KILSBY VILLAGE

Kilsby lies on the modern A5, very close to the line of the old Roman Watling Street, which from about 873AD formed the "Danelaw" boundary line between Saxons (to the south and west) and Danish invaders (to the north and east). The village of Kilsby is sandwiched between Barby village on the south-west and a couple of hilltop farmsteads to the north-west on land known as Barby Nortoft which is part of Barby parish, though it is separated from the main part of Barby parish because Kilsby parish intervenes.

Barby (which was often spelt "Berroughby" or "Beroughbury" in medieval times) was probably a Saxon settlement founded somewhere during the period 500-800AD, whilst the land at Barby Nortoft was probably settled somewhere around 880-900AD by a Danish freeman (or socman) who had pushed south across the Danelaw border searching for available land to farm.

Though relations between the Saxon community at Barby and the Danes at Barby Nortoft may have been initially strained, it seems likely that by the early 900s the two settlements would have been living peaceably together, meeting when necessary on the low hill that lies halfway between the two settlements. They probably cemented their friendship somewhere around 910-920AD by a symbolic marriage between the son of the lord of Barby and the daughter of the Danish farmer, after which the newlywed couple founded a new settlement of "cildesbyr" (ie "the dwelling-place of the chief's son") halfway between their parent-settlements of Barby and Barby Nortoft, in the lee of the hill where a good spring still trickles down from higher ground.

It is of course impossible to prove this suggested interpretation by any surviving documentary records - but three separate items of surviving place-name evidence combine to provide very strong support:

a) The land both north and south of Kilsby includes the name "Barby", indicating that Barby's land originally extended right across the territory now included within Kilsby parish, thus the settlement at Barby is of considerably earlier date than that at Kilsby.

b) The place-name derivation "cildesbyr" suggested above for the original form of the name "Kilsby".

c) Three small fields on the low hill that lies exactly mid-way between Barby Nortoft and Barby and Kilsby are still to this day known as "Thingho", "Little Thingo" and "Fingo". A thing or ting (Old Norse, Old English and Icelandic: þing) was the governing assembly in Germanic societies, also used more generally for a public meeting or assembly; thing-ho therefore indicates "meeting-place", ie for debating and resolving matters of common interest between neighbouring settlements.