ALL FLATS, FOGS AND FENS'

In the latest in our series on English counties, Hugh Massingberd dispels the myths

about Lincolnshire

AH, Lincolnshire,' King George III is sup- posed to have exclaimed on being told of a pillar erected in honour of his Jubilee at Dunston, near Lincoln, 'Lincolnshire, all flats, fogs and fens!' In the hope of keep- ing people out of this still largely undiscov- ered county it is tempting to continue in this negative vein, to parade all the famil- iar anti-`Yellowbelly' prejudices.

Dear me, no, you don't want to bother with Lincs. What could be more dreary? Makes Norfolk look like the Alps, what? Just mile after mile of fen and marsh, dykes, plough, spud fields, RAF stations and caravans heading for `Skeggy' or Mablethorpe, or some such godforsaken dump. Bitterly cold, too — that biting east wind, you know — and absolutely nowhere to eat. Of course, you can easily miss it it's right out on a limb, completely cut off from civilisation, really more like Holland than England. Oh, no, Lincolnshire is terri- bly dim. Didn't P.G. Wodehouse place the newt-fancying squire Gussie Fink-Nottle 'in a remote Lincolnshire village, covered with moss'? A very minor county, my dear . . .

Actually, Lincolnshire is the biggest county in England after Yorkshire. It reg- istered nearly 1.8 million acres before the odious 'Heathco' boundary changes of the 1970s disturbed the historic administrative divisions of the county — the Parts of Hol- land, the Parts of Kesteven and the Parts of Lindsey — by arbitrarily carving off North Lindsey to create the absurdity of `South Humberside'. Happily, the much- maligned new Local Government Commis- sion has recommended that this footling `new county' be scrapped and replaced by the 'unitary authorities' of North-East Lincolnshire' (basically the great fishing port of Grimsby and the resort of Cleethorpes) and 'North Lincolnshire' (Scunthorpe and the Isle of Axholme).

For all its size, Lincolnshire is also undoubtedly — as the Revd Henry Thorold and the late Jack Yates claimed in their splendid Shell Guide — the 'least appreciated' county in England. And the Yellowbellies prefer to keep it that way. Thorold — surely the best exemplar in England of that once familiar type, the scholarly antiquarian bachelor clergyman — underlines this point in his entry on Scopwick in his indispensable, inspira- tional Lincolnshire Churches Revisited (a recently revised edition of the old Shell Guide, published by Michael Russell at £14.95): 'A pretty village, with a stream running through: were this the Cotswolds, tourists would come flocking — but this is Lincolnshire, dull, flat, boring Lin- colnshire, so no one comes, thank God.'

Alas, the truth must be told: Lin- colnshire is not all flats and fens. To cite the most obvious examples, the giant cathedral of Lincoln is atop a very steep hill (being visible over almost half the county) and the hilly, rolling landscape of the Lincolnshire Wolds has been immor- talised by Tennyson (`Calm and deep peace on this high wold . . '). While not nearly as high as the Yorkshire Wolds, they were steep enough to afford Dr John- son the satisfaction of a good roll down the Sheep Walk at Langton when he was stay- ing with my ancestor Bennet Langton. The Wolds, wonderfully underpopulated and innocent of motor-cars even on a Bank Holiday, are officially designated an 'area of outstanding natural beauty'. Yet marsh and fen landscapes also have their own beauty. The vast expanses of sky yield unri- valled cloudscapes (Lincolnshire has been called 'the county of sunsets') and, at night, awesome displays of stars.

The great joy of Lincolnshire is that the Industrial Revolution passed it by. This is still the land of the farmer and, to a lesser extent, the small squire (my kinsman Adri- an Massingberd-Mundy of South Ormsby, who is celebrated for taking the Jockey Club to court, is still, quite unselfconscious- ly, addressed by his tenantry as 'Squire). It is, though, a significant measure of Lin- colnshire's extraordinary emptiness that so large and rural a county can only muster barely 30 traditional surviving squires (compared to its neighbours, Yorkshire and Norfolk, with well over 100 each). This remarkably low figure is explained by the failure of traditional estates to develop in the fens and marshes.

By far the largest estate is the great land- holding (some 28,000 acres) of the Earls of Yarborough in the north-east, a well-wood- ed domain that retains an engagingly feu- dal air — tenants are still obliged to walk a Brocklesby foxhound puppy, and one Lord Yarborough used to preface his Christmas reading from the second chapter of St Luke's Gospel, in which the shepherds leave their flocks to go and see the Babe at Bethlehem, by pronouncing, 'I'd just like to say before reading this lesson that if they'd been my shepherds I'd have sacked 'em.'

If the Brocklesby estate seems so large as to be a world apart, so, too, does Lin- colnshire itself. There is an undeniable feeling of remoteness; the county is, quite simply, cut off — by the Humber to the north, the Wash to the south, the sea to the east and the Great North Road to the west. It is not 'on the way' to anywhere, Although, back in the early 1960s, I used to enjoy catching a train for London at Burgh-le-Marsh station (next to the Mass- ingberd Arms) and addressing the BR breakfast grill as Boston Stump — surely one of the great landscape features of Europe — hove into view, I suppose we should be grateful to Dr Beeching for axing most of the East Lincs line and thereby preserving the county's air of `goneness'. There is a real fear, though, that a frightful `Eastern° motorway en route for the Hum- ber Bridge — that magnificent folly of the Walter Mitty/Wilson era, the whole point of which was that it joined nothing to nowhere — might yet destroy Lin- colnshire's singularly sleepy quality.

A journey through Lincolnshire is to travel back through time, to rediscover sound, no-nonsense values long abandoned elsewhere. The ubiquitous red and gold pub signs proclaiming `Batemans Good Honest Ales' speak volumes about the Lin- colnshire character. Do not, on any account, mistake the apparent sleepiness for doziness; there is none cannier, shrewder or tougher than the Lincolnshire farmer (or indeed poacher), his feet firmly on the ground. Margaret Roberts (later Thatcher) was a by no means atypical Lin- colnshire lass. The blunt, dour manner and pawky humour tempt one to compare the Yellowbelly to the Yorkshire Tyke, yet there is none of that silly self-satisfied bragging you find north of the Humber. Lincolnshire folk are content to be what they are and they would prefer to be left alone to get on with it.

In view of the fact that this counties series has cravenly allocated separate arti- cles for the Ridings of Yorkshire, I now rather regret not pushing harder for the three divisions of Lincolnshire to be simi- larly treated. For the Parts of Holland, the Parts of Kesteven and the Parts of Lindsey each form distinct entities, with their own individual characters. Holland, much the smallest, conforms to the popular view of Lines with its preponderance of marsh and fen yet contains superb churches like Sut- terton and Algarkirk (where my first recorded ancestor, Lambert Massingberd, was up before the beak for a spot of GBH in the 13th century). Kesteven, in the south-west, has a 'Shires' feel and boasts some of the best country houses (including Belton and the amazing early-19th-century extravaganza of Harlaxton) and the pretti- est stone villages, such as Fulbeck. Lindsey is by far the biggest division and occupies more than half the total acreage of the county.

My ideal day in Lincolnshire would begin with a breakfast of pure pork Lin- colnshire sausages at the George in Stam- ford, an excellently preserved stone town which is now becoming a little too popular thanks to BBC Television's film of Middle- march. Sadly, Lines cannot claim the neighbouring fairy-tale palace of Burghley, but the next best thing is to be found at Grimsthorpe near Bourne, with its glori- ous facade by Vanbrugh. Then on to Grantham, with its soaring spire and the famous corner shop; Marston, atmospher- ic seat of Henry Thorold; Belton, serenely late-Stuart; the underrated splendours of RAF College, Cranwell; the mighty brick keep of Tattershall Castle; and the exquisite little St Leonard's Chapel at Kirkstead, before pausing to admire one of the county's curious surprises — Wood- hall Spa, 'that most unexpected Bournemouth-like settlement in the mid- dle of Lincolnshire', as Sir John Betjeman described it. The half-timbered hotels, like the Petwood, have a potent period charm and where better to see a film than the delicious Kinema in the Woods, converted from a cricket pavilion in the Twenties?

After a picnic lunch (pork pie, haslet, stuffed chine?) in the Wolds, on to explore Tennyson Country — as, happily, it is yet to be officially billed. I would take in Somersby, with its fascinating Vanbrughian mini-castle; Harrington, into the garden of which Maud was invited so urgently to come; Langton, with its 18th-century squires' church reminiscent of a college chapel; and, of course, Gunby, Tennyson's `haunt of ancient peace', which my family gave to the National Trust during the sec- ond world war.

By this stage of the afternoon I would be ready for high tea at the estimable `Mr Chips' (haddock, mushy peas and all the trimmings) in Louth, 'the Queen of the Wolds' and the most attractive Georgian brick market town in England, with a spire to die for. This perfect day would be rounded off with a jolly evening meeting over the sticks at Market Rasen races and then a walk round the floodlit Lincoln Cathedral.

In my Will I have expressed a wish to be buried in Lincolnshire; thinking about it now, in a Bayswater flatlet, makes me won- der why I don't live there first.

By way of a postscript — as I happened to write the above before I fell ill at the beginning of the year — I am pleased to add that, Deo volente, I shall be moving up to Lincolnshire next month.

Hugh Massingberd writes for the Daily Telegraph.