Tuesday 25 October 2022. We take a two nights stay in Lincoln, staying at The Lincoln Hotel near the cathedral. This article will deal with our arrival day and further articles will cover a visit to the cathedral itself and a final round-up of the castle grounds and the Brayford waterfront in the city centre.
We go for a couple of nights stay in Lincoln, staying in one of the hotels Clive and I used for work more than a decade ago, right on top of the hill at the side of the cathedral. Before heading up the hill however, we stopped near the waterfront as Fran wanted a look around the town centre. At the top of High Street we found the Stonebow, one of the medieval gates to the city. It began as a Roman barbican of 211 CE, set just forward of the city's southern wall. It sits on the Romans' Ermine Street. The city's Guildhall was incorporated into the first floor over the gateway. It was demolished in the late 1300s and the present building completed c1520, being delayed due to funding difficulties.
We spent a couple of hours up and down the High Street and then went to check into the hotel. By the time we were ready to venture out again it was thinking about starting to go dark. This was taken from the entrance steps to the hotel and shows just how close we were to the cathedral. The low wall on the right surrounds a pit in which the foundations for the Roman East gateway to the city can be seen.
We start to look for somewhere to eat. Lincoln is a large university city so, lots of restaurants and pubs served modern menus which either we would find too spicy or too loaded with strange untried flavours... We ended up in the Duke William Hotel, the "Duke William" in question being the Duke of Cumberland, the youngest son of King George II, who fought and won the Battle of Culloden over the Scottish Jacobites of the Old Pretender earning himself the nickname of "Butcher Cumberland" for his savage reprisals after the battle. The food was ok though and gave us no savage reprisals at all!
The White Hart Hotel was another of the hotels where Clive and I had stayed. The car park was on the opposite side of the road with the entrance close by the bollards blocking the end of of the street (Bailgate).
Steep Hill. It is... It starts off fairly steep and then gets steeper. Lower down it becomes almost unbelievable and a handrail has had to be installed on the steepest part which approaches the Stonebow archway seen previously.
Exchequer Gate (Lincoln had its own mint at one time) with Lincoln Cathedral towering behind.
The Magna Carta pub on the corner of Steep Hill and Exchequer Gate is so called as the nearby castle holds one of the four surviving original copies of King John's Magna Carta document.
Lincoln Cathedral is spectacular and we shall visit it in the morning with a view to finding the elusive Lincoln Imp! Whether or not we were successful will be seen in my next article!
A night-time view of the cathedral from the hotel. In the next article you can have the same viewpoint in sunshine! You lucky people!
Looks a very interesting place to visit. Thanks John, it's on my list now.
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