Cold Harbours

 I have discovered 17 places in Lincolnshire named "Cold Harbour", many of them are names of farms, houses or just a patch of land. I have seen many suggestions for the name, the most common is 'a place where a Roman building once stood'.

Unfortunately it is not as exciting as that; if we remove the 'H' from the second word we get Arbour, which some keen gardeners build to make a pleasant shelter to sit beneath on a warm sunny day.

Historically a Cold Arbour is a clump of trees, a ruined building or a depression in the land where travellers could get some shelter from the weather.

The image below is a map showing the location (blue tag) of a cold arbour at the junction of the High Dyke and A52 near Grantham. It's interesting that the public house was called the Blue Harbour, possibly owned by the same Lord of the Manor who owned the "Blue" inns in Grantham.  See https://itsaboutlincoln.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-blue-inns-and-sign.html

The Lost Houses of Lincolnshire - Bayons Manor

• Why is the manor called "Bayons"?

• At the Conquest the manor became the property of the William the Conqueror’s half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, it was then named Bayeux Manor later corrupted to Bayons, it became the baronial inheritance of the family of De Bayeux till the reign of Edward II., subsequent owners were Beaumont, and then, by inheritance, into the hands of Francis Lovell, 1st Viscount Lovell and d'Eyncourt, who forfeited it, with his other vast possessions to Henry VII, due to his involvement in the battle of Stoke, 1487. This powerful nobleman avoided capture, he was said to have lived for years afterwards in a cave or vault. The only person who knew of his presence was a faithful servant who locked him into the secret room at Minster Lovell Hall and brought him his food. According to legend, the servant died unexpectedly, leaving Lovell to starve to death.  In 1718 a vault was said to have been discovered, containing the skeleton of a man in rich attire, with a cap, book, paper, pens, etc sitting at a table with a skeleton dog at his feet.

• Bayons Manor came into the possession of the Crown, and was granted by Henry VIII to Sir Henry Norris, who was later decapitated for his friendship with Queen Anne Boleyn following her fall from grace with Henry VIII.  Bayons was again forfeited, but afterwards, by grant and repurchase, came back to, and continued the property of, the descendants of William, second son of, Alice, Baroness D’Eyncourt, and male heir of the Lord Lovell and D’Eyncourt. 

• George Clayton Tennyson, Alfred's grandfather, descended from a long line of south Yorkshire yeoman farmers and professional men, who moved to Lincolnshire in the eighteenth century. George’s father, Michael, was a surgeon in Market Rasen, and married, Elizabeth Clayton, whose family owned much of Grimsby. The Claytons were co-heirs of the Earls of Scarsdale and descendants of the medieval family of d’Eyncourt. George became the most successful solicitor in Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire. The profits of his business, combined with shrewd purchase of farm land at slump prices, made him a rich man.

• At the end of the eighteenth century he bought Tealby Lodge, and built a property around it. The original bay-fronted Regency building was the size of a thatched cottage, but it was in a beautiful position on the west slope of the Wolds, and there were traces of a medieval castle about 100 yards from the house. He enlarged the existing buildings, planted trees and formed a park.  It was about this time that Tealby Lodge was renamed Bayons Manor.

• George died in 1835, his eldest son was also George Clayton Tennyson, Alfred’s father, George senior had decided his eldest son was unfit to succeed him. He disinherited him, supplied him with a family living at Somersby and properties in the growing town of Grimsby, and concentrated his energies and money on his second son, Charles.  George, the son, predeceased his father by 4 years.

• Charles was left Bayons Manor and the bulk of his father's property, plus an allowance of £7,000 a year. Almost immediately Charles added d’Eyncourt to his name; they were ancestors of Elizabeth Clayton, his grandmother.

• Charles was Tory MP for Grimsby from 1816 to 1822, he remained MP at other constituencies until 1852.  Charles married Francis Mary Hutton at All Saints Church, Gainsborough in 1808.

• Between 1818 and 1825 he had been busily engaged in advising and helping his brother-in-law, the millionaire Durham coal owner Matthew Russell, in the task of resurrecting one of the most magnificent modern castles in England from the scant ruins of medieval Brancepeth Castle. With this experience behind him and with considerably increased antiquarian knowledge, he embarked on a similar task at Bayons.

  • Lincoln architect W A Nicholson was employed to design Bayons Manor, but most of the design was down to Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt; when he was in London weekly, sometimes daily, writing letters with changes including drawings and plans.  Nicholson was noted for designing fairly boring buildings but with the aid of Charles produced an extravagant neo-Gothic manor.

  • Charles employed a small army of workmen, several from Italy.

  In 1836 the foundations of the Great Hall were laid, and a little later the Library wing was built to the north. The hall faced south. The two neo-Tudor Regency bays remained. In the centre of the north front, the massive tower was built. The date is about 1839. At this stage Bayons was still only a medium-sized manor house. Then the mood changed and the works began to get theatric. Inner and outer defensive walls were erected, a moat dug, and an embattled barbican with a mock drawbridge provided.   Bayons Manor was almost finished but the design was thought to be incomplete, a tower was suggested as the necessary central point, a flag was hoisted at the site of the intended tower, to give idea of its effect, it was approved and the tower was built.  Later the house was surrounded by fake fortifications.  The manor comprised of 60 rooms, twelve battlemented towers, a keep, a moat, and a great hall that would seat 150 guests.  It was completed by 1842.  Among the fine fittings and furniture installed in the Great Hall were heavy bronze chandeliers that previously hung in the Palace of Westminster, and were removed after the fire of 1834 and statues of two English kings (one being Edward the Confessor), the statues were returned to the Palace of Westminster when Bayons was abandoned.  There was also a dining table made for Burghley House too big for there, but not for the Great Hall. The main framework of the interior was Gothic, with open timber roofs and elaborate Gothic chimneypieces in the hall and others of the main rooms. Crace & Sons of London installed painted decorations and wallpapers by Pugin.  Armour, weapons, heraldry and stained glass abounded. But there were also busts of Napoleon and Byron, classical tapestries, Etruscan vases, and pictures by Van der Neer and Guardi.
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  • The literary equivalents of Bayons are the novels of Walter Scott and still more of Charles d’Eyncourt’s friend Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote Harold the Last of the Saxon Kings (1848) during a stay there.  Charles was himself a bad poet.  He considered his nephew’s poetry ‘horrid rubbish’ and was disgusted when he was made Poet Laureate.

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    Keeping the tenants happy

    This lithograph shows the tenants being entertained in the hall of Bayons Manor in 1842.  The formula was found to work remarkably well; with the squire and his tenant farmers in the hall, the rest of the gentry in the dining room and the labourers in a marquee in the park, the Victorian countryside sailed out of agrarian discontent into the calm waters of mid-Victorian deference.

    
    
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    Bayons Manor in 1887

    
    

  • Mrs Charlotte Ruth Tennyson d'Eyncourt was the last resident of Bayons Manor, she had lived there for 40 years, in 1944 she moved into the Garden Cottage in the park.  She claimed in an interview that Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt built Bayons Manor because his brother in law, Matthew Russell, spent £80,000 a year on his Co. Durham castle.

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    Mock Drawbridge and Barbican Gatehouse
    
    

  • Bayons wasn't only a romantic interpretation of a medieval manor house; it was also a demonstration of the social status of the recently wealthy Tennyson family.   

  • There is a story related by members of the family that Charles in old age was being driven in a carriage through park looking back at Bayons Manor and saying "I must have been mad."

  
  Charles Tennyson-d'Eyncourt died 21 July 1861, one day after his 77th birthday.  Charles' eldest son, George Hildyard Tennyson D'Eyncourt, inherited Bayons Manor, he died 23 March 1871 and was succeeded by his brother Admiral Edwin C Tennyson d'Eyncourt CB RN.  Edwin C Tennyson-d'Eyncourt died 14 Jan 1903, he was succeeded by his nephew Edmund Charles Tennyson-d'Eyncourt, The last lord of the manor of Tealby.  
  
  
  There was a fundamental flaw in the construction of Bayons Manor, the local stone that was used in the main structure had deteriorated but the cappings were of Portland Stone which is much heavier and was crushing the local stone.  The cost of rectifying this flaw was estimated at £90,000 in the 1960s, about £1.7 million today (Bank of England figures).
  Bayons Manor was taken over by the army in the Second World War.
  The Tennyson-d'Eyncourts sold the manor house and park to local farmer, Reginald W Drakes in January 1944

  • In 1956 trees were growing out of curtain walls, the adjacent buildings had collapsed in a jumble of timbers, and the whole looked ready to return to nature. It was truly the enchanted palace of the Sleeping Beauty, ‘a fairy-tale invention’ wrote Mark Girouard. I wandered through room after room, Pugin papers fluttering off the walls, the hammerbeamed Great Hall a wreck, panelling ripped off and splintered, wonderful carved stone Puginesque chimney-pieces defaced. Geoffrey Houghton Brown’s antique dealer from Grantham had carted off a load of Gothic furniture some years before. Upstairs, birds fluttered and cawed at my presence. I thought then, and later wrote: ‘Bayons is now in total decay, and never looked better.’ In 1959 the situation had changed little since my first visit, the decay simply more picturesque,

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    Aerial view of Bayons Manor c.1960

  • The Bayons Manor Estate was sold to E A Sheardown Ltd of Marston, Lincolnshire for £162,000 in 1964.  The manor house had been subject to theft of lead, wood panelling, and damage since the Second World War.  The Manor had become a white elephant, World War One had changed peoples views of employment, women found they could do other jobs apart from domestic service, and the new ambitions brought higher wages.  Sixty rooms took a great deal of work, cleaning, lighting and maintaining fires in rooms.  Add to that the cost of maintaining the buildings and it's obvious impossible to keep going.  

  • The Ministry of Housing and Local Government in 1964 suggested to the Lindsey County Council that the buildings be left as a "Monumental Ruin", the cost of clearing rubble and making the buildings was deemed too expensive.

  • The demolition of Bayons Manor began in September 1964, The main tower which housed the principal drawing room and staterooms above was blown up.  In October the remaining parts of the building and walls were blown up.

  • Over 100 more posts @  https://itsaboutlincoln.blogspot.com/p/index-to-blogposts.html

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The Lincolnshire Pub the RAF Destroyed

The Sir Isaac Newton in the 1930s, possibly shortly before demolition

Heading north on the A46 from Newark it is almost impossible to believe there once was a public house a short distance south of the roundabout at Halfway Houses.

The pub began life at Halfway House Farm.  In 1856 the pub moved south to its final location.  It and the nearby Red Lion were well placed to serve and accommodate the weary traveller being almost exactly midway between Newark and Lincoln.

During the Lincoln Handicap it was usually granted an alcohol licence extension so the late night travelling punters could celebrate their wins and losers could get some consolation in an alcoholic drink.

Auctions and inquests were also held at the pub.

Its end came with the building of RAF Swinderby, one of the last stations completed under the RAF's expansion plans begun in the 1930s.  The pub was demolished in 1940 to make was for a dispersal point.  As a result, the tenants moved to the newly constructed Fosse Way public house on the A46 near Thorpe on the Hill, where they remained until their retirement in 1956.

1912 Ordnance Survey Map overlaid with Bing aerial view
© National Library of Scotland

Google Streetview of the location of the Sir Isaac Newton public house.  Too dangerous to stop to take a photo.

List of Licensees of the Sir Isaac Newton public House

Dates are not when they became licensee, but give a chronological indication

1841 Thomas Glazier (b1813 - d1845)
1855 Richard Glazier
1860,1861 William Bottomley
May 1870 Robert Merry becomes licensee
1872 Robert Croft
Dec 1874 W Smith becomes licensee
1896 George Makin, 1st March 1893 he was prosecuted for selling adulterated brandy.
1905 William Henry White
1909/1913 Richard Bones
1919 Mary Ann Bones
27 February 1920 the S.I.N sold by auction for £1,550. With 10 acres of Land to Mr Antill of Cleethorpe.  Was he acting as agent for James Hole?
1924 licencee W D Antill
Mar 1934 Application for extension for Lincoln Handicap, licencee A J Gardner 
Arthur Gardner was licensee of the Sir Isaac Newton and became licensee of The Fosse Way from 1940, he retired in 1956 after 43 years with James Hole's brewery.  

Lincoln Companies - Lincoln Gas, Light and Coke Co.

History

Gas was first used to light a house in 1792. By 1826 Stamford, Boston, Louth and Gainsborough all had opened gasworks. It wasn’t until 1828 Lincoln Gas, Light and Coke Co was founded at the junction of Carholme Road and Brayford Wharf North, by a group of Lincoln businessmen. The company had capital of £8,000 in shares and a mortgage of £1,800. Production of gas began in 1830.

First Year Accounts

First year accounts show a turnover of £1,515 and a loss of £330. Wages amounted to £436. 76 street lamps were lit in Lincoln.

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The First Private Consumer

The first private consumer was Cornelius Maples of the Bail. He had to give the following undertaking:

“Gas to be consumed in the shop from sunset until the hour of nine for six days in the week. 

“I will not wilfully wastefully consume gas, and as far as I can I will not suffer the flame to exceed the height of 3 ½ inches, and I will not commence burning until sunset at any time and will extinguish such light within a quarter of an hour from the time here agreed upon, except on Saturday night when the burning shall, if I require it, continue an hour extra.

“The charge per half-year to be £2 per light, payable in advance”

The Cost of Gas 1830 & 1853​In 1830 cost of gas was 13/6d (67.5p) per 1,000 cubic feet, by 1853 the cost had reduced to 5/- (25p) per 1,000 cubic feet. The amount of gas produced was 15,000,000 cubic feet.

Other Suppliers

It wasn't viable for the company to lay pipes outside of Lincoln, companies like Porter & Co of Lincoln, supplied complete gas plants to large country houses and some villages so that gas could be produced locally. Hartsholme Hall had its own gas plant, probably supplied by Porters.
Bracebridge Gasworks

Bracebridge Gas Works 1933

The use of gas had grown considerably over the previous 40 years and there was little room to enlarge the site at the Carholme Road plus it was becoming more and more difficult to get a sufficient coal to carbonise, due to the size of barges on the Fossdyke. Bracebridge was growing from a village into a suburb of Lincoln and the recently opened Lincoln to Honington railway gave it easy access to coalfields therefore it was decided that a new gasworks would be built at Bracebridge. The Bracebridge gasworks opened in 1876.

The owners of the gasworks had tried for several years to sell it. In 1885 agreement was made with Lincoln Corporation to buy the gasworks.


1885 Statistics
163,000,000 cubic feet produced
5,789 consumers
Main 35 miles long


The Cost of Gas in 1913 was 2/- (10p) per 1,000 cubic feet


Helping the War Effort
During the First World War a by-product recovery plant was installed to extract Toluol and Benzol for the high-explosive industries


Showroom
First showroom opened in 1919, later moving to Silver Street.


1933 Statistics
Wages £25,996, 102 miles of mains, 17,796 consumers, 1,884 street lamps, 12,242 gas cookers, 33,257 tons of coal carbonised, 14,014 gallons of oil used, 21,617 coke made, 412,275 gallons of tar, 324 tons of sulphate of ammonia, 560,000,000 cubic feet of gas produced an increase of about 25% over the previous 10 years


A New Gasholder
The rapid increase in consumers during the previous 40 years meant that the maximum storage for gas was only enough for 12 hours consumption.
Various types of gasholder were inspected and in 1930 a new holder of the three-lift spiral guided type was ordered to increase storage capacity. The capacity of the new holder was 1,500,000 cubic feet.

The End of Coal Gas
Natural Gas was found in 1910 in Germany, in the mid-1950s BP discovered natural gas fiels in several places in the UK, a field was discover near Gainsborough in the late 1950s. It wasn't until the 1970s that drilling for natural gas in the North Sea became economically viable due to the 1973 oil crisis. Since that time coal gas production has ceased in the UK.​

Banks and High Bridge

Joseph Banks, painted 1773 by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Sir Joseph Banks is well-known as a naturalist and botanist, the son of William Banks a wealthy Lincolnshire land owner. Joseph was also a farmer and business man and was instrumental in promoting the Horncastle Canal.

An Act of Parliament was passed in 1792 approving the building of the canal; the canal was completed by 1802 but was partially in use some years before this.

In order to make the canal viable it was essential that barges could navigate to and from the Trent: the only route was through Lincoln.  

Richard Ellison had acquired a 999 year lease for the Fossdyke Canal and river Witham in 1740, he dredged and improved the canal and the river east of Lincoln but was prevented by Lincoln Corporation from improving the navigation below High Bridge. Lincoln Corporation earned valuable revenue from porterage fees, barges were unloaded one side of the Bridge and reloaded the other.  The problem was so severe that in exceptionally dry summers it was possible to drive a coach across the bed of the river west of High Bridge.

High Bridge c 1836

The reluctance of the Corporation to act on the navigation under High Bridge forced Joseph Banks to look at alternative routes.  William Jessop, the noted canal builder (locally he built the Grantham and Sleaford canals), was commissioned to investigate a likely route.  Jessop put forward a scheme to route barges from the Fossdyke southwards on the upper Witham to Sincil Drain, in effect by-passing Lincoln. The Corporation realised this would be devastating for the economy of the city and, in 1795, the bed of the river beneath High Bridge was lowered at the expense of the proprietors of the Horncastle Canal. To celebrate the event boards were laid on the dry river bed and a dance took place under the bridge.

The building of the Great Northern Railway from Lincoln to Boston in 1848 dramatically increased the traffic on the Horncastle Canal but in 1854 a line was opened from Kirkstead to Horncastle: the canal closed in 1889.  

See also: Lincoln's High Bridge, Unique In This Country

Byards Leap - A Lincolnshire Legend

The legend of Bayard's Leap is locally well-known and is timeless, over the years many versions of the story have been retold; the difference is the hero of the tales, he is a knight, a soldier or a shepherd.  The story I have reproduced below the hero is a shepherd:

"On the old Roman road, called ' Ermine Street,' or ' The High Dyke,' . . . —and at a distance of some three miles from Ancaster, a Roman station . . . —and in the angle formed by the Sleaford and Newark road, which there crosses the Roman road — stands a solitary farm-house; its solitude only relieved by two cottages distant about one hundred yards, on the same side of the great highway, and, more recently erected, a small school building on its opposite side.

"Solitary in its position, its civil status also was formerly isolated, since it belongs to what was an extra-parochial farm, at the north-west corner of Rauceby, sometimes returned with the parish of Cranwell, sometimes with that of Leadenham ; but latterly (under the Act, 20 Victoria, cap. 16) constituted a separate parish in its own right.

"Close by the entrance gateway to this farm-house, on the roadside, is a block of stone, such as not uncommonly may be seen near old houses of the kind, forming two steps, from which a rider mounted his horse. This stone is inscribed with the words ' Byard's Leap.'

"Not less singular are the circumstances which are said to have given rise to the name "of ' Byard's (or ' Bayard's ') Leap,' or the Leap of the horse ' Bayard.' ... It [the Leap] is situated in the midst of what was once a lonely tract of high land, almost a waste, extending for many miles, and called Ancaster Heath. . . . The pedestrian who follows the footpath which runs along the Eastern side of the great Roman highway will observe, at a distance of some fifty yards northwards from the farmhouse of Byard's Leap, and near a pond by the roadside, four very large iron horseshoes, embedded in the soil. If he measures the distance of these shoes from the pond he will find that it is twenty paces or sixty feet, and sixty feet was the length of Byard's Leap. . . . Opposite the farm of ' Bayard's Leap ' is a plantation . . . consisting chiefly of trees of recent growth; but probably there formerly existed an older growth, whose pristine shades were more adapted to harbour weird spirits.  Within that wood, inhabiting, as it is said, a cave, but more likely a deserted quarry of the famed Ancaster stone of the district (such places of abode being still used), there lived the pest and terror of the countryside in the person of an old woman, known far and wide as, par excellence, the witch ... a dangerous character was the old beldame to anyone who ventured to thwart her or cross her path. ...

An alternative tale

"If the old woman was denied anything which she craved, of her better-to-do neighbours they were certain speedily to suffer for it. . . . Neither man nor beast is secure from her spells. ... At length, a child having been stillborn in a cottage from which the old woman had been turned away without receiving what she asked for, the indignation ripens, and a plan is proposed, by which it is hoped that the witch's power may be put an end to, while the act shall seem to be of her own originating. The shepherd of the farm has been on something like intimate terms with the old woman, ... as is surmised . . . having had illicit dealings with her, the result, however, being that closer acquaintance with her has in no wise enkindled affection: and although afraid to ' break ' with her ... he would yet greatly rejoice ... if he could terminate the unpleasant thraldom of her influence. . . . By a sort of lottery, the shepherd is selected for the enterprise. He is to lead out the farm horses to water in the evening, at the pond by the roadside, opposite to which is the hag's den.  He is to throw a stone into the water as the horses are drinking, and whichever horse then raises its head first, he is to mount. He is to be armed with a two-edged knife.  He is to call to the old woman to come out and mount behind him. He is to stab her when she has done so as if in self-defence on her springing up behind him; it is hoped that in the struggle she will be drowned; the not unfrequent end of witches. At the appointed time he proceeds to carry out these instructions. The horses are led to the water, the stone is thrown into the pond. The first horse that raises his head on hearing the splash is the blind Bayard; a providential circumstance, since it is likely that any horse which could see would shrink from contact with the witch. 

"He mounts the horse Bayard.  He calls out to the old woman, asking her to come and ride behind him. Her reply (which has been preserved) is, ' Wait till I've buckled my shoes and suckled the cubs, and I'll be with you.' He waits, and in due time she comes forth. At his bidding, she mounts behind him.  He at once plunges his knife into her breast. The old hag, in her agony, clutches at the horse's back with the long sharp nails of her fingers. The horse in alarm makes one wild, sudden bound, which lands him full sixty feet from the spot. The witch falls back into the pond and is drowned, so her career is ended.

"Tradition says that the horse made a second bound, equal in length to the first, and which brought him to the corner of the cottages which stand further on by the side of the road ; but only the first is marked by the four huge horse-shoes, which are carefully preserved, in situ, as described above, as standing evidence and memorial of ' Bayard's Leap.' . . . It should here be stated that considerable variations from the foregoing version of the legend exist, as is usually the case with such narratives, in the form of oral tradition still floating in the neighbourhood. For instance, the personality of the hero himself varies from that of a knight-errant of the age of chivalry to that of an ordinary cavalry soldier of a more recent period. . ."

"The Legend of Byard's Leap" - Rev J Conway Walter

(Bayard is Old English meaning horse)

For many years the leap and landing points were marked by holes in the ground, these holes were probably marked parish boundaries and would be re-established at the annual "beating of the bounds".  

In the mid-19th century the then Colonel Reeve of Leadenham had three sets of horseshoes made by Bradley and Howitt of Newark.  The horseshoes were set in concrete and set in the legendary positions.

In the early 1960s the A17, a trunk road from King's Lynn to the A1, was straightened at Byard's Leap and the third set of horseshoes was in the direct route of the road.  This set of horseshoes was put into storage at Wilsford, several years later they were returned and placed near to Byard's Leap Cottages on the north side of the A17.  

Map showing the re-alignment of the A17

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland