Folkingham

      After leaving Aslackby we drove a couple of miles north to the understated beauty of Folkingham.  What makes it such an attractive village (apart from Hansen's Chocolate House!) is the immense green or market place.  Roughly triangular, it has been laid out on a south facing slope, (in the Middle Ages, I presume), and is lined with attractive, but not flashy, eighteenth century houses.  Presiding over everything at the top of the hill is great red brick bulk of the former Greyhound Inn - a Georgian coaching inn with assembly room attached (right hand side in photograph).  At the bottom of the hill the fine stone built manor house that also served as a courthouse.  I think the Assize Courts used to sit there, hence the Assembly Room at the Greyhound; Folkingham, then small market town, becoming a social hub for the local gentry when the court was session.

 

     Tucked away at the side is the parish church of St Andrew.  The tower is particularly fine.  It seems to belong to the same family as the towers of St John and St Martin Without both in Stamford.

     Inside the tower has a tierceron vault very similar to that at  Morton.  And just as at Morton and Aslackby there is a lot of fine ashlar masonry above the arcades.  Quite an extravagant thing to do when you consider that originally it would be whitewashed and painted.

     I think the Victorian restorations (Kirk and Parry, 1857 and Edward Browning, 1859) must have been quite drastic - the chancel looks almost entirely Victorian - but there a couple of good medieval furnishings left: the Rood Screen and the piscina in the south aisle.