Inkhambridge

To someone with a background in both history and linguistics when I came across the name Inkhambridge in Peterborough records I was rather excited. The word appeared so incongruous with other Peterborough place names, and yet so perfectly placed historically and geographically ('inkham' or 'ingham' is such a great word to find in an area where most place names end in -ton). I had questions, specifically where Inkhambridge was, and I started looking for answers.

What Was the First Reference?

The earliest reference I have found to Inkhambridge was from a charter relating to the parish church (St John) and guild lands of Peterborough (1) and dated to 1355 which refers to ‘two acres of arable land lying in the fields of Peterborough at Inkhambridge adjoining the King’s highway known as Botolphgate.’

In another charter from the same collection (2) from 3 March 1381-82 there is a reference to ‘two acres of arable land situate at Inkhambridge in the fields of Peterborough adjoining the public way leading from Inkhambridge to Boongate.’

Where Were These  Locations?

Botolphgate was the name of the road that went past the hamlet of Botolphsbridge or Bottlebridge, which is now known as Oundle Road, Woodston. The hamlet had at one time a ford and/or bridge across the Nene close to where Nene Valley’s Fletton Junction is between Botolph Green and the rowing lake over the river. Earlier maps and archaeological digs (EEA Report 153 on Botolph Bridge) have shown how Botolphgate had been diverted from its earlier route, which made a gentle curve towards a crossing close to the location of the Key Theatre, meeting up with what is now Vineyard Road, east of the Cathedral.

Boongate, or Bondgate, was the name of the settlement to the east of the abbey which was close to Roman Car Dyke and predates the abbey/cathedral. Evidence of Bronze Age and Roman remains were found in the cathedral grounds and in the area of Boongate.

In present day Peterborough, Oundle Road meets London Road and crosses the river directly north onto Bridge Street. A bridge was first built there in 1308, so it was in place in the first reference to Inkhambridge in 1355, but from a linguistic point of view the location of Inkhambridge had to predate the 'new' bridge. 

What Can the Name of the Location Tell Us? 

Inkhambridge is an unusual name and likely to be a variant of Ingham Bridge (try saying them with a Scandinavian or German accent and see how similar the g and k sound). The ‘ingham’ part of the name is Anglo Saxon in origin, possibly dating from the 6^th century, if not earlier, and therefore pre-dating the abbey, which was founded in 6553. The name refers to a homestead and is common across England but tightly concentrated in Norfolk and Suffolk4. As you might expect from an early Anglo Saxon word, there aren't many 'inghams' in the fens or indeed around Peterborough, which makes this name in this location all the more interesting.

So Where Was Inkhambridge?

Joining together the two references, Inkhambridge was probably a bridge or crossing of the Nene where the embankment is now and would have been the main river crossing that led to Boongate from the south. The two acres of arable land mentioned are almost certainly to the east of the road running south from Boongate to the river, the west containing several river channels and belonging to the abbey at the time. 

With such an old name it's even possible that Inkham or Ingham was the name of the original settlement that pre-dated Boongate, or (more likely) was a settlement south of the river where Fletton Quays is now, surviving as a name in the river crossing alone. 

As a new pedestrian bridge is being built close to the location of the old settlement of Inkhambridge, is it a suitable name for the new bridge? I'm suggesting it is!

References

1. PAS/GCH/6

2. PAS/GCH/9 

3. https://farringford.co.uk/history/estate/place-name-derivation

4. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:-ham_and_-ingham_place_names.png

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay

Woad You Believe It

The plague arrived in Peterborough in 1665 in the guise of an unknown woman who had travelled to the area from London. Simon Gunton, vicar of St John's, captured this fact and the deaths of everyone assumed to have died from the plague in laborious detail in the parish records.

The first named person to die of the plague was Katherine Hambleton. She was buried on 22nd September 1665. For the first few weeks the outbreak appears to have been isolated to the woadgrounds, which is where they were also buried. So where and what were the woadgrounds? To answer this, we need to look at the plant itself, look back at the history of woad growing, and at the history of the area.

Woad is a very hungry crop and grew very well in the fertile fields throughout the fens in more modern times but it's not grown commercially nowadays. Parson Drove is known locally as the last location that woad was grown in and there are a few images to show the process including this evocative painting

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co65223/woad-mill-at-parson-drove-oil-painting

Woad is used to create blue dye, a skill that was used as far back as the Iron Age (yes, those naked, blue warriors), but with synthetic dyes its use has become largely obsolete. The plant is reasonably small for its first year - around the size of an outspread hand - with small plantain-like leaves, followed by metre-tall bracts of yellow flowers, quite like oil seed rape, in its second year. However it is also incredibly invasive with a long root that can be difficult to destroy (think of a dandelion with a super-sized tap root) which can make crop rotation a bit of a nightmare. 

Less than a hundred years before the plague arrived in Peterborough Queen Elizabeth I had decreed how much woad was allowed to be grown in each parish, with a limit of the number of acres grown and the amount individuals could grow. This was to ensure that enough food was grown in the country and fertile land wasn't being damaged by the continued use of the very hungry crop. As usual, the increased wealth of the few was at the expense of the poor who were struggling to grow enough food to survive on.

She also decreed how far away from towns and cities the crop could be grown and processed, stating it had to be at least four miles away. The process of picking, drying, grinding and mixing the leaves created an unpleasant smell further worsened by the addition of urine or manure for fermentation to release the blue dye, which was not popular with nearby residents. Her decrees did not have the expected response and so she reduced the limit to three miles at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

As is still the case in farming, the personal side of this production was that the land owners growing the crop became incredibly rich, but the people farming the land remained incredibly poor. These were seasonal workers. They would have prepared the land before sewing the seed, then harvested several crops of the leaves in the first year and potentially a little in the second (the amount of dye in the leaves diminished in the second year) before harvesting the seeds after the flowers. The processing of the crop took place in the same location as the growing of the crop, so we can assume that the labourers in the fields also worked in the production too. This would have made the workers exceedingly smelly, stained, and therefore isolated - potentially shunned - from other workers. (For more information about the Parson Drove process follow this link http://www.woad.org.uk/html/woad_mills.html )

It is therefore fascinating that the first cases should be identified in the people working the woadgrounds. These were people living on the margins of the town in an industry that was disliked. When they died they were not buried in the town but in the ground they worked and lived on. Of the first 12 deaths from 22nd September to 2nd November, ten of them were stated to be buried in or lived at the woadgrounds. Three Carews - Richard, his wife Julian, and son Thomas - died within five days of each other in September. Three Gregorys - Walter, Hannah, and Joan - succumbed in October. This tells us that families were living together at the woadgrounds, working the land together. Eight of the 12 people who died were women, four of those were daughters.

It is difficult to know exactly where the woadgrounds were, but there are some clues. Firstly, the fifth person buried - Walter - wasn't placed in the woadgrounds, where he lived, but in Newark (largely lost under Perkins Parkway), possibly suggesting that the woadgrounds were near to Newark. Secondly, the plague then moved on to Crawthorne Hill. This is another location that is lost to time, but we do still have Crawthorne Road, which joined Lincoln Road and Eastfield Road. A few references exist for Crawthorne Hill, including Pigot's Directory of 1840, and we know it was land somewhere north of Crawthorne Road. So, it is possible that the woadgrounds were located somewhere between modern Crawthorne Road and modern Oxney Road. Thirdly, the fens were still in the first few decades of drainage and it's likely that a crop that required two years of care would not have been well-suited to the still precarious fenland to the east of Car Dyke. This was a crop that needed to survive through the winter and would not have fared well in the soggy peat during the winter. It's therefore highly unlikely that the woadgrounds were east of Car Dyke. With all of those considerations, the woadgrounds were likely somewhere in the modern Eastfield or Park districts of Peterborough, so if you live there, be cautious if you come across a body in your garden!

The woadgrounds would not have been a permanent feature like a park or garden. The growing of woad stripped the soil of many nutrients and was therefore rotated with other crops, the plants fed to sheep at the end of the season. But unlike other crops there was a small industry built up around the growing and processing of woad, a small hamlet of workers living in the grounds for the season. These few tragic deaths have helped to illuminate a long-forgotten industry, forgotten places, and a marginalised group of people. Again, we must thank Simon Gunton for his diligence in recording every death.

Image: woad growing in the author's garden 2021

References: 

Iqbal, N.F.K., Ambivalent Blues: Woad and Indigo in Tension in Early Modern Europe, University of Alberta 

https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/constellations/index.php/constellations/article/download/19050/14723/45331 

woad.org.uk

 

A Visit to St Firmin's, Thurlby

On the penultimate Saturday of November, before the temperature finally dipped to that closer to winter, I visited St Firmin’s church in Thurlby. Many churches in the fenland area are, understandably, eighteenth or nineteenth century, so it was a treat to find a substantial church with origins in the 10^th century and lots of evidence of expansion over the years. 

The church clings to the lowest part of the village, the rest of it sitting on the higher ground up the hill to the west. The church and a few houses are cut off from the rest by what is now the busy A15, but was historically King Street, a Roman road leading to Lincoln.

What delighted me most about the church was its liminal location on the very point where the snooker-table-flat fens rise up to higher ground. I had checked maps and a satellite image of the church before I arrived, and knew that Car Dyke, the local Roman canal was next to the church, but I was very pleased to see it played a part in the boundary of the church grounds.

Car Dyke is said to follow the Iron Age shoreline (there is an old book featuring a wonderful map that I last saw in a Stamford bookshop that illustrates this point perfectly, but I cannot find it – the search will continue) and there has been much discussion, therefore, about whether the dyke was built as a canal or as a drainage dyke. Frankly, it is impossible to build such a feature and for it not to act as a drainage feature and likewise to create a feature and not expect people to use it for transport. There are some signs that the dyke has been used for transport and it links up well with roads and paths that still exist in the landscape. I look forward to Rex Sly’s upcoming book on Car Dyke to read what he has made of it.

You would expect the church to be on the western ‘dry’ side of Car Dyke, but it is on the ‘wet’ eastern side instead. There are several things to remember here: firstly, Car Dyke is largely straight and the boundary between fen edge and high ground is not; the church was built hundreds of years after Car Dyke and the shoreline was not close at that point; it is possible that people were living or ploughing all the other available land and it made sense to use land that was available. We cannot rule out the fact that earlier religious features were there first (as is presumed at Maxey church) and this was a continuation of that. It’s worth pointing out that St John’s Church Peterborough/Medeshamstede was originally built on the boggy fen edge with less success and it had to be moved at the start of the 15^th century because it was often inaccessible in the winter.

                                                            

The church is lovely and there is an adjoining car park, which makes visiting easy, so I recommend you do. I didn’t get the chance to go in to the church, but I was more than satisfied with the features outside. The porch features two large coffin lids which are complemented by others used in the wall by the entrance gate to the graveyard. I am certainly no expert on architectural features, but there are a number of interesting faces and features on the walls to observe; you might want to take binoculars or a decent camera to see them. If you’re very observant, you’ll spot the faded datestone in the wall at the north-eastern end of the church by the curious feature that looks like a bowed stand for a statue. If anyone knows what it is, then do let me know!

                                                    

The graveyard is really well kept and there are some unusual and noteworthy gravestones. See if you can spot the panther family as you start to walk around, or some of the common local names such as Lenton.

                                        

The southern side of the church has a feast of different windows as if a foreman has gathered every window shape they could find in a workshop and forced them all into the part of the church they were asked to build. There is little logic to them from the outside, so I am hoping that a visit inside the church will explain the existence of such oddly placed windows.

Walking to the edge of the churchyard really gives you a sense of the churches place in the landscape, and how it was been extended into the flatter land as it has become necessary. You can also get a greater sense of how the land rises up at Car Dyke and then continues up the hill.

Should you still be curious about Car Dyke, you can follow the path that runs along it either north to Bourne or south to Kate’s Bridge. There appear to be some interesting mounds to the south, so I intend to return to see what they are. On this day I headed north and followed the footpath over the culverted dyke – it’s always nice when modern features respect the old boundary lines. The path is short and takes a quick turn over the released dyke, over which is a tiny bridge with what appear to be old footings. After crossing a (very high) style you find yourself in a field and you can follow the path across it to continue to walk along Car Dyke all the way to Bourne, should you wish. On that route you’ll pass the old manor house and The Grange, which has clear examples of ridge and furrow in the fields close to the A15.

                                                  

                                                Old coffin lids used in the graveyard wall

St Firmin's is a little oasis and a delightful site to visit if you want to blend Roman history with medieval and more recent history. It’s also delightful to stand at the edge of the graveyard, knowing it was once the Iron Age coast and that as you look northeast there is nothing but flat land (and Spalding) between you and The Wash.

All images belong to the author.