ancient tumulus as being near the church. {157a} REVESBY. Revesby is situated about 7½ miles from Horncastle, in a south-easterly direction; some 12 miles north-west from Boston, 8 miles south-west from Spilsby, and about 7 miles East, from the nearest railway station at Tattershall. Letters, _via_ Boston, arrive at 7 a.m. The nearest telegraph office is at Mareham-le-Fen. One derivation of the name Revesby is from a Danish word meaning a “fox,” the Danes certainly at one time settled extensively in this neighbourhood, and “by” is a very common Danish termination. (Streatfeild “Lincolnshire and the Danes.”) Another and perhaps more likely derivation is from the “reeve,” or public guardian of the fen, {157b} who might well reside here, to look after the means of communication, roads and channels in the great tract of country southward, which was at one time almost a waste of morass, and subject to frequent inundation from the sea, and in connection with this, it may be mentioned that one of the recognised duties of religious houses, {158a} such as the Abbey of Revesby, was to keep roads and bridges in proper repair, and a portion of the Revesby property, named Stickney Wydale, was granted to the abbey, on condition that the monks kept in proper order the “Northdyke Causeway,” then a main road raised above the floods. {158b} And among the charters and deeds of Revesby, is one (No. 7_b_), by which William de Romara undertakes to compel the men of Holland to keep in repair a waggon-road from Sibsey. {158c} The history of Revesby at that period is lost to us. No Saxon chronicles exist, as they do as regards some other places, to tell us of those early days. Yet we can, in a degree, connect Revesby with a great Saxon family, and one which is represented by a leading family in our county in the present day.