"Nooks and Corners of Old England" by Allan Fea is a book that explores the history and architecture of various towns and villages in England. Fea takes the
Nooks and Corners of Old England Summary
"Nooks and Corners of Old England" by Allan Fea is a book that explores the history and architecture of various towns and villages in England. Fea takes the reader on a journey through the countryside, highlighting lesser-known landmarks and historic sites that often go unnoticed by tourists. He provides insight into the daily lives of the people who lived in these places and sheds light on the unique characteristics of each location. The book is filled with beautiful illustrations and photographs that bring the descriptions to life.
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Nooks and Corners of Old England Excerpt
NOOKS IN HUNTINGDONSHIRE
AND NORTH NORTHANTS
At Huntingdon we are on familiar ground with Samuel Pepys. When he journeyed northwards to visit his parental house or to pay his respects to Lord Sandwich's family at Hinchinbrooke, he usually found suitable accommodation at "Goody Gorums" and "Mother" somebody else who lived over against the "Crown." Neither the famous posting-house the "George" nor the "Falcon" are mentioned in the Diary, but he speaks of the "Chequers"; however, the change of names of ancient hostelries is common, so in picturing the susceptible Clerk of the Admiralty chucking a pretty chambermaid under the chin in the old galleried yard of the "George," we may not be far out of our reckoning.
But altogether the old George Inn is somewhat disappointing. Its balustraded galleries are there sure enough, with the queer old staircase leading up to them in one of the corners; but it has the same burnished-up appearance of the courtyard of the Leicester Hospital at Warwick. How much more pleasing both would strike the eye were there less paint and varnish. The Inn has been refronted, and from the street has quite a modern appearance.
Huntingdon recalls the sterner name of Cromwell. Strange that this county, so proud of the Lord Protector (for has it not recently set up a gorgeous statue at St. Ives to his memory?), should still harbour red-hot Jacobites! According to The Legitimist Calendar, mysterious but harmless meetings are still held hereabouts on Oak Apple Day: a day elsewhere all but forgotten. Huntingdon was the headquarters of the Royalist army certainly upon many occasions, and when evil days fell upon the "Martyr King," some of his staunchest friends were here secretly working for his welfare.When Charles passed through the town in 1644, the mayor, loyal to the back-bone, had prepared a speech to outrival the flowery welcome of his fellow-magistrates: "Although Rome's Hens," he said, "should daily hatch of its preposterous eggs, chrocodilicall chickens, yet under the Shield of Faith, by you our most Royal Sovereigne defended and by the King of Heavens as I stand and your most medicable councell, would we not be fearful to withstand them." Though the sentence is somewhat involved, the worthy magnate doubtless meant well.
It was the custom, by the way, so Evelyn tells us, when a monarch passed through Huntingdon, to meet him with a hundred ploughs as a symbol of the fruitful soil: the county indeed at one time was rich in vines and hops, and has been described by old writers as the garden of England. Still here as elsewhere the farmers' outlook is a poor one to-day, although there are, of course, exceptions.
At historic Hinchinbrooke (on June 4, 1647), King Charles slept the first night after he was removed from Holdenby House by Cornet Joyce: the first stage of his progress to the scaffold. In the grounds of the old mansion, the monarch, when Prince of Wales, and little Oliver played together, for the owner in those days of the ancient seat of the Montagues and Cromwells was the future Protector's uncle and godfather. Upon one occasion the boys had a stand-up fight, and the commoner, the senior by only one year, made his royal adversary's nose bleed,—an augury for fatal events to follow. The story is told how little Oliver fell into the Ouse and was fished out by a Royalist piscatorial parson. Years afterwards, when the Protector revisited the scenes of his youth in the midst of his triumphant army, he encountered his rescuer, and asked him whether he remembered the occurrence.
"Truly do I," was the prompt reply; "and the Lord forgive me, but I wish I'd let thee drown."
The Montagues became possessed of the estate in 1627. Pepys speaks of "the brave rooms and good pictures," which pleased him better than those at Audley End. The Diarist's parental house remains at Brampton, a little to the west of Huntingdon. In characteristic style he records a visit there in October 1667: "So away for Huntingdon mightily pleased all along the road to remember old stories, and come to Brampton at about noon, and there found my father and sister and brother all well: and here laid up our things, and up and down to see the gardens with my father, and the house; and do altogether find it very pretty, especially the little parlour and the summer-houses in the garden, only the wall do want greens up it, and the house is too low roofed; but that is only because of my coming from a house with higher ceilings."
Before turning our steps northwards, let us glance at the mediæval bridge that spans the river Ouse, to Godmanchester, which is referred to by the thirteenth-century historian Henry of Huntingdon as "a noble city." But its nobility has long since departed, and some modern monstrosities in architecture make the old Tudor buildings which remain, blush for such brazen-faced obtrusion. Its ancient water-mill externally looks so dilapidated, that one would think the next "well-formed depression" from America would blow it to atoms. Not a bit of it. Its huge timber beams within, smile at such fears. It is a veritable fortress of timber. But although this solid wooden structure defies the worst of gales, there are rumours of coming electric tramways, and then, alas! the old mill will bow a dignified departure, and the curfew, which yet survives, will then also perhaps think it is time to be gone.
At Little Stukeley, on the Great North Road some three miles above Huntingdon, is a queer old inn, the "Swan and Salmon," bearing upon its sign the date 1676. It is a good example of the brickwork of the latter half of the seventeenth century. Like many another ancient hostelry on the road to York, it is associated with Dick Turpin's exploits; and to give colour to the tradition, mine host can point at a little masked hiding-place situated somewhere at the back of the sign up in its gable end. It certainly looks the sort of place that could relate stories of highwaymen; a roomy old building, which no doubt in its day had trap-doors and exits innumerable for the convenience of the gentlemen of the road.
A little off the ancient "Ermine Street," to the north-west of Stukeley, is the insignificant village of Coppingford, historically interesting from the fact that when Charles I. fled from Oxford in disguise in 1646, he stopped the night there at a little obscure cottage or alehouse, on his way to seek protection of the Scots at Southwell. "This day one hundred years ago," writes Dr. Stukeley in his Memoirs on May 3, 1746, "King Charles, Mr. John Ashburnham, and Dr. Hudson came from Coppingford in Huntingdonshire and lay at Mr. Alderman Wolph's house, now mine, on Barn Hill; all the day obscure." Hudson, from whom Sir Walter drew his character of Dr. Rochecliffe in Woodstock, records the fact in the following words: "We lay at Copingforde in Huntingdonshire one Sunday, 3 May; wente not to church, but I read prayers to the King; and at six at night he went to Stamforde. I writte from Copingforde to Mr. Skipwith for a horse, and he sente me one, which was brought to me at Stamforde. ——at Copingforde the King and me, with my hoste and hostis and two children, were by the fire in the hall. There was noe other chimney in the house."The village of Little Gidding, still farther to the north-west, had often before been visited by Charles in connection with a religious establishment that had been founded there by the Ferrar family. A curious old silk coffer, which was given by Charles to the nieces of the founder, Nicholas Ferrar, upon one of these occasions, some years ago came into the possession of our late queen, and is still preserved at Windsor.
