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On weekdays, Emil and Theo spend most of their time in Caistor. Here they attend Lincolnshire Montessori School. An old inn, complete with barns and stables was converted, with much attention paid to detail, to house the school. It is a young school and a small one and all the teachers and staff are contagiously enthusiastic about their work.

Naturally, Emil and Theo were quite nervous on the eve of their first day at the new school. However, when we picked them up in the afternoon, one of Emil’s first comments was, “Great, tomorrow I don’t have to be nervous again because everything is so nice.” Theo immediately agreed. It can’t go any better.

Caistor Grammar School is a bit older than just a few years. But the German lessons there must be first rate, after all a large number of those are in the competent hands of Dan Wilton. An much of his excellent German he acquired back in the 1990s in our shared flat in Chemnitz under the stern gaze of this city’s former eponym Karl Marx. Caistor Grammar inhabits a labyrinthine campus with buildings and additions from the school’s founding year 1631 until today. This is where the pupils in their smart uniforms strive to comply with the school’s motto Always to Excel.

Caistor itself, however, is much older than its most dignified educational institution. Evidence of settlement in the area reaches back into the first century bc, when the Romans were attracted to this location by its natural defences and iron deposits close by. They built an encampment which transformed into a fortified settlement and is now Caistor. Every day on our way to school we drive along an about 3 kilometre stretch of dead straight road that has been there ever since the Romans first designed it about 2,000 years back.

Caistor was not ignored by the plague or devastating fires, so that only at the end of the 17^th century the town attained its contemporary face of red brick buildings that replaced the traditional timber frame constructions.

The arduous visitor can read up on all this and much more at the Caistor Arts and Heritage Centre. This red brick building houses the local public library and a small gallery along with what must be the best café in town. The freshly prepared sandwiches and excellent tea taste especially good when you return to town from a small ramble across the footpaths around the town.

But our walks through Lincolnshire and the Lincolnshire Wolds are another story.

Tags: caistor, England, Grammar School, history, Montessori, Romans

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 at 23:59 and is filed under english stuff, hingekritzeltes, trips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.