Mavis Enderby is a hamlet and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. It lies in the Lincolnshire Wolds, east from Horncastle.
History
An early reference may be seen in 1349 when both parts of the name appear to end in "by", i.e. Maleby Senderby
[Plea Rolls of the Court of Common Pleas; CP 40/357; http://aalt.law.uh.edu/E3/CP40no357/bCP40no357dorses/IMG_7757.htm ; 5th entry, end of line 1] A later spelling, 1430, may be "Malvyssh Enderby"
[The defendant lives in Malvyssh Enderby. Plea Rolls of the Court of Common Pleas; National Archives; CP 40 / 677; 4th entry in http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT1/H6/CP40no677/bCP40no677dorses/IMG_1275.htm]
Literary references
Mavis Enderby had a peal of bells named after it, called The Brides of Enderby,
[ "The Brides of Enderby" ; Enderbymuseum.ca. Retrieved 30 April 2012] which is mentioned in
Jean Ingelow's poem
The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire 1571: in the poem, the ringing of the Enderby bells is the generally recognised signal of approaching danger to the neighbouring countryside: "Came down that kindly message free, the Brides of Mavis Enderby".
An extract from the poem is at the head of Rudyard Kipling's short story, At the Pit's Mouth.
Douglas Adams used the name "Mavis Enderby" in his spoof The Meaning of Liff dictionary "of things that there aren't any words for yet". Adams assigned meanings to placenames based on what he imagined them to mean, Mavis Enderby, becoming "The almost-completely-forgotten girlfriend from your distant past for whom your wife has a completely irrational jealousy and hatred".
Mavis Enderby was also used as the name of a character in Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary.
St Michael's Church
The
parish church is dedicated to
St Michael. It is
medieval (14th/15th centuries) with
Victorian era restorations by James Fowler in 1875 and C. Hodgson Fowler in 1894. It is built of
Greenschist rubble, with
ashlar dressings and roofs in
Welsh slate and Westmorland slate. A re-sited 11th-century Saxon grave slab stands in the doorway of the tower and a remnant of a 14th-century churchyard cross is located in the graveyard.
See also
External links
