Somersby, Lincolnshire
| Somersby | |
| Lincolnshire | |
|---|---|
 St Margaret's Church, Somersby | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TF343727 |
| Location: | 53°14’5"N, -0°-0’44"E |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Spilsby |
| Postcode: | PE23 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | East Lindsey |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Louth and Horncastle |
Somersby is a village in Lindsey, the northern part of Lincolnshire, in the Lincolnshire Wolds, six miles north-west of Spilsby and seven miles east of Horncastle.
Tennyson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate, was born and brought up in Somersby, the son of the rector, and the fourth of twelve children. When he wrote The Babbling Brook he was referring to a small stream here.[1]
Other features of the local landscape are claimed as features mentioned in Tennyson's poetry,[2] such as "Woods that belt the grey hillside" and "The silent woody places by the home that gave me birth". In 1949 the copper beech was reported to be still standing at the former rectory which was mentioned in In Memoriam:
"Unwatched, the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away."
The same poem also mentions leaving
"the well-beloved place
Where first we gazed upon the sky".
In other poems Tennyson uses Lincolnshire dialect terms for his places, as for example 'wold' for a hill in The Lady of Shalott[3]
Church
The parish church, St Margaret, is an ancient sandstone building, constructed some time before 1612, and restored between 1863 and 1865. It seats about 80 people. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was baptised in St Margaret's.
Stone from the now disused Somersby Quarry, an outcrop of Spilsby Sandstone, was used to repair the church. This soft stone is a khaki-green colour when exposed to weathering.[4]
Somersby Grange
Somersby Grange is a Grade I listed Georgian manor house which stands adjacent to the rectory where Tennyson was born.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Somersby, Lincolnshire) |
References
- ↑ Alfred, Lord Tennyson. "The Brook". Catrine-Ayrshire.co.uk/Brook. http://www.catrine-ayrshire.co.uk/brook.htm. Retrieved 25 April 2011.
- ↑ Mee, Arthur: The King's England: Somersby (Hodder & Stoughton)
- ↑ Tennyson, Poems
- ↑ "Spilsby Sandstone". Lexicon of Named Rock Units. British geological survey. http://www.bgs.ac.uk/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?pub=SYS.