OS grid reference TF343727 Country England Post town Spilsby Shire county Lincolnshire Civil parish Greetham with Somersby | Region East Midlands Sovereign state United Kingdom Postcode district PE23 District East Lindsey UK parliament constituency Louth and Horncastle | |
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Somersby is a village in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated 6 miles (9.7 km) north-west from Spilsby and 7 miles (11 km) east-north-east from Horncastle. The village lies in the civil parish of Greetham with Somersby (where the population is listed) in the Lincolnshire Wolds, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty; the parish covers about 600 acres (2.4 km2).
Contents
Map of Somersby, Spilsby, UK
Tennyson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate, was born and brought up in Somersby, the son of the rector, and the fourth of twelve children. When he wrote The Babbling Brook he was referring to a small stream here. Other features of the local landscape are claimed as features mentioned in Tennyson's poetry, 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". In such poems as The Lady of Shalott Tennyson uses the word "wold" for a hill in a sense found in Lincolnshire.
Church
The Anglican parish church is dedicated to Saint Margaret. It is an ancient sandstone building, constructed some time before 1612, and restored between 1863 and 1865. It seats about 80 people. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was baptised in St Margaret's.
Stone from the now disused Somersby Quarry, an outcrop of Spilsby Sandstone, was used to repair the church. This soft stone is khaki-green colour when exposed to weathering.
Somersby Grange
Somersby Grange is a Grade I listed Georgian manor house which stands adjacent to the rector where Tennyson was born.