Not in the village, but…

I include these photographs/postcards because they are close enough to considered part of the village although, technically, they might lie outside the boundaries.

---

Bridge-building on Bassingham Road (undated)I am not 100% certain but I believe that this photograph shows the construction of the bridge across the River Witham on Bassingham Road. The “navvies” (Navigators) are clearly hard at work. (Photo from the Bassingham Community Led Plan of 2015)

---

Scotwater Bridge (1912)
Travel down Newark Road and then continue along Rinks Lane and you’ll eventually come to the junction with Norton Disney Road; turn right and the next junction that you will hit (Norton Road) is where you’ll find this crossroads. The horse and farming machinery at the right has just come along the Norton Disney Road and the signpost at left points back towards Carlton le Moorland and Bassingham. My thanks go to Tom Booker for allowing me to scan and share it with you.John Brogan has exactly the same postcard, franked 2nd September 1912 and addressed to Miss Marshall, Post Office, Branston, Lincoln. Here’s the back of his card which reads, “Dear Maudie, This is a view of the floods near Bassingham. If you could have seen us, we were sitting in the trap all amongst the water. Daddy was very pleased with the P.C’s [postcards] Love to all, kisses for Henry & Charley & all –“ Unfortunately I cannot read the sender’s name. John has the actual place named as Scotwater Bridge.

---

Thurlby (c1910)You will all recognise the view in this postcard – courtesy yet again of Tom Booker– as it shows the junction of Bassingham Road and Moor Lane/Haddington Lane. The old house in the centre distance of the original postcard was Herbert Wallhead’s cottage which has now been replaced by a new build that seems to sit on the same footprint. Wallhead is buried in the churchyard of Thurlby St Germain.And, staying in Thurlby, I recently came a cross a very old envelope which was addressed to Sir E.F. Bromhead Bart., Thurlby Hall, Lincoln (below). The stamp is an imperforate “Two Penny Blue” with white lines, first issued in 1841, and an example of only the world’s second ever official postage stamp. The sealed back seems to have been franked “14 May 1844”.The recipient was Sir Edward Thomas Ffrench Bromhead, 2nd Baronet Bromhead (1789 – 1855).

Born the son of Gonville Bromhead, 1st Baronet Bromhead (grandfather of the British second in command of the same name at Rorke’s Drift) and Lady Jane Ffrench, Baroness Ffrench, in Dublin on 26th March 1789, Bromhead was educated at the University of Glasgow and later at Caius College, Cambridge (B.A. 1812, M.A. 1815).

Whilst at Cambridge, Bromhead was a founder of the Analytical Society, a precursor of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, together with John Herschel, George Peacock and Charles Babbage, with whom he maintained a close and lifelong friendship. While he was, by all accounts, a gifted mathematician in his own right (although ill-health prevented him from pursuing his studies further), his greatest contribution to the subject is at second hand: having subscribed to the first publication of self-taught mathematician and physicist George Green, he encouraged Green to continue his research and to write further papers (which Bromhead sent on to be published in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and those of the Royal Society of Edinburgh).

He later took up the study of Law at the Inner Temple in London, and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1817. Returning to Lincolnshire, he became the 2nd Bromhead baronet, of Thurlby Hall in 1822 and was elected High Steward of Lincoln in 1823.

Bromhead then repeated his earlier success by encouraging the young George Boole from Lincoln. Bromhead was President of the Lincoln Mechanics Institute in the Lincoln Greyfriars, where George Boole’s father was the curator. Boole first came to public notice when he gave a lecture on the work of Sir Isaac Newton on 5 February 1835. The young Boole’s development was fed by books that Bromhead supplied, and he would go on to become best known as the author of The Laws of Thought (1854) which contains Boolean algebra. Boolean logic is credited with laying the foundations for the Information Age.

Bromhead lost his sight when he was old and he died unmarried at his home of Thurlby Hall in Thurlby, North Kesteven on 14th March 1855.

---

BACK HOME