SIR CHRISTOPHER WRAY thin slits for lights below it and with the usual mid-wall shaft in the belfry window above it, but with an unusual impost; a slab with a boldly-cut cross on it forms the jamb in the light over the west window, and the south side shows ornamentation similar to that which we noticed at Stow. Besides the tower, the chancel-arch and a narrow priest's door are all that remains of the Early work. The monument to Sir Christopher Wray, who lived here from 1574 to 1592, is a very fine one. The judge is represented in his robes and hat, with ruff, which his wife also wears, she having a hood and gown with jewelled stomacher. Four daughters are figured kneeling below, while the son kneels above in armour. Marble pillars with Corinthian capitals support the arch over the recess in which the figures lie, and it was once richly coloured and enclosed by a screen of wrought ironwork.
The right hand road from Scunthorpe runs down the centre of the plain half-way between the Cliff and the Trent, through a number of villages. Of these Ashby still maintains a Duck Decoy near the Trent. Bottesford has a fine cruciform church, with a handsome chancel, having narrow deep-set lancet windows of unusual length, ornamented with tooth moulding, a singular arrangement of alternate lancet and circular windows in the clerestory, and stone seats round the Early English arcade pillars, as at Claypole. Messingham, with its stained-glass and oak furniture collected by Archdeacon Bailey from various churches in his Archdeaconry and elsewhere, as also Scotter and Scotton, are but milestones on the way to Northorpe, where are two good doorways, one Norman, and one, in the south porch, Decorated, with fine carved foliage, and the old door still in use. The western bays of the arcade are built into the walls of the Perpendicular tower, which has been inserted between them. A sepulchral brass with inscription to Anthony Moreson, 1648, has been inserted into an old altar slab, shown as such by its five crosses. Thanks to Mrs. Meynell Ingram the church of Laughton, three miles west of Northorpe, was beautifully restored by Bodley and Garner in 1896. Here is a very fine brass of a knight of the Dalison (D'Alençon) family, about 1400, which, like that of Thomas and Johanna Massingberd at Gunby, has been made to serve again by a parsimonious Dalison of a later century.
Roads lead both from Northorpe and Laughton to Corringham.
