number of skulls and other remains, which popular tradition assigns to Cromwell's Ironsides; though to all appearance they are very much older, going back, perhaps, to the days of the Danish incursions.

The chancel is Early English, with three Decorated windows on the north side. The window at the east end, and also those in the north aisle, are domestic. There are two piscinas in the south wall, the eastern somewhat low, and dating from a time when the level of the church must have been lower; the other made for the present level, but by an unskilled-probably village-mason.

The south porch is spacious, and in one corner is a receptacle for holy water, of Perpendicular workmanship.

To sum up we have the west wall running up to the small bell-gable, and perhaps one pillar remaining of the Norman church; the nave, arcades, and aisles are Early English: the pillars that divide the north and south aisles of three bays each from the nave being of that date; while the church seems to have again been nearly rebuilt in the early part of the succeeding century, when the middle Pointed style of architecture prevailed; the south porch, the caps of the pillars in the nave, and the chamfered arches that spring from them, being of that date. The cornice under the parapet is encircled with the dog-tooth ornament, and the clerestory windows below consist of two lights each under square-headed hoodmoulds. The chantry, dating from the middle to the end of the fourteenth century, is, as we have seen, a beautiful example of pure, though late, Decorated work.

Thus the entire building, as it at present exists, is, as I before remarked, an epitome of the history of architecture during three centuries, and a memorial to unfinished plans and frustrated hopes.

To come now to the " Castle," or manor-house of the Claypoles. We have already narrated how this came into possession of the family. It was bought by them from a family of the name of Browne, but I am a little doubtful whether it was the original manor of Northborough, whose history I have given, as some authorities maintain that there were two manors, one granted by Henry VIII to the dean and chapter of Peter

borough, the other to Earl Fitzwilliam, but which was which they do not state.

The "Castle" is coeval with the chantry,' and exhibits the same style, applied to domestic architecture (fig. 4). It stands at the entrance to the village, on the road from Glinton. There is a noble gate-house, with an outer gateway of very large span, and within two smaller ones: one for carriages, the other for pedestrians. Originally there must have been three massive gates, to

Fig. 4. Northborough Castle: Outer Gateway.

be opened before an entrance could be obtained into the courtyard. The windows in this gate-house are Perpendicular, and it is pierced with numerous round openings which tradition asserts were for defensive purposes, though they are probably later, and merely for ventilation. The house is a fine old structure of various dates.

Long

Having been "built by Henry de la Mare in 1340."-Canon Moore, of Spalding, or Bishop Trollope, in Report of Associated Architectural Societies, 1882. Williamson, Lincoln.

windows of wrought stone face the courtyard, and there is one at the east end, almost filled up, where probably the chapel stood. In the passage entrance are three doorways (fig. 5), the central one more imposing than the rest, having heads of the Decorated period, with

hood-mouldings crocketed, and with finials. a farmhouse.1

It is now

1 I transcribe the following interesting account of the Castle from a Paper by Mr. J. H. Parker, in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1862: "Norborough House, although sadly mutilated and altered, still contains some of the richest Decorated work of the time of Edward III that we have anywhere remaining in a domestic building. The gatehouse has lost the upper part, but the arches remain, and still form