Swallow is a small village and civil parish in the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England, on the A46 road 4 miles (6.4 km) north-east from Caistor.

[1] The name Swallow has been variously written as Sualan (Domesday Book), Suawa, Swalwe and Swalewe (all twelfth century).

Bob Willey, who used to live in the village, put forward the theory that it is closer to the German schwall, meaning "flood" and suggesting that water gathered on the clay bottom land below the fast-draining chalky hills.

Straddling the Limber parish border are the remains of an undated ring ditch in Swallow Wold Wood.

The Domesday Book does not mention Swallow in detail, but in 1086 Lincolnshire was remote from the rest of the kingdom: cut off from the south by the undrained Fens, and occupied by hostile and rebellious Danes (Vikings).

Others mentioned in Domesday include Sualan (Archbishop of York), Count Alan, Roger de Poitou and Alfred of Lincoln.

By the 13th century Count Alan's manor had passed into the hands of the Lascelles family, who may have been resident landlords and were closely involved with the parish church.

The Cistercian nuns of Nuncotham also had a holding, as did Thornton Abbey and Saint Leonard's Priory (Grimsby) by the time of the Reformation.

In 1530 George St. Pol bought the former Lascelles Manor, and in 1543 he acquired the former abbey lands from John Bellewe and Robert Brocklesby, to whom they had been granted following the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

A survey in the early 14th recorded that Swallow had 26 households and 31 taxpayers, while a Poll Tax count in 1372 found 110 people over the age of fourteen.

To the west there was a series of narrow closes and yards fronting Caistor Road with a back lane near where the present A46 runs.

Until 1805 the majority of villagers had strips in two large fields, as well as grazing rights on the wold, the moor and in Horse Pasture.

By the end of the 18th century, improved agricultural methods and animal husbandry, together with the need to move from subsistence farming to large-scale food production for growing numbers of city and town dwellers, made change inevitable.

It was rare for a family to remain in the village for more than two generations, and the majority of labourers moved on after a few years to get a better job or to leave farming.

[2] The lower portion of the tower is in Saxo-Norman style; the west door has a rounded Romanesque arch, as has the window above it.

The much wider arch dividing the tower from the nave has typically Norman dog-tooth carving, but this may be partly or wholly Victorian restoration.

William Andrew, the rector from 1564 to 1612, supported the reformation and may have been responsible both for this and for the change of dedication from St Salvatoris ("Saint Saviour") to Holy Trinity.

In 1670 both aisles were demolished (the north aisle having apparently been ruinous even before the collapse) and the following year the three bells were sold to cover the £140 cost of demolition and restoration, an incident referred to in the local rhyme: Sir Philip Tyrwhitt, who paid the cost initially, reportedly bought one bell and undertook to buy another.

The north aisle was built during the church's restoration of 1883–84, when the old horse box pews, the gallery and the three-decker pulpit were removed.

In the early 1980s a major tidying of the churchyard and the neighbouring corner green removed rotten trees and facilitated mowing.

The Old Rectory, now a private residence, was built in 1864 to a design by James Fowler of Louth, the diocesan architect, at a cost of £1,700.

Unlike the farmhouses, which were all built in variations on the vernacular style, it is clearly identifiable as a mid-Victorian building with its Gothic ornamentation.

[citation needed] The present rectory, built on Beelsby Road in 1958, is a more modest building in post-war style.

[citation needed] From 1965 parcels of land were sold for building, and since then new houses have been built at the rate of about one a year in a wide variety of styles and materials.

In June 1946 work began on installing a school kitchen, but in July 1949, following a huge intake of ten new pupils, the canteen became the infant classroom and the end cloakroom the cookhouse.

Most years there are more major events – a craft and garden show, an exhibition, or a traditional village fete (usually in conjunction with the Church).

The Village Hall Committee is also responsible for maintaining the playing field for which the Parish Council pays Sutton Estates a quarterly peppercorn rent.