CHAPTER XXXII
ROADS FROM SPILSBY
Road to Louth—Partney—Dr. Johnson—His letter on Death of Peregrine
Langton—Dalby—Langton and Saucethorpe—View from Keal Hill
with Boston Stump—"Stickfoot Stickknee and Stickneck"—The
Hundleby Miracle—Raithby—Mavis Enderby—Lusby—Hameringham—The
Hourglass Stand—Winceby—Horncastle—The Horse Fair—The
Sleaford Road—Hagnaby—East Kirkby—Miningsby—Revesby
Abbey—Moorby—Wood Enderby—Haltham—Tumby Wood—Coningsby—Tattershall—Billinghay—Haverholme
Priory.
The four roads from Spilsby go north to Louth, and south to Boston, each sixteen miles; east to Wainfleet, eight miles; and west to Horncastle, ten miles. The Wainfleet one we have already described and two-thirds of that from Louth. The remaining third, starting from Spilsby, only goes through two villages—Partney and Dalby. Partney lies low in the valley of Tennyson's "Cold rivulet," and those who have driven across the flat meadows between the village and the mill after sundown know how piercingly cold it always seems.
The place has a very long history. Bede, who died in 725, writing twelve hundred years ago and speaking of the Christianising of Northumbria by Paulinus, who was consecrated Bishop of York in 625, and his visit to the province of Lindissi, i.e., "the parts of Lindsey" and Lincoln in particular, says that the Abbot of Peartaney (= Partney, near Spilsby, which was a cell of Bardney) spoke to him once of a man called Deda, who was afterwards, in 730, Abbot of Bardney and a very truthful man "presbyter veracissimus," and said that Deda told him that he had talked with an aged man who had been baptised by Bishop Paulinus in the presence of King Ædwin, in the middle of the day, and with him a multitude of people,
