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CHAPTER VIII

A picturesque ruin—Round about Stamford—Browne's "Callis"—A chat with an antiquary—A quaint interior—"Bull-running"—A relic of a destroyed college—An old Carmelite gateway—A freak of Nature—Where Charles I. last slept as a free man—A storied ceiling—A gleaner's bell—St. Leonard's Priory—Tennyson's county—In time of vexation—A flood—Hiding-holes—Lost!—Memorials of the past.


Early in the morning we started out to explore the town; first, however, we found our way to Wothorpe a short mile off, from whence there is a fine view of Stamford. At Wothorpe are the picturesque ruins of a small mansion built by the first Earl of Exeter: "to retire out of the dust," as he playfully remarked, "whilst his great house at Burleigh was a-sweeping." The deserted and time-rent mansion is finely built of carefully squared stones and has four towers one at each corner, square at the base, but octagonal at the top; these towers, judging from an old print we saw in a shop window at Stamford, were formerly capped by shaped stone roofs, which in turn were surmounted by great weathercocks: the towers when complete must have been quite a feature in the structure, and have given it a special character—a touch of quaintness that is always so charming and attractive in a building. The ruins