MORTON NR BOURNE. CHURCH : ST JOHN THE BAPTIST.

  The setting of this church is absolutely wonderful. The church sits proudly at the end of a main street, with a public house next door and a very small village green immediately in front of the church. Easy to imagine that this particular view had not changed for many, many years. Some very nice stone grotesques could be found on this church, also some nice views of this church can to be found by going around the back, and shooting from the end of the very long graveyard.

  The church was open, and I lit a candle for my father. Lovely church inside with some quite spectacular stained glass. One window detailing the beheading of John The Baptist is quite superb...if gruesome!

  Church grounds are very well maintained and there are an interesting number of eighteenth and nineteenth century graves to be seen, including a number of very ornately carved slate stones. Beautifully preserved as you would expect from slate.

  The picture above left, is also worth a little extra explanation. The ancient "Grafitti" pictured below comes from the bottom of a stained glass window, with the strange coloured patterns in the photograph due to the Sun shing through the stained glass. In truth the Sun shing at all in the English Summer of 2007 is worth a mention in its own right! It appears that grafitti is not a modern problem with Robart signing his name under the window in 1642. There are some even earlier examples elsewhere with Lawrence from Boston and Marie (surname illegible) both carving their names under a different window in 1626. Up on the roof, H Gill carved his/her name into the lead on the roofroof in 1899, 1903 and 1907!

  The photograph top right, of the front of St John The Baptist church, with graves in front, features a gravestone in the bottom left hand corner, which is definitely worthy of a little closer scrutiny. The stone commemorates one Richard Lister, who died at the age of 34 on July 29th 1827. This is still very moving, 180 years after his death. The inscription reads as follows.....

Stop traveller, and drop a tear, My time is gone, and yours draws near, Oh my dear friends, prepare in time,

for i was called in my prime, In love he lived, in peace he died, his life was craved, but God denied,,

go home dear wife, and child so dear, I must lie here, until Christ appears,, and if you will, from grief refrain,,

I hope in Christ we'll meet again.

Morton has an excellent street fair every Summer, and in past years there have been guided tours up to the top of the tower. I have no head for heights at all but braved it up to the top in 2007. Whilst being securely wrapped around the flag pole to prevent being blown off the roof by the ferocious 3 miles per hour wind I managed to photograph some long range shots of nearby Hacconby church. Sadly, this church was damaged by the shockwaves from an earthquake that hit Lincolnshire early in 2008. Sad to see the scaffolding surrounding Hacconby church when I was there last in May 2008, and the keep out signs even preventing access to the church grounds.