the markers

Though not currently in place, the four main entrance routes into the village used to be marked with carven and painted depictions of landmarks vaguely associated with that particular bit: the Tower on the Moor on Horncastle Road, the railway on Witham Road, some sort of wheel thing presumably representing the pump of the Spa on Stixwould Road and the ruins of Kirkstead Abbey on Tattershall Road, albeit with a monk-looking person in a robe, who presumably all cleared out long before the current state of almost complete ruination was reached. Unlike Tupholme Abbey a few miles to the south along the river, this has not had a farmhouse built up against the side of it. I assume if you looked hard enough you could find a few nearby farmhouses with suspicious large blocks of dressed sandstone somewhere in their walls, though it's equally possible that all the bits which have fallen off have just been absorbed by the marshy flood plain. Whilst flat, there are enough trees in the surrounding area to conceal this from most directions except to the west, particularly along the straight across the fens from Martin, where Tattershall Castle, Conningsby church and eventually the abbey always hove into view on the way home.
After the morning's trundle past through Roughton and Kirkby (lamenting the passing of the sludge lagoons) and popping past the Lightning at Thorp Park and the abbey on the return leg, despite only having our electronic membership for NTS to hand, we eventually got into Tattershall Castle later in the morning. The roof was unfortunately shut due to the wind, but I went round all the windows to peer out at the various bumps on the landscape, though it seems that the water tower at Billinghay is now invisible behind a screen of tall trees. My abiding memory of the castle, prior to revisiting it with the children, is cycling over shortly after getting my first SLR to practice photographing things, including a view of a round iron ceiling candleholder on the floor through an iron gate, which is possibly now one of the candleholders dangling from the ceiling. I tried to get a record of some of the more ostentatiously-serif-ed graffiti on the stairwell and windowsills, including H.Vinter and B. Allenby.
Later, we went to the Kinema in the Woods, changed though the building is since I was small, and only to the newer second screen. I always greatly appreciated having a cinema within a few minutes' walk of the house when I was small, though we always seemed to be at the end of the queue along which the actual physical reels of film would pass. As well as being the place where I first saw RotJ and Back to the Future (and, on the post-christmas school visits, various Children's Film Foundation things like Sky Pirates), the same advertising reel for a series of local businesses always played as people were being seated, followed by the geometric-hyperspace and "pa-paah-pa-paaah" Pearl and Dean ident. For years, the ancient cinema organ acquired by the manager sat next to the freezer at the snack kiosk, but was eventually installed beneath the stage in front of the screen, and is still used today for selected interval music. The foyer was expanded when the additional screen was added and now contains various bits of cinema and film gubbins including a Dalek, with the little ticket booth now inside, whereas I'll always remember the external window on the other side of the entrance, staffed by the antithesis of the film-loving students and youths I later became accustomed to seeing at the Cameo and Filmhouse.