The Lincolnshire Wolds are a gently rolling but sharply dissected upland landscape in eastern England, and a decisive setting for Roland Michell and Maud Bailey’s investigation of Christabel LaMotte. Their ridges, hidden villages, and the hollow containing Seal Court turn the landscape into more than a route across the county: it is a terrain in which poetry, local history, and the remnants of LaMotte’s life meet.

Landscape and Literary Association

The Wolds are introduced as a small surprise: Alfred, Lord Tennyson grew up in one of their tightly twisting valleys and transformed the local landscape into the cornfields of immortal Camelot. The poem’s barley and rye fields clothe the wold and meet the sky. Roland immediately attends to the precision of “meet,” seeing in that single word a particular relation between earth and horizon rather than a vague poetic flourish.

The ground itself complicates first impressions. The hills appear folded up from the earth, but are described instead as part of a dissected tableland. Deep, narrow valleys—some wooded, some grassy, some ploughed—cut between sharply defined ridges, while much of the surrounding county is marsh, fen, or flat farmland. Villages lie at the ends of blind funnels in the valleys; roads and paths branch across the ridgeways.

Roland and Maud on the Ridgeway

As Roland and Maud drive through the Wolds, their different habits of attention make the same country legible in contrasting ways. Roland, an urban observer, registers the dark ploughed soil, white chalk in the furrows, and pewter sky crowded with chalk-white clouds. Maud notices the practical signs of land management: good rides, unrepaired gates, and hedgerows badly crushed by machinery.

Their journey brings Seal Court into view below them. Maud points it out in the hollow, first through a carpet of treetops, then as glimpses of battlements, a round turret, and something like a keep. The estate is private, so they cannot simply descend to it; instead, they can go into the nearby village. The prospect establishes both the physical separation of the house and the limits that shape the researchers’ access to its history.

Croysant le Wold and LaMotte’s Burial Place

Croysant le Wold is described as a lost village, one of many scattered around the feet of the hills, with little more than a grange and a church still standing. The church is no longer in use, and Christabel LaMotte is buried in its churchyard, St Etheldreda’s. The Wolds thus bring the inquiry from a distant view of the private estate to a specific, neglected place associated with LaMotte’s memory.

Maud relates LaMotte’s interest in St Etheldreda, a Virgin Queen who was twice married, became Abbess of Ely, founded a great religious house, and was buried in the odour of sanctity. She also corrects LaMotte’s mistaken nineteenth-century guess that Croysant joined words for belief and saint: the name is said to derive instead from the word for crescent, after a bend in the valley and river. The exchange links LaMotte’s imaginative reading of place with the imperfect record of local etymology.

The Hill Above the Church

After looking at the churchyard, Maud suggests walking up the hill to look down on Seal Court from a distance. She imagines LaMotte coming that way often, given her diligence as a churchgoer. The path climbs from behind the church across a ploughed field toward an uncompromising skyline, making the estate visible only from outside its boundaries.

At the top, Roland first mistakes a person in a wheelchair for a seated, crowned figure by Henry Moore. The figure then inclines its head and struggles, arms pointing toward the ground; glints of silver correct Roland’s initial interpretation, and he calls Maud’s attention to it. The brief reversal echoes the scene’s larger movement from distant impressions toward closer recognition, while keeping the Wolds’ human presence distinct from the historical and poetic associations layered onto their landscape.