Barholm. church : st martin

I left Barholm with some very good memories, despite having trouble finding this tiny, quiet village, and finding the church locked when I did get there. With regards the former, Barholm can be found not far off of the busy A15, about eight miles from Bourne. On the way there coming in from Tallington, and exiting the village on the way to Braceborough, I never saw a single road sign with Barholm on it! One of South Lincolnshire's best kept secrets.

  Highlight of the visit for me was to be found on the church tower. When I was taking photographs I noticed an inscription half way up the tower, just above the clock, and just below a date of 1648. At the time, I couldn't read it with the naked eye. Later that night though, when blowing up the image on the computer, the inscription read as follows...

  "Was ever such a thing, Since the Creation, A new steeple built, In the time of Vexation"

  In other words, whilst the English Civil War had raged, and when other places had suffered greatly as a result, the church of St Martin at Barholm had fared much better!

  Much of the original building is Norman, with a superbly carved Norman doorway in evidence, along with statue of Knight on horseback above.  There was restoration in the 1840's as well.

   I visited nine different churches that day, but I found Barholm to be peaceful and tranquil. Good to visit places like this to escape the rat race from time to time.

  I paid a re-visit to Barholm on the fifth day of a cycling holiday around South Lincolnshire, in which I photographed 56 churches. Weather conditions had "dipped" a little from the sunshine encountered earlier in the week. I reached Barholm in fairly heavy rain. After expressing my disgust at the English Summer with two other luckless cyclists on holiday I did take the camera out...but soon put it back again.

  I did manage to take a close up of the inscription above the clock mentioned above, and a close up of a military figure from the War Memorial in the church grounds before heading towards Thurlby in the (ultimately fruitless) hope that the weather would have lifted by the time I reached there!