The Woodhall or Iodine Spa, Lincolnshire / by Robert Cuffe.

  • Cuffe, Robert.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Woodhall or Iodine Spa, Lincolnshire / by Robert Cuffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    medical man should be taken; and I trust the great physicians of London and other large towns in England, who see occasion to recommend to their patients a course of Iodine, will bear in mind that there exists in this country, within a convenient distance from London, and on a great Trunk Railway (the Great Northern), a Spa where Iodine may be administered contained in solution in a natural spring, and so combined, by Nature’s cunning, with salines and gases as to be most agreeable to drink and more actively curative than any combination that can be sent out from the laboratory of the chemist. Woodhall is a parish in Horncastle Union, containing 276 inhabitants and 2,240 acres, including the allotment in Wild- moor Fen; five miles south-west from Horncastle, in the deanery of Horncastle, archdeaconry and diocese of Lincoln. The living is a vicarage in the Incumbency of the Rev. Edward Walter, and in the patronage of the Bishop of Lincoln. The church, dedicated to St. Margaret, is a small modernised erection with tower surmounted by a spire. The neighbour¬ hood is full of interest, antiquarian and historical. The military genius of the Romans is exemplified by the imperish¬ able remains of the ancient wall at Horncastle, whose vestiges are manifest nearly the whole compass round; and this is most probably the Bano-vallum of the Roman geographer Ravennas. The remains of the Roman fortress situated on an angle formed by the rivers Baine and Witham are most worthy of attention, and are still sufficient to show the form and extent of space enclosed. The wall was fifteen or sixteen feet in thickness, and composed of sandstone dug from the neighbouring hills. The original Roman fortress has been destroyed, but the remains of the old wall are very distinct. Roman coins and other remains are very frequently discovered. The Saxons appear to have made use of the Roman wall, and to have erected a fortress on the old site. The name was by them altered to Hyrncastre or Horncastre, from its situation in the angle formed by the two rivers.