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Wansford-in-England

Wansford is a particularly picturesque village with most of the buildings built of ‘coursed limestone rubble with freestone quoins’ (that’s rough bits for most of the wall but flat square stone at the corners). The roofs are of Collyweston stone or thatched.  The Haycock Hotel is an enormous place more befitting a significant stagecoach town rather than a sleepy backwater but now has 50 bedrooms, nice garden and a pétanque court and does a thriving restaurant trade.  Don’t overlook the mid-18th century Cross Keys up the road if you’re looking for a pub lunch though. 

Daniel Defoe wrote: Lord Fitzwilliams lately built a very fine stone bridge over the Nyne.  I was very much applauding this generous action of my lord’s, knowing the inconvenience of the passage there before, especially if the waters of the Nyne were but a little swelled, and I thought it a piece of public charity; but my applause was much abated, when coming to pass the bridge (being in a coach) we could not be allowed to go over it, without paying 2s.6d. of which I shall say only this, ‘tis the only half crown toll that is in Britain.

Wansford Bridge is a great structure well worth taking a closer look at.  There used to be an eight-arched wooden bridge.  In 1221, a remission of 10 days penance was granted to anyone giving alms for its repair. After floods damaged it in 1571 it was replaced by a thirteen-arched stone bridge. Only the seven northernmost arches remain, the other six being replaced after about 100 years.  Further rebuilding in 1795 after more flood damage left a single span over the main stream, making navigation easier.  Go down the footpath upstream from the northern end of the bridge for a good view.  The various constructions of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries can then be seen.  It’s hard to imagine what the river looked like 400 years ago.  Even in flood, most of the water now goes under just one arch, the two northernmost arches being completely blocked with the ground level well above river level.  This may account for the seriousness of the Easter 1998 flood, a foot higher than 1947.

                    The northern arches are blocked...                                              ...quite thoroughly

At Wansford the flood plain of the Nene narrows and this is not helped by the Old London Road bridge which creates a serious restriction to the free flow of flood water. Peter Waszak [1]

It’s not the bridge itself that is a restriction but the fact that the arches forming the northern causeway are completely blocked. The bridge was designed to span the whole flood plain as well as the main navigable channel but has not been maintained.

Wharves and warehouses on the south bank fed local produce to Peterborough and beyond down the Nene.  From the bridge look upstream at the row of buildings along the river. These were 18th century granaries associated with riverside wharves but converted to dwellings in about 1850 and now make rather smart cottages, imaginatively named ‘Riverside’ and ‘Water Edge’. Just how close to the riverside / water-edge they are depends on the weather.  The gardens (ex wharf) are regularly flooded and the River Nene has occasionally ventured through the buildings themselves. On the landward side, there is a first floor loft door, approached by wooden steps, hinting at the building’s former purpose. The road once took grain to the river but then to the railway.  The granaries were converted to housing just a few years after the railway opened in 1845.

A little upstream is a building known as the Soll.  It is all that remains of Wansford Paper Mills, which at one time supplied paper to The Times. It closed after an explosion in 1855 after making paper from recycled rag for 150 years.

Even the Haycock stopped trading in 1887 and became a private house and hunting lodge. It reopened as an inn in 1928.  The Wansford bypass with its new bridge was constructed in 1929 heralding another eventual change, the demise of the railway, as well as relieving the antique bridge of heavy traffic.  There is now a two-ton weight restriction on the old bridge, hardly appropriate for the A1.

The Haycock, recorded from 1571, with most of the building dating from 1662, was first known as the Swan Inn. The name changed about 1710 to commemorate a Drunken Barnaby verse.  The rhymes, probably written by Richard Braithwaite (born 1588), tell of Barnaby's journeys around the country.  The Wansford rhyme describes how he was sleeping on a haycock beside the river when a flood occurred.  Barnaby floated downstream and awoke to find himself somewhere other than where he thought he was:

On a Hay-cock sleeping soundly,
Th' River rose and tooke me roundly
Downe the current; people cryed,
Sleeping, down the streame I hyed;
Where away, quoth they, from Greenland?
No; from Wansforth-brigs in England

Many accounts tell that this was the source of the Wansford-in-England epithet.  There is, however, another explanation: 

Wansford Parish Council have a website which includes, tucked away between the Parish Accounts and the Planning Applications, a real gem of a document describing the history, architecture and development of the village.  The document is cunningly designated Village Design Statement.  Methinks it needs a new title and a more prominent position on the website.

John Byng, in his Tour in the Midlands seemed very satisfied with his stay at the Haycock:

Tuesday June 29^th 1790

I arrived here (the Haycock, Wansford) last night to a good supper and a good night’s rest in the best of inns, pleasantly situated; the bridge, the river, the church beyond and the all-about constitute the right inn scenery; and I have brought with me a fishing-rod and tackle to destroy the fish withal.  This morning crossing the bridge, of length and beauty (tho’ narrow), I enter’d the pretty little churchyard and therein try’d my pencil in drawing the church and in transcribing an epitaph.

A good breakfast, with excellent tea; I seldom remark upon tea, but here everything seems to be good.

Next I took a ride upon Harbinger… first to Stebbington village… thence to Water Newton.  I did not return till two o’clock.  Nothing could equal my good dinner but my good disposition towards it.  This is a nice inn; everything clean and in order; a napkin with a wash-hand glass at meals; the beds and stabling excellent!

After dinner, at five o’clock’ I realised my hopes about fishing by catching some very fine chubs and bream, several that made my small rod to crack.  My situation was opposite to some upland closes under mowing, and well shaded with trees.  To my right, at a distance, a mill; to my left, Wansford Bridge and village; and behind me, the London road descends a gradual hill, where I can see every passing carriage.  Being satisfied with fishing, I borrow’d a stick, and walk’d the high road, northerly, for two miles; then returned to a quiet supper, my writing and to an early bed.

Wednesday, June 30.  Here I loiter; but who can help it at such an inn?  This morning, as soon as the post had brought me my letters (seven o’clock), I sally’d forth to fishing but only caught one perch; however, the refreshing air sent me home with a fine appetite for breakfast and the newspapers.

Arthur Mee, in The King's England series, described the new (1929) bridge as: built of concrete with one magnificent arch.  Its width was doubled with an even newer bridge built along the eastern side when the A1 became a dual carriageway.

Barnack Hills and Holes, the once quarry for the shelly Barnack Rag from the Jurassic Lincolnshire Limestone, is today a 50-acre National Nature Reserve managed by English Nature.  It lies on the southern edge of Barnack Village,  north of Wansford.  Bury St Edmunds Abbey and the cathedrals at Ely and Peterborough, a number of Cambridge colleges and many churches and other medieval buildings of Eastern England were all built of Barnack stone.  By the 16th century most of the usable stone had been used and what remained was the Hills and Holes left by the quarrymen.   The digging was begun by the Romans and continued through to medieval times when stone from Barnack, then controlled by the Abbots of Peterborough, was transported to Wansford on wooden sledges by teams of oxen, some of the foundation stones for Peterborough Cathedral weighing up to three tons.  The stone was then transferred to boats for transport along the River Nene.

The nature reserve has an abundance of calcareous flora including supports what is considered to be the largest population of the nationally scarce man orchid Aceras anthropophorum. It also supports a rich assemblage of other orchid species, such as fragrant orchid Gymnadenia conopsea, pyramidal orchid Anacamptis pyramidalis and bee orchid Ophrys apifera.  The pasque flower Pulsatilla vulgaris, also found at Ancaster Valley grows in some profusion here.

Fotheringhay castle, one time home/prison of the hapless Queen Mary, is a couple of miles up stream from Wansford.  Go west from the crossroads at the north end of the old bridge and through Yarwell and Nassington.

North from Wansford, The A1 climbs onto the higher ground between the Nene and Welland valleys.  The flat top is occupied by the RAF at Wittering.  They seem to have left one of their planes by the roadside outside the gate.  If you want a close look there is a handy car park if you are on the north-bound carriageway.  There is a man with a big gun who smiles at you if he thinks you are a plane-spotter but will probably shoot you if you try stealing it.

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©Biff Vernon 2001, 2002, 2003