MOULTON carved in stone, on either side of which are figures about three feet high of Adam and Eve, and the Serpent is curling round the tree.[1] The wooden cover with the figure of a stout Rubens angel flying and grasping the top has fallen into disrepair. A list of the vicars from 1237 is in the north aisle.
The clerestory windows are handsomely arcaded outside, with round Norman arcading on the south and pointed arcades on the north side, and ugly Perpendicular windows inserted at intervals which occupy the space of two arcades.
The great beauty of the church is the Perpendicular tower and spire, built about 1380. It has four stages, and over the great west window are some canopied niches, two of which still contain their statues. The buttresses have also niches and canopies, and the tower finishes with a rich battlement and pinnacles which are connected with the spire by light flying-buttresses; the whole is beautifully proportioned, and as it stands in a very wide street one can get a satisfactory view of it.
The dividing of each side by set-off string courses, three on the west and four on the north and south sides, the canopy work of the buttresses at each stage, the pleasing varieties in the size of the windows, the canopied arcading on the west front, the panelled parapet and deep cornice, the elegant pinnacles at the corners of the coped battlements from which the light flying-buttresses spring up to the richly ornamented spire, all help to delight and satisfy the eye in a manner which few churches in any county can hope to rival.
In a bridge half a mile from the church on the south side of a lane called 'Old Spalding Gate,' or 'Elloe Stone lane,' at the fifth milestone from Spalding, still stands the Elloe Stone.
The Shire Mote or hundred court of the Elloe Wapentake, which is a huge one embracing the whole of Holland between the Welland and the Nene, used to be held at the four crossroads near this stone, in pre-Norman times. The manor courts were introduced by the Normans.
Boy Scouts were very much in evidence when we were in Moulton; they number over thirty there alone, and I never saw a smarter lot.
From Moulton we get back to the main road and go on two short miles to Whaplode. In Domesday Book this is spelt Quappelode, the cape on the lode or creek, the village being
- ↑ See Chap. XXII.
