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

 

An Enormous Christmas Turnip

In December 1841 the Stamford Mercury reported that a very large turnip had been discovered by a farmer and deposited in Stamford. Mr Nixon, a Stamford farmer, had dug up his enormous turnip in his field and had taken it to town for weighing. The vegetable was the length of a five-year-old child (3ft 7in/109cm) and weighed 18 ¾ lbs (8.5kg) or more than the weight of a microwave!

Mr Nixon took the turnip to the Stamford Institution on St Peter’s Hill, which had only been founded three years earlier. It’s not stated what happened to the turnip, but we can hope they either found great scientific value in the specimen or enjoyed a handsome meal!

Reference: Lincolnshire Chronicle, December 24 1841, p.3.

A Family Day at Stamford Races

The Stamford Mercury is one of England’s oldest papers in England, which means we can get a snapshot of Stamford life that we do not get from many other towns and cities. One of those snapshots is of horseracing in Stamford.

Stamford was a pleasure town in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and had all of the attractions you would expect such a town to have, including a well-known racecourse. In September 1718 the Mercury revealed the horses who were entered into the Three Plates run at the Stamford Races on the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth day of that month, and of course, the winners too.

Tuesday the 17^th for the Ten Pound Plate

Robert Mackmillian’s Black-Horse, Dunham

Mr Thompson’s Bay-horse, Spider

                                     Mackmillian’s horse Spider won.

 

Wednesday 18^th, for the Ladies Plate of Twenty Pound,

Mrs Wilson’s Chestnut-Mare, Brunnet.

The Countess of Gainsborough’s Bay-Horse, White-Foot.

Mr Copinger’s Grey-Horse, Cheater.

Marquis of Lindsey’s Chestnut-Horse, Cripple.

Mr. Thompson’s Chestnut-Horse, Squirrel.

The Countess of Exeter’s Gray ------ Loyalist.

The Duchess of Rutland’s Chestnut-Horse, High-Low.

Mr Parker’s Gray-Mare, Smiling Jenny.

                                 Marquis of Lindsey’s Chestnut-Horse, Cripple, Won.

 

Thursday the 19^th, for the Twenty Five Pound Plate

Mr Noel’s Chestnut-Mare, Brunnet.

Countess of Exeter’s Gray ------ Loyalist.

The Duchess of Rutland’s Bay-Horse, Farmer.

 

Sadly the information slips onto a page that is not in the collection, so we do not know the other horses that entered, or which horse won.

There are a few observations to take away from this race, firstly the unusual, and at times offensive, names of the horses. It is likely that the names were chosen in part to elicit laughs from the supportive calls of the punters, and also the insults waged from the winner, who would no doubt have had great mirth in celebrating the victory of a horse named ‘Cheater’ over its rivals. Secondly, and unsurprisingly, the vast majority of people entering horses in the races are local nobility. But what might surprise you is that most of them were related to each other!

The Countess of Gainsborough, Dorothy Noel, was the daughter of the 1^st Duke of Rutland, John Manners of Belvoir Castle, and the granddaughter of Lady Elizabeth Bertie. Mr Noel was almost certainly her relative given that Dorothy’s mother was Catherine Wriothesley Noel, and her husband Baptist Noel was her first cousin. She was also competing against her sister-in-law Lucy Manners (nee Sherard), Duchess of Rutland, who had married her brother, also named John, in 1713. Not only was she her sister-in-law, but she was also her aunt Elizabeth’s sister (she had married her mother’s brother John).

Dorothy Noel was also the second cousin of the Marquis of Lindsey, Peregrine Bertie, who gained the title after his father was advanced to the Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven. Peregrine, of Grimsthorpe Castle near Bourne, had married Jane Brownlow of Belton House in 1711. Jane’s sister Elizabeth had married John Cecil, 6^th Earl of Exeter in 1699, meaning that the Marquis was competing against (and beat) his sister-in-law, second cousin, and her relatives with his unfortunately-named horse. It is such a shame that the record does not exist of the entrants and winners in the twenty-five-pound plate, for we can imagine that it was very hotly contested within the wide and convoluted family tree watching the spectacle.

For further information about the racecourse, this website is recommended http://www.greyhoundderby.com/Stamford%20Racecourse%20UK.html

Reference: Stamford, September 17., Stamford Mercury, September 25 1718, p.11.

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.

The Deeping Fen Waterspout

In my last blog I briefly mentioned the great bog that was Deeping Fen, so it felt important to explain a little more about it and highlight an unusual event.

Deeping Fen was, as Stukeley had observed, largely a bog and at times a lake. Even in more recent times, the central part of the area was commonly referred to as a lake and was mostly unusable land.

The Deeping fen area stretches from the rivers Glen to the north and Welland to the south, an area of vast flatness with no observable feature that was not manmade. Several towns and villages exist on the periphery of the fen with strong Anglo-Saxon roots, and Roman Car Dyke flirts with the western edge of the fen. There are also some excellent archaeological features from prehistory, so the land was never ‘just a swamp’.

Drainage began centuries ago, and the enormous hand-cut drains still dominate the landscape today. They remain vital in protecting the low-lying land from summer deluges and winter’s constant rains. Almost as vital as the deeply dug river channels of the Welland and Glen whose wide and enormously high banks have happily contained a vast quantity of water without incident for many years. However, in took centuries to drain the fen until it was suitably habitable.

It was thanks to this frequent dampness that Deeping Fen was the site of an unusual weather feature in 1752. The journal Fenland Notes and Queries carried an account from Reverend Benjamin Ray, the Perpetual Curate of Cowbit and Surfleet, who had seen a waterspout over Deeping Fen. Rev. Ray is described in Literary Anecdotes related to the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society as being ‘A most ingenious and worthy man, possessed of good learning, but ignorant of the world; indolent and thoughtless, and very often absent.’ Hardly a glowing report and perhaps not the most reliable reporter of a rare meteorological sighting. The report was as follows:

May 5^th 1752, a phenomenon appeared about 7 in the evening, in Deeping-Fen, which, from its effects, seemed to be a water-spout, broken from the clouds. A watery substance, as it seemed, was seen moving on the earth and water, in Deeping-Fen. It passed along with such violence and rapidity, that it carried every thing before it: such as grass, straw, and stubble; and in going over the country bank, it raised the dust to a great height; and when it arrived in the wash, in the midst of the water, and just over against where Mr R. lived, it stood still for some minutes. This watery substance spouted out water from its own surface to a considerable height, and with a terrible noise.

The waterspout continued to Cowbit and then headed towards Weston Hills and Moulton Chapel, destroying a field of turnips, and damaging two gates on its progress. Others were also seen on the same day, but none of them would have benefitted from the specific landscape credentials of Deeping Fen.

The journal Fenland Notes and Queries can be viewed online, as can Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. Follow the links below.

https://archive.org/details/fenlandnotesque01sweegoog/page/n272/mode/2up

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Literary_Anecdotes_Of_The_Eighteenth_Cen/-UxjAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

Image of a sheep on the high bank of the River Welland by the author
 

An Earthquake in Stamford in 1750

Much of the information I gain comes from the fantastic British Newspaper collection. Little notes can lead to large stories when cross-referenced with other collections, archive material, census information, books etc. Sometimes, it's just nice to find accounts of small events and share them for the fun of it.

Back on the 3rd October 1750 an earthquake was recorded in Stamford. This was obviously long before we have the sophisticated material that exists today and any earthquake can feel quite alarming, so how did they explain its strength?

Thankfully, there were people who had experienced two earlier earthquakes in London that were able to compare it with the Stamford earthquake. It was described as 'stronger than the first [London earthquake], but neither so violent, nor continued so long as the latter.' If this were a competition, I have a feeling that the Stamford earthquake would have managed a respectable 2nd place rosette. A reminder, if one were needed, that provincial towns should not compete with great cities like London on such matters!

Whilst researching, I came across a book that made me wonder if the town's well-known historian William Stukeley had witnessed the earthquake, for I discovered he had published a book called 'A Philosophy of Earthquakes, Natural and Religious'. The book, I discovered, pre-dated the earthquake, and Stukeley was living in London then, but additional information in the third edition printed in 1750 was just what I was looking for.

Stukeley still had many local friends and they corresponded with him on local earthquakes. The Stamford earthquake was claimed to have occurred on 30th September at '36 minutes after 12 o'clock at noon' and the description by Mr Alderman Taylor is vivid:

They were suddenly surprised with an uncommon noise in the air, like the rolling of large carriages in the streets, for about 20 seconds. At the same instant they felt a great shake, or snap, as he calls it; insomuch that it sensibly shook a punchbowl, which was in his parlour, and made it ring. He says it was perceiv'd of most of the people of Stamford, who generally ran out of their houses.

The description continues, stating that the earthquake was felt far and wide including Oakham and Peterborough. However this detail is part of a much larger book in which Stukeley attempts to use philosophy (science) and a little religion to try to understand what earthquakes are and how they're formed. One note regarding the centre of another earthquake being situated in Deeping Fen which was 'under water in the winter time; underneath 'tis a perfect bog' ruled out a theory that earthquakes came from subterranean fires.

I recommend taking a look at the book, which is free to access thanks to the Gutenberg Project, and diving into that great philosophical mind. He makes some interesting observations which need to be read in context to be really appreciated.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/63322/63322-h/63322-h.htm

B. Country News, The Ipswich Journal, 13 October 1750, p.1.

Take Care Lest We Blow Ur House Up

It was the darkest part of an early May night in 1883, most people had been asleep for hours and were hoping to sleep for many more. Without warning, an enormous explosion ripped through the eastern end of Priestgate. It was chance alone that no one was killed, such was the force. Local correspondence fed the story across the country, retelling it in detail. Paving slabs had been cracked in half or shattered, others had been flung into the air landing on the roofs of nearby properties. All the windows in the vicinity were smashed, including on Narrow (Bridge) Street, allowing the contents of the sewer – the focus of the explosion – to find their way into the buildings. This included the entire rat population of the sewer too.

It is still a mystery as to how the sewer came to explode, with the finger pointed at both coal gas and brewery gas mixing with the sewer and potentially a discarded cigarette. What is perhaps more intriguing is the story that did not make the national press but was reported in the local press – the locals thought the cathedral had been blown up.

Their fear was not due to the size of the explosion or indeed the location, but because a threat to blow up the cathedral had already been made by activists. According to a London paper, a letter had been received by Dean Perowne from the South of England Fenian Society, an Irish Republican group, which stated ‘Sir, Take care lest we blow ur house up. We have the dynamite ready.’ The police were quick to dismiss it as a hoax once they realised it had been sent from a neighbouring village, or so it was reported in the Aberdeen Evening Press.

It was curious that the story was difficult to find in the local press, but I finally found quite a different record in the Stamford Mercury. According to the Mercury the Dean had indeed received a letter, but the writing was so bad it was thought to have been written by a child and had been sent from Market Deeping. The house referred to was presumed to be the deanery (a fine building that would be a crime to destroy) and not the cathedral as stated.

However, despite the Mercury’s statement that the story had been grossly exaggerated and likely nothing more than a prank, the news rumbled on. The same paper reported a week later that Scotland Yard had informed the local police to take a thorough inspection of both the Post Office and the cathedral, perhaps in search of a bomb. Again, this was said to have been nothing more than a rumour, but it does at least tell you that it was on the minds of the local population. After such a fear that the city’s finest building would be destroyed, there was probably a sense of relief that the explosion was in the sewers, despite the stomach-churning clean-up necessary!

 

References

Aberdeen Evening Press, 5 April 1883, p.2.

Alleged Threat to Blow Up the Cathedral, Stamford Mercury, 6 April 1883, p.4.

Stamford Mercury, 13 April 1883, p.4.

Priestgate Explosion, Our Journey Peterborough, City Culture Peterborough

The image belongs to the author