Looks better from a distance than it does close up
Seen better days but still solid and plodding on

Of course there’s a very interesting psychological study to be made of people’s cars and what the choice of vehicle says about that individual - I personally think it tells you a lot.
Personality traits must shine through when it comes to choosing a car. Except for buying a house it’s probably the biggest single purchase made by most people, therefore it’s considered and important.
As proof that car choice does tell you what people are like you can readily imagine some people driving certain types of car and others not.
Certain cars have clichéd owners and as we all know clichés only survive due to a kernel of truth.

I wonder also whether automobiles and their drivers follow the same theory as dogs and their owners ?
That is they match up, even begin to merge into the same traits and looks as each other. There’s been some remarkable test results showing how accurately some people can pair up dogs with their owners in a random selection of individual pictures.
Whether I was always like my car or whether we’ve merged together in harmony and synergy over the years I cannot say. I know we share many similarities both real and jocular.
I also know I wouldn’t want to be without it - perhaps some cars are like dogs after all.

I’ll bet if you had pictures of cars and people there’d be a high rate of success in pairing them up - likewise much could be ascertained about a person by the type of car they drive - I think you could even build up a picture without seeing the person !
If you want to know what I look like then look now further, well look a little further because it’s below.
I think this is a superb picture, taken by my brother at Nettleton, much like my car it says an awful lot about me and my life.
Out in the wilds of Lincolnshire, walking, camera in hand, on my own and in a world of my own - a picture paints a thousand words !

Me Candidly Captured By My Brother at Nettleton

Is there any validity in what I’m saying or am I talking rot !
Hard Workingly Yours
Rod

The latest macro-micro beast to emerge from Amiguru Jungle lurched into my field of view this morning as I hacked away at the Snowberries. It measures 100mm top to vicious-looking tail and goes by the name of Sphynx ligustri or to you and me, Privet Hawkmoth larva.

Sphynx ligustri

Not only does it have that ‘horn’ at its rear end but can also hiss quite effectively however, this one was quite friendly and happy to pose for me in the ’sphynx position’.

Regards,
Neville

Here’s two very salient points I’ve read recently:

Amazon now sell more Kindle Download e-books than they do hardbacks ! For 100 hardback books sold by Amazon, 143 Kindle books have been bought

The next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary may never appear in book form ! A team of 80 lexicographers have been working for 21 years on this revised edition and the OED have said it may never actually be printed in book form

That’s certainly food for thought for those who said ‘It’ll Never Take Off’
It’s also worth considering the point that e-Books are still relatively expensive, that is to say similarly priced as actual books. Obviously, using downloads as a delivery format offers the opportunity to massively reduce the price of books - so as the price comes down it’s reasonable to expect an even greater surge in their popularity.

I suppose it’s easy to have romantic attachments to books and all they engender - perhaps some of us look at them through Rose-Tinted Reading Glasses.
Possibly it is time to move on - few people send letters anymore yet we communicate more than ever thanks to the ease of technology.

Does it matter what format somebody uses ? Should we be encouraged about the Kindle sales figures from Amazon ? After all, if it say one thing for sure it say people are still reading !

I don’t see myself buying a Kindle or e-Reader, not because I’m a dinosaur or because I have a vested interest in books, but because I don’t want to look at a screen to relax. I often read in order to take a break from looking at this infernal thing !

I would say one thing though - I do believe non-fiction books will gradually die out !
They will become a specialist field, most people will simply look on the internet for the information they want - we are creating, despite the Problems and Pitfalls, a Wikipedia generation . . .
Interested in World War II ? Then here’s what happened on one page !
I could write considerably more on this but I am well aware of the word count most internet readers find acceptable
Anyway I’ve had enough of staring at a screen - I’m off to read a book to relax !

What do you think ? Do you read ? Do you use Kindle or a e-Reader - does the book have a future as a physical thing ?
Are you Books or Bytes ?

Bibliographically yours
Rod

This and other things looked at in this weeks Winners and Losers

I managed to spend a fabulous day with my brother today, it’s an all too rare occurrence so something to be cherished. Walking all around Nettleton under huge Lincolnshire skies - Buzzards and Kestrels soaring overhead - takes some beating - here’s what it looked like this afternoon

Nettleton Top

Walking

Bare Faced Cheek
I get lots of emails, and I mean lots, but this one’s a corker:
Hi my name is A**a A**n and I live in Pakistan. I love Peter Cheyney books but they are not available in Pakistan. Moreover I am a student and i am not an earning hand. I can’t afford to buy these books from you because they are pretty expensive. If you could please send me these books for free I will be very thankful to you.

Men
Multi-tasking now looks like a myth !
Research suggests that multi-tasking simply leads to doing several things poorly and is, in fact, nonsense !
Where does that leave women ? I thought that was the only thing they could do

Lap Dancers
The qualifications to be a Pole Dancer are not quite as obvious as you may imagine. A new survey has revealed that 25% of Lap Dancers have a University Degree !
They seem to have swapped the idea of climbing the ‘Greasy Pole’ for one quite different

Walking
The benefits are well known but new medical research shows that walking for 40 minutes 3 times a week appreciably increases your intelligence.
How come I’m so dumb then - I should be a bloody genius !

Watching TV

Watching TV
Watching Soap Operas, Daytime TV and Reality TV shows makes you dumber !
So says the latest research, I can see how it drags you down to a lower mental level but do you not have to be at a certain level already if you’re tuning into Jeremy Kyle

George Michael
Washed up former popstar, now better known for cottaging and smoking dope, George Michael was in yet another car incident, did he fall asleep again or hit another car ?
No, he drove in shop !
Here’s a tip George, instead of spending £70,000 on a Range Rover use the money for cabs !

X Factor
Everybody knows the X Factor sucks - I’ve Amusingly Told You Before but it’s back yet again. It’s obviously always been a highly manipulated farce but now they’re using auto tuning software to make the contestants sound better - I thought it was meant to be a talent contest - pffft !

The Catholic Church
Once again covers itself in glory at the news it helped conceal the fact that one of it’s priests was in fact an IRA terrorist, apart from on Sunday when he was blessing people or telling them not to sin. He directed the plan for a bomb which killed 9 people, 3 were children, and injured 30 others.
Rather than being charged politicians and the church decided to post him to another ‘parish’ because he’d been “a bad man” - staggering !

Asda Supermarket
A fabulous gaffe from the head of one of Britain’s biggest supermarket chains:
‘Food quality is something Asda hadn’t been as focused on in the past as it should have been’

In another Asda related gaffe a Town Mayor referred to a visit he made to his local Asda on a YouTube video
‘My usual visits to Asda would probably be later than this… mostly to avoid the mutants who go in during the day’
It caused a local stir, doesn’t make it any less funny, or indeed any less true

That’ll do for me, time to raise a glass and draw a veil over a superb day, if you’ve got this far then I wish you all well and hope that you too can get out to somewhere like Nettleton this weekend and enjoy yourselves

If you’ve any comments, opinions or issues to raise either in general or with me indeed - then feel free !
Happy Bank Holiday Weekend
Rod

A Google search for “Helby” Lincolnshire proves fruitless - how can at least 3 maps mention a place and nobody else seemingly does. Antiquarian books on Lincolnshire and English Heritage likewise yield no results, the only interesting reference I came across was a birth record: Sarah Burkitt 1817 Helby Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire 1770 - Sent in by Neville

If you look at all three maps you’ll see each one has a large symbol apparently depicting a ‘church’. These are symbols in line with the likes of Lincoln and Grimsby in stature.
One of Neville’s original conjectures, and a view I also share, was that these symbols denoted an area of importance rather than depicting the size of a church as one might initially imagine.
Note the map below, few places are actually marked and named so it’s fair to assume that those marked are the most significant and again Helby is there.
If it was so significant then why no mention elsewhere ?

So, where is it ?
Neville’s suggestion was Great Limber or Lymburgh or indeed Limberge / Linberge and I agree but . . .
I’ll throw a second possibility into the ring, could it be perhaps an area rather than a specific place, perhaps it’s the Limber - Brocklesby area ?

The Map I Looked at this Morning - 1742 by Badeslade

On the map below you’ll notice that it is the only place marked in a font as bold as Grimsby, again that can only be significant, also it’s only those two places that are marked by a building. Go back to the first map and you’ll see only 3 places marked with a building - very telling.

Also Sent in by Neville

As mentioned previously the name Helby was brought to my attention initially by our Map Meister Neville and I’ll not paraphrase him any longer, I’m sure he’ll speak for himself and offer his opinions, more eloquently than myself as well. Here’s what I think, I make the distinction so if any ideas turn out to be nonsense I don’t want people attributing them to Neville.

I’m wondering about it being an area because when you compare the spots marked with other maps it doesn’t seem to quite land on a specific target we’d recognise today.
This could, of course, be due to the fact these maps were, presumably, drawn to be representative rather than specifically accurate in an OS sense.
But, if it was a specific town or village then I would expect it to turn up in plenty of documentation.

I would suggest Great Limber as the epicentre though. I’ve written before that Great Limber strikes me as a place far more important than we realise today. Only last week I stood at the Mausoleum marvelling at the commanding view and thought - this must have been a natural place of significance, or possibly of worship or sacred in someway, going way back - pre-Christian is not a ridiculous hypothesis.
It’s a spot with few equals in the county - I cannot believe it was just a hill !
I’ll round this up now before it gets unwieldy and move further information, ideas and discussion over to comments.
In closing I think it’s clear that there’s something of significance and interest here - a historical curiosity I venture to suggest - a case to investigate

The Game is Afoot !
Rod

Beesby Earthworks

My first sighting of them was above, note Shetland Ponies, and as usual the pictures don’t do them justice I’m afraid. My initial thought was wow - much better than I’d hoped for.
Took a picture etc and carried on walking looking for a public footpath which I intended to use to visit somewhere else - went round the corner and bang . . .
More and more and more - it’s staggering, possibly the most elaborate earthwork site I can recall visiting !

It’s a fantastic place for a walk too, a couple of good Public Footpath routes which kept me quiet for a few hours

Just Look at that - a thing of beauty

The village is listed in the 1086 Domesday Book, listed as Basebi and in the hands of, yet again Count Alan.
The earthworks include many mounds and building platforms as well as a church and various Medieval agricultural features.
By 1450 the village had merged with Hawerby and the shrinkage continued when in the mid 1500s there were only 7 families recorded as resident in the village.

This is a lovely spot and one I’ll definitely be returning to, I also have one more related article to write, and also hope to find out more about the history.
If you know anything at all about the village then please do share it with us, please note this is not Beesby in the Marsh but the one in the Wolds.

A fantastic place and a fantastic day
All the best
Rod

A Old Stone Tool or a Stone ?

The above picture shows the sharp edge. It was sharp enough to strip bark from a piece of wood I picked up as efficiently as any knife.
Note how the colour changes around the edge of the ‘blade’ also the odd edge chips suggestive perhaps of damage in use ?

Is it or Isn’t it ?

The above is the thick ‘heel’ end which fits beautifully in the palm of the hand.
It feels like an absolutely perfect Neolithic tool - but is it simply nothing more than a piece of flint - I’m in need of help and advice !
I had the idea when I found it of looking around at other stones in the field to see if it was obviously just indigenous and one of many flint pieces chopped and changed over the years by ploughing.
It didn’t appear to be a hotspot for flint which was encouraging.

Later research seemed to be less than conclusive. Information such as look for striations where the stone has been worked followed by though these may have been smoothed out
Has it got a sharp edge which shows signs of use, blunting certain areas and chips - yes it has.
It’s confusing and very clearly an area for a real expert but are there any rules of thumb for the non-professional - a simple guide that whilst not foolproof does at least narrow the field down whilst not guaranteeing a diagnosis does possibly discard definite non-starters.

I should like to put together as many tips, ideas and things to look for and consider when trying to decide whether a piece of flint is an ancient Prehistoric Tool or just a stone
If you can help, have any ideas, suggestions or indeed questions then please do leave a comment - many thanks

Knappingly yours
Rod
Please scroll down to see a series of superb articles covering all aspects of this subject in the fully illustrated comments by ‘Amiguru’

A few things that caught my eye, and I thought worthy of minor note but not a full article, over the last few days

Facebook

The Pill
Medical research shows the Contraceptive Pill improves memory.
Good news, let’s hope girls don’t forget to take them !

Digging for Britain
A TV programme on archaeology to watch - unbelievable - I enjoyed it too

Crashing for Cash
Having a deliberate car accident in order to claim compensation is on the rise (I never knew it was even happening)
Estimate: some 30,000 cases a year - adds £44 to the average insurance premium !
The honest amongst us once again penalised

Interest Rates
Some experts predict a steep rise in the next two years . . . good !
I’ve been very magnanimous, I think, despite low rates being bad for me personally I’ve been in favour of them as it gives people with mortgages and loans etc a break.
I’ve now decided to abandon this tact and pursue self-interest more - let’s have them as high as they can go

Bebo

Facebook Indiscretion
One of Cyberspaces most influential people, Google’s Eric Schmidt, has predicted a lot of young people will one day be forced to change their names in order to get a decent job . . . why ?
To escape the things they’ve put on Facebook and other social networking sites - wise words - a lot of things will come back to haunt some people

Yasmina Siadatan
Described as a ‘Career Woman Role Model’ and an ‘Alpha Female’ she struck a blow for women in the workplace by beating men in something called The Apprentice and was rewarded with a high-flying career and job. Weeks after starting she is said to have begun an affair with a colleague, she’s now pregnant and due to go on ‘Maternity Leave’ shortly.
Didn’t even make it half way through the first year - must make some women weep with despair and set-in-their-ways men laugh and say told you so !

My Camera Bag
I have a special camera rucksack so I can cart all my gear about when I go on days out and trips etc - sometimes walk for 6 hours with it.
Now weighing in at 2.5 stone
Do you really need all that to take a picture ?

The End of Summer
It really does fell like it’s the end, such as it was, of summer

Nightmares
I woke up the other morning completely lost and convinced I had to be at work but couldn’t remember whether it was a day shift or a night shift !
It was a bit like one of those Vietnam Style Flashbacks so beloved of third rate movie directors

I went for composition as opposed to close up - I’m getting ever poncier !

A comments, opinions and alternative ideas or examples warmly welcomed
Pseudonymiously yours
Rod

I shall be making a separate trip to visit the Roman Site and shall be writing that up in another article.
Being on the Humber clearly aided the prosperity of the town for, despite its size, the entry in the 1086 Domesday Book states:

The land was of Gilbert de Ghent and Robert from him and had on it a church, 3 mills, a ferry and a fishery. That compares very favourably to many entries I’ve seen for towns in Lincolnshire.

It’s commanding position on a hillside overlooking the River Humber must have made it a natural place for settlement, traces of which go back to the Neolithic with finds including polished axes and scrapers. There’s signs of an Iron Age Barrow, plenty of Romano-British activity it’s also touted as being possibly the site of the Post Medieval harbour called Flashmire.

All Saints church displays many periods in its build, there’s possibly some Norman left and it’s the tower could go back as far as the 11th century.

All Saints Church Winteringham

The area is connected to the well known Marmion family and inside the church there’s a circa 13th century knight effigy of William Marmion, unfortunately the church was locked when I visited so I was unable to catalogue the cross-legged knight.
There is also an interesting, and early, carved figure of a man in a niche which I did see and is pictured above.

The church was obviously prestigious too as in 1143 there was a ceremony there confirming William de St Barbara as Bishop of Durham who found himself in turbulent times and was even suspended by the Pope for not attending the famous Council of Rheims in 1148.

More modern history saw the town renowned as the only Michelin starred restaurant in Lincolnshire, it did, I believe, eventually lose the accolade following ownership/chef changes.
It’s a great spot and clearly there’s an awful lot more history and information to add but for now I’ll bring this potted history to an end and extend into the comments below for further information and greater depth.
As previously mentioned I’ll be dealing with the nearby Roman Fort site separately

If you can add anything or have any comments then please do share them - thank you
All the best
Rod

In 1821 there were only 15 house and a population of 114, a more recent estimate of the population suggests about 35 - the effects of machinery in farming I presume.
The village certainly has a long and fascinating period of settlement. Two Neolithic axes have been found, one polished stone the other flint as well as Bronze Age scrapers.
The Romans where there in the 3rd and 4th century, archaeological finds include plenty of pottery and the possibility of several kilns. Tentative suggestion is also made that it may have been the site of a Romano-British vineyard. The site, mentioned in the 1086 Domesday Book as Grenesbi is listed as belonging to, as so much did, “Count Alan and Wimund from him”, continues with medieval earthworks, pond and a Norman Church.

St Nicholas Church in Grainsby Lincolnshire

Saint Nicholas church looks like a proper small Lincolnshire village church. The tower, although re-topped, looks ancient indeed, I thought Norman personally.
Mee suggests 11th century with later higher parts going back to the 13th.
There’s certainly a Norman doorway leading into a small church whose nave may also be Norman in origin.
It’s chalk and ironstone in construction and a few sources mention the legend of the scorch marks stating they were the result of the church being ‘fired’ by marauding Danes.

As always we’d love to find out more about Grainsby so if you have any information or connections then please do leave a comment.
All the best
Rod