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 CHAPTER XVIII

THE ISLE OF AXHOLME

Epworth and the Wesleys—"Warping"—Crowle—St. Oswald—St. Cuthbert.

The Isle of Axholme, or Axeyholm, is, as the name when stripped of its tautology signifies, a freshwater island, for Isle, ey and holm are all English, Anglo-Saxon, or Danish, for "island," and Ax is Celtic for water. The whole region is full of Celtic names, for it evidently was a refuge for the Celtic inhabitants. Thus we have Haxey, and Crowle (or Cruadh = hard, i.e., terra firma), also Moel (= a round hill), which appears in Melwood. Bounded by the Trent, the Idle, the Torn, and the Don, it fills the north-west corner of the county, and is seventeen miles long and seven wide. The county nowhere touches the Ouse, but ends just beyond Garthorpe and Adlingfleet on the left bank of the Trent, about a mile above the Trent falls. The northern boundary of the county then goes down the middle of the channel of the Humber estuary to the sea. Once a marsh abounding in fish and water-fowl, with only here and there a bit of dry ground, viz., at Haxey, Epworth, Belton and Crowle, it has now a few more villages on Trent side, and two lines of railway, one going south from Goole to Gainsborough, and one crossing from Doncaster by Scunthorpe and Frodingham to Grimsby.

An unfair arrangement was made by Charles I. by which the Dutchman Vermuyden, the famous engineer who afterwards constructed the "Bedford Level," undertook to drain the land, some of which lies from three to eight feet below high water-mark, he receiving one-third of all the land he rescued, the king one-third, the people and owners only the other third