GREAT COTES
In the churchyard, after passing under a yew-tree arch,
you see a magnificent walnut on a small green mound. There
is no porch. You enter by a small, deeply moulded doorway
at the north-west end of the north aisle. The pillars of the
arcades are clusters of four rather thick shafts, some with
unusually large round capitals, but others various in shape,
and all of a bluish grey stone. There are four bays, three
big and one a small one next the tower at the west end. There
is a flat ceiling, both in nave and chancel, which cuts off the top
of the Early English tower arch; hence the nave and aisles
are covered, as at Swaton, near Helpringham, by one low,
broad slate roof, reminding one of that at Grasmere. The
chancel arch, if it can be called an arch at all, is the meanest
I ever saw, and only equalled by the miserable, and apparently
wooden, tracery of the east window. The chancel,
which is nearly as long as the nave, is built of rough stones
and has Decorated windows. On the floor is a curious brass
of local workmanship probably, to Isabella, wife of Roger
Barnadiston, c. 1420, and the artist seems to have handed on
his craft, for the attraction of the church is a singular seventeenth
century brass before the altar, to Sir Thomas Barnadiston,
Kt. of Mikkylcotes, and his wife Dame Elizabeth, and
their eight sons and seven daughters. The children kneel
behind their kneeling parents, who are, however, on a larger
scale, and have scrolls proceeding from their mouths. Above
them is a picture of the Saviour, with nimbus, rising from
a rectangular tomb of disproportionately small dimensions,
while Roman soldiers are sleeping around. A defaced inscription
runs all round the edge of the brass, and in the centre
is the inscription in old lettering: "In the worschypp of the
Resurrectio of ōr Lord and the blessed sepulcur pray for the
souls of Sir Thos Barnadiston Kt. and Dame Elizabeth his
wife
and of yr charite say a pr noster ave and cred
and ye schall have a C days of p~don to yor med"
Another six miles brings us to the outskirts of Grimsby, the birthplace, in 1530, of John Whitgift, Queen Elizabeth's Archbishop of Canterbury. This is not at all an imposing or handsome town, but the length of the timber docks, and the size and varied life in the great fish docks, the pontoons which project into the river and are crowded with fishing boats, discharging tons
