Swallow is a small village and civil parish in the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England, on the A46 road north-east from Caistor. The population (including Cabourne and Cuxwold) taken at the 2011 census was 289.
History
Etymology
The name Swallow has been variously written as Sualan (Domesday Book), Suawa, Swalwe and Swalewe (all twelfth century). The Oxford Dictionary of Place Names equates the name with Swale, suggesting that the village is called after a fast-moving river of that name, with eau being French for water. Bob Willey, who used to live in the village, put forward the theory that it is closer to the German schwall, meaning "flood" and suggesting that water gathered on the clay bottom land below the fast-draining chalky hills.
Early history
Archaeological finds, including flint tools at Swallow Vale Farm, indicate the presence of early settlements in Swallow. Other traces include cropmark traces of four possible barrows, a pit and a boundary ditch on Cuxwold Road, and 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.
Further finds include Roman pottery and coins, and the apparent remains of a Saxon leather worker. Ridges found in the field above the skeleton are further indications of a pre-Norman conquest settlement.
Middle Ages
The Domesday Book does not mention Swallow in detail, but in 1086 Lincolnshire was remote from the rest of the kingdom: cut off from the south by the undrained Fens, and occupied by hostile and rebellious Danes (Vikings). At this time, Swallow consisted of at least 35 households.
In Swallow the important landowners were Norman (the Bishop of Bayeux was William the Conqueror's half-brother Odo of Bayeux), though low in the Norman hierarchy. Others mentioned in Domesday include Sualan (Archbishop of York), Count Alan, Roger de Poitou and Alfred of Lincoln.
By the 13th 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. Their successors, the Conyers family, were certainly non-resident. From around 1200 the manor of Swallow was held by the Augustinian abbey of Wellow in Grimsby. The Cistercian nuns of Nuncotham also had a holding, as did Thornton Abbey and Saint Leonard's Priory (Grimsby) by the time of the Reformation.
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 following the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
A survey in the early 14th recorded that Swallow had 26 households and 31 taxpayers, while a Poll Tax count in 1372 found 110 people over the age of fourteen. 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.
Apart from the church, there are no obvious reminders of the medieval village. On closer examination, a few earthworks 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 medieval period there were further closes on the south side of the road running down to the stream.
The Eastern Settlement shows signs of one or more monastic farms, a moated manor site and a mill.
Enclosure
Swallow dates from the 19th century enclosure. Until 1805 the majority of villagers had strips in two large fields, as well as grazing rights on the wold, the moor and in Horse Pasture.
However, this system started to lose viability as early as the Tudor period. From the mid 17th century, some Swallow residents described themselves as farmers rather than cottagers. By the end of the 18th century, improved agricultural methods and animal husbandry, together with the need to move from subsistence farming to large-scale food production for growing numbers of city and town dwellers, made 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, and the Rector's Glebe of , virtually all the land was awarded to Lord Yarborough. The Rector received corn rents in lieu of tithes. There were also about in the village and around the church which were old enclosure, and were for roads.