Heritage

by Dr Avril Lumley Prior

Have you ever returned to an old familiar place to find that it doesn’t look familiar anymore? The paths you trod have gone and housing estates have sprouted where quirky old buildings once stood. In Peakirk alone, the Boat Inn, Firdale Farm and dovecote, an ‘ancient’ barn and a myriad of quaint cottages have vanished within living memory. And I’m sure that residents across Tribland have reminiscences of lost properties too.

Old barn, St Pega’s Rd (Jean Marshall, 1965)

Mosaic from Helpston villa (Artis, 1828)

Glinton Congregational Chapel

Of course, drastic changes to our environment are not modern phenomena. They have been happening since Neolithic settlers put down roots and became farmers, creating shelters for their families and livestock from biodegradable materials that left no trace. When the Romans invaded in 43AD, they brought with them new construction techniques and their works were less ephemeral. For example, to the east of the Heath Road near Helpston, there was a villa of palatial proportions. It was excavated in the 1820s, by local archaeologist, Edmund Tyrell Artis (1789-1847), who revealed mosaic flooring and painted walls, suggesting seriously rich occupants. Unfortunately, none of Artis’ notes survive, prompting a second excavation in 1967. The dig was badly managed and carried out by amateurs, who abandoned the site leaving it open to looters. In 1971, a survey was conducted by Christopher Taylor on behalf of the Royal Commission of Historical Monuments, after which the excavation was backfilled. Taylor concluded that the villa, built in local limestone, had gradually evolved from the second century AD, reaching its zenith during the fourth century. The western section alone contained at least twenty-two rooms, indicating what a massive impact it must have had upon a landscape sprinkled with wattle-and-daub roundhouses.

Old Ordnance Survey Maps show a field in Pilsgate called ‘Chapel Close’, though no evidence of any structure is visible above ground. Peterborough Abbey registers corroborate that there was a chapel-of-ease in Pilsgate, erected c.1146, to save the villagers the mile trek to St John the Baptist’s church in Barnack. It was dedicated in the honour of the Holy Trinity and maintained by tithes [taxes] levied upon the abbot’s tenants. After the abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539, the manor of Pilsgate was granted to a certain David Vincent, who either allowed the chapel to disintegrate or robbed it for materials.

According to the Northamptonshire historian John Bridges (writing c.1721), ‘the chapel stood in the middle of the town; the site, about the bigness of a small churchyard, lay waste many years. But about 60 years ago, Lord Exeter dug up a great quantity of the foundation stones, walled it in and planted it for an orchard’.

A ‘dissenting’ chapel and schoolroom once stood at the junction of Lincoln Road and the old Helpston Roads. It was raised, c.1861, for the self-governing Congregationalists (Christians who rejected or ‘dissented’ from the Anglican form of worship) as an outstation of their Market Deeping mission. It had space for 100 worshippers, increasing its capacity to 140 sittings in 1904. But those were the days when

Maxey Castle (from a map of c.1542)

Geoffrey de la Mare fell from grace when he reneged on a debt of 100 marks (100 ounces of gold) owed to his neighbour and kinsman, Roger, Bishop of Coventry and Lincoln and lord of Northborough Castle. When summoned to Edward III’s Court to explain himself, Geoffrey produced a ‘receipt of payment’, seemingly signed by Bishop Roger, who promptly denounced it as a forgery. Consequently, Geoffrey was outlawed and all his assets seized.

nearly everybody attended church or chapel at least once on a Sunday. By 1933, numbers had dwindled to just four families. A bungalow now occupies the plot.

Nowadays, there is little left of Maxey Castle apart from the double moat and fishponds which hint at its illustrious past. After the Norman Conquest (1066), the eastern part of Maxey was granted to Ralph de la Mare, one of King William’s knights, though it is uncertain whether he chose to live there. His descendent, Geoffrey de la Mare, fell from grace when he reneged on a debt of 100 marks (100 ounces of gold) owed to his neighbour and kinsman, Roger, Bishop of Coventry and Lincoln and lord of Northborough Castle. When summoned to Edward III’s Court to explain himself, Geoffrey produced a ‘receipt of payment’, seemingly signed by Bishop Roger, who promptly denounced it as a forgery. Consequently, Geoffrey was outlawed and all his assets seized. By 1372, his Maxey estates were under the control of King Edward’s Chancellor, Sir Robert de Thorpe, who had been Solicitor General at the time of Geoffrey’s downfall. When Sir Robert died suddenly 1372, Maxey passed to his nephew, William. He rebuilt Maxey manor house and applied for a royal licence to crenelate or add a double moat and battlements (as a status symbol rather than for defence), thereby elevating it to castle status. In 1485, it was acquired by the Countess of Richmond, Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509), who is known to have lodged there. In due course, Maxey passed to her grandson Henry VIII (1509-47) and her greatgrandchildren, Edward VI (1547-53) and Elizabeth I (1559-1603), who bestowed it upon her Secretary of State, William Cecil [Lord Burghley]. In 1699, Maxey became part of Lord Fitzwilliam of Milton’s estate. John Bridges tells us that, by 1721, the castle had been dismantled.

Barnack manor house, c.1905

Despite succumbing to a fire in 1905, Barnack manor house, to the north of St John the Baptist’s churchyard, was still standing (though only just) when The Victoria County History, Volume II, was published the following year. Earlier historians, like Bridges (1721) and John Henry Parker (1853), described tall medieval, stained-glass windows, a hall with a vaulted ceiling, and fireplaces and doorways emblazoned with the escutcheons of Henry VII (1485-1509), his wife, Elizabeth of villagetribune 49

Geoffrey de Barnack’s effigy

Margaret Vincent’s effigy

Bainton moated site

York (died 1503), and their son, Henry VIII. All this is evidence of a quality structure. Yet, Parker reveals and the Victoria County History sketch confirms that the house was ‘modernised’ and ‘greatly reduced’. Now all that is left of its former glory are earthworks and the depression left by two fishponds. In 1327, the manor was held by Geoffrey de Barnack, who endowed a chantry on the north side of St John the Baptist’s chancel, where prayers could be said for his soul and those of his family. His defaced effigy and that of his granddaughter, Margaret (clutching her keys), lie in recesses. Margaret married John Vincent and their descendent, David, was responsible for Pilsgate chapel’s decay.

manorial site on King Street, west of Helpston, for they have been thoroughly researched and the findings published. In the late 1970s, a lowlier manorial site was observed from the air to the immediate south of Bainton. It is enclosed by a moat with a causeway or entrance on the eastern side. Like Torpel, it contains humps and bumps (on a much smaller scale), which may be associated with a modest hall and chapel. It has been conjectured that the site was colonised during England’s late-thirteenth-century period of optimum population but was forsaken after the region succumbed to the Great Plague (aka the Black Death) in 1348/9. Whilst most fen-edge settlements, like Deeping Gate, Northborough and Peakirk, suffered roughly a 50% decrease in their population, we cannot be sure that this was entirely due to pestilence. Surviving peasants, eking a living on wet, marginal soils, migrated to plots on the gravel uplands

Eyre & Jeffreys’ map showing ‘Waldram’ Hall (1791)

Hexham’s map, showing bar across the river, c.1590

By the early-fourteenth century, a ferry service was operating between Walderam Hall and Crowland Abbey, mainly patronised by pilgrims visiting the shrines of St Guthlac and St Waltheof at Crowland. There was a sliding scale of fares with ferrymen charging ‘strangers’ twice as much as locals and everyone paying triple in ‘tempestuous’ weather.

left vacant by plague victims. In fact, by comparing the 1301 Northamptonshire Tax Assessment figures with the 1377 Poll Tax returns, it seems that Bainton enjoyed a hundredfold increase in its inhabitants! Was this the time when Bainton’s moated site was created, I wonder.

In the eastern corner of Northborough parish on a headland betwixt the ancient courses of the Welland and Folly Rivers lies another collection of earthworks, which represent all that remains above ground of Walderam Hall. Strategically placed close to the river-crossing of the old road to the Deepings, Walderam has enjoyed a chequered career. The confluence of the Welland and ‘Follies’ is cited as a pe-Conquest boundary of Peterborough Abbey. However, the earliest reference to any activity is in 1274, when Peter de la Mare of Northborough and Joanna Wake of Deeping were hauled before Edward I’s court for neglecting to pay twenty years’ rent for their fishery on the Welland, near ‘Walraund’. By the early-fourteenth century, a ferry service was operating between Walderam Hall and Crowland Abbey, mainly patronised by pilgrims visiting the shrines of St Guthlac and St Waltheof at Crowland. There was a sliding scale of fares with ferrymen charging ‘strangers’ twice as much as locals and everyone paying triple in ‘tempestuous’ weather. The tenants of Walderham Hall were also cashing in. A survey of 1547 states that, before the Dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, ‘the farme at Waldranhall was an Inne and sometime greatly frequented by Pylgrimes passing to Walsingham’. Afterwards, the hall and ferry were leased to the ubiquitous David Vincent of Pilsgate! Although Peterborough Abbey had held the right of toll along the Welland from Stamford to Crowland since the late-tenth century, the earliest known reference to a toll bar across the river appears in Elizabeth I’s Exchequer Roll for 1580. The ‘barre’ is described on John Hexham’s ‘Map of the Fenland’ of c.1590. From at least 1512/13, road tolls were also being levied at the ‘crossing place for travellers with merchandise from the country to the market of Deeping with carts and horses’. The site of the ford possibly was obliterated during the construction of the Peterborough to Spalding Great Northern Railway line, in 1878. Walderam Hall’s importance declined after 1651, when the bridge was constructed at Deeping St James. By the end of the seventeenth century, it was a dilapidated farmhouse, prone to seasonal flooding. Despite this, in 1705, Walderam’s owner Lord Fitzwilliam ordered its reconstruction, in stone with a thatched roof (later to be replaced with pantiles). Still, mindful of the cost, Fitzwilliam instructed his steward ‘to build the house strong and well, but not better than the tenant needs’!

A sketch made in 1714 shows Walderam as almost identical to that depicted in a photograph taken during the 1947 floods. Shortly afterwards, it was demolished, whilst the outbuildings remained until the 1950s.

Longthorpe Tower (P. Tillemanns, 1719) If Stones could Talk

The ruin in Lawn Wood

From the massive Roman prætorium at Castor (excavated by Artis in the 1820s) to the scatters of dressed ragstone in the moated Down Halls Wood, north of Ufford, it would be the archaeologists’ dream if stones could divulge what actually took place within a structure. In the south-east corner of the strictly private Ashton Lawn Wood, stand the sorry ruins of a square ‘tower?’ with walls four metres thick, estimated to have been sturdy enough to support three storeys. It occupies part of the former 60-acre deer park created by Roger de Torpel III, in 1198, upon payment of 100 shillings [£5] to Richard the Lionheart.

The building, with its vaulted ground-floor chamber, is a century later and contemporary with and maybe similar to Longthorpe Tower. By then, Torpel manor had passed through marriage to the de Camoys family. By 1281, John de Camoys was in dire straits. His wife had left him for a rival and Torpel was mortgaged up to the hilt. Consequently, John sold the manor, lock, stock and Lawn Wood, to Edward I, who bestowed them upon his queen, Eleanor of Castile. Legend dictates that Eleanor was so beguiled by the area, that her husband built her a ‘hunting-lodge’, in Lawn Wood. Edward and his heavily-pregnant wife did, indeed, hold Court at an unspecified location at Torpel in September 1290, and it is tempting to imagine the pair viewing their prospective game from the ‘lodge’. Sadly, we have no proof the Edward erected it or even of Eleanor’s presence here. She died two months later and her grief-stricken widower leased the farmland to the abbot of Peterborough. By 1554, the deer park had fallen into disuse and we can, presumably, trace the demise of the ‘lodge’ from then.

Back in the 1990s, Greg and I often walked my rough collie, Bing, from Marholm to Woodcroft Castle, then along Maxham’s Green Road to Helpston. Near where Woodcroft Road meets the track to Woodcroft Lodge and on the contiguous boundary of Etton, Glinton and Marholm, stood the last vestiges of Pellett Hall, a brick-built barn with a hayloft above.

Site of Pellett Hall

Pellett Hall’s past is enigmatic. Lots of folk have heard of it and some recall running riot in the hayloft, in the late 1960s and 1970s, and I’m told that scenes from the second series of Secret Army (1978) were filmed there. But no one can remember the house, which makes it all the more intriguing and research-worthy. Pellett Hall is absent from both the 1819 ‘Inclosure’ and 1824 Ordnance Survey Maps. Also part of the Fitzwilliam Estate, the earliest tenants that I can find emerge on the 1851 Census Returns as John Vine, an agricultural labourer, his wife Mary and four offspring. By 1861, they had moved out and were replaced by John Kew, farmer of 132 acres, who pretentiously renamed the property ‘Kew’s Farm’. According to Kelly’s Trades Directory, John, his wife Elizabeth and their family of nine remained there until c.1874. Afterwards, William and Sarah Goodfellow and their son, William junior (farmers of 139 acres and employing five men and one boy), arrived and the name reverted to Pellett Hall. The Goodfellows had left by 1891 and John Sheppard, another ag. lab., was ensconced with his wife, Mary and their three children. They were followed by 1901 by John Brewin, a ‘yardman’, Sarah his wife and their three children; next by John and Gertrude Cook, farmers, and two of their eleven prodigy, before 1911. The 1911 Census informs us that the farmhouse comprised nine rooms, though some may have been used for storing crops. By 1921, Pellet Hall was a dairy farm occupied by Arthur and Catherine Sharpe and their five daughters. The 1939 Survey (the last record available to me) divulges that it had been taken over by the Osbourne family. OS Maps from 1898 onwards describe farm buildings forming three sides of a courtyard with an orchard and the barn opposite. When I returned to Pellett Hall in March, the barn too had vanished, leaving just a few chunks of red brick, slithers of Collyweston slate and a broken-down trailer to mark its passing.

The prospect of a village hall at Peakirk was first mooted at a Peterborough Rural District Council meeting in July 1915 by the rector, Reverend Canon Robert Colquhoun Faithfull, who promised to donate land for the purpose. Prior to this, all public gatherings were held at the Hermitage Chapel, then the Parish

Peakirk’s old Village Hall, Peakirk, 1974 Reading Room. After World War I (191418), surplus government materials became available. So, in late November 1919, Tom Neaverson (1897-1975) purchased a 60-feet sectional hut for use as the village hall. The cost, £70.0s.61/2d [£70. 03], was raised by public subscription. The villagers rallied to raise the hall in time for the Christmas Whist Drive and it rapidly became a hub of social activity in an era before TV, the internet and play-stations. It was a venue for dances, concerts, pantomimes, parties, ‘magic-lantern’ shows (the precursor to PowerPoint lectures), jumble sales and Parish Council meetings. Nevertheless, conditions were spartan by today’s standards. Heating was provided by a temperamental, coal-burning stove and it was not until the 1950s that electric fires were installed. There was a kitchen and single ladies’ lavatory but no ‘Gents’. Men were obliged to relieve themselves elsewhere! The hall’s replacement (again financed by public sponsorship) was opened in August 1974 by Arthur Neaverson on behalf of his father, Tom, whose health prevented him from attending.

Maybe someday, someone will invent a time-machine allowing us to visit Tribland’s lost buildings in their heydays. Just imagine Helpston villa with its cool mosaic floors on scorching summer days, the sights, sounds and smells of Walderam pilgrims’ inn or feasting with medieval VIPs at Lawn Wood ‘lodge’!

WI Christmas party ‘with hats’, 1959 (Notice the ‘Jerusalem’ banner} Time Travel in Tribland?

Maybe someday, someone will invent a time-machine allowing us to visit Tribland’s lost buildings in their heydays. Just imagine Helpston villa with its cool mosaic floors on scorching summer days, the sights, sounds and smells of Walderam pilgrims’ inn or feasting with medieval VIPs at Lawn Wood ‘lodge’! But distance lends enchantment to the view and, at the end of the day, doubtlessly, most Triblanders would be relieved to return to 2022 with all its troubles!

HELPSTON LOCAL HISTORY GROUP | HERITAGE New website for Helpston History Group

The Helpston Local History Group are delighted to be finalising the layout and content of the Helpston History Website which is due to launch at the beginning of June.

Once the site is live, the public will have access to all the items we have posted relating to our village history. The website will have the facility to contribute articles, stories and photos. Here is a sneak preview of our training home page. In the meantime, if you would like to share any material for inclusion which could be used by our group for articles, (we are particularly looking for photos of village people working in local employment) we would be delighted to hear from you, via the email address below, or by calling 01733 254818. Come and chat with us in St Botolph’s Church, at the Helpston Gala on Saturday 14th May 2022. Make sure you don’t miss our screen presentation and themed display on, “Feasts, Fêtes and Galas”. We would also like to invite you to our open meeting at 7.30pm on 19 May, also in the church, when Toby Wood of the Peterborough Civic Society will give a talk about Peterborough’s Blue Plaques. There will be an admission charge for non-members to this event of £2, however if you take up group membership on the evening, the entry will be free.

To contact us or request details about joining our group, please email helpstonhistory@gmail.com and a member of the group will get back to you.

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