Tattershall

The Tower and the Fortescue

The castle tower shows up long before the village does. A hundred and thirty feet of red brick, standing over flat fen-edge country, visible from the A153 well before you reach the Market Place. It is often called the finest piece of medieval brick-work in England, and it dominates the skyline the way nothing else in Tattershall does.

The Fortescue Arms sits at 34 Market Place, a short walk from the castle. It dates to the 15th century and is Grade II listed, with beams, dark wood panelling and brick walls in the main bar, and a second bar with darts and a TV. The menu is pub classics done properly: steak and chips, gammon and chips, scampi and chips, peppercorn steaks, steak burgers and chicken strips. The loaded fries have a following. There is a large garden at the rear, dogs are welcome, and CAMRA lists it for a changing beer and a regular one.

Village Pubs and Flying History

The Black Horse on the High Street doesn't serve food and doesn't pretend to. It's a community local run by Lesley, well regarded for the John Smith's, with a pool table, live music, bingo and karaoke, and three letting bedrooms above. A mile north in Tattershall Thorpe, the Blue Bell Inn occupies a building that dates to 1257 and trades on its RAF and Dambusters heritage.

For a proper shop you cross the River Bain into Coningsby, which adjoins the village to the east and has the supermarkets. Coningsby is also where RAF planes go over, and where the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight keeps its Lancaster, Spitfires and Hurricanes; hangar tours run about two miles away.

Church Glass, Tom Thumb and the Buttercross

Holy Trinity is the collegiate church, endowed by Ralph Cromwell and built after his death, finished around 1500. Pevsner called it "a glass house" for all its glazing, though most of the medieval glass was removed to Stamford in 1754. Near the font a plaque marks the grave of a man reputed to have stood eighteen and a half inches tall and died in 1620 aged 101. The inscription reads "T. THUMB, Aged 101 Died 1620." Fact and folklore are impossible to separate, and there is a miniature Tom Thumb's house on the roof of a larger house in the Market Place.

The Buttercross, an octagonal 15th-century market cross, still stands in the Market Place. No market is held there any more. The grant for that market came in 1201, when Robert Eudo obtained it from King John in return for the annual gift of a trained goshawk.

Waterside Paths and the Old Railway

The walks are waterside and flat. Footpaths follow the Bain past the castle down towards Dogdyke, good for birdwatching, and the old Boston–Lincoln railway line closed and reopened in 2008 as a cycle path. Tattershall Lakes lie just south.

A Lordship and a Lockerbie Curiosity

The lord of the manor is Julian Fellowes, who created Downton Abbey. In a scrapyard near the village, the nose cone and flight deck of Pan Am Flight 103 are quietly kept in storage.