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medieval village. The tower is all that survives from medieval times, the rest having being rebuilt in 1835, but the whole structure overlies the buried remains of a much older church.
    There is another tale of a defeated dragon in Lincolnshire, at Buslingthorpe, near Lincoln. The famous dragon-slayer in this instance was Sir Buslingthorpe, who died around 1250. An effigy of this knight is housed in the little church of Buslingthorpe, St Michael’s. He was thought to have attacked the ferocious dragon and killed it and for such bravery and prowess, Sir John was awarded 400 acres of local land, known as Lissington Pasture. The Lincolnshire Magazine suggests that he actually drained and reclaimed this marshy land, making it habitable, and this was how his fame arose. The fact that boggy, watery land was involved, however, seems to agree with the alleged link to serpents and worm-like dragons.

    The head of the dragon-shaped rock residing on the hillside in the small village of Dragonby. Halfway down the road through the village there is a gap in the houses on the right-hand side. A track leads onto some open ground and the dragon can be clearly seen winding its way down the hill on the right, as if heading to drink from the pond at the bottom.

    Part of the tail of the colossal stone dragon at Dragonby.
    The other dragon we briefly touched on earlier was the creature that lived at Dragonby. The legend states this beast was the guardian of some mines but was defeated by a wizard, who turned it to stone – hence the ninety foot dragon-shaped rock that can be seen snaking its way up the hillside. It is actually a natural rock formation, apparently caused by a limestone spring, but legends often attach themselves to such wonders of nature. This particular rock has another myth attached to it, one concerning the Devil. The tale states that the ‘dragon’ rock is in fact the top of a church that once stood there but sank into the ground, congregation and all – and once a year the ghostly bells can still be heard to ring. The Devil had been attracted to the village because, as Daniel Codd tells us, ‘The community had fallen into avaricious ways.’ 26
    He caused the church to sink and sat on the roof, laughing all the while. When the congregation tried to leave they found themselves in a long, underground tunnel which led only down, to Hell!

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    When thinking of Lincolnshire, picturing the extensive North Sea coastline along one border, the boundaries of the River Trent and the Humber, and the endless horizon viewed over the miles of open countryside, one inevitably imagines vast expanses of low-lying wetlands, fens and marshes. The magnificent Lincolnshire Wolds and heathland stand tall amongst the peat and silt-filled depressions of the Fens and the salt-lined marshes. The fact is that forty per cent of Lincolnshire’s land is at or below sea level, three quarters of the land lying below thirty metres. This is one of the reasons why, for many years, the Fenland was a very isolated place, difficult to get to and then hard to traverse, and so strangers mostly stayed away. It is little wonder that in such out-of-the-way places legends and folk tales arose, mingled with the history of the area, abounding with stories of strange creatures, especially those lurking in the wet and wilds! Before the eighth century, Lincolnshire was apparently described as ‘a deep and horrible fen, a strange land of fetid pools and flowing rivers, and a terrain grim enough to daunt all but the most intrepid settler.’ 1 The chronicler Felix of Crowland is said to have described it as, ‘A trackless waste of immense marshes and foul running streams…oft-times clouded with moist and dark vapours…the haunt of the Devil.’ 2
    Despite its reputation as an inhospitable wet and marshy area, Lincolnshire also had many scholars defending it. In the Lincolnshire Bedside Book , Jack Yates and Henry Thorold are quoted explaining