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A BRIEF
HISTORY of SWALLOW by Clarissa
M. Turner SWALLOW
AND THE MIDDLE AGES The name
Swallow has been variously written as Sualan (Doomsday Book), Suawa,
Swalwe and Swalewe (all twelfth century). Most people seem to
agree that the name derives from the Old Norse svel - - meaning ‘to move dartingly’ (the same
derivation as the bird name), The compilers of THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF
PLACE NAMES equate it with Swale, suggesting that the village
is called after a fast moving river of that name with eau being Norman
French for water; however unless Swallow’s beck has changed dramatically in
the last millennium this theory would seem somewhat difficult to
substantiate! Others believe that the root is the Old English swillan
‘to wash’. Bob Willey, who used to live in the village, put forward the
theory that it is closer to the German schwall ‘flood’ in
meaning suggesting that water gathered on the clay bottom land below the
fast-draining chalky hills. Another theory suggests that the first part of
the name could be Celtic deity Sul from the same source
as Aqua Sulis (Bath). On the other hand, for generations teachers at
the village school told children that the name came about because the water
here was swallowed into the ground. Swallow
doesn’t get much of a mention in the Doomsday Book, but in 1086
Lincolnshire seemed very remote from the rest of the kingdom, cut off from
the south by the undrained and almost impassable Fens, and occupied by
hostile and rebellious Danes (Vikings). In fact, Lincolnshire was never much
like the rest of the country under Norman rule: many of the peasants were
free as they had been under Danelaw, not villeins (slaves) as they were under
the Feudal System, and many of the overlords were Breton or - even - Danish
rather than Norman. So, it is hardly surprising that by the time they reached
Lincolnshire some of the compilers of the Doomsday book were somewhat sketchy
in their researches compared with further south. In Swallow the important landowners were Norman (the
Bishop of Bayeux was William the Conqueror’s brother), but the least
important in the Norman hierarchy, but those most likely to be actually
resident in the village have distinctly Anglo-Danish names. Sualan:
Archbishop of York; Bishop of Bayeux; Count Alan and Picot from him; Roger de
Poitou and Wimond from him; Alfred of Lincoln. SYNOPSIS from the DOOMSDAY BOOK Throughout
the Middle Ages the manorial tenure of Swallow is complex, not to say
confused! By the thirteenth century
Count Alan’s manor had passed into the hands of the Lascelles family who may
have been resident landlords, and were closely involved with the Parish
Church. However, their successors, the Conyers family, were certainly
non-resident. From
around 1200 the Manor of Swallow was held by the Augustiian Abbey of Wellow
in Grimsby, and the Cistercian Nuns of Nuncotham also had a holding, and by
the time of the Reformation Thornton Abbey and S. Leonard’s Priory (Grimsby)
also had lands in Swallow. In 1530
George St.Pol bought the former Lascelles Manor, and in 1543 he acquired the
former Abbey lands from John Bellewe and Robert Brocklesby, to whom they had
been granted a year previously following the Dissolution. In 1086
Swallow consisted of at least 35 households, with 26 and 31 taxpayers
recorded in the early fourteenth century, with a Poll Tax count of 110 people
over the age of fourteen in 1372. There were 18 taxpayers in 1525 but only 12
in 1543, and 20 households in 1563. (These numbers remained fairly
constant for the next three centuries, although the number of communicants
dropped from 76 in 1603 to 45 in 1676 which could indicate a drop in
population but is more likely to be a result of political/religious change.) Apart from
the Church, there is little to see of the Mediaeval village. A few earthworks
visible only to the trained eye show a village of two centres. To the west
there was a series of narrow closes and yards fronting Caistor Road with a
back lane near where the present A46 runs. This and the ploughing strips are
cut through by the much later Limber Road. Towards the end of the mediaeval
period there were further closes on the South side of the road running down
to the stream. Chapel
Lane may also lie along the route of a mediaeval village street, but
nineteenth century farming and twentieth century building have virtually
obliterated any conclusive evidence. The Eastern Settlement shows signs of one or more
monastic farms, a moated manor site and a mill. It seems possible that there
were no buildings along the Beelsby Road until after Enclosure (1809). There have been several
interesting archaeological finds in Swallow, including
. . . Assorted
Flint Tools (Swallow Vale Farm) Great
Langdale Stone Axe (Field next to Old Rectory) Roman
Pottery, Coins and a Brooch (Rookery Farm) Roman Bronze
Coin (Near Church) Roman-British
Pottery (Opposite Grange Farm) Mediaeval
Pottery and Coins (Rookery Farm) Mediaeval
Pilgrim Badge (Swallow Vale Farm) As well as
the artefacts there are some traces of early settlements. On the Cuxwold
Road cropmark traces of four
possible barrows, a pit and a boundary ditch have been observed, with similar
barrows behind Grange Farm and on the eastern edge of the village south of
Grimsby Road. Straddling the Limber
Parish border are the remains of an undated ring ditch in Swallow Wold Wood. The most
interesting find of recent times was a skeleton unearthed when a drain was
being dug at Wold Farm. Examination of his jawbone showed him to be a Saxon
leather worker. There are some interesting ridges in the field above where he
was found which may be indicative of some sort of lost pre-conquest
settlement. To the children on the farm the most intriguing notion is that
there was somebody making bridles and harness on the very spot where a
thousand years later they keep their ponies. THE CHURCH The only
apparent mention of the Church in the Doomsday book is unclear whether it is
referring to Swallow or to some other church since Ralph de Mortemar had
property in both Swallow and Grimsby. However, the oldest part of it undoubtedly
dates from that period or even a little earlier. The lower portion of the Tower
is in the Saxo-Norman style; the small west door has a rounded Romanesque
arch, as has the window above it. The much wider arch dividing the tower from
the Nave has typically Norman dog-tooth carving, but this may be partly or
wholly Victorian restoration. On the
south wall of the tower there is a carving which may be part of the
original fourteenth century Rood.
This was probably broken up at the time of the Reformation. William Andrew,
the Rector from 1564 to 1612, was a firm supporter of reform and may well
have been responsible both for this and for the change of dedication from S.
Salvatoris (Saint Saviour) to Holy Trinity. The remains of the Rood were
unearthed in the churchyard and placed in the tower early in the twentieth
century by someone with antiquarian interests . In 1553
Swallow Church was reported to have three ‘gert bells’ and one sanctus
bell, but just over a century later things were sadly changed. You must
pity poor Swallow People Who sold
the bells to mend the steeple
runs a local rhyme. This
refers to the collapse of the tower sometime before 1663 when the steeple and
bells fell destroying the South Aisle. In 1670 both aisles were demolished
(the North Aisle being reported as ruinous even before the collapse) and the
following year the ‘three riven bells’ were sold to defray the £140 costs of
demolition and restoration to Sir Philip Tyrwhitt. Sir Philip is at
the time reported to have bought one bell and promised faithfully to buy
another. Of these bells there is no trace. The single extant bell was cast by
Thos. Warner and Sons of London in 1864. Did
history repeat itself in 1700? Or is the story of the steeple blowing down
and the five bells being sold to Barrow Church to pay for rebuilding simply a
mis-telling of the earlier and better documented incident? The
steeple was again restored in 1868 when the upper part of the tower was built
in the neo-norman style. The
Nave was originally built in the thirteenth century, but much of what we
see today is Victorian restoration. The carving around the south door dates
from the 1880s, but may be a copy of the original tympanum. The Font,
however is genuinely Norman dating from the late eleventh or early twelfth
century. The window
in the south wall is Edwardian, given in memory of the Rector, James Wallis
Loft, and his wife. The North
Aisle was built during the restoration of 1883-4 when the old
horse box pews, the gallery and the three decker pulpit were removed.
The pillar was added at this time, but may be of reused stone as it appears
to have early masons’ marks and/or graffiti faintly on its surface. There is
no South Aisle now, but traces of it and the Lady Chapel built
in the thirteenth century can be seen on the exterior of the south wall. The
thirteenth century Chancel was largely rebuilt in 1868 at a cost of
£350. Again, traces of the original doorway can be seen on the exterior of
the south wall. The Pillar Piscina is a lovely example of Norman
stonework. The East
Window in memory of the Farrow/Bingham family dates from the 1883 restoration
and shows very clearly the excellent and, until recently, undervalued quality
of Victorian craftsmanship. Less good is the spelling. See if you can spot
the mistake. There are
several nineteenth century memorial tablets in the chancel. In 1968 it
cost £650 to do the first major repairs since 1884, and a further £2,100 was
spent in 1976. Rectors
of Swallow and their Patrons
A few of
Swallow’s Rectors have proved more memorable than others. J. E. Wallis Loft
was a cricketer of National repute, and Arthur Askey made a comprehensive
study of oral history which has proved invaluable to later researchers. On
the other hand, Watson Foreman led a tragic life and was a notable drunkard. The United
Benefice In 1931
Swallow was united with the parish of Cabourne, and in 1979 Swallow with
Cabourne was amalgamated with the benefices of Rothwell with Cuxwold,
Thoresway with Croxby, and Nettleton as the Swallow Group of Parishes. The
Churchyard The
churchyard in Swallow has been a burial site for well over a thousand years,
and has not changed much in either size or shape in all that time. The
Turnpike of 1765 cut through some of the ancient (pre-Christian?) burial
ground, and in 1954 a road straightening and widening scheme on the then A46
took a further slice of the churchyard replacing the hedged bank with the
distinctive high retaining wall. It was
during these excavations that the famous Swallow Giant was unearthed - a man
7 feet 2 inches tall (well over 2 metres), and said by some to be a
Viking Warrior. Unfortunately
the legend proves as usual to be far more interesting than the truth, and
correspondence between the Reverend Mr. Jacoby and the County Archaeological
Department suggests that, whatever the locals wanted to believe, scientific
measurement of the bones showed a tall man of between 6 feet and 6 feet 4
inches whose bones had spread out in the earth as apparently all skeletons
do. In 1970
the eastern and northern parts of the churchyard were levelled. In theory the
old gravestones were preserved by being placed around the church, but far too
many were damaged or defaced in the process, and no proper record was kept of
their original positions. A complete survey was made of the remaining graves
in 1978. The early 1980s saw a major tidying of both the churchyard and the
neighbouring corner green to remove rotten trees and facilitate mowing. Since then there has
been extensive tree-planting throughout the village including the graveyard and
green. The Copper Beech was planted to commemorate the opening of the
by-pass, and the seat, flanked by chimney pots from the demolished Rookery
farmhouse, was placed there in 1998. The
Rectory The Old Rectory, now a private residence,
was built in 1864 to a design by James Fowler of Louth, the diocesan
architect, at a cost of £1,700. Unlike the farmhouses which were all built in
variations on the vernacular style, it is clearly identifiable as a
mid-Victorian building with its gothic ornamentation. Its
successor, the present rectory, built on Beelsby Road in 1958 is an
altogether more modest house in the rather drab post-war style. The earlier rectory or rectories are somewhat
mysterious. A County Directory of 1872 states clearly that the rectory dates
from 1856 - presumably a mistake - and that its predecessor was built in
1834. It has been suggested that this was a short-lived house on the same
plot, though possibly closer to the road, as the Old Rectory. Another
possibility is that Glebe Farm was originally built as a rectory. METHODISM As in many
Lincolnshire villages in the nineteenth century, the people of Swallow
embraced Methodism with fervour. At first they met in private houses, but
later they built two chapels. The Primitive
Methodist Chapel was the first to be built in 1844 at a cost of £98. Its
site on the Cuxwold Road was donated by the then Lord Yarborough. In 1855 it
had to be enlarged, but thereafter numbers declined and it closed in 1916.
The building remained, used as a barn and increasingly derelict, until it was
bulldozed in 1994. The Wesleyan Chapel was built on the north
side of Back Lane (subsequently Chapel Lane) in 1863. An altogether more
ambitious building than the Prims’, it was designed to hold a congregation of
140, although in fact membership never rose above forty. The chapel closed in
1967 and was demolished shortly afterwards. A small fragment of the base of
the wall remains between Solitus and Wishing Well. THE PARISH
REGISTERS The
Parish Registers (dating back to 1671 and now kept at Lincoln although
there are a number of transcripts in the village) tell a fairly typical
story of an estate village. It was rare for a family to remain in the village
for more than two generations, and the majority of labourers would move on
after a few years to get a better job or to leave farming altogether. Even
the better off farmers tended (being tenants rather than owners) to remain no
more than two or three generations. In the
spring of 1841, during the Hungry Forties, fourteen children under the age of
ten died (about a quarter of all the children in the village); they came from
seven families, but one of those families lost five children in the space of
a single week. No adults in the village died that year suggesting that the
epidemic, whatever it was, was a particularly virulent form of some childhood
ailment such as measles, whooping cough or diphtheria. In 1870
there was another epidemic when six children died in the space of a month
between October 20th and November 20th. The Rector, Sir Charles McGregor,
records that the last two died of scarlet fever. 1909 saw
the burial of an unknown man of about fifty whose decayed remains had been
found in the Jubilee Plantation after 12 to 2
years exposure. THE CENSUS The census
provides an interesting snapshot of a rural population. The census of 1851
shows 127 males and 90 females in 57 households. Ten years later the number
of dwellings had reduced to 41 (hardly more than the Doomsday level of 35)
while the population had risen by 22 (all female!). Analysis of the 1881 census shows 78% of all working
males in farming, with 16% in allied trades - 92% in total. Of the adults
only 10% were born in Swallow although just three women and no men were born
outside Lincolnshire. Today’s picture would be very different with fewer
than twenty men working the same farms, the majority of both working men and
women employed outside the village, and residents born not merely outside the
county, but outside the country. ENCLOSURE Swallow as
we know it today dates from the nineteenth century enclosure. Until 1805
agriculture was based on the Two Field System, with the majority of
villagers having strips in the two great fields, as well as grazing rights on
the Wold, the Moor and in Horse Pasture - at least that was the theory. However
from as early as the Tudor period the old system of agriculture was becoming
less viable, and from the middle of the seventeenth century various Swallow
residents were describing themselves as farmers rather than cottagers which
suggests a degree of consolidation in their land use. By the end of the
eighteenth century the Agrarian Revolution with its improved agricultural
methods and animal husbandry, together with the need to move from subsistence
farming to large scale commercial production of food for the ever growing
numbers of city and town dwellers had combined to make change inevitable. Swallow
was enclosed by parliamentary act in 1805, and the award was completed in
1809. Apart from two small parcels awarded to the Bishop of Lincoln and
Trinity College, Cambridge respectively, and the Rector’s Glebe of 96 acres,
virtually all the land in Swallow was awarded to Lord Yarborough. The corn
rents from what now forms the western halves of Swallow Grange and Swallow
Mount farms were to go to the Rector in lieu of tithes. There were also about
65 acres in the village and around the Church which were old enclosure, and
four acres were for roads. Within a
few years the farms we know today - Vale, Wold, Mount, Grange and Rookery -
had been built. Hedges were planted, new roads and lanes were built (Limber
Road was built at this time to provide access to the new farms), and Lord
Yarborough had begun the tree planting which so radically altered the countryside. THE FARMS Swallow
Vale Farm Swallow
Vale is probably the oldest of the farmhouses, and was begun even before the
Enclosure Award was completed, the back premises and the cellar still being
more eighteenth than nineteenth century in style. In the Yarborough Archive
at Lincoln there is a sketch plan for a ‘New House and Yard on Horse
Pasture’. This yard
remains almost exactly as it was in 1806 (right down to the uses of some of
the buildings) to this day. The house was extended and refronted in 1824/5,
and it seems probable that it was at this time the upper floor of the old
house (entered from an external access ladder) became sleeping quarters for
the farmworkers. A further £2,700 was spent on the farm in 1856/7 when a vast
amount of work was done. It was at this period (1851 to 1866) that Stephen
Gibbons, Lord Yarborough’s steward, lived at Swallow Vale so there was
probably a considerable incentive to make it a model farm setting a standard
for others. He was succeeded by his wife, Eliza, and briefly by his son
William Robert on her death in 1881, to be followed by Thomas Kirkby in 1882. In the
twentieth century Swallow Vale has been farmed by William Wilkinson and
Edward Lamming. Since 1967 Basil Thompson has been the tenant, with his
brother, Guy, and - as each grew up - his sons Denzil and Glenvyl, and
grandson Roger. There is a
story of the murder by her lover of a young servant girl from the Vale, and
his subsequent suicide, but nothing in the Parish Records seems to bear this
tale out. The
cottages at the Vale show very clearly the progression of styles in the
Yarborough estate cottages. Swallow Cottage was built about 1830; in
the 1960s Fred Smith bought the pair (one lived in and one derelict) and
converted them into a single dwelling, adding a large sun-room and garage and
demolishing the wash-house, coal store etc. Like the farmhouse, it is now
Grade 2 listed. The foreman’s cottage was built around ten years later
in a similar style. Towards the end of the century another pair of cottages
was built; they too were knocked into a one when the Thompsons took over the
farm tenancy in 1967, and are now called Henholes Cottage after the
wood opposite. Originally the corners were decorated with rusticated
brickwork but this was removed and re-used in Limber or Brocklesby when the
end wall was rebuilt following subsidence due to the nearby chalk pit.
Finally, the two Swallow Vale Drive cottages were built in the 1930s. The
detached coal store and wash-house still pertained, but there was now an integral
downstairs bathroom. Swallow
Mount Farm Swallow
Mount, arguably the grandest of the farmhouses, was built in the teens of the
nineteenth century, and is now grade 2 listed. It has since the 1930s been
farmed by the Robinsons, as it was by the Willows family for much of the
nineteenth century. The farm’s cottage is a modern bungalow. Rookery
Farm Rookery
Farm, at 800 acres, was the largest of Swallow’s nineteenth century farms and
flourished throughout the century under the Borman family, but its glory days
came to an end when Charles Campion went bankrupt in the 1930s. After an
upturn in fortunes it was sold in 1979 to Sir Richard Sutton Settled Estates.
The farm continues to flourish, but the house, derelict for many years, was
demolished in 1996. It dated primarily from the 1850s, although earlier maps
show buildings on that site which may have been incorporated into the later
house. The back premises (pictured below) included an impressive
dairy, and dormitories for the itinerant gangs of seasonal workers for all
the farms of the village. A new house was built on the site in 1996/7. Grange
Farm The present Grange Farmhouse
was built in 1820, and is said to be
a replacement for an earlier house in the village on the opposite side of the
road. The Farrow family who farmed at Grange make their first appearance in
the Parish Registers in 1747 and were well enough established to be listed as
‘gentleman’ or ‘gentleman farmer’ in various nineteenth century directories -
unusual for a tenant farmer in those class-ridden days. In 1807 Sarah Farrow
married Thomas Bingham, and the line continued unbroken until their
great-grandson, James Edward Quibell Bingham, retired in 1970 ending the
longest unbroken tenancy on the history of the Yarborough estate, and when he
personally was the estate’s most senior tenant. He died in 1996. Grange is
now farmed by Michael Kendall and his sons Daniel and James. The farm
buildings predate the house by several years, and are of particular interest,
especially the hexagonal pumphouse/horse-gin. The cottages are modern
replacements. Wold
Farm Wold has
always been the smallest of Swallow’s outlying farms. In the nineteenth
century it was farmed by members of the Tomlinson family (whose history in
Swallow is almost as long as the Farrow/Binghams), and then by William
Marshall Bucknall. In the 1930s it was taken over by Ben Wright who ran it as
a stud farm. His wife, Mary, was the daughter of Charles Campion of Rookery
Farm. On Ben’s retirement in the 1980s, the Thompsons of Vale took over
farming the land, and in 1996, following Mary’s death, Glen and Helen
Thompson moved into the house. During the
war Ben Wright was a Home Guard Commando trained as a resistance fighter
should the Germans invade. His secret hideout can still be seen in the woods
if you know where to look, and spent ammunition can be picked up. Village
Farm Village
Farm has always been, at about 80 acres, the smallest of Swallow’s farms, and
for generations it was tenanted by the Tomlinson family which rivals the
Farrow/Binghams for length of time in the village with the name appearing in
this form or as Thominson as early as 1679 when Elizabeth and Richard
Tomlinson died within a few months of each other, and 1685 when William
Tomlinson (a farmer) married Susannah Odling, although the line is only
directly traceable from Edward Tomlinson (1748 to 1830) and Sarah, his wife
(1765 to 1839). After Sarah, who was a tenant in her own right, died, her son
Edward is listed in Trade Directories as a farmer living at Wold, while
another son John was a carpenter and wheelwright living in the village. The
wheelwright’s workshop which was demolished in the 1960s, had living
accommodation consisting of a room and tiny kitchen with a loft above not
tall enough to stand up in, but with room enough to lie down to sleep. For
three generations, throughout the nineteenth century, the Robinson family
were carpenters and wheelwrights in the village; in the 1881 census their
address is given as Grimsby Road so it may be that they were never connected
with this workshop. The
cottage, built in 1839 and now the back premises of Village farmhouse, still
retains the stone sink, fireplace and ladder up to the bedroom. By 1861
the Tomlinsons had gone from Wold (to be succeeded by the Bucknalls) and not
long after John was being listed as ‘farmer’ or ‘farmer and wheelwright’. He
was succeeded by his son Alfred, who died in 1926. The Misses Tomlinson took
over the dairy farm; neither ever married, but one had a live-in lover
because under the terms of a will she would lose everything if she married!
Tomlinson Close was built on the site of the farmyard in 1949. Ethel, the
last of the Swallow Tomlinsons, died in 1959 aged 73. Glebe
Farm Glebe
Farm, demolished in 1970, may have been the 1834 rectory. In 1851 the farmer
was called Holliwell and was almost certainly a member of the rector’s
family. It was the only farm in Swallow not to belong to Lord Yarborough. The
site had been occupied since mediaeval times and can still be identified
(opposite Keeper’s cottage) by the remains of the old orchard and a few
mounds in the field. Glebe’s
history is closely linked with that of
Village Farm, particularly in recent times when Glebe was farmed by
William Dixon from 1939-65, and then by his sons until Keith and Mary Dixon
moved to Village Farm. Moggs
Hollow Strictly
speaking Moggs Hollow isn’t in Swallow, but in Irby, although the
neighbouring Copperfield (Swallow’s only barn conversion) is. Some
people derive the name Moggs Hollow from ‘Monk’s Hollow’, a reference to the
lands of the mediaeval monastic grange which probably included this site.
Some go further and endow it with a monkish ghost. VILLAGE HOUSES and COTTAGES The
village at the time of Enclosure appears to have been very scattered;
unfortunately the plan gives no indication as to what are dwellings and what
are farm buildings; nor can the scale be judged accurately with the distances
between known landmarks inconsistent with modern Ordnance Survey maps. The
route of Beelsby Road is particularly mysterious, but could be no more than
careless draughtsmanship. It appears that at this time there were still
houses along Caistor Road where the crofts of mediaeval times had been. Village
houses at enclosure and for some time afterwards would have been simple one
storey buildings of mud and stud. The brick tied cottages of the
Yarborough Estate gradually replaced these older dwellings, with the majority
of those on Grimsby Road and Chapel Lane being built around 1875. Of the 45
houses in Swallow listed in the 1881 census, about two thirds survive. Shops in
Swallow In 1976
the last Post-Office-cum Village-Shop in Swallow finally closed, beaten by
the motor car and supermarkets, leaving the less mobile villagers reliant
upon occasional buses and good neighbours. The
earliest recorded shop in the village was at the Forge in 1856, and it had
become a post-office by 1889. Presumably the blacksmiths starting with John Lawrence, then Charles Henry
Brown, and finally John James Johnson saw the
running of a shop as a useful augmentation of income as more farm implements
were mass produced, although his services both for repairs and as a farrier
would have continued in great demand until well into the next century. The
success of the business may be judged by the size and quality of Forge House
which is predominantly nineteenth
century, although parts of it may date from the eighteenth century.
Many of the shop fittings remained in situ until the early 1970s when Geoff
Baxter removed them from his dining room to his studio and store-room. The
forge also seems to have had some land attached as these
shopkeeper/blacksmiths are frequently referred to as ‘farmer’; according to
the 1881 census C. H. Brown farmed 105 acres of ‘Brown’s Farm’. The next
shop was a tobacconist’s kiosk near Crossroads Cottages which was somewhat
surprisingly run for a time by the Reverend Mr. Askey’s son. The remains of
this building can still be seen in the garden of no.8 Grimsby Road - Mrs.
Holloway’s. Swallow’s
penultimate shop was the post-office in Chapel Lane at number 1 Cottage (now
the Watsons’ house). Until the recent extension (1998/9) it was possible
to see marks in the brickwork where the post-box used to be. After a brutal
robbery and assault on the Post Mistress, Fanny Hanson, in 1958 a new shop
was built at the corner of Cuxwold Road and Chapel Lane (now Maple Tree
Bungalow) opening in 1961. The Pub In 1953
the old pub, The White Hart (now Keeper’s Cottage), closed, to
be replaced by the much larger pub and restaurant, The Swallow Inn.
Although popular with the locals, it was passing trade from the A46 upon which the Swallow Inn
relied initially until its reputation made it the hostelry of choice for
people from a wide area around. It is hard
to imagine the tiny White Hart doing much casual trade except when a cast
shoe or broken axle necessitated a lengthy unplanned wait in Swallow. Even
among villagers trade cannot have been thriving in days when pubs were
predominantly a male preserve and half the adult population of the village
were Methodists, leaving a maximum regular clientele of perhaps thirty. It
had a six day licence, and was presumably dry on Sundays. Small wonder that
the innkeeper frequently had a secondary trade to support him. In 1882 Mr.
Osburn was doubling as innkeeper and wheelwright, and its time as a saddler’s
workshop remains quite strongly in evidence with offcuts of leather and
broken tools still frequently dug up in the garden. Houses
since the War After the
Second World war, Swallow saw a number of changes. Like many similar
villages, it became less of an estate village and more of a
commuter-cum-retirement village with a number of cottages passing into
private hands as the more intensive and mechanised agriculture necessitated
by the need to feed the country during the war made them redundant as the
homes of farm labourers. It isn’t until the 1970s that the Parish
Registers begin to show any real variety of trades and professions, From 1965
parcels of land were sold for building, and since then new houses have been
built at the rate of about one a year
in a wide variety of styles and materials. All have been built on good sized
plots and enjoy open views on at least one aspect. THE
VILLAGE POND In 1949
Arthur Mee wrote:- SWALLOW:
In a pretty Wold valley it lies, between Caistor and Grimsby, serene with its
pond by the green; a delightful little avenue leading to one of its houses,
and a tiny church on a high bank. The King’s England -
Lincolnshire The Church
and the avenue remain, although the house (Rookery) is gone, and the high
bank is largely replaced by a retaining wall, and the pond was filled in
during the 1960s and the land sold to make a garden for Pond Cottage. The
site now has a modern house on it. The
reasons for filling in the pond are somewhat obscure. The most prosaic reason
given is that as the water table dropped, the pond, always shallow, simply
became dry for most of the year, and was filled in as a logical part of Mr.
Metcalfe’s garden plan. More
interesting (and borne out by newspaper cuttings of the time) is the story
that the then rector, A. W. T. Nestor, had spent some part of his life in
India and was in mortal dread of a typhoid outbreak. Until 1949
the village was served by a parish pump near to the entrance to the present
playing field, and you had to be up
by 5 o’clock on Monday washday to be sure of sufficient water, although many
houses had - and still have - their own wells. Rookery Farm’s water was
pumped by a windmill which also seems to have served a pump on Grimsby
Road. In 1949 piped water came to the
village, pumped from Barnoldby and then fed to Swallow by gravity from
Beelsby Top. Electricity followed in 1950. Mains sewerage did not arrive
until 1970, and mains gas later still. Outlying houses are still served by
septic tanks and are without gas, although most now have mains water. ROADS
AROUND SWALLOW Prior to
the Grimsby Turnpike Act of 1765 the road (track) through Swallow seems to
have followed a line close to Chapel Lane; a green road ran from Swallow to
Rothwell until the Second World War when it was ploughed up to grow crops and
never re-instated. The new turnpike road cut through the ancient burial
ground and tolls were paid to travel along it. In 1954 a
road straightening and widening scheme on the then A46 (Caistor Road) through
the village took a further part of the churchyard, and during these
excavations the skeleton of the Swallow Giant was unearthed. (see Churchyard
section) For years a traffic roundabout at the cross-roads
was promised, but nothing ever came of it. After many
years - and far too many fatal accidents on a road far too narrow and
meandering for fast heavy modern traffic - Swallow got its by-pass in 1992
(at the expense of one healthy mature tree, but rather a lot of good farmland
and hedgerow, and the football field) and Grimsby Road and Caistor Road
became quiet cul-de-sacs. At long last it became safe for even quite young
children to walk or cycle unattended to visit friends or relatives on the
other side of the village, or to go to the playing field, or even play a game
of street football. THE SCHOOL
and VILLAGE HALL Prior to
1856 there must have been some sort of Dame School as the census for 1851
lists village children (not only those of the Rector and the more prosperous
farmers and tradesmen) as ‘scholar’. This school - so called - may have been
little more than a childminding service as many ‘teachers’ of the time were
themselves all but illiterate. The new
school was built at the expense of the then Lord Yarborough in 1856 for the
benefit of the children of his estate workers, tenants, and their employees.
The headmistress of the new school was Miss Mary Ann Whitworth. five years
later Miss Lucy-Ann Chatterton was the schoolmistress, to be followed by Miss
Sophia Swan in 1876 By 1881,
when the school registers begin, Mrs. Maria Unwin was headmistress, and the
first pupil on the roll was Henry Alfred Robinson; eighty-seven years later
the final admission, Sharon Redfearn was number 1,068. Teaching at a village
school in the early days must have been incredibly difficult with the
children of itinerant workers registered for just a few weeks, and the
majority of labourers’ children remaining for no more than a year or so. Initially, the
school seems to have consisted of a single room, but early in the twentieth
century an infant classroom and cloakrooms were added to the west, and the
main entrance appears to have been moved from the north to the south
side. Although
Swallow was a two classroom school for about fifty years, numbers fluctuated
considerably; in 1941, when the only extant school log begins, it was a one
teacher school, and was again on many subsequent occasions. November 1948
brought an excellent report from the School Inspectors citing Swallow as a
model for Rural One Teacher Schools; less than a year later Miss Marris was
appointed assistant to Miss Frances Cox. On November 4th 1949, the school was
on display when Mr.D.R.Hardman, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of
education, visited. In June 1946 work began on installing a
school kitchen, but in July 1949, following a huge intake of ten new pupils,
the canteen became the infant classroom and the end cloakroom the cookhouse.
In January 1959 it was agreed to dispense with the services of a cook and
have meals sent from the central canteen. A year later this was
reported as being satisfactory. The school appears to have been
closed on somewhat flimsy grounds. It was small, but - with twenty-four
children - still within the bounds of viability, and the buildings were in
good condition; the only problem seems to have been getting a teacher to
stay. The school was closed in May 1968 and the children transferred to
Caistor Primary School where they had to join existing classes, in some cases
for just one term before going up to secondary school. The whole process
appears to have caused some considerable disquiet in the village, and a
number of mothers kept their children from school for a period because of the
inadequate transport arrangements. It wasn’t the first time that Swallow
children had been sent to Caistor; from March 31st to November 30th 1945,
following the illness and resignation of Miss Joan Marrows as Headmistress,
Swallow School was closed. Maybe in
1968 parents hoped that enough fuss would make the closure temporary as in
1945. The Final Class Glenvyl Arthur Thompson Valerie Ann Hammond Deborah Elizabeth Dixon Michael Melton Elaine Hewson Rosemary Baldock Paul Hammond Ruth Lidgett Susan
Ann Metcalf Michael Goddard Pat Welton Sharon
Redfearn Paul Whillock Susan Dixon Mark Richards Caroline Ann Baldock Andrew Keith Dixon Jacqueline Karen Newsom Timothy James Winn Marie Ann Ritson Frazer Matthew Melton Pauline Janet Metcalf David John Ritson Susan Margaret Baldock After the
school closed the ownership of the building reverted to Lord Yarborough, and
in 1969 he sold it to the village for a nominal £150 on condition that it
would be returned to him if it could not be maintained as a village hall for
twenty-one years. In 1990 it
was handed over to the village, the Parish Council (which meets in the hall
bi-monthly) taking over the trusteeship shortly thereafter together with
responsibility for the day to day running expenses, leaving the Village Hall
Committee to raise money for capital projects. There is an irregular
programme of talks, quizzes and demonstrations on a roughly monthly basis
from September to May. Most years also see one or more major events - the
Craft and Garden Show, an exhibition, or a traditional village fete (usually
in conjunction with the Church). The Harvest Supper run by the Church is one
of the year’s most popular events. Recently an extension was built to house a
bar. The Village Hall Committee is also responsible for maintaining the
Playing Field for which the Parish Council pays Sutton Estates a quarterly
peppercorn rent. The swings were given by Quibell Bingham when he retired in
1970, and the other play equipment was paid for by fund-raising events in the
1990s. |