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at their freedom from that mighty terror and Sir Hugh became a hero.
    As promised, he took the dragon’s head to King Henry I. The king changed Hugh’s name to Bardolph and as Castle Carlton was the head of the baronetcy, he granted it many privileges, such as freedom from all tolls for Sir Hugh’s tenants and the right to take a horn of salt from every salt cart passing through his domain. Sir Hugh did not forget the help he had been given and made a pilgrimage to the saints’ shrine to lay down treasures and thanks. His deed was talked of widely, as was his bravery and the privileges he bestowed upon his people. The Lincolnshire Magazine states that it was ‘this same valiant knight [who] had lands in Norfolk, his chief seat there being Wormgay, which name again retains the “dragon” tradition’.
    Perhaps he and his ancestors were old hands at confronting dragons. It seems the baron’s crest included the image of a dragon’s head, but when researching Wormgay, the village’s name seems to stem from a family or the followers of a man called Wyrma. I can find no dragon legend attached to the area. Adrian Gray 22 suggests the Castle Carlton dragon may have lived at Walmsgate, near Louth, but that it was then known as Wormsegay. There is a long barrow at Walmsgate, which legend states holds the skeleton of a dragon that was slain in the area. If it is headless, then perhaps we would find our answer.
    Whitlock quotes from a very early source, William Camden, writing in 1586:
    Sir Hugh Bardolfe lived in Castle Carlton in the time of Henry I. It is said in a very old court roll that in the first year that Sir Hugh was lord of the place ther reigned at a toune called Wormesgay a dragon in a lane in a field that venomed men and bestes with his aire; Sir Hugh on a weddings day did fight with thys dragon and slew him, and toke his head, and beare it to the kynge and gave it him, and the kynge for slaying of the dragon put to his name this word dolfe, and did calle him afterwards Bardolfe; for it was before Sir Hugh Barde; and the kynge gave hym in his armes then a dragon in sygne. 23
    In old Germanic dolph means ‘famous wolf’ – which could be a champion’s title given for bravery. Whitlock also proposes that Walmsgate may have originally been named Wormsgate.
    Folklorists Gutch and Peacock refer to ‘a tradition, which probably took its rise at an early period, [which] tells of a huge serpent that devastated the village of South Ormsby and was slain at the adjacent hamlet of Walmsgate.’ 24 This could be either another version of the slaying of the dragon and its burial in the barrow, or the tale of a different dragon, making the area rather unlucky in this respect! One version does suggest that there were actually three dragons in the area; one buried in the barrow, one flying away to settle in Dragon’s Hole in Corringham Scroggs, and the third fatally wounded, crawling away to die at Ormsby.
    Gutch and Peacock state that ormr was the old Norse form of Anglo-Saxon wyrm , and in dragon tradition worm was another name for dragon, just like drake.In many stories of dragons they are depicted as worm-like creatures, with no wings – like the famous Lambton Worm, a legend from the North East of England. South Ormsby, therefore, was apparently named after the dragon incident, as was, we assume, Walmsgate.
    The worm-like dragons have also been depicted as serpents – and through much of history they have been linked with water: ‘On that day the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent; and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.’ 25 In fact, it is said the English word dragon derives from the Greek drakon , meaning serpent of huge size/water snake.

    The effigy of Sir Buslingthorpe inside the small church, aptly named St Michael’s, at Buslingthorpe. The church is one of the few remaining buildings on the site of a deserted