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.

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.

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.”We then pass Squire’s Brewery at the entrance to Lincoln Road, where the Liberal Club and Masonic Hall now stand, and we go to Boroughbury; all beyond the malting formed part of Squire’s Brewery, going past what is known as the “Square Pond.” The houses there, including a large part of the Catholic Church and other buildings, are actually built upon that which was, in 1833 (and many years afterwards), covered with water. I was intimate with Mr. Buckle, who succeeded Mr. Squire in that brewery, and I was permitted to fish in the pond as often as I pleased. I have stood upon that spot which is now a public road and have caught pike and eels, and used to have very capital sport there. In the winter time it was a favourite resort, not thrown open to the public altogether, but still, with great liberality, it was allowed to be used for skating. I was very unlucky one day. It was just after a gentleman had bought the house, afterwards Mrs. Willoughby’s (now shops erected by Mr. W. D. Nichols), and the grounds about it, was walking in his grounds, when he saw me pull out a large pike, and he was so enchanted with it, he thought it would be a great benefit to his property, and to my disgust, but the pleasure of Mr. Buckle, he bought the pond and merged it into his private grounds. I never caught any pike there again!

Passing the outskirts of the town, we pass the great Tithe Barn, Boroughbury, an interesting and attractive specimen of antiquity and a good specimen of that kind of barn. You go up that junction of Lincoln Road to Dogsthorpe, and there past the last house until you come to two or three cottages, then belonging to a retired tailor, named Mitchell, and people had been profane enough to christen those cottages “Cabbage Row.” What connection there is between a tailor and cabbage, I don’t know.

Crossing the fields now laid out by the great roads of the Land Company, and which at that time were the most secluded fields around Peterborough, and going down Crawthorne Lane you came to a junction—a little lane at the back of Boroughbury, now a wide street behind St. Mark’s Villas, which runs up to Park Road, and there four roads met, where there was a little tombstone which was known as the “Girls’ Grave.” A girl was buried there, with a stake through her body, without Christian burial. The place was very well known, and for long remained in the midst of a potato garden belonging to one of the cottages there.

You go as the crow flies to a place called Frog Hall, in front of St. Mary’s Vicarage, one of the cottages remained till 1904, and the place had a very unsavoury reputation. It was inhabited by squatters, gipsies, and travellers, and was one of the least desirable parts in that neighbourhood. Then came a row of cottages known as Burton’s Row, where Peterborough attempted to travel past its boundaries and get into the country.

Going back, we come to the Cemetery, but at that time all were grass fields let out as accommodation ground, and quite secluded. A little further on were the Gas Works. Now they ARE Gas Works. When I came they were, as compared with the present, in about the same proportion as a small kettle to a large steam engine boiler. A gentleman named Malam—a Hull man—used to supply all the little towns in the country, and used to contract with the inhabitants to supply gas for them. There was no Act of Parliament, or anything of that sort, but permission from the Local Authorities to break up the streets and roads was all that was required, and he chanced it. I think Mr. Sawyer used to give as much time as he could spare from his own business, until he became, as the town increased, by purchase, the owner of the works, and he then gave his whole time and attention to them, and a very nice property it developed into by the time the present company took it off Mr. Sawyer’s hands.

That is the history of gas in Peterborough. This brings us back to the Long Causeway and the Market Place. Not the market now, as I recollect it! Up to the year 1848 the farmers attending the market used to cool their heels in the open air in front of the Town Hall, hot or cold, wet or dry, rain or snow, blowing or still, there they stood, till the Theatre, now the Corn Exchange (since largely added to), became vacant, and it occurred to some agricultural gentleman that they could be much more comfortable in every way if they could form a company, and they did so, and I think no one will doubt that is an improvement. On the Long Causeway, the Cattle Market was the principal institution of the place, and I will tell you why. On Saturdays that place was wholly given up to them. There they were; nobody paid anything; anybody who had cows or horses to sell brought them there. They became the proprietors of the street for that day.

Our widest and best street was spoilt; because if there is one thing more certain than another it is that the female mind most intensely abhors anything approaching contact with horned animals. Somehow or other, it seems to disturb that equanimity which appears to be utterly indispensable to a lady when she is going what she calls “shopping,” and it would take away all her ideas to think she was going to meet a restless-looking cow or a doubtful looking ox. It takes away all notion of colour, shape, and measure, or whether the thing will wash or not. The consequence was, the Long Causeway was practically abandoned on market days, and it was not much more used on other days for shopping purposes, because in anything like changeable or damp weather the atmosphere of the street was what I have heard ladies describe (not meaning to be complimentary) as “smelly.” Therefore, naturally, there was great rejoicing among the inhabitants generally when that street was restored to a cleanly wholesome state by the construction of the Cattle Market.

The Wednesday Cattle Market had a very peculiar growth. It was set up without the smallest authority about 1845 or 1846 by an old gentleman named Dean, who was a retired farmer, and an enterprising auctioneer named Dowse, who kept the “Greyhound.” They suggested that fat stock should be brought, and it came more and more, until it grew into that excellent stock market, which became one of the best in the Kingdom. There was no foundation for it but that of custom. When the new market was proposed, the farmers invited the then authorities, the Improvement Commissioners, to construct it for them, but they made their bow and said, “If you want a market, make it for yourselves.” It was made by a limited company, and it has since fallen into the hands of the authorities, and Broadway constructed through it.

We have another market which has grown up, and that is the present Wednesday Market on the Market Place, which I think is one of the greatest curiosities that ever comes under one’s notice. It does no harm to anyone. I went there recently, and I saw an extraordinary medley of things exposed for sale. I wondered at first if they were to be given away! I could understand anybody wishing to sell them, but wondered who could wish to buy them. It is one of the things no one can understand. But it affords the means of getting rid of most undesirable things, call them furniture, or anything else! It puts me in mind of a shop in the Market Place at Great Yarmouth, where they say you may buy anything. A visitor, a clergyman, was told he could get anything he wanted. He said, “I want a pulpit.” “Well,” his friend said, “go in and try.” He went in and said, “Do you happen to have a pulpit?” and they said, “Well, we do happen to have a pulpit.” And I think I have seen everything in our Wednesday’s Market except that. I have not seen anything so useful as a pulpit!

I have spoken of our accommodation for the living. What do we do for the dead? We have the Cemetery, which has been considerably enlarged since it was first formed in 1852 or 1853, and the rapid increase of the Cemetery suggests the difficulty of the disposal of the dead in a creditable and satisfactory manner with our increasing population. The old burial ground was opened in the year 1802, and it is one of the peculiarities of this peculiar place, and of the old jurisdictions here, that the old Parish Church appears to have had in ancient times no burial ground belonging to it, a thing that very seldom happens, for the burial ground of the Parish of St. John the Baptist was outside the Minster, which is an extra parochial district. This remained up to 1802, when the burial ground in Cowgate was formed. If you go into it sometime (I am very fond of looking at the tombstones), you will find the oddest peculiarities of language and literature as inscriptions on the tombstones, but I cannot say I have ever found much to admire. You will find a collection of legends which are common all over the country, commencing with

Affliction sore, long time he bore,
Physicians WAS in vain.

Next to it:

Pale consumption gave the silent BELOW, etc.

In our graveyard in Cowgate there is an epitaph upon old Mrs. Thomas, by which you are informed, that

Making carpets and beds she did pursue
With care and industry is very true,
The established religion she did profess
In hopes, through Christ, of Heaven to possess.

Such rubbish as that, under the veto of the present Cemetery Commissioners, will, I hope, soon disappear. But there is one in the Cathedral graveyard (the existence of which is not generally known), on the tombstone memorial of an old family of this place, and I trust it will not be allowed to disappear. It is very superior to what they generally are. It is on the right just as you go through the Arch by the Deanery, and is to the memory of one of the Richardson family:

Stranger pass by nor idly waste your time
In bad biography or bitter rhyme;
For what I am, this cumbrous clay ensures,
And what I was, is no affair of yours.

The old gentleman, as you see, has carried his cynical humour to the grave with him. It was quoted in an article in “Blackwood’s Magazine” on “Monumental Inscriptions” a few years since.

Peterborough Market Place A.D. 1795. N. Fielding of Stamford. Specially drawn from a painting in Peterborough Museum