portion of the area of Lincolnshire at the time of the coming of the Angles and Danes. The great freshwater swamp formed by the confluence of the Don, the Went, the Ouse, and the Trent, in which the Isle of Axholm rose like a beacon, was the barrier that divided it from Northumbria.[1] Lincolnshire was the early Southumbria of Anglo-Saxon records, and is mentioned by this name in 702.[2]
On the south was the great fen that reached from the coast along the course of the Witham almost as far as Lincoln, also westward almost to Sleaford, and from the north, near Horncastle, southwards into Cambridgeshire. West of this was the great heath between Sleaford and Lincoln, on which no ancient settlement could be made owing to the poverty of the soil, and on which, in later centuries, it was a pious work to erect a land lighthouse to guide travellers at night across it. Lincolnshire was not wanting in woodlands and forests, a necessity for all primitive settlements. That of Bruneswald covered a large extent of country south of Bourn, and part of the south of the county was also called the Forest of Arundel as late as the time of King John.[3].
In our endeavour to trace the character of its early colonization, careful attention must be given to the fact that Lincolnshire is pre-eminent among English counties as the land of the -bys and the -thorpes. These -bys were not domains of lords with their serfs, but were the characteristic communities, in their origin at least, of freemen come from Northern lands, living under tribal conditions similar to those they had left behind them. The -by place-names in Lincolnshire end where the old tens began. The settlement of this county is typical of settlements of people of the Old Anglian, Danish, and Northern races. Some Saxons and Frisians
