BLACKSMITH'S EPITAPH
My coal is spent, my iron's gone,
My nails are drawn, my work is done.
My fire-dryed corpse lies here at rest,
My soul like smoke is soaring to the bles't.
There is a charming old grey stone grammar school, possibly the very building in which Robert De Brunne taught when "Magister" at the abbey at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The station-master's house, called "Red Hall," is a picturesque Elizabethan brick building once the home of the Roman Catholic leader, Sir John Thimbleby, and afterwards of the Digbys. Sir Everard Digby, whose fine monument is in Stoke Dry Church near Uppingham, was born here. Another house is called "Cavalry House" because Thomas Rawnsley, great grandfather of the writer, was living there when he raised at his own expense and drilled a troop of "Light Horse Rangers" at the time when Buonaparte threatened to invade England. Lady Heathcote, whose husband commanded them, gave him a handsome silver goblet in 1808, in recognition of his services. He died in 1826, and in the spandrils of the north arcade in Bourne Abbey Church are memorial tablets to him and to his wife Deborah (Hardwicke) "and six of their children who died infants."
