THE "HOLE IN THE WALL" transepts, had Perpendicular aisles added. The large south-east chapel which, until 1874 was used as a school, was founded in 1311. An erect life-size marble figure commemorates Elizabeth Johnson, 1843. There are no other important monuments. The tower has eight bells and a Sanctus bell-cot at the east end of the nave. There are stone steps to enable people to get over the brick churchyard wall, as there are also at Kirton and Friskney. Some stone coffin-lids curiously out of place are let into one of the boundary walls of the churchyard. Close by is the White Horse, a picturesque old thatched and gabled inn. There is another inn here called "The Hole in the Wall." I wonder if this title is derived from Shakespeare's play, "The tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and Thisbe," who, says the story, "did talk through the chink of a wall," or does it refer to some breach in the sea wall? To come from fancy to fact, the real name seems to have been Holy Trinity Wall, the house having been built up against a wall of that church which, with half a score of others in Spalding, has been dismantled and utterly swept away. Another puzzling sign I passed lately was "The New Found out." The writer of an article in The Times of April 8, on the fire at Little Chesterford, thinks the sign of one of the burnt public-houses, "The Bushel and Strike," a very singular one, not knowing that the strike, like the bushel, is a measure of corn.
St. Paul's, Fulney, to the north of the town, is a handsome new brick-and-stone church, by Sir Gilbert Scott, who also restored the old church and removed every sort of hideous inside fitting, where galleries all round the nave came within four feet of the heads of the worshippers in the box pews. At that time £11,000 was spent on the restoration. This was in 1866, in which year the vicar, the Rev. William Moore, died, and he and his wife are buried in the nave; his parents, who had done so much for the church, are buried at Weston.
About two miles from Fulney is Wykeham chapel,[1] built in 1310 and attached to a country residence of the priors of Spalding; it is now only a ruin.
Going out of Spalding northwards, three miles bring us to Pinchbeck, which was an important village in Saxon times, and attached to Croyland Abbey, where a fine tower with six bells leans to the north-west. It is approached by a lime avenue.
- ↑ See Illustration, page 180.
