Horbling

Horbling is just half a mile north of Billingborough on the B1177. The cross-shaped church of St Andrew's was built by the monks of Sempringham Abbey and has a low central tower with pointed arches and a pinnacled top that dates back to the 15th century. The work of the Normans is seen in the remains of the arcading on the west front and also in the chancel with its two narrow Norman windows on each side.

The church has given trouble ever since it was built seven centuries ago because of poor foundations and iron bars help to support it and it bears the marks of partial rebuilding in mediaeval days. The font has the Instruments of the Passion carved on its bowl and the north transept has a mediaeval recess with a shield supported by an armoured knight and a lady with butterfly headdress who are believed to be the parents of Thomas de la Laund who was killed in the Battle of Loosecoat Field near Stamford in 1470.

There are surprises around every corner and an old cottage down every street and a walk down one of them, Spring Lane, will lead you to the Plough Inn, an ancient hostelry and the only one in Britain to be owned by the parish council. The profits subsidise the local rates and so the more they drink the less they pay. There was a time during the last century when it was mooted that the inn be sold but such was the strength of feeling in the village that it was decided instead to let it as a free house on a 21-year lease. For the previous 21 years, the rent paid by the brewery had been under £200 a year and the council decided that by investing the sale money, they could pass on a greater rate reduction rather then letting it as before and good housekeeping therefore prevailed. 

The Plough is very much a local community centre with an active charity fund that raises money for good causes. The building is well over 200 years old and has the stabling accommodation associated with old coaching inns and although it has been owned by the village throughout living memory, parish records do not reveal how this came about. 

It could well be that the inn is as old as the other village attraction nearby, the overflowing springs fed by underground aquifers into a well that dates from 1711 when Anthony Ashley, a stone cutter from Stamford, was paid £9 15s. 5d. by the Constables of Horbling to construct and maintain it for 20 years. In 1998, the cost of such work had risen considerably because the parish council paid contractors £5,600 to carry out maintenance work when much of the main stonework was replaced, the money being raised from parish funds and grants. 

This is an ever-flowing water supply that has filled the daily needs of villagers until the arrival of a public water supply and it still flows into three stone troughs from a central cistern in Spring Lane. The way the water flows endlessly from an apparently motionless pool has always had some mystical appeal to human nature and coins have often been thrown into the cistern as a good luck gesture while earlier this century it was also common practice for people to place photographs in the water, such is the gullibility of human nature. 

Horbling Hall is one of the grandest properties in the village, built in 1860 of grey stone with a dry stone wall and numerous trees around the front to protect its privacy and now Grade II listed. Across the road on the side of a building owned by the Crown Commissioners is one of the locality's oddities, the village clock. The building is now the Old Post Office Farm but was for many years, as the name suggests, the village post office and when it closed over forty years ago the clock survived and has been built into the side wall as a community facility. It is a local timepiece, made by Goodacre of Billingborough, and although the original mechanism has been lost, an electrical movement has been installed and in 1991 the parish council agreed to finance its upkeep with a regular supply of batteries to ensure that anyone who passes by will always know the correct time.

Horbling is an attractive village with many charming cottages, the oldest being the Old Yeoman House in Church Lane.

THE RECTORS OF HORBLING

Among the most influential people in our lives apart from our parents is usually a particular teacher or perhaps the local priest but imagine the effect if they were one and the same person. This was the case at Horbling during the mid-19th century when the Reverend Plumpton Stravenson Wilson became rector. He was a most colourful character and made quite an impact on the village when he was appointed to the living in 1876, not least because of his sermons that were full of spontaneity, fire and energy and delivered from the old three-decker pulpit in St Andrew's Church.
Mr Wilson was a fine scholar who coached not only his own children but several outsiders as well and they had cause to remember him because early in life he had lost his right hand which had been replaced with a steel hook that became the terror of many a forgetful pupil because he used it to great effect in hauling them out of their seat for a reprimand. The rector was also the grandfather of Michael Ramsey who rose to become Archbishop of Canterbury from 1961-74 and whose baptism in 1904 is recorded in the church register.
Horbling seems to have a history of curious clergymen because earlier, in the 17th century, the incumbent was the Reverend Jonathan Cateline who, on his appointment in 1663, took it upon himself to transcribe the parish registers that had been dutifully preserved by previous rectors. He was both a scholar and a poet and he has left on the flyleaf of Volume I a long ode written in Latin lamenting the Great Fire of London that destroyed 400 acres within the city walls in 1666, including 13,200 houses and 87 churches, although miraculously only nine lives were lost.
The village can also claim a connection through its clergymen with the famous Lincolnshire-born explorer Matthew Flinders, the naval officer and hydrographer (1774-1814) who circumnavigated Australia where the Flinders River in Queensland and the Flinders Ranges in South Australia are named after him. During the late 18th century, the church vestry was used as a schoolroom and it was here that Flinders came to be tutored in mathematics by the Reverend John Shinglar, who was then curate. His instruction in this subject was so good that after two years, Flinders was able to take up the study of navigation on his own although he always remembered his old teacher.
Mr Shinglar, who eventually became rector, farmed his own glebe land and frequently appeared in church straight from the fields and one elderly parishioner recalled in her memoirs: "Often, he had no time to change even his boots between attending one flock and ministering to another." The rector's preoccupation with sheep was a reflection of the times because wool was of paramount importance and the law which decreed that people should only be buried in garments made from this material was faithfully observed. Many burial entries of the period end with the words "all in woollen" and one death certificate dated 1712 states: "Martha Locton maketh oath that Joseph Baldwin of Horbling was not put in, wrapt or wound in any shirt, shift, sheet or shroud made or mingled with any hemp, flax, silk, hair, gold and silver or any other material than what is made of sheep's wool only."
Earlier still, from 1596 to 1621, the Reverend Symon Bradstreete was rector and he belonged to a Puritanical group characterised by a dislike of ceremonial and a love of long sermons. Mr Bradstreete's son must have shared his father's Puritan beliefs because he was fired by an admiration for the Pilgrim Fathers and sailed for the New World in 1630 where he became Governor of Massachusetts in 1679. The rector was a man of strong character but came in for a lot of criticism for refusing to use the sign of the cross or to wear a surplice but he was popular and an indication of his success may be judged by the fact that there were more than 200 communicants in Horbling, a quite astounding figure from a village population of 450 in the light of today's church attendances where services are frequently conducted by priests with little or no fire in their bellies. 

 

HORBLING IN PAST TIMES

Photographed circa 1910

Photographed in 1910.

One of the more interesting buildings at Horbling was the Old Hall or Old House, a domestic property dating back to the 16th century and which survived until March 1967 when it was demolished to make way for residential development. It had a long history as a private house but was standing empty when the First World War started in 1914 when it was used as a hostel for Belgian refugees. From 1916 until 1919 it became a Red Cross hospital to treat wounded servicemen brought home from the front, containing 43 beds that were filled continuously. A total of 777 patients were treated there during this three-year period and a plaque on the wall commemorated this but it disappeared when the house was pulled down. Also a victim of the demolition was a magnificent Judas tree in the front garden, an eye-catching sight around Whitsuntide when it was full of purplish-pink flowers growing in clusters before the leaves were fully developed. The tree was of great age and had become so large that the gnarled branches spread from one end of the frontage to the other and attracted many visitors anxious to see it in full bloom. The Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum) is a native of Europe and Asia and although frequent in parks and gardens in southern England, it is seldom seen this far north. It is so named because Judas Iscariot is reputed to have hanged himself from one of its branches after betraying Christ.

Photographed in 1905

A tranquil village scene from circa 1905 showing St Andrew's Church in the background with no traffic about apart from a horse and trap which appear to be at a standstill and unattended in the middle of the main road and was probably owned by William Armitt Owston, the village draper, grocer and coal merchant, who also took photographs in his spare time and perhaps stopped to capture this view which he later sold in his shop as a picture postcard. The two photographs of Horbling Hall (top) were also taken by him around 1910 for this purpose.

 

FROM THE ARCHIVES

The house of George Johnson of Bridge End, Horbling, near Bourne, was broke open on the 28th October 1795 and amongst other things a remarkable watch was taken away. The outside spring of which is hollow, three clips on the side of the face, and the inside engine is broke. If the above is offered for sale or to be pawned, on giving notice to Mr George Johnson, as above, forty pounds will be
paid on the conviction of the offender for burglary. - news report from the Lincoln, Rutland& Stamford Mercury, 13th November 1795.

An inquest was held on a stranger man found dead in Mr Robert Worce's stable, the jury's verdict being visitation of God.
- from the parish registers, 7th July 1798.

There have been only nine interments in Horbling during the last twelve months out of a population of 596; and of those, four were over eighty years of age, being respectively 89, 83, 83 and 81. Of the remaining five deaths, one was an infant and another caused by an accident. - news report from the Stamford Mercury, Friday 11th January 1867.

A SINGULAR OCCURRENCE: Shortly after Divine Service had commenced in the parish church on Sunday morning last, it was discovered that several of the Sunday School children who were seated in the church, had become affected by inhaling, it was supposed, the sulphurous fumes proceeding from the stove. By degrees, the effects more fully developed themselves and it was deemed advisable to remove the scholars into the open air as quickly as possible; this was accordingly done and the service suspended. A careful examination of the stove was made when it was discovered that a complete stoppage in the pipe had occurred and thus prevented the smoke from obtaining an outlet. The children soon recovered. The defect in the pipe of the stove was afterwards remedied and the evening service conducted as usual. - news report from the Grantham Journal, Saturday 29th January 1887.

REVISED SEPTEMBER 2016

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