Part 2

Now I may mention about the postage. When I first knew Peterborough the postage of a letter to London was 8d. A little further on it would be 10d., and go on, until it came to about 1s. 4d. When you were going to London in those days you would receive visits from your friends, who would ask you to take letters for them and put them in the 2d. Post in London, and sometimes it happened that these letters were found in your coat pocket when you got home again! The postage of a ½oz. letter was 8d., but if you cut the sheet of paper in two and used one-half as an envelope, the postage was 1s. 4d. If you divided the sheet of paper again and wrote a cheque on one quarter of it, and the receipt to be signed and returned on the other and put them into the other half sheet, the postage was again doubled. When I was at school my eldest brother, in a fit of benevolence, sent me 2s. 6d. in a letter, and I was delighted until I was told the postage was 2s. 8d. The matron, however, found a way out of it. She put the 2s. 8d. down to the governor’s account, and I had the half-crown.

These rates of postage were very heavy, but Members of Parliament had the privilege of what was called “franking” letters. They were continually being applied to for these franks. They were only allowed, however, to send a certain number of letters, and you always ran the risk of having a bill sent in from the Post Office to the person having the privilege of “franking,” and they would send a footman to you, and you would then have to pay your share. This privilege of franking was abused, and one would hear that so and so had franked a ham, and one person was said to have franked a piano! Whether this was the truth or not I do not know, but it shows the advantage of getting rid of exceptional privileges.

A few words about the government of our City. When I first came to the Town, the principal governor, the one who made the greatest impression on my youthful imagination, at all events, was the Beadle. He was a very important personage. His principal duty was to see the tramps out of the town. He could not arrest them, but had to “fidget” them out. He was always chosen with special reference to his age and infirmity. He had a long robe, a mace, and a cocked hat. He looked very imposing, almost like Old Scarlett in the Cathedral put into a long coat, a pair of knee breeches, and a cocked hat. He was paid in this way: At the Quarter Sessions he waited upon the Magistrates with a bill: “A man and a woman sent out Stamford Road,” “Two tramps and a child, Lincoln Road,” and so on. As we say educationally, he was paid by results. He was allowed so much according to his services. He was the principal officer of the place, and was appointed by the Feoffees.

About the year 1857 we were protected by Parish Constables, and I think the principal duty of the constable was to report himself at the Quarter Sessions. We had two gaols—we could not do with one! One of these was that in the Minster Precincts, recently vacated by the School of Art. The other stood upon what is now the site of the Cumbergate Almshouses. The one in the Minster Yard was maintained by Lord Exeter as Lord Paramount. The other one, I think, was paid for by the Magistrates. In 1840 we got an Act of Parliament for a new gaol, and it was brought about in this way: In about the year 1838 or 1839 a person walking through the Minster Yard saw a head pop up out of the pavement, a body followed, walked off, and was never heard of again. The man had simply undermined the foundations of his cell with a knife or bone and disappeared! He was the first that discovered that way of escape!

About the same time in Peterborough was a family named Rogers. They were the black sheep of the place. The head of the family was known as Jimmy Rogers, and he took it into his head to dine one day upon sheep’s head and pluck which he stole from a butcher’s shop. He was ordered to be put into the Feoffees’ Gaol. He picked his way out, and this thief of the district and his family disappeared and never came back again. It was thought to be time we had a gaol, and the present building on the Thorpe Road was erected.

You must not think that we had no amusements. We used to have a theatre on the site where the Corn Exchange now stands, and a very good theatre it was. A very good company used to come for about three months in the summer, and a very good entertainment was afforded. The Bishop and his Lady of those days used to make a point of attending during the season, and it was quite the thing to go to the theatre.

The Fairs were very important in those days. The importance must not be judged by what is seen of them now. Bridge Fair was then most important. It shows the antiquity of the fairs that they had a special Court. All fairs and markets of any antiquity had this Court which was to do justice between man and man in any disputes arising at the fairs.

We had two Balls regularly, one for the National School and one for the Infirmary. When political feeling ran high one Party would go to the National School Ball and the other to the Infirmary Ball. At other times each party would go to both.

Peterborough was one of the last places in which Sedan chairs flourished. They went on until some time after the railways were established, which altered everything. The men were too much occupied to be able to go with the Sedan chairs when they were wanted, and so they gradually died out.

[Picture: A Peterborough Sedan Chair. “Peterborough was one of the last places in which Sedan chairs flourished.”—Andrew Percival]

Whittlesey Mere existed in those days. It was thus called because it had nothing whatever to do with Whittlesey. It was several miles away. Whittlesey Mere was one of the wonders of Huntingdonshire, Whittlesey being in Cambridgeshire. Whittlesey Mere was a charming place for skating in frosty weather and for fishing in the summer time, when there was water enough, and for boating under the same circumstances. Sometimes, when there had been a dry time it became so shallow that you stirred up mud from the bottom when you attempted to sail. It was very good for fishing. One day we were out with a party, and we stopped at old Bellamy Bradford’s landing place. It shelved off so gradually that the distinction between grass and water was so graduated that a large pike, probably in pursuit of a fish, had gone so far as to be prevented from getting back to his native element. The place was surrounded by reed shoals, where reeds for thatching grew, and these were the resort of innumerable starlings.

[Picture: Photo. T. N. Green. Ball & Co., Peterborough. A bit of Old Paston. Peterborough people used to be married and buried in the enclosed parish of Paston—a kind of oasis in the desert.—Andrew Percival]

PART THE SECOND.

AN OASIS IN THE DESERT.—OLD SYSTEM OF CASTOR FARMING.—A LIGHTED BEACON.—THE FEN AROUND US.—DRAINING THE GREAT LEVEL.—THE MILL SYSTEM OF DRAINING.—SNATCHED FROM THE SEA.—HOW LAND IMPROVED IN VALUE.—“INTELLIGENT FENMEN.”—OLD TOWN BRIDGE.—OLD-TIME JAUNT THROUGH THE CITY.—POOR HOUSE AND NEW GAOL.—THORPE ROAD HOSTELRY.—NEWTOWN.—THE GREAT BREWERIES AND THE PONDS.—CABBAGE ROW.—BURIAL AT CROSS ROADS.—FROG HALL.—GAS WORKS STARTED.—OLD MARKET.—LADIES AND THE CATTLE.—WEDNESDAY MARKET.—A CURIOSITY MARKET.—GOD’S ACRE.

THE great point which strikes us all, and which strikes everyone considering the history of the last seventy years in the City of Peterborough is the very great increase in the population, and when one began to think how it came about we used to say “it is owing to the railways.” But that is like telling you that the world, as the Indians say, is supported on the back of a tortoise! You want to know why the railways were wanted, what the tortoise stands upon, because if you look into statistics seventy years ago, before the railways, the population of Peterborough was considerably increasing, and the populations of agricultural districts altogether were very much increasing, and when you go a little further, if you look at all into the history of the land around Peterborough, or the country altogether, you will find within a century there had been a great change. Now, take for instance the immediate neighbourhood of Peterborough. My recollection of it begins, as I have said, at the latter end of 1833, at the commencement of the last century. I think the only parish, if I except Fletton, the only enclosed parish within some few miles of this place was the parish of Paston.

There you will rind the church, surrounded by old trees, and the parish differed very much from others. If you look into the Churchyard there you will find a great many names of the inhabitants of Peterborough and other parishes outside Paston. If you look into the Paston register you will find marriages solemnised between inhabitants not belonging to Paston, the undoubted fact being that the enclosed parish of Paston led people to desire they should be married and buried there. Paston was a kind of oasis in the desert.

Most of the parishes around here were in the position and character of Castor, which until recently was the only open field parish within many miles of this place. I was riding through Castor field some years ago, before it was enclosed, with a few farmers, when one turned round and said: “How should you like to farm this parish?” “Not at all,” was the reply. A man in the parish who had a farm of a hundred acres would have to go to his farm in four different parts of the parish—some against Ailsworth, Milton Park, Alwalton, and so on, perhaps scattered in pieces of one acre, two roods, and so forth. So that with a large farm a man would have to go to a farm of a hundred acres to as many different places two or three miles apart. The pieces were so narrow that they were like ribbons; you could plough lengthways but not crossways. As soon as you turned, you got on to your neighbour’s land, which was frequently a subject of dispute. Conceive the state of the cultivation of the country generally when that was the system not only in one parish, but in the general bulk, at all events, in this part of the kingdom.

Peterborough was open. All the parishes, to my knowledge, from Peterborough to Deeping, and east to west, have been enclosed since 1812. There was a beacon lighted at night to light the passengers over the weary waste, since brought into cultivation. Just conceive, if you can, the state in which this part of the country was then, and in what it is now, and consider the great increase of corn that can be grown, and not only corn that can be grown, but the stock that can be fed by the cultivation of roots and the introduction of bone manure, and then you get some idea of the increased production of the country, that rendered improved roads, terminating in railroads, necessary. For the same reason, the marvellous increase in the manufacturing districts has been kept pace with in the agricultural production of the country, another feature in our neighbourhood.

If you begin at Cambridge and draw a line along the high land by St. Ives, east of Peterborough, by Spalding and Boston, down to the Humber, you will find the tract of land known as the Fen Country. That country has undergone within the last seventy or eighty years, or a great part of it, a change even more striking than that which has passed over the uplands. At first you would be inclined to doubt whether there were any such places as the Fens at all. If you say to anybody “Don’t you live in the Fens”? the reply will be “Oh, no.” At Peterborough we are not in the Fens. Of course not! There is Flag Fen, and there is Borough Fen, but we are on high ground, and not in the Fen, and you will find, even if you go east of Wisbech, where the land is called marsh land, which sounds rather funny, that the farmers and graziers there will say they don’t live in the Fens. And walking towards the sea you will always be told you have come to the wrong place, you must go a little further, and then you will find the Fen country! But still, take the Fens as we know them, extending from Peterborough to Cambridge, and down by Boston nearly to the Humber.

I will confine my observations to that which most comes within my own knowledge, that district of the Fens known as the Bedford Level, called the South, the Middle, and the North Level. From the beginning of Crowland on the North, down to, say, the Middle by March and Lynn, and the South down to Cambridge. In the year 1637 a Charter was passed by Charles I. for the improvement of that country, and we form some notion of what it must have been—the weary waste of waters it must have been—from the preamble of the Charter of Incorporation. It is described as being generally covered with water, of little advantage to mankind, except yielding some few river fish and water fowl, that is when you may catch them, and on lucky days you may shoot wild ducks. Adventurers had endeavoured to make lines of meadows, which had made such progress that it was hoped this place, which had lately presented nothing to the eye but waters and a few reeds thinly scattered here and there, might, under Divine mercy, become some of it pleasant pasture for cattle, with many houses belonging to the inhabitants. That seemed to have been the extreme notion of what could be made of that country in the way of production. Going on to the year 1830, when the last history of the Bedford Level was written by Mr. Samuel Wells, well known as the Register of the Corporation, he speaks of it seventy-five years ago as a matter of congratulation that at that time, when they had improved it sufficiently to grow oats and cole seed, that the cultivation of wheat had begun to extend itself into the Fen country. He spoke of it almost as a novelty, and says that the Corporation, soon after its formation, had interfered to prevent the inhabitants, occupiers, and owners of property from improving and draining by mills. He says that the system of drainage by mills was abandoned in consequence of the result of the suit to prevent it being favourable to the Corporation.

However, in a short time, after many struggles, the Level becoming so inundated by the choking of interior drains, the defective state of the rivers, and neglected improvement of outfalls, the Corporation found it impossible to resist the importunity of the country to resort to artificial drainage, and therefore waived their objection, and allowed a return of the mill system. The mill system up to 1830 consisted simply of working a machine by wind to lift the water out of some embanked portion of the Fens into a drain at a higher level, to conduct it to one of the main drains of the Corporation to the outfall in the sea. Seventy years ago, Mr. Wells tells us, in the whole district of the Bedford Level—350,000 acres—there were only five steam engines, one being in the parish of Newboro’, put up on the enclosuse. He says there was a general opinion that steam drainage would be further prosecuted, but this depended upon the finances of the district, and he goes on to say many intelligent Fenmen indulged the hope of acquiring a natural drainage, when the result of the work now undertaken, in a greater or a less degree on all three levels, can be fully understood and ascertained. The author, however, says he cannot rank himself amongst the number of those sanguine persons. He thought it great progress to get five steam engines, and hoping they would get more, he, as an intelligent Fenman, thought it was as much as he could anticipate.

I think in the year 1827 or 1828 one of those works, the Nene outfall, had been undertaken, the object of which was to make the channel to the sea through the high and shifting sands, which were at the entrance of the Wash, through which the waters of the Nene found their way to the sea. It was carried out. I think Mr. Tycho Wing was the great inaugurator and Sir Jno. Rennie the engineer. It was so thoroughly successful that it at once allowed the interior drainage of the country to be vastly improved, and not only so, but up to the present time, by the operation of the Nene Outfall Act, no less than 5,800 acres of land have been actually reclaimed from the sea, the value of which is at least from £40 to £50 per acre. Not only was the Fen district materially improved, but a tract of country equal to a large parish was obtained, the value of which alone would, in a measure, repay all the expense of the undertaking. Then they went on, following the success of that, to get the North Level Act in 1830. The effect of that was that water mills and steam mills disappeared, and they now have natural drainage by the water finding its way by gravitation to the sea.

In 1840 a similar work was begun in the Middle Level, and they now have natural drainage in nearly the whole of that Level. The only exception is about Whittlesey Mere, where they have a steam pump and a steam water-wheel to carry away the floods. What was the effect of that? In the first place a tax was put on. In the Middle Level and North Level the yearly tax may be taken at about 8s. 6d. or 9s. per acre altogether. It sounds a very large sum where the land itself, in many instances, was worth next to nothing before, but the effect has been that in that district, I am not exaggerating when I say, leaving the tax out of the question, that is, after putting the tax on the land and comparing it to what it was before, the land is worth double, and, in many instances, treble, and where land without the tax was worth £10 an acre, it is now worth £20 or £30. I have had through my hands deeds of an estate in the Fen. It contained 200 acres. In 1824 it was sold for £1,155; in 1829 for £1,880. In 1882, notwithstanding the time of depression, it was sold for £5,000, without any special bargain. Just think of the increase in the value of the country in consequence of what has been done, and I think you will see at once why the district has required railway accommodation.

[Picture: City wooden bridge over the Nene. Replaced 1872. Old Photo by William Ball, Peterborough]

Mr. Wells speaks of the “Intelligent Fenmen.” I believe in their intelligence! In their Parliamentary battles they are as warlike as people can be in protecting the valuable interests of which they are the custodians, and counsel in Parliamentary committees have often said: “How well those men understand their business; how ready they are, and what talent they show in stating and maintaining their cause.” That is rather a digression, but it accounts very much, I think, for the great changes in this part of the country to which we belong.

Now let me endeavour to show the changes in Peterborough proper. I will supply an omission, with an apology to my old friend, the old Town Bridge. I am ashamed to find that in my previous notes I had omitted to say anything about it. That was rather extraordinary, because I had my mind on it, and when I first came from Northampton my first acquaintance with Peterborough must have been “over that bridge.” There is an old proverb which says “Find no fault with the bridge which carries you over.” With every disposition to be charitable, that is the only good thing I can say of the old Bridge. It carried me over, and there was no instance that it ever fell in, but there was always a fear that it would fall, and everybody thought it ought to fall, but it did not, and I mention this because I think our new Bridge is a striking instance of the public spirit of the inhabitants of Peterborough and the neighbourhood in subscribing the cost of one-half of it, and also of the fairness and liberality which the county authorities displayed in meeting the inhabitants in assisting to get a new bridge—a credit to the district—rather than patch up that shabby, ramshackle concern, which, patched from time to time, might have outlived another hundred years, and a suspicion that it would fall, but never actually falling.

[Picture: From an Old Print. Sexton Barns. “A Fine Old Building; an object which vanished when the Railways were made, because now it is the Site of the G.N. Station.”—Andrew Percival]

We will walk up Bridge Street and take a turn round the outskirts of the town as I knew it years ago. Going past the toll-bar in Cowgate we come to the building known as Sexton Barns; probably some of you recollect it, a fine old building; it was an object that vanished when the railways were made, because now it is the site of the G.N. Station. There was a handsome tree near the Crescent, where Peterborough began to stray into the country; the Crescent had been erected four or five years before. Opposite was the house where Mrs. Cattel lived, and then the house where Dr. Skrimshire lived (now Dr. Keeton’s). Walking a little further, we came to the Town Mill; very much like the Town Bridge, it had seen better days and, like the Bridge, it had had a history. It had been the property of the Dean and Chapter, and, without the smallest doubt, it came down to them from the Abbot and Convent, who were the Lords of this district. These town mills were mills which the largest landowners kept for the accommodation of their tenants, who were thereby provided with the means of grinding their corn at a small cost, but were compelled to use them and pay grist to the millers, and the old law books contain much on the subject. Its need passed away, the mill got into private hands; it seems to have become worse and worse, and at last it was burnt down, and we know it no more, the very site having been utilised in an exchange of property for the erection of the present King’s School in Park Road.

On the opposite side is the Union Workhouse, built about 1834 or 1835. It has been very much beautified, but it is not a handsome building now. It has had a new front or facing. I may mention in passing that I recollect at one time there was a persistent cry made by some portion of the Press against the new Poor Law, against the hardship of separating man and wife, and so on, but never was so persistent an attempt made in that part of a portion of the Press with such signal failure at the time, although since come to pass where desirable. The new Poor Law took the place of one that was probably ruining the country, and is, in these later days, itself under review.

We then walk along the road back towards Peterborough, and we find the Gaol and Sessions House. This Gaol was built in 1840. There was a fight between the Dean and Chapter, and their Lessee, and the Magistrates about the enormous price asked for it, and a jury was appointed, but a price of two or three times more than was paid at that time for the land has been paid since for land. If anyone had it to sell now at the same price he would be very happy.

Between the Gaol and the Workhouse there is a nice quiet-looking residence (Mr. Noble’s). It was, till recently, devoted to the supply of milk, but it was built as a public house, put up by a brewery in order to supply accommodation for people who resorted to the Sessions House at the weekly meetings of the Magistrates, and at the Quarter Sessions. There was a temperance wit of the day who said, “No, it is put there to show the close and intimate connection between the gin shop, the gaol, and the workhouse.” We will go back to the town, the whole of that known as Newtown, long before the railways, between 1815 and 1833, had been erected, so that it was, strictly and literally, “Newtown.”