Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

THE CORPORATION SEALS

The corporation had in old times two seals, one the common seal, and one the mayor’s seal; the latter showed a boar charged by a dog and a huntsman winding his horn, an allusion to an ancient privilege of the mayor and burgesses of hunting in the adjacent woods of Bradley Manor. The common seal bore a gigantic figure of a man with drawn sword and round shield, and the name ‘Gryem,’ the reputed founder of the town; on his right a youth crowned, and the name ‘Habloc,’ and on his left a female figure with a diadem and the legend “Goldeburgh,” the name of the princess he is said to have married.

These two interesting and distinctive old seals have, sad to say, been discarded for one bearing the arms of the corporation, just like what any mushroom town might adopt.

The figures on the old seal alluded to the tradition embodied in the old Anglo-Danish ballad of Havelock the Dane, which was borrowed from a French romance of the twelfth century, called “Le lai de Aveloc,” which in turn was probably taken from an Anglo-Saxon original. It tells how Havelock, son of the Danish King Birkabeen, was treacherously put to sea and saved by one Grim, a Lincolnshire fisherman, who brought up the waif as his own. He grew to be of huge stature and strength and of great beauty, and, from serving as a scullion in the king’s kitchen, he became betrothed to the king’s daughter; and his royal descent being discovered, the Danish king rewarded Grim with a sum of money with which he built a village on the coast and called it Grim’s town or Grimsby.

CHAPTER XX
CAISTOR

The Roman Castrum—The Church and the Hundon Tombs—Rothwell and the Caistor Groups of Early Church Towers, “Riby,” “Wold,” “Cliff” and “Top”—Pelham Pillar—Grasby and the Tennyson-Turners—Barnetby—Bigby—The Tyrwhit Tombs—Brocklesby—The Mausoleum—The Pelham Buckle.

CAISTOR

Caistor is the centre from which roads radiate in all directions, so much so that if you describe a circle from Caistor as your centre at the distance of Swallow it will cut across seventeen roads, and if you shorten the distance to a two-mile radius, it will still cross eleven, though not more than four or five of them will separately enter the old Roman town. For the town has grown round a Roman “Castrum,” and the church is actually planted in the centre of the walled camp. A portion of the solidly grouted core of their wall shows on the southern boundary of the churchyard, and bits of it still exist to the east and west just beyond the churchyard boundary, and also a little further from the church on the north. Even the well which the Roman soldiers used, one of many springs coming out of the chalk, for Caistor is on the slope of the Wold, is still in use to the south-east of the church, and was included within the walls of the “Castrum.”

Dr. Fraser of Caistor, who takes a keen interest in the subject, kindly showed me a plan on which such portions of the wall as have been laid bare, in some half-a-dozen spots, were marked. He lives in a house belonging to the Tennyson family, the poet’s uncle and his brother Charles having both tenanted it. The place has a long history. It was a hill fort of the early Britons, then it was occupied by the Romans till late in the fourth century, and, after their departure, it was a stronghold of the Angles, who called it, according to Bede, Tunna-Ceaster or Thong-caster, which might refer to its being placed on a projecting tongue of the Wold, just as Hyrn-Ceaster or Horncastle is so named, because it is on a horn or peninsular, formed by the river. In 829 Ecgberht, King of Wessex, defeated the Mercians in a battle here, and offered a portion of the spoil to the church, if a stone dug up about 150 years ago with part of an inscription apparently to that effect can be trusted. Earl Morcar, who had land near Stamford, was lord of the manor in Norman times, and the Conqueror gave the church to Remigius for his proposed Cathedral.