The singular cluster of very early church towers near Caistor are similar to those near Gainsborough, and to another group just south of Grimsby (_see_ Chapter XXIII.). South of Caistor is _Rothwell_, which we hoped to reach in a couple of miles from Cabourn, but could only find a bridle road, unless we were prepared to go two miles east to Swallow, or two miles west to Caistor, and then make a further round of three miles from either place. The church, which keeps the register of marriages taken in Cromwell’s time before Theophilus Harneis, Esq., J.P., after publication of banns “on three succeeding Lord’s Days, at the close of the morning exercise, and no opposition alleged to the contrary,” has two very massive Norman arches, the western bays with cable moulding. The tower is of the unbuttressed kind, and exhibits some more unmistakable “Long-and-Short” work than is at all common in the Saxon-built towers of Lincolnshire churches, built, that is to say, if not by Saxon hands, at least in the Saxon style, and in the earliest Norman days. The village is in a depression between two spurs of the Wold, and a road from it, which is the eastern one of three, all running south along the Wold, leads to Binbrook. The middle road is the “High Dyke,” the Roman road from Caistor to Horncastle, and has no villages on it. The western one goes by _Normanby le Wold_, Walesby, and Tealby, and joins the Louth-and-Rasen road at North-Willingham. From this road you get a fine view over the flats in the centre of the county, as indeed you do if you go by the main road from Caistor to Rasen. This takes you through _Nettleton_, where there is another of these early towers, but not so remarkably old-looking a specimen as some. A buttress against the south wall of the tower is noticeable, being carefully devised by the mediæval builders so as not to block the little window. _Usselby_, three miles north of Rasen, lies hidden behind “The Hall,” and is the tiniest church in the county. It has a nave and chancel of stone, and a bell-turret, and hideous brick-headed windows. At _Claxby_, close by, some fine fossils have been found. The eastern main road to Grimsby has most to show us, for on it we pass _Cabourn_ and _Swallow_, both of which have towers like Rothwell, as also has _Cuxwold_, which is half-way between Swallow and Rothwell. All these unbuttressed towers are built of the same yellow sandy stone, and generally have the same two-light belfry window with a midwall jamb. _Cabourn_ was the only church we found locked, and we could not see why, and as the absence of the rector’s key keeps people from seeing the inside, so the presence of his garden fence, which runs right up to the tower on both sides, keeps them from seeing the west end outside—a horrid arrangement, not unlike that at Rowston. The tower has a pointed tiled roof, like a pigeon cote, a very small blocked low-side window is at the