to a date near the end of the Roman occupation. It is impossible to say who Cunobarrus, the maker, was, but his latinized Celtic name is believed to be of Irish origin. Curno in ancient Irish names (Cyn in Welsh names) means hound and it is interesting to speculate on a possible connection between Cunobarrus, the Romano-British craftsman and the origin of the name Hundon of which a reminder is to be seen in the little carved hound beside a clerestorv window on the north side of Caistor church.
In the fifth century, when the Roman legions had left Britain, places like Caistor, not far inland and occupying strategic positions for both attack and defence mav well have attracted the Teutonic invaders and, even though the historical accuracv of the stony told by Geoffrev of Monmouth in the twelfth century about the marriage of the British king Vortigern with the beautiful Rowena, daughter of the Saxon chief Hengist, can easily be disproved, it mav indicate that the place called "in the British tongue, Kaercorrie, in Saxon Thancastre, that is, Thong Castle" was one of some importance. This place has been identified with Caistor by successive writers since the seventeenth century and as the chapter in Geoffrey's book in which it is mentioned relates to Lindsey, the identification is probably correct.
The fifth century is one of the most obscure periods in the whole historv of Britain, but there is sufficient archaeological evidence to justify the assertion that an early Anglian settlement existed at Caistor and the conjecture that we have here an example of continuous occupation since the first century A.D.
By far the most important discovery so far made at Caistor was that of a broken flat stone in or about 1770, bearing a f'ragmentary latin inscription in a form of lettering which has been assigned by expert opinion to the early part of the ninth century. 'Ihis stone, which is now lost, bore the name Egbert, whom early commentators identified with a king of Wessex, whose defeat of the Mercians in 829 is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and consequently it was assumed that the battle took place at Caistor and that the stone had formed part of a memorial, erected on or near the site.
Unfortunately, this speculation has been repeated regularly,