Croysant le Wold is a largely lost village in a valley hollow below the Lincolnshire Wolds, marked by the churchyard where Christabel LaMotte is buried. When Maud Bailey and Roland Michell visit, its overgrown paths, locked church, and rain-worn grave make the village less a settled community than a surviving fragment of local history—and the final resting place of the writer they have been tracing.

Setting and Remains

From the heights, Maud points out Seal Court below, among treetops, battlements, a round turret, and what may be a keep. The land around the estate is private, but the village can be reached by descending a switchback road and turning into the valley. Maud describes Croysant le Wold as one of the lost villages scattered around the feet of the hills: little remains beyond a grange and a church. The village church appears not to be in use.

Maud offers two possible explanations for the village’s name. Christabel had guessed that it combined words for belief and saint; Maud identifies this as a nineteenth-century etymological error, giving Croissant, or crescent, as the more likely source. In her account, the name refers to a bend in the valley and river. The correction sets local history against the imaginative meanings Christabel attached to the place.

The Churchyard and Christabel’s Grave

The church stands within a walled graveyard, its square tower and heavy porch giving it a solid, closed appearance. A battered estate car is parked outside. Maud and Roland leave their own car at a distance and walk through the wet grounds. Blackening beech leaves clog the path, damp grass has overgrown the small burial ground, and two large yews flank the porch. The church entrance is bolted and padlocked; water drips from a gutter and leaves a sinuous green-stained mark on the stone.

Maud distinguishes Christabel’s resting place from the Bailey family graves inside the church. Christabel lies outside, on the edge of the churchyard, exposed to wind and rain, where Maud says she wanted to be. To reach her, the visitors clamber over tussocks and hummocks, placing their feet in narrow rabbit-runs between the graves. A shoulder-high wall, rooted with ivy-leaved toadflax, marks the spot. Christabel’s local-limestone headstone leans slightly and has been roughened by weather; someone has cleaned its lettering, though not recently.

Memorial and Significance

The inscription identifies the dead woman as Christabel Madeleine LaMotte and records that she was born on January 3, 1825, and laid to rest on May 8, 1890. It also names her as the wife of Sir George Bailey of Seal Court and gives Croysant le Wold as the place of burial, ending with the words “After mortal trouble.” The dates and formal epitaph anchor the researchers’ literary and biographical inquiry in a particular grave, while the exposed position and eroded stone make the physical persistence of memory fragile rather than triumphant.

Croysant’s layered traces complicate any simple recovery of the past. Christabel’s mistaken derivation of the village name survives alongside Maud’s correction, while the disused church, scattered remains, and weathered grave offer material evidence without restoring the village or its history in full. For Maud and Roland, the visit joins the investigation of a writer’s life to the uneven landscape of what remains—and what time has nearly erased.