Creeton

Creeton village from the south west

Some of the most beautiful of England's country churches are tucked away in remote locations and therefore have few callers but a detour to see them can be rewarding for the discerning. One such building is the 13th century village church at Creeton, which is one of the hidden beauties of Lincolnshire.

This is a hamlet straight out of the picture-postcard books and its church and a few houses can be seen clinging to the hillside just off the B1176, five miles west of Bourne. Creeton was the home of Creata, chief of the Saxons, who defended an early Saxon church against the Danes. In the Domesday Book, Godefrid de Cambrai figures as Lord of Creeton in 1085. King John halted here in 1216 on his journey from Sleaford to Stamford. In olden times, Creeton was an important place, as is proved by the many remains of buildings in the surrounding fields. 

The village church, built on a rock

St Peter's Church was built on a rock and dates from the early 13th century but is now well off the beaten track, small and isolated at the end of a winding country lane and the visitor needs to take care not to miss it.

The road crosses the River Glen here and it then requires an eagle eye to spot the rough byway that climbs steeply up the hillside and ends in a farmyard close to the stone church that can occasionally be glimpsed through the trees on the way up. But it is well worth a visit if only to see its magnificent broach spire, octagonal in shape but sitting comfortably on the square tower with sloping, triangular splays of masonry to buttress each corner while its appearance is enhanced by narrow window openings known as lucarnes set in the alternate faces of the spire. 

The church was once bigger for the pillars and arches of a north arcade were found in the wall during restoration while the south transept, built probably as a chantry, has an ancient piscina. The church interior also has a few delights for the traveller including two curiosities, a little wooden model of the church itself and a "Judas" bible of 1611 in which the printer made the strange mistake of putting Judas instead of Jesus in the 36th verse of the 26th chapter of St Matthew, the story of Our Lord with the disciples in Gethsemane: "Then cometh Judas with them". It has been corrected to Jesus but two chapters missing from the old bible were replaced by pages from a still earlier edition. 

In the sloping churchyard there are relics from Saxon England, the broken shafts of two crosses with scroll and interlacing patterns, each several feet high and originating from an unknown date before the Norman Conquest. They appear to have been used for the lintel of a doorway and a third piece is built into the wall near the south door. The churchyard also contains several ornate tombstones, richly carved in memory of distinguished couples who lived hereabouts in the 18th century. The font has five crosses cut into the rim and still retains part of the original iron to which the cover was locked to prevent witches from using the holy water for their black magic.

Other links with a remote past are several coffin-shaped stones with raised crosses, believed to mark the resting places of monks from the vanished Cistercian Abbey of Vaudey in the heart of the neighbouring Grimsthorpe Park. Vaudey, a contraction of Vallis Dei, the Valley of God, was a Cistercian Abbey founded by Fat William, Earl of Albermarle, in 1147 for monks from Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire.

Adam of Fountains, who also built Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire and Kirkstead Abbey in Lincolnshire, chose the site near the lake in Grimsthorpe Park in preference to Castle Bytham, and built a beautiful abbey, richly endowed by Gilbert de Gant who was also responsible for the original 12th century castle at Grimsthorpe and was buried in Vaudey Abbey in 1162.

The monks also founded Vaudey College in Stamford. Most of the abbey was pulled down in the 16th century by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, during the dissolution of the monasteries and the materials used in the building of Grimsthorpe Castle on the site of the earlier one, so that he could entertain Henry VIII who had granted the manor to the duchess' father, the 9th Lord Willoughby. 

The rectory at Creeton, now a private home, but here you can
collect the key of the church

The list of rectors at Creeton starts in 1229 and the last parsonage survives. Edmund Knox was born here in 1881 and seven years later, his brother Ronald Arbuthnot Cox, who was to become a Roman Catholic and chaplain at Oxford. Their father was Rector of Creeton and Edmund became a well known writer but it was not generally recognised that the brilliant, humourous works under the nom de plume of Evoe, came from the pen of this Lincolnshire born genius who was from 1932 editor of Punch magazine.

The rectory stands next to the church, an imposing stone building hidden behind trees but no longer the home of the incumbent of this living and now sold and modernised as a family home. The church is kept locked for despite its isolated location, vandalism is still a problem, but the key can be collected from the Old Rectory as it is now known and so its association with the church continues.