showing Somersby Rectory, where Tennyson was raised
Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
Poet Laureate, was born and brought up in Somersby, the son of the
rector, and the fourth of twelve children. When he wrote
The Babbling Brook he was referring to a small stream here. Other features of the local landscape are claimed as features mentioned in Tennyson's poetry, such as "Woods that belt the grey hillside" and "The silent woody places by the home that gave me birth". In 1949 the copper beech was reported to be still standing at the former rectory which was mentioned in
In Memoriam: "Unwatched, the garden bough shall sway,/The tender blossom flutter down,/Unloved, that beech will gather brown,/This maple burn itself away." The same poem also mentions leaving "the well-beloved place / Where first we gazed upon the sky". In such poems as
The Lady of Shalott Tennyson uses the word "wold" for a hill in a sense found in Lincolnshire. Tennyson wrote a few poems (e.g. "The Church-warden and the curate") in the
local dialect. == Church ==