Market Rasen, Lincolnshire

Description
Market Rasen, a market-town and a parish in Lincolnshire, 15 miles NE from Lincoln, 15 W from Louth, and 145 from London, with a station on the Hull and Lincolnbranch of the M.S. & L.R., and a head post office. Acreage, tl76 ; population, 2497. The town, which derives its name from the small river Rase, a feeder of the Auchoime, consistschiefly of one long street intersected with several smaller ones; is governed by a local board of nine members, formed in 1878; has two banks, a corn exchange, market-hall, temperance hall, and county police station; and is the headof a county court district and a petty sessional division. The market for corn, cattle, and provisions is held every Tuesday, and there are fairs for cattle, sheep, and horses onthe fourth Tuesday in Lent and on 25 Sept. There are a horse and dog show on the first Wednesday after 25 Sept., And a steeplechase meeting which is held early in the spring of each year. Brewing is carried on. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lincoln; net value, £387 with residence, in the gift of the Lord Chancellor. The church, a buildingof stone in the Early English and Decorated styles, has been almost rebuilt, but has an embattled western tower with rather peculiar belfry lights, a Norman S door, and a stained E window. A curious carving in stone representing the Fall of Man, formerly inserted in the tower, is now built into the W end of the S aisle. There is a Roman Catholic church, which was erected in 1824 and enlarged in 1869, and there are Free Methodist, Primitive Methodist, and Wesleyan chapels. There is a cemetery of 1 1/2 acre in extent on the E side of the town, with a mortuary chapel, and there are an endowed grammar school founded in 1501, two groups of endowed almshonses, a dispensary, a cottage hospital, and several small charities.