A lost Fenland trade route.
The village of Yaxley is located where the northwest edge of the Cambridgeshire peat fens meets the clay plateau running north towards Peterborough. Although the medieval village may have been located around St Peter's church and manor farm on higher ground to the west of the present village, later development of the village moved down to the base of the clay ridge around the 5m O.D. contour. Modern development has slowly expanded back up the ridge towards the north. Yaxley's location just off the Great North Road (Roman Ermine Street) with access to the fen waterways, led to it becoming an inland medieval port and marketplace, as a holding of Thorney Abbey. Norman Cross, one of the four hundreds of the old county of Huntingdonshire, was administered from Yaxley: until the dissolution of the abbeys the Abbot held court there as Lord of the manor.[1]
The main thoroughfare of the modern village is Broadway, which runs along the top of the clay ridge overlooking the fens. In the west it meets the A15 London Road which connects Peterborough to the A1 at Norman Cross, and after passing through the neighbouring village of Farcet to the east, it joins the road to Whittlesey at Stanground.
Main Street Yaxley runs along the base of the clay ridge at the fen edge. It doesn't really go anywhere, being connected to Broadway by several roads which run up the ridge. At the western end of Main Street near the junction with Church Street, a road leads south across the fens to the village of Holme. This road was only a droveway (Hod Fen Drove) giving access onto the fens until after the Yaxley and Stilton Fens were finally drained in C19th.
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| O.S. 6" to 1 mile, Huntingdonshire, Sheet V.SE, 1887 (Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland) |
At its eastern end, Main Street was connected to Broadway by the very wide Cow Lane (now Windsor Road). Until the C20th this appears to have marked the eastern limit of the built village. Great Drove runs away from this junction with Main Street, at an angle out across the fens. Cow Lane/Great Drove was a droving route for moving animals from the high farmland on the north side of Broadway down onto summer grazing on the fens. C20th development has since extended Main Street further eastwards.
A footpath runs north-eastwards from the eastern end of Main Street, passing under the embankment of the East Coast Railway. It then follows the edge of the higher ground and the Pig's Water Drain (a former branch of the River Nene), at around 5m O.D. After passing through Farcet and Stanground, the path originally reached the road to Whittlesey near Horsey Bridge, which crosses the old River Nene channel. Nowadays the path has been diverted slightly to Ramsey Road due to modern development. The 1961 O.S. map below also shows a towpath running along the north bank of the Old Nene channel.
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Old Nene towpath. O.S. 1:25000 map, 1961. (Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland) |
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Horsey Hill fort. O.S. 1:25000 map, 1961. (Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland) |
A short section of lane and track known as Wykes Lane, running south-westwards from the western end of Main Street, becomes a bridle way and then a footpath (see the following map). Once again it follows the fen edge at c.5m O.D. at the base of the clay ridge. This route originally ran all the way to Stilton. Here it met the old line of the Great North Road which ran through the middle of the village. This footpath has since been interrupted by the construction of the modern A1(M), which bypasses Stilton.
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Yaxley to Stilton footpath. O.S. 1:25000 map, 1961. (Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland) |
Christopher Taylor noted that although the later focus for the development of Stilton was north/south, aligned along the Great North Road, originally it would have been east/west.[2] Taylor cited the position of Stilton church, well to the west of the village centre as evidence, although did not elaborate further on the east/west route, other than showing it running uncertainly onto the fens. In 2006 Time Team excavated what was identified to be a Roman era industrial area near to the junction of Yaxley and Stilton dikes, and just such a route running east from Stilton became evident.[3]
Is the route through Yaxley of any great importance or antiquity? Like many fen edge villages Yaxley's principal means of transporting heavy goods was via its lode. Lodes are canalised waterways, some of which date back to Roman times. Yaxley lode may have been created from the old branch of the River Nene which flows along the fen edge from Stanground. At Yaxley this branch is known as the Pig's Water drain and it flows into the lode. It would surely have made sense to move shipments of heavy goods coming from the west and the Great North Road along a relatively flat route to the hithes alongside Yaxley Lode. Barges would have been loaded here for onward transport around the east of England. Coal was certainly being shipped from wharves at Yaxley in C19th and most likely earlier.[4]
Despite there having been an existing route along the higher ground from London Road/Broadway to a junction with the Great North Road at Norman Cross and continuing further west, the lower more direct route may have been favoured for the movement of heavy goods. Knowledge of this route is graphically illustrated in early maps such as Cary's of 1787 below. Although lacking detail, it shows the route as a direct connection between Yaxley and Stilton and continuing eastwards to Stanground and the road to Whittlesey.[5]
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| Extract of John Carey's 1787 map of Huntingdonshire |
Although drawn in a simplified manner, Morden's map of 1695 (below) shows the route continuing to the south-west from Stilton, across what was then Huntingdonshire, and into Northamptonshire.[6] To the west of Stilton this route would have intersected with the Bullock Road (the subject of another of my blog articles), which was an ancient north/south droveway.[7] This might be the last remembrance of the former medieval trading routes.
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| Extract of Robert Morden's 1695 map of Huntingdonshire |
From perhaps as early as the Iron Age, it may have been a route over which salt was moved from production centres further to the east (e.g. Guyhirn).[8] The next village to the south of Stilton on the Great North Road is Sawtry, which in 1086 was known as Saltrede.[9] The place-name interpreted as 'salters stream', suggesting that it may have lain on one of the east/west salt transportation routes from the eastern fens.
For evidence of another possible use of this route in the C17th, we need to look to events during the English Civil War. The Squire surname was quite common in Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. One of their number, a Samuel Squire, was reputed to have had a house in Oundle where he may have entertained Oliver Cromwell. Unfortunately, events surrounding this Samuel Squire during the Civil War are mired in the controversy of the 'Squire papers' as it became known (more on that in another blog post).[10]
According to one William Squire of Great Yarmouth who claimed to have been a descendant, Samuel Squire apparently became a Cornet, the lowest rank of commissioned officer in the Parliamentary 'Ironsides' cavalry and later a lieutenant. It was claimed that Samuel had ridden with the 'Stilton troop of horse', occasionally with Oliver Cromwell himself. It was claimed that among the 'Squire papers' were copies of letters written by Cromwell to Squire at his 'quarters at Stilton' and also at Stanground. Could this latter be a reference to the Horsey Hill fort?
The 'Squire papers' were undoubtedly a sophisticated hoax perpetrated by William Squire, hoever they do appear to be woven around some truthful elements. William had local knowledge having attended Oundle school and was probably descended from a Thomas Squire who was born in Yaxley in 1682. Perhaps the Yaxley Main Street route to Stanground from Stilton was a local folk memory or still in use at that time. It would have been a faster ride for cavalry than the alternative: following the Great North Road to Norman Cross, along the Broadway if it existed at that time, and then through Farcet to Stanground.
Evidence for even earlier activity along the route was discovered in 1955 when Roman pottery and kiln debris was observed during ploughing on the fen near Yaxley Lode.[11] During a pre-development excavation adjacent to Main Street on the north side in 2013, pottery dating from the C9th was recovered.[12] Another pre-development excavation took place to the south of Broadway in 2017 on the eastern side of the railway and extending downslope towards the fen edge footpath.[13] This revealed that significant activity took place there from the Bronze Age and through the Iron Age. The site would have been located on the shoreline of the Whittlesey Mere, a vast area of wetland which was drained during C17th - C19th.
Pottery from the later medieval, through to the post-medieval periods has been observed by the author on the fields alongside Main Street and the Lode. Examples include C12th-C14th shell tempered pottery which may have been produced at Lyveden/Stanion near Corby, and C14-C17th Midlands Purple ware from kilns at Chilvers Coton (Warks), Ticknall (Derbys) or Burslem (Staffs).[14]
It would appear that the east-west route through Yaxley along Main Street could have been of some antiquity, perhaps in use for thousands of years. It may have served as a convenient trade route following drier terrain around the edge of the wet fenland. However, it is much curtailed nowadays, with Main Street carrying only local traffic.
[1] 'Parishes: Yaxley', in A History of the County of Huntingdon: Volume 3, ed. William Page, Granville Proby and S Inskip Ladds (London, 1936), pp. 241-247. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hunts/vol3/pp241-247
[2] Taylor, C. 1979. The Roads and Tracks of Britain, p123.
[3] Time Team, 2006. Stilton, Cambridgeshire: Archaeological Evaluation and Assessment of the Results. Wessex Archaeology report reference: 62505.01
[4] Stamford Mercury, Thursday 28th April 1720, page 12. British Newspaper Archive https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/
[5] John Cary's 1787 map of Huntingdonshire. Antique Maps of Huntingdonshire - Richard Nicholson https://www.antiquemaps.com/hk/hunts/
[6] Robert Morden's 1695 map of Huntingdonshire. https://www.gillmark.com/map/huntingdonshire-maps-37/robert-morden-479/
[8] The Squire Papers. Carlyle, T. 1850. Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches with Elucidations. Third edition vol II.
https://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/browse/Huntingdonshire/Sawtry%2C+All+Saints+and+St+Andrew%2C+and+St+Judith/53282b41b47fc407a900039d-Sawtry
[10] Koziminski, I. 2013. Land Between 58 and 66 Main Street Yaxley, Cambridgeshire: Archaeological Trial Trench Evaluation. Albion Archaeology, Document 2013/150.
[11] Zeki, L.R. 2017. Land East of Eagle Business Park, Phase 2, Yaxley: Archaeological Evaluation Report. Cambridge Archaeological Unit, Report N°.1391.
[12] Provisional identification by Paul Blinkhorn.
[13] Newton, Andrew A.S. et. al. Romano-British saltmaking in Guyhirn: Archaeological excavation at Chapelfield Road. Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, vol. CX, 2021, pp. 197-205[14] Boyle, A. and Rowlandson, I. (2023) “A Midlands Purple and Cistercian Ware Kiln at Church Lane, Ticknall, South Derbyshire,” Medieval Ceramics: Journal of the Medieval Ceramics Research Group, 30, pp. 49–60. doi: 10.5284/1106337.
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