CAISTOR

As I will soon be travelling back to England, to my home town, I thought I would write a little bit about the place. I regard it as my home town, although I was 14 years old when my parents moved there. That is 46 years ago, and they are still there.

My home town is CAISTOR, in Lincolnshire, England. It is a very old town, as the name implies. 'Caistor' stems from the Anglo-Saxon ”ceastre” (which meant a camp or a settlement) which in turn stems from the Latin 'castra', or camp. All English place names that include castor, caistor, caister, chester, cester and so on have the same roots. This suggests the presence of a Roman camp as the origin of the place. There remains a tiny bit of 4th Century CE Roman wall visible near the Church and a 4^th Century Roman cemetery was discovered in 2010.

Some years ago it was claimed that post holes from a 1^st Century Roman Legionary marching camp were found. However, I have heard no more of this. It is not impossible that a temporary camp was there much earlier, giving rise to the civil settlement later.

Legend has it that it was Legio IX Hispana that was based there briefly in the 1^st Century. This is the so-called 'lost legion'. This legion was certainly based in the permanent fortress at York by 108 CE. York is just an hours drive north-west of Caistor. This legion had ceased to exist by the 150's and there are many theories about this.

Caistor also appears in the Domsday Book that was completed in 1086 for William the Conqueror. It is called 'Castre' in the Domesday Book.

More of its earlier history is little known. It was an agricultural settlement and market town. In the late 17^th Century a serious fire destroyed much of the town and most of the buildings in the centre today date from this period.

After the emergence of Methodism in the 18^th Century, which began at Epworth in Lincolnshire where the Wesley brothers were born, Caistor became known as a hotbed of Methodism, and regarded as a rather radical place. It must be remembered that Caistor was an 'urban' centre in the midst of a very traditional rural society. How 'urban' it was I don't know, the population today is about 2,700.

The Grammar School, which I attended, was founded in 1633. The original school was used as the school hall when I attended. Dawn French, the actress, attended the school 1969 to 1970, when I was there. However, she is younger than me and I certainly don’t remember her. Sir Henry John Newbolt, (1862 – 1938) the poet and David Ricardo (1772 – 1823) the political economist both attended the school.

The RAF had a base just outside Caistor during World War 2, as a training school and maintenance unit. This was closed in 1945, but used by the air force again from 1959 to 1963 by No. 269 Squadron RAF with PGM-17 Thor missiles. I don't remember that, but the area is still referred to by locals as the 'rocket site.'

We moved to Caistor in September 1967, I was 14 and my brother was 11. We moved from a tiny dot of a village to the 'big city' of Caistor. It was the first, and only, house my father has ever bought. The house was built in 1749 by a farmer. When he died it was divided into 3 houses by his 3 sons, and my parents own the largest of these. The original interior has, of course, long since been ripped out and modernised. That happened before my father bought it. But the brickwork is original.

Well, Tove and I will be staying there Thursday to Monday night, sleeping in my old bedroom.