Somersby, Lincolnshire
Coordinates: 53°14′05″N 0°00′44″E / 53.234592°N 0.0121899°E
| Somersby | |
 St Margarets church, Somersby |
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 Somersby
Somersby shown within Lincolnshire |
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| OS grid reference | TF 34399 72728 |
|---|---|
| Civil parish | Greetham with Somersby |
| District | East Lindsey |
| Shire county | Lincolnshire |
| Region | East Midlands |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Spilsby |
| Postcode district | PE23 4 |
| Police | Lincolnshire |
| Fire | Lincolnshire |
| Ambulance | East Midlands |
| EU Parliament | East Midlands |
| UK Parliament | Louth and Horncastle |
| List of places: UK • England • Lincolnshire | |
Somersby is a village in the parish of Greetham with Somersby in the Lincolnshire Wolds, 6 miles (9.7 km) northwest of Spilsby and 7 miles (11 km) eastnortheast of Horncastle. The parish covers about 600 acres (2.4 km2).
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[edit] History
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate, was born and raised here, the son of the rector, and the fourth of twelve children. When he wrote of The Babbling Brook, he was writing about this place.[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". [3]. In such poems as The Lady of Shalott [4] Tennyson uses the word "wold" for a hill in a sense found in Lincolnshire [5].
[edit] Location
Somersby lies in the Lincolnshire Wolds, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which runs from Caistor in the north to Spilsby in the south.
Somersby Quarry, an outcrop of Spilsby Sandstone, is a soft stone that is khaki-green colour when exposed to weathering. Although this quarry is now disused, stone has been used to repair nearby Somersby Church.[citation needed]
[edit] Church
The Anglican parish church is dedicated to Saint Margaret. The church is an ancient sandstone building, built some time before 1612 and restored between 1863 and 1865. It seats about 80 people.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, poet laureate, was baptised in this church.
[edit] References
- ^ Alfred, Lord Tennyson. "The Brook". Catrine-Ayrshire.co.uk/Brook. http://www.catrine-ayrshire.co.uk/brook.htm. Retrieved 25 April 2011.
- ^ The King's England: Lincolnshire (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 1949, 1952) under the entry for Somersby.
- ^ All these quoted in the article mentioned.
- ^ Tennyson, Poems Published in 1842, Oxford University Press, 1956
- ^ Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names.
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Somersby, Lincolnshire |
