The Lost Houses of Lincoln - Monk's Tower

Monk's Tower was designed by the Scottish country house architect William Burn, he was a pioneer of the Scottish Baronial style. The house was built before 1868 for F S J Foljambe, Liberal MP for Retford and Master of the Burton Hunt, at a cost of £6,000. He lived here for a short time while some alterations were being made at Osberton Hall in Nottinghamshire.

Foljambe relinquished his position of Mastership of the Burton Hunt and the house was auctioned, the following is a description of the house from the auction catalogue:

The residence is stone-built and of a striking and pleasing elevation; it stands on the boundary of Lincoln, within a mile of the Cathedral, upon the highest part of the city, and thus commands extensive views of the surrounding country.

The accommodation afforded comprises on the 

• GROUND FLOOR, Large Drawing-room, Dining-room (with a lift from the basement).
• FIRST FLOOR, Four spacious Bedrooms and Dressing rooms and two closets.
• SECOND FLOOR, Four bedrooms and one Dressing room.
• THE TOWER, Two Bedrooms and One Boxroom.
• The principal stairs are of stone, and there are also backstairs.  Gas and Water are laid on and the house throughout is heated with hot water.
• In the BASEMENT is every requisite accommodation, including Kitchens, Pantry, Larder, two Storerooms, Servants' Hall, Still-room, Butler's room, Housekeeper's room, and above a portion of these, ample and very excellent accommodation for servants.

The auction took place on the 13th October 1881, the highest bid was £1,200 from Theodore Trotter, the house cost £6,000 to build and was withdrawn from the auction.  Trotter later negotiated a price to buy the house.

Theodore Trotter moved to the Dell on Wragby Road 1885 and leased the house to Mr R E Wemyss, Master of the Burton Hunt, and later to Colonel Rudge. Colonel Rudge left Lincoln in 1895.

Trotter died in 1897 and Monk's Tower was offered for sale at auction, only reaching £`1,000 and was withdrawn from sale. The house was eventually sold in 1900 to Henry Elsey, a Lincoln corn merchant.

Henry Elsey was an owner of racehorses and had four stables built in 1901. Elsey moved to Eastcliffe House in about 1902.

The next tenant was Henry Charles Hynman Allanby, fomerly Major of the 3rd battalion Seaforth Highlanders. Allanby had two houses built for his gardener and his chauffeur in the grounds of the house in 1903 and a motor house (garage) in 1908.

Monk's Tower was offered for auction on 28th May 1920, unfortunately no bids were received. Lord Charles Bentinck was resident at Monk's Tower by 1921.

The house was empty for many years, and, like so many other grand houses, there were no buyers for the house and it was demolished in 1935. The stone was sent to the RAF Waddington and Scampton airfields for road building.

The Monk's Tower grounds were offered for sale by auction but was unsold, in August 1937 Lincoln Corporation bought the land for the building of initially 122 houses at what became Monk's Tower Estate (later just Tower Estate).

Other Lincoln Houses

The Lost Houses of Lincoln  - Boultham Hall
The Lost Houses of Lincoln  - Hartsholme Hall
The Lost Houses of Lincoln  - Eastgate House
The Lost Houses of Lincoln  - Monk's Manor

The Lost Houses of Lincoln  - Cold Bath House

The Lost Houses of Lincoln  - Sibthorp House

The Lost Houses of Lincoln - Eastcliffe House

The Old House on Corporation Street

The Crooked House and the Harlequin

Grand House Built on the Sale of Drugs

Marwood and His Long Drop

Until 1815 the place of execution in Lincoln was at the corner of Burton Road and Westgate where the convenience store and adjoining cottages now stand, known as Hangman’s Ditch.

Mary Johnson murdered her husband and, as was normal practice at that time, she was burned at the stake, before her burning in April 1747 she was garroted by the executioner.  Another woman received the same punishment in 1722,

In those days prisoners sentenced to be hanged were often executed in batches, often for very minor offences.  On 18th March 1785, nine prisoners were hanged at one time, three for highway robbery, two for sheep-stealing, two for cattle stealing, one for horse stealing and one for housebreaking.  It was reported that a crowd of 20,000 watched the executions.

The last person hanged on the old gallows was William Ward, for shop breaking at Mareham, on 1st April 1814.

From 1815 to the passing of the Act abolishing public executions in 1868, the tower in the northeast corner of the castle, known as Cobb Hall, was the place where those sentenced to death were hanged.  The gallows was erected on the lead flat roof at the top of the tower.

The Strugglers Inn

Hanging was once a crude affair, those being hanged died of strangulation which meant that they took a long time to die, they struggled on the gallows, hence the name of the inn at the north-west corner of the castle:  The Strugglers.

The Strugglers is said to be haunted by a lurcher that belonged to William Clark who was executed on 26th March 1877 for the murder of Henry Walker, a gamekeeper.

William Marwood had developed a method of hanging called the “long drop”.  Using the prisoner's height and weight he calculated the length of rope required to instantly break the prisoner's neck at the end of the drop and cause instant death.

William Marwood was born at Goulceby in 1820, about six miles from Horncastle, and lived for some years in Old Bolingbroke, moving to Horncastle about 1860; where he was a shoemaker in Church Street.

Marwood began his career as a hangman assisting his predecessor, William Calcraft, succeeding him in 1872; continuing the duties until his death on 4th September 1883.

Marwood was appointed the official Crown Executioner in 1874 and carried out 178 executions in his 9-year career, His first official act was to hang a man named William Francis Horry, at Lincoln, who murdered his wife at Boston, in 1872; his last was to hang a man, James Burton, at Durham, who murdered his young wife, aged only 18, from jealousy. On this occasion, the man fainted on the scaffold and got entangled with the rope under his arm, and Marwood had to lift him in his arms to get him disentangled, and then drop the unconscious man down - a painful scene.

He hanged the "Irish Invincibles" at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin between 14th May and 9th June 1883, five Irish nationalists who murdered Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Henry Burke, the Permanent Under-Secretary for Ireland, with surgical knives in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

Marwood’s wife was unaware of her husband’s official occupation, he would tell her that he had to go away to settle some legal question. 

Locations of Hangings in Lincoln:

The image on the left shows the gallows location 1784, hangings were moved to Cobb Hall in 1815.  From 1868 hanging took place in the county prison in the castle.  Only crimes committed in the county were dealt with in Lincoln, the city gallows was at the top of Canwick Road (Hill)

Drawing by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm.