Files
Click on an image to view its copyright status.
Description
Like William Henry Bartlett 60 years before him, Marcus Huish visits Boston’s remarkable church: St Botolph’s, a notable local landmark and a relic from Boston’s time as a wealthy medieval trading port. The church has become an important location on the map of Mayflower sites in the north of England. Huish includes an extract from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem ‘Boston’ which celebrated its link with the Puritans. Elizabeth Chettle provides a beautiful water colour illustration of the church catching the evening light. As Huish describes:
"The pilgrims' way from Gainsborough or Scrooby hither would be marked along its course by many noble landmarks of the religion they were so reluctantly forced to give up. Two routes were open to them, but both would take them within sight of the glorious fane of Lincoln, and, whether they went by way of Sleaford or followed the course of the sluggish Witham, church towers would hardly ever be out of sight until Boston's came into view. At whatever time of day or night they first saw the " Stump," its appearance must have magnetised them, for its fair stem stands so isolated in the fenland that it catches the earliest rays of the rising, and the latest of the setting sun, whilst at night its lantern was in those days brilliantly lit as a beacon for both sea and landsmen.
St. Botolph's Town : Far over leagues of land
And leagues of sea looks forth its noble tower.
And far around the chiming bells are heard :
So may that sacred name for ever stand
A landmark and a symbol of the power
That lies concentred in a single word.
[Henry Wadsworth] Longfellow."