The late Dean Kitchin described to me how, in company with a Roman Catholic bishop and a medical man, he had opened what was supposed to be St. Cuthbert’s tomb about the beginning of this century. The old chronicler had related how he was slain in battle, how the body was hastily covered with sand and afterwards taken up, and for fear of desecration was carried about by the monks whithersoever they went, until at last it was laid in a tomb, and a shrine built over it in Durham Cathedral. He also said that the saint suffered from a tumour in the breast, the result of the plague in 661, which latterly had got better. It was known where the shrine was and the reputed tomb was close by. The tomb slab was removed; beneath it were bones enough to form the greater part of one skeleton, and there were two skulls. “What do you think of that?” asked the dean; the bishop at once replied “St. Oswald’s head.” The doctor then said, “This body has never been buried.” “How do you make that out?” “Because the skin has not decayed but dried on to the limbs as you see, as if it had been dried in sand,” just as tradition said. “Also,” he said, “there is a hole in the breast here which has partly filled up, evidence probably of a tumour or abscess which was healing,” again just what the chronicler stated. One of the skulls showed a cut right through the bone, like the cut of axe or sword, again corroborating the story of the death of St. Oswald in battle. The whole account seemed to me to be most interesting, and certainly it would be difficult to obtain more conclusive proof of the veracity in every detail of the old chronicler. CHAPTER XIX THE NORTH-EAST OF THE COUNTY Thornton Curtis—Barrow—The Hull-to-Holland Ferry—Goxhill—Thornton Abbey—Immingham—The New Docks—Stallingborough—The Ayscough Tombs—Great Cotes—Grimsby—The Docks—The Church, Cleethorpes—Legend of Havelock the Dane. We will now return to the north-east of the county. From _Brocklesby_ a good road runs north by _Ulceby_, with its ridiculously thin, tall spire, and _Wootton_, to _Thornton Curtis_ and _Barrow-on-Humber_. [Sidenote: THORNTON CURTIS]