Grange Farm, North Hykeham, Lincolnshire

Today was simply a continuation of yesterday’s schedule, returning to Castle Hill and visiting everything we had missed. But it was not until 10 am that we were even ready to leave our campsite; hand washing takes even longer than a British washing machine. Later we came upon an interpretive panel that asked “Imagine doing the laundry without a washing machine…. Every day is laundry day at the prison.” Of course everyday on the road for us is not laundry day, but I did chuckle about the comment suggesting that the absence of a washing machine was a tragedy. How I could have done with one this morning!

However English towns are slow to kick off on Sundays, so the fact we were late arriving in town and making our way on foot up to the Castle Square was hardly a problem.  We headed back into the Castle and to the prison constructed within the castle precinct.

The first red-brick Georgian gaol was built in 1788 to hold criminals and debtors, but was superseded in 1848 with a Victorian wing in 1848. The prison still on site but now only open to tourists, was built to embrace the Pentonville system, that adopted at Port Arthur in Tasmania, separate cells to guard against the camaraderie that had gone on in earlier prisons which had effectively been nurseries of crime; hardened criminals schooling the less experienced in the art of larceny and assault. The Victorians believed that this would encourage the prisoners to reflect and repent, and more importantly to reform. Here too was the chapel constructed in such a way that each prisoner was placed in a high walled individual pew so they could not communicate or see their fellows. The chapel here in Lincoln was more accessible than that DownUnder, but no less shocking. 

The men’s prison on three levels looked like those you see on television, such as in “Shawshank Redemption”, and here there were excellent exhibitions on the system and the inmates to keep our attention for some time, the women’s area much smaller, but no less impressive.

Expensive running costs and declining prison numbers led to the prison’s closure. A new prison, now HMP Lincoln, had opened north of the city in 1872 which was larger and cheaper to run, replacing smaller prisons in the county. The last prisoners at Lincoln Castle Victorian prison were transferred there in 1878.

A section of this same building holds one of four copies of the Magna Carta, and here this copy is exhibited in a darkened special built room which has space for other special documentary exhibits, and an excellent film that explains how it came to be compiled and how it has affected the political history and political wellbeing of western society ever since.

But the current star of this exhibition area is the Domesday Book, the detailed survey of land and land ownership throughout the majority of England in 1086. There are in fact two Domesday Books: Great Domesday and Little Domesday, the latter including places in the Welsh Marches and southern England which were not included in the greater record.

The Domesday is now over 900 years old and extremely fragile as you would expect. It was originally kept with the royal treasury at Winchester, but from the early 13^th century, when not travelling around with the King, it was housed in Westminster at first in the Palace, then in the Abbey. From about 1600 it was kept in a large iron-clad chest reinforced with iron straps, with three different locks, the keys divided between three different officials, so that it could only be opened by all three.  Since 1859 it has been in the custody of the Public Records Office (now called the National Archives), first at Chancery Lane and now at Kew. During World War I it was sent to Bodmin Prison for safe keeping and during World War II, it was safely stored at Shepton Mallet Prison.

The Book is made up of 413 folios, or sheets of parchment, each subdivided into sections called “breves” (or chapters) and each of these related to the land held by one landowner.  It is a marvellous record of a snapshot of time from a statistical point of view, even if William the Conqueror’s motivation for the recording was more sinister. He could never have imagined that we would be standing awestruck over a low-light glass cabinet nine hundred and thirty one years later.

It was sometime after midday when we emerged from this boutique museum, into the castle grounds. We shared a bench with another to eat our lunch, watching the crowds of locals and tourists enjoying the sunshine and location.

Once fed and watered, we ventured out into the streets of Castle Hill and walked toward the Newport Arch, where a fragment of the city’s defences dating back to the 4^th century still stand.  Returning to the square, we bought ice-creams and sat outside a café listening to a saxophone playing busker, where we were soon joined by a young couple from Birmingham, she heavily pregnant and anxious to put her feet up. We spent some time chatting with them; they like us are members of English Heritage, but unlike us, seem to be in the frantic exercise of ticking off as many visited attractions in the shortest time possible. I guess with their first child due in less than two months, time is more pressing than for us. This prompted us on our return home to count up the number of English Heritage and National Trust properties we had visited ourselves since we joined two years ago; about forty for each, not bad for part-time English travellers!

In fact our next destination was to be another English Heritage property, Lincoln’s medieval Bishop’s Palace, the official residence of the medieval bishops of Lincoln and their large households. The bishops were almost certainly the wealthiest individuals in Lincoln during the middle ages. It was first built in the mid-12^th century, probably the earliest medieval domestic building to be built in stone in the city. It had to cater for both public and private functions, and modifications and additions were made over three centuries to meet the changing requirements of successive bishops. 

Damage occurred during the Lincolnshire Rising of 1536, but the palace was in sufficiently good repair to accommodate visits by Henry VIII in 1541 and James I in 1617. In the Civil War the Royalist attack of 1648 caused extensive damage and most of the building decayed until repairs began in 1838.

In 1954 the remains were taken into guardianship by the Ministry of Works (now English Heritage). Since then further repairs have been done, usually preceded by archaeological excavations or surveys. 

We enjoyed our audio guided tour of the site, and the views back up to the Cathedral and down over the city. From here we headed on down the hill through a pedestrian lane, emerging near the Usher Gallery, our next destination. 

 Lincoln’s museum is set over two buildings, across the street for one another; the art gallery is the Usher, named for its main benefactor, James Ward Usher, and opened in 1927.

Usher himself is worth mentioning further, if only for his eccentricity. He was a local jeweller and watchmaker, an eclectic collector of coins, porcelain and items of his own trade and a bachelor. He made his fortune on the back of the “Lincoln Imp”. In the 1880s he invented the legend derived from a “grotesque” on the cathedral wall, just one of those random little creatures the stonemasons delighted in putting in odd corners of their work.  His tale had imps hopping around the cathedral until one of them was turned into stone for trying to talk to the angels carved into the roof of the Angel Choir. His mate made his exit on the back of a witch but the wind is still supposed to haunt the cathedral awaiting their return. This canny entrepreneurial jeweller sold trinkets and novelties to celebrate the story, with such success that the imp became the city’s emblem.

We did not find the gallery quite as captivating as this little story, but did feel it worth calling into.  Had we not short-changed our touring time with our domestic tasks, we would have proceeded to The Collection across the street. Hopefully we can still squeeze this in before we leave Lincoln.