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TATTERSHALL TOWER.

As the traveller passes along the railway through the Fen country between Boston and the good city of Lincoln, he suddenly comes upon a magnificent tower of red brick, the sight of which is sure to strike his eye. It is, perhaps, the finest specimen of ancient brickwork in the kingdom, with the exception of Layer Marney Tower, in Essex; and its height and its colour, a dark red, render it a most picturesque addition to the level country over which St. Guthlac and St. Catherine were once thought to preside. The name, too, Tattershall Tower,' is one which somehow or other arrests the attention of a Londoner, whose thoughts instinctively turn, as he hears it, to the Tattersall's,' late of Grosvenor Place and now of Knightsbridge Road. No wonder, therefore, that many passengers by the Great Northern Railway stop for an hour or two to look at the old castle, as it stands hard by the line of railway, and at no very

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'It may be of interest to our readers to know that the name is spelt by Dugdale, in his Monasticon, in three various ways, 'Tateshall,' 'Totteshall,' and 'Tattershall.'

great distance from a station. Tattershall is said to have been the Durobrivis of the Romans, who had a military station there, as is proved by the remains of two military stations still to be seen in Tattershall Park.

The local histories tell us that the manor of Tattershall was one of those possessions which William the Conqueror, when he parcelled out the broad acres of Lincolnshire among his followers, bestowed on Eudo, a knight who had crossed the sea with him as a military adventurer, and that the descendants of the same knight lost no time in erecting a castle upon it. The Fitz-Eudos were barons of Parliament, and gradually came to be called Lords of Tattershall, from their lands. We read that Robert Fitz-Eudo, by presenting King John with a well-trained goshawk, a valuable bird in those days, obtained a charter whereby the inhabitants of Tattershall were empowered to hold a market weekly on Fridays; and that his son, Hugh Fitz-Eudo,' in the reign of Edward III., obtained royal leave and licence to fortify the place by the erection of a castle.

But, although this fact is attested by deeds and antiquarian researches, no trace of the old Norman work can be found; and the noble structure which rises so proudly before our eyes cannot be ascribed to an earlier era than the reign of Henry VI., when

This person, in 1139, founded an abbey for Cistercian monks in the neighbouring village of Kirkstead, of which some scanty ruins still remain.

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Sir Ralph Cromwell, Treasurer of the Exchequer, erected it as a fortress1 about the year 1430 or 1440. Some forty or fifty years later, in 1485, we find that Henry VII. granted the 'castle and manor of Tattershill' to Margaret, Countess of Richmond, and entailed them in the following year on the Duke of Richmond, but as his Grace died without issue, like a genuine Tudor sovereign, Henry VIII. appears to have taken the property into his own hands, and to have bestowed it on the Duke of Suffolk in 1520, a grant which was subsequently confirmed by Edward VI. in 1547. About four years later, the estate passed in fee simple by a gift from the same king to Edward, Lord Clinton, afterwards Earl of Lincoln, and it appears that the castle remained in the hands of this family for a century and a half at least, as Edward and Francis Clinton both died at Tattershall about the year 1693. The line of the Clintons ending in an heiress, the estate was severed from the title, and now belongs to Earl Fortescue, who is lord of the manor and patron of the living of Tattershall. It ought to be mentioned that the tower suffered considerably in the civil wars, during which, it is almost needless to add, the Clintons held strongly to

1 William of Worcester states that the Lord Treasurer Cromwell spent in building the principal and other towers of this castle above 4,000 marks; that his household there consisted of one hundred persons; that his suite, when he rode to London, commonly consisted of one hundred and twenty horsemen, and that his annual expenditure was about 5,000l.-Itinerarium, p. 162.

the side of royalty and loyalty. The principal entrance to the castle, with its portcullis and towers, was standing in 1726; it stood at the north-east corner of the enclosure.

Tattershall Tower is thus described by the late John Britton in his 'Beauties of Lincolnshire' :

'The castle stands on a level moor, and is surrounded by two great fosses, the outer one formed of earth, and the inner one faced with brick, ten feet deep. This is occasionally filled with water from the river. It was intended originally as a place of defence, and was progressively raised to a great height and extent. In the civil wars it was, however, dilapidated. Till very lately, the principal gateway was remaining; the part at present left standing is a square tower of brick, flanked by four octangular embattled turrets, which are crowned with spires, covered with lead. It is above one hundred feet in height, and divided into four stories. The main walls were carried to the top of the fourth story, where a capacious machicolation enclosed the tower, on which there is a parapet wall of great thickness, with arches. This was to protect the persons employed over the machicolations. Upon these arches is a second platform and parapet, containing embrasures; above which the spired turrets rise to a considerable height. The tower is constructed upon ponderous groined arches, which support the ground floor. In this there is a large open fireplace, adorned

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with sculptured foliage and emblematic designs; such as the treasury bags and shield of the Cromwell arms, with the family motto. Similar ornaments are at Colyweston Hall, in Northamptonshire, which was a house begun by the Treasurer, and afterwards finished by Margaret, Countess of Richmond. On the second floor is another fireplace, decorated in a similar manner; and over these was a third story, with a flat roof. In the east wall are some narrow galleries, curiously arched, through which there were communications from the grand stairs in the south-east turret, to the principal apartments.'

Tattershall is one of those castellated structures which combine the features of the newer and more domestic style of the fifteenth century with some of the military features of earlier castles. The houses of the barons of the Edwardian period were castles, not homes in any sense of the term; and as their owners spent their lives in a constant alternation of attacks on their neighbours' and defence of their own, on the good old rule,

That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can,

we find that their houses exhibited more of wall and battlement, tower and turret, than any of those lighter features which speak of social comforts, splendour, or refinement. The age of Henry VI. was an age in which this state of things was only gradually passing