Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/260

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a fine bust of the first earl's wife. In a conservatory are portions of another once famous collection of antiques, tombs, altars, and statues, made by Sir Richard Worsley and kept as a kind of classical museum till 1855 at Appuldurcombe in the Isle of Wight.

THE PELHAM BUCKLE Religious houses abounded here. Thornton Abbey is only five miles off, and here, outside the park to the north-west, is Newsham Abbey, 1143, perhaps the earliest Premonstratensian house in England. On the east was the Cistercian nunnery of Colham, and just at the south of the park, in the village of Limber, was an alien priory belonging to the Cistercian house of Aulnay in Normandy. Newsham abbey, which was worth twice what the other two were, became part of the spoil which was absorbed by Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. The gardens have some fine cedars, and the church with its curious tower and small spire is in the garden grounds. There are some Pelham monuments in it of the sixteenth and seventeenth century: one to Sir John and one to Sir William and Lady Pelham and their seventeen children. At her feet is the head of a king and the Pelham "Buckle," commemorating the seizure by a Pelham of King John of France, at the battle of Poictiers.

Thornton Abbey Gateway.