CHAPTER XLI
CROYLAND
St. Guthlac—Abbot Joffrid—Boundary Crosses—The Triangular Bridge—Figure
with Sceptre and Ball—Lincolnshire swan-marks.
As you pass in the train along the line from Peterborough to Spalding, and have got a mile or two north of Deeping St. James station, you can see to the east in a cluster of trees a broad tower with a short, thick spire standing out as the only feature in a wide, flat landscape. This, for all who know it, has a mysterious attraction, for it is the sorrowful ruin of a once magnificent building, a far-famed centre of light and learning from whence came the brains, the piety, and the wealth which, issuing over the fens of south-east Lincolnshire, not only supplied the first lecturers to Cambridge, but planted those splendid churches for which the "parts of Holland" are famous to this day. For this is the great Abbey of Crowland, or Croyland, the home of the good St. Guthlac, to whose memory this and many another church was dedicated, and to whose shrine pilgrimage was made for several centuries. It stands alone on a once desolate and still sparsely inhabited and seemingly endless fen, and past it the Welland flows down to the long serpentine lake beloved of skaters, which is spelt Cowbit, but called by all Lincolnshire folk "Cubbit Wash."
Croyland is an older name than Crowland, and the fine church and monastery to which it owes its fame was set up in the eighth century, by King Æthelbald, in grateful memory of St. Guthlac. Now St. Guthlac is no legendary saint; he was a member of the Mercian royal house, who, tired of soldiering, sought a retirement from the world; and certainly few better places could be found than what was then a desolate, reedy
