My computer now automatically comes up Google UK. Not so great, as I am convinced that when I
do a search for “synonyms”, I get a whole different selection of terms and
meanings. I’ve tried to make my computer go back to just plain old Google.com,
but it will not. So cheeky!
The
Domesday Book, that great 1086 A.D. survey mandated by William I, the Conqueror, to determine who held what land and the
taxes that had been liable under the previous ruIer, records the
probable name of Grimsby township as the Celtic phrase, “the abode at the
sacred mounds.” In other circles, it is believed to have been named after Grim,
the town’s, probably mythical, Viking founder. Often here in this area of North
Lincolnshire I have the sense that I have stepped back in time: ancient buildings,
like St James, originally built as a Norman edifice, to be rebuilt in the Gothic tradition (with the
exception of one enduring Norman doorway in the west end, known as the Jesse
window), and the Police Station, now converted into solicitors’ offices; Market
Hall, which in every town would have been situated close to the cattle stalls/bull
market/bull ring, where animals were displayed and auctioned off (A note on the connection between the Bos species and pecuniary exchange: The Latin word for money, pecunia, comes from pecus, or
cattle, and Roman coins were often stamped with the figure of a bull; our word
capital comes from chattel, meaning cattle; our phrase “bull market” comes from
the potential of breeding more cattle.);
the names of streets, like Bargate, named thus because the abbot of
Wellow was given the right of extracting tolls along the only road leading into
town, where a bar was positioned across the road to regulate egress and ingress,
and then there’s Abbeygate, formerly the approach through a gate that segregated the abbey
from the rest of the village; the docks, which sadly lost their honorary status
of being the third largest port in the kingdom -- long devoid now of their
fishermen, because the size of vessels increased incrementally in relation to
the slow, imperceptible silting up of the channels. Reminiscences of bygone
days, old ways of doing things still evident in the texture of life lived today.
I have to brag that on one Sunday when Brother
Bland, a member of the ward, was giving us a ride home, we were talking about
what streets I would take in order to come and visit his mum, Mary. He was
surprised to discover that I knew my way around quite well already and remarked
that I would be a Grimberian before I knew it. Yeh!
Photos__
1- Olympic Google doodle
2- St. James
3- cool means of preservation - gathered against
the wall,
rather than left to disintegrate in the yard
4- John King, Alderman
5- police station
6- inside Market Hall
7- fishing heyday
8- abandoned factories & waterways near the
old docks
9- Grimsby water main
