was passed for the Caistor Canal to the Ancholme,[1] which in earlier days had been so straightened as to be really a canal also. In 1763 an Act was obtained for a canal from Louth to Tetney, and it was completed in 1770 at a cost of £28,000.[2] In 1792 an Act was procured for a canal from Stainforth, where the River Don had been stopped, to the Trent at Keadby, to restore the communication of the Isle of Axholme with Thorne and Doncaster.[3] In 1793 an Act was passed for a canal from Grantham by Woolsthorpe to the Trent at Nottingham.[4] Of these, the Louth, Horncastle, Bourne, and Sleaford Canals are derelict.
About the Lincolnshire roads in early days little is known for certain. Possibly the great main road through Stamford and Lincoln may have been in fair condition, but probably most roads were bad, many being mere tracks across the country. To repair the roads was doubtless the duty of landowners, lay and religious alike, and for those who had to pass from estate to estate to maintain themselves and their retinue, or to look after their affairs, this was their interest also. Yet it was by no means easy to enforce this obligation, the difficulty being naturally increased in the low districts, where the expense was the greatest. In 1316 the men of Claypole and the adjoining parts complained that the bridge of Oldehebrigge, which is on the confines of Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, and which they passed on their way to Newark, was dilapidated, and the way so deteriorated that men passing that way could not examine the metes of the said way, whereby many losses and dangers befell them: and commissioners were appointed to view the bridge and way and inquire into the entire matter.[5] In 1329 commissioners, appointed on the petition of the bishop of Lincoln and others, had ordered the bridge and road to be repaired and maintained at the cost of the township of Claypole; but the jurors, contrary to such advice, made a new bridge and a new road on the land of the bishop and others; commissioners were to examine into the facts, and if a new bridge and road had been made on the land of the bishop to remove them and replace the old ones, and do all they should think necessary therein.[6] In 1332 twelve jurors had presented before the sheriff in his 'turn' at the hospital on the Strete (Spittal) that the abbot of of Louth Park had not repaired the causey at Flixborough, and had narrowed the common way by raising a bank; but the abbot said he had no lands by reason of which he ought to do the repairs, and that he raised the bank on his own soil without narrowing the way, and eventually a jury found in his favour.[7] The abbot was also discharged of the liability to repair the causey of Louth Park. In 1333 it was found that the priory of St. Saviour de Ponte Aslaci had been given the site and certain lands for the maintenance of the brethren there, and that only what was over was to be devoted to the reparation of Holandbrigg, so the order that the prior was to repair and maintain the causey of Holandbrigg and thirty bridges over the same is amended, and the judges are to find out a way by which the bridge may be repaired.[8] In 1337, a petition having been presented to Parliament that the ways between Croyland and Spalding were in a very dangerous state, and that this could be remedied by the abbot of Croyland making a causey on his soil between Croyland and 'le Brotherhous' on the understanding that he and his successors should take tolls for making and maintaining it from the persons using it, and the king having commanded the abbot to certify him whether he would bind himself to do this, the abbot wrote back that between the great bridge at Croyland and 'le Brotherhous,' where the dangerous part of the way is, there were 3 miles [leucae] of marshy land along the bank of the Welland on which it would be difficult to make a causey, inasmuch as, the land lying deep in a morass, the causey would have to be by the said bank, and since the bank was liable to be flooded in winter, the land whereon it would be made was at such times greatly loosened, as well by the passing of sailors and boatmen as by the force of the wind, and fell away to such an extent that any causey on it would be destroyed unless built deep and high and well protected: that for the convenience of the people of those parts there would also have to be several bridges across the Welland both at Croyland and across the causey, which must be built at great cost to be high enough for laden ships and boats to pass under them, and strong enough for carts to pass over them: that persons passing over there by ship in rough weather then paid for every cart laden 12d., for every horse laden 2d., for every man 1d., and for beasts and other things as the boatmen agree, and that these tolls are often doubled in time of flood and wind: but that he would undertake the work if the king would grant him corresponding tolls not exceeding half those now paid, and at the end of seven years some tolls of less amount for ever for the maintenance of the causey. The men of Kesteven and Holland petitioned Parlia-
- ↑ Brewster, Notes on S. Kelsey.
- ↑ Goulding, Louth Records, 62.
- ↑ Stonehouse, Isle of Axholme, 45.
- ↑ Turnor, Grantham, xii.
- ↑ Cal. of Pat. Rolls, 1313–7, p. 430.
- ↑ Ibid. 1327–30, p. 480. It was about this time that the two-spanned bridge over the Witham at Claypole was built, which has quite recently been so inexcusably destroyed by the district council. It was an exceedingly valuable specimen of a mediaeval bridge of which the county ought to have been proud.
- ↑ Cal. of Pat. Rolls, 1340–3, p. 137.
- ↑ Ibid. 1334–8, pp. 3, 11.
