The place name, Caenby, seems to contain an unrecorded Old Norse personal name Kafni, + bȳ (Old Norse), a farmstead, a village, so possibly, 'Kafni's farm or settlement'.
[1] The place appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Couenebi.[2]
Caenby's Grade II listed Anglican church is dedicated to St Nicholas.[3] A moated manor house, now the Grade II listed Hall Farm House,[4] was a seat of the Tournay family from the time of Edward I to George II. In 1541 Henry VIII slept here while on his Lincolnshire progress.[5] In the 18th century, Lawrence Monck occupied the house.[4][6]
In 1945 fields adjacent to Caenby were a military Q decoy site maintained by RAF Hemswell. Dummy plywood buildings, inflatable rubber aircraft or vehicles, and a ploughed faux runway were set up to simulate an active airfield and draw German bombers away from genuine target airfields.[7]
^A. D. Mills, Dictionary of English Place-Names (Oxford, 2002), p. 92; E. Ekwall, Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names (Oxford, 1960), p. 81; K. Cameron, Dictionary of Lincolnshire place-names, (Nottingham, 1998), p. 26; K. Cameron (ed.), Place Names of Lincolnshire: Part 6 (Nottm, 2001), p. 137
