, as at Grimoldby. The chancel has late twelfth century lancets, one with a Norman arch, the others pointed, showing the transition period; once the church was all Norman, but it was extended westwards early in the thirteenth century. There are two charming piscinas of the same period, with Norman pilasters and round-headed arches, but the western one has had a later pointed arch, apparently put on in more recent times.
In the north aisle wall there are three arched niches for tombs, and on the north side of the chancel outside is a wide Norman arch with a flat buttress curiously carried up from above the centre of the archway, as in the Jews' House at Lincoln. Near the south porch is a mural tablet carved in oak, with old English lettering, which reads thus:—
In the yer yat all the stalles
In thys chyrch was mayd
Thomas Kyrkbe Jho Shreb
byn Hew Roston Jho Smyth
Kyrk Masters in the yer of
Our Lorde God MCCCCCXXXII.
In the churchyard is half of the shaft of a cross, octagonal, with rosettes carved at intervals on the four smaller sides. Like the font, it is mounted on a broad, square three-stepped pedestal.
At Barrow, two miles further north, there was once a monastery, founded in the seventh century by St. Ceadda, or Chad, on land given by Wulfhere King of Mercia. This is an interesting corner of the county. New Holland, where the steam ferry from Hull lands you, is but three miles to the north, and near Barrow Haven station, between the ferry pier and Barton, is a remarkable ancient Danish or British earthwork called "The Castles"—a large tumulus-topped mound with a wide fosse, and with other mounds and ditches grouped round it, which, when occupied, were surrounded by marshes and only approachable by a channel from the Humber. The claim that this is the site of the great battle of Brunanburh in 937 cannot be looked upon as more than the merest conjecture.
