Blog Editorial May 2022

To celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in May 2022, we take a lighthearted look at local links with Royalty. As far as we know Elizabeth II never visited St Neots so we have tried to find any local links to royalty that we can, from ancient coins to visits by medieval kings and local people who have met royalty.

Our earliest link is to the Iron Age ruler of the St Neots area, Cunobelin leader of the Catuvellauni tribe. Whom the Roman writer Sutonius, called the King of the Britons.  This small gold coin has CUN standing for Cunobelin stamped on it and is part of the hoard of gold Iron Age coins found at Kimbolton and now part of the museum collection.

Casting round for other royal links we recalled that St Neot himself was said by some ancient sources to have been one of the brothers of King Alfred the Great who ruler England 870 – 899. Alfred was famous for uniting England and fighting off the Vikings who raided England and tried to conquer the whole country. There is no evidence that St Neot and King Alfred were in fact related, but sources do suggest that they knew each other.

Not all rulers were as successful as Alfred and a coin, which was found close to the local village of Southoe, shows King Ethelred, who reigned 978 – 1013. He was known as Ethelred the unready because he was unable to expel the Vikings from Britain and preferred to pay the invaders enormous bribes not to attack the country.

After the Norman conquest of 1066, St Neots priory was rebuilt and we know that King Henry II visited the Priory in 1156, when he was a young man at the beginning of his reign. Perhaps he brought with him his friend Thomas Becket, whom he later fell out with and whom some of Henry’s knights murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. This beautiful medieval casket designed to hold a relic of Becket was found in St Neots in 1765 and is now in the V&A museum in London. The glory days of the St Neots Priory were the 1200s and King Henry III, a pious but weak ruler, visited the Priory three times in the 1200s (1229, 1235 and 1236).

St Neots remained a small market town throughout the medieval period, dominated by the larger surrounding towns. It was in July 1533 that Queen Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, was brought to Buckden Palace, the home of the Bishop of Lincoln, where she was imprisoned while Henry struggled to divorce her and marry Ann Boleyn. Catherine was later moved to Kimbolton Castle where she died in January 1536.

Perhaps the most important Tudor royal link was the link created when Henry VIII closed all the monasteries in Britain after the Pope refused to grant him a divorce. St Neots Priory closed in 1539 and was demolished and all the building materials and contents were sold off. Sadly, no-one knows what happened to the body of St Neot.

The dissolution of the monasteries marked the beginning of a new era for the country symbolised by the religious toleration and increasing prosperity of the later Tudor period. In 1564 Queen Elizabeth I stayed close to St Neots at Hinchinbrooke House, outside Huntingdon, when she visited Cambridge university.

Other members of the royal family passed close to St Neots as they travelled the country. In 1835 Princess Victoria and her party, stopped to change horses at the Cock Inn on the Great North Road in Eaton Socon. There she was charmed by a landlord’s young daughter and is reputed to have said ‘What a pretty child, I should like to kiss her’, and the child was held up and the princess kissed her.

Once Victoria became Queen she and her husband, Prince Albert, became hugely popular as they developed a new style of friendly and approachable royal family. When their eldest son Prince Albert (later Edward VII) married Princess Alexandra of Denmark in 1863, the whole country celebrated. This photograph shows the decorations put up in Cambridge Street, St Neots to celebrate the wedding and is one of the earliest photographs we have of the street.

In 1870 when Joseph Barringer, a baker in St Neots heard that Queen Victoria would be travelling by train along the Great Northern Line and stopping at Peterborough he determined to present the queen with a bunch of grapes he had grown in his own heated greenhouse. He travelled to Peterborough station and was allowed to present the grapes to Victoria on his best silver salver, they were graciously received – but Mr Barringer never saw his silver salver again!

Many years later in 1897, Queen Victoria celebrated 60 years on the throne – her Diamond Jubilee.  A national bank holiday was declared for Tuesday 22^nd June 1897 and special celebrations were held across Britain and the Empire. In St Neots a committee was formed and organised a whole range of celebrations, including a street procession, prize competitions on the market square and meals for children and older residents.

In the 20^th Century the celebration of royal occasions have continued to be enormously popular. After the death of Edward VII in 1910, George V (son of Edward VII) came to the throne and was crowned in 1911. With the celebrations for Victoria’s Diamond jubilee still fresh in people’s minds the coronation was celebrated widely across the country.

In 1935 King George V celebrated his Silver Jubilee after reigning for 25 years and again across the country the flags and bunting were put out and the High Street and Market Square were the focus for celebrations in St Neots. This photograph shows well-known local sportsman, Laurie Evans, conducting the singing of ‘God save the King’ on the Market Square in May 1935.

Sadly, George V died in January 1936 and in 1937 (after the abdication of Edward VIII) the town was celebrating the coronation of George VI, the father of the present Queen. This photograph shows the butchers shop of John Raynes Smith on St Neots High Street with the flags out and his new fleet of delivery vans parked outside.

The celebrations for royal events cheered up the depression years of the 1930s and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 cheered up the tough years of the 1950s after the Second World War. These photographs give a glimpse of the street celebrations and children’s parties held locally.

In recent years more local people have met members of the wider royal family as they have attended local events, unveiled memorials and opened local centres. In 1980 Mike Van De Kerkhove began working with the Princes Trust (established by Prince Charles) raising and distributing funds to support young people, this photo from 1992, shows him meeting Prince Charles in Cambridge at a major fund raising event.

In 1987 local teacher, Geoff Watts took a group of Ernulf school children to see Princess Anne open Wood Green Animal Centre, there was great excitement when she arrived by helicopter.

A few years later in 1992 Princess Anne opened the new Bedford Disabled Horse Riding Association centre at Willington and met Ivan Twigden, of St Neots, who had donated the land for the centre.

On 25^th May 1999 the Duke of Gloucester visited St Neots town centre to mark the completion of the Market Square and the Brook Street Environmental Improvement Scheme.

Local people have also been honoured over the years in the Queens New Year Honours List. In 2006 local teacher and magistrate, Geoff Watts, was awarded the MBE for his services to Education, after teaching at Ernulf school for 32 years. Geoff was presented with his MBE by Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. And in 2013 Richard Shaw, who now lives in St Neots, received an MBE from the Queen for his volunteering and fund raising with cancer charities in Norfolk.

Eaton Socon has been part of St Neots since 1965 but did not gain its own community centre until 2010 when the Duchess of Gloucester came to open the centre and met the Mayor, Cllr Gordon Thorpe and other local people including Lucy from Bushmead School who presented the Duchess with flowers.

2012 marked the Queen’s Golden jubilee and Her Majesty attended a series of jubilee garden parties across the country, including one at Burghley House, Stamford, which was attended by 20 local people chosen to represent St Neots. Here the Queen waves to well-wishers as she arrives at the event.

A year later in 2013 Prince Charles unveiled a war memorial at RAF Tempsford commemorating the men and women of the secret services who gave their lives during World War 2. These brave women and men flew from RAF Tempsford and were parachuted into enemy territory in Europe to work with foreign agents.

The closest Her Majesty the Queen has come to St Neots in recent years has been in 2019 when she visited Cambridge for a day of engagements including opening the new Royal Papworth Hospital. We send Her Majesty our congratulations on her Platinum Jubilee, marking a life of incredible service to the people of her country.

 

We’re preparing to ‘Meet the Romans‘ at the museum in March, so here’s a short blog from our curator on St Neots’ Roman past.

What was life like in Roman St Neots? Well, thanks to major road building schemes along the A14 and the A428, coupled with new housing developments across the region, we’re discovering fascinating new information to help us build a better picture of  our town in the Roman period, 43 – 410AD.

Recently published discoveries at Fenstanton (only eleven miles from St Neots) include the skeletons of both men and women who are thought to have been slaves working in a meat processing factory. One male skeleton in particular has been drawing international attention. Found with a nail through his heal, he is thought to bear evidence of crucifixion, the first example of this punishment ever recorded in the UK!  Three other skeletons also showed signs of traumatic injury, having had both legs broken at some stage in their lives, another punishment usually reserved for slaves. The man who had been crucified also had wasted leg bones, suggesting that he may have been forced to wear leg shackles that limited his movements. What must local people have thought about the way people were being treated only a few miles away?

A patchwork of settlements

Over the years, local finds have revealed that the area around St Neots was a patchwork of small farms and growing settlements during the Roman period. New archaeological finds at Wintringham, just east of the old historic centre of St Neots, have revealed a network of tracks and Roman roads linking local people together, including a road to the important local Roman town of Durovigutum, (now Godmanchester). At Wintringham, archaeologists have excavated over 3,000 sherds of Roman pottery, as well as the bones of many farm animals, including cows, sheep, goats, pigs and horses.

Historic archaeological excavations in the 1960s provided early evidence that this area was increasingly densely settled by the Roman period. Iron Age buildings and Roman pottery found in the town centre of St Neots (on a site behind Cambridge Street, where Church View stands today) confirm that local Britons were already living here in their traditional round houses by the time of the Roman invasion in AD 43. Other early discoveries include a Roman villa with underfloor heating discovered close to the Conygeare in Eynesbury, and three stone coffins found in 1968 near the Duloe Road (Bilberry Close, Eaton Socon). The stone coffins reveal that some local families were wealthy enough to afford lavish burials.

Other finds in the villages surrounding St Neots reveal the growing local population during the Roman period, and include a substantial villa outside Great Staughton, and the Kimbolton Coin hoard of sixty-seven gold staters, both further evidence of the wealth of the area.

Read more about the coin hoard HERE, and find the Fenstanton article HERE

Come and ‘Meet the Romans’ on Saturday 12th March at the Friends of St Neots Museum family open day. Meet members of the Longthorpe Roman Legion, resplendent in their replica armour and find out what life was like for a Roman soldier. Try on armour, discover the work people did, the clothes they wore, and the cosmetics they used.

Book your tickets for timed entry HERE

In this brief blog, our curator takes a look at the history of building work in St Neots…

January is often a time of new beginnings and new projects. Following the impact of the pandemic, this year more and more of us will be turning our attention to our homes in an effort to create a fresh space in which to inhabit! The phrase ‘build back better’, apparently coined in 2015 by the United Nations in relation to disaster relief, has also been in heavy use. All of this combined, led me to thinking about the amazing mixture of buildings and building styles that have graced St Neots throughout its history, much of which can still be seen today.

Past building fashion

The oldest buildings still standing are timber framed buildings, the most notable of which is 42 High Street (currently the Kodak shop), which dates to the late 16th century. A quick trip around the area reveals many other such buildings in Eaton Socon, Eynesbury and in local villages. Some periods in history are well known for the ‘building booms’ that took place. A ‘great rebuilding’ of domestic housing was said to have taken place in England between 1570 and 1640, replacing old medieval buildings with these sturdy new timber ones.

Another period of major rebuilding and refurbishment took place during the Georgian period in the 1700s, and again, this can be clearly seen in St Neots. Stand in the Market Square, and many of the buildings you can see were either built or re-fronted in the Georgian period. Their smart red bricks and large windows, so recognisably Georgian in style, tell us that local people could now afford to rebuild in this new style to celebrate their prosperity. Both the Cross Keys Inn (now the shopping mews) and Lovett Estate Agents (24 Market Square) are older buildings, which were re-fronted in new red brick in the 1700s. The late 17th and early 18th centuries were a high point in the use of brick, with improvements in their manufacture leading to greater quality and consistency in shape and size.

The builders behind the scenes

Sadly, we know nothing about the builders who transformed these early properties, but as we come forward in time, we know far more about more recent local builders. One very well-known local firm, who helped to shape the town between the 1860s and 1980s, were Wrycroft & Sons. They were responsible for the Flour Mill in Bedford Street, rebuilt after a fire in 1909, and the new St Neots Post Office completed in 1913 (now the Weeping Ash public house). Other local builders, such as the Bellamy family, concentrated on domestic housing, and the house they built for themselves at 16 Kings Lane is a good example of a 1930s family home. More recently, Mr Twigden created a highly successful building company and built many local homes in the 1980s and 1990s.

Today, we are experiencing another building boom, although the link with local builders has been sadly lost, and new housing estates at Loves Farm and Wintringham are being built by national companies. Eventually though, they too will become part of the history of the town, reflecting the fashion and trends of our own time.

If you’ve been inspired to explore the old buildings of our town yourself, then why not download our Town Trail, and learn a little about St Neots’ history as you go! Just click HERE to download.

From biblical personalities sprouting horns to life on Mars, here’s five instances that historical misinterpretations and translations have impacted history

A few months ago, we wrote a blog post about unicorns (yes, we’re adults!) and how a mistranslation of the old Hebrew text, even led to unicorns being mentioned in some versions of the bible (resulting from a supposed error when translating the Hebrew word for ‘ox’. You can read more about this in our ‘Unicorns – a brief history’ blog!)

With this fresh in our minds, we thought we’d write a follow-up piece on how other historical misinterpretations have had quite the impact…

The small matter of St Neot

Starting off close to home… If you read about St Neot, the chances are you’ll come across references to him as the dwarf or pygmy saint (something which infuriates our curator!) Though St Neot may well have been short in stature, the legend quickly escalated, exaggerating rumours of his height until he became just 15 inches tall! The tradition seems to originate from a particular ‘miracle’ associated with the saint, known as the miracle of the ‘high door lock’ (we know, sounds thrilling, doesn’t it?) What the miracle boils down to is that once, during the monks’ rest time at church, St Neot was roused from his sleep by a banging at the church door. When he arrived to answer the door, he found that due to the door being situated on a step, he was too short to reach the lock. At this point, the lock on the door miraculously lowered itself to the level of his monastic sash, enabling him to open the door. We’re told that the lock remained that way for a long time afterwards… Not the most exciting of miracles we grant you!

From this legend, the references to St Neot’s extreme short stature may well have stemmed. Disregarding the fact that the door was set above ground level, or the notion that the lock may have been particularly high, the tale has instead been interpreted and retold time and again to present St Neot as abnormally short. There’s even a suggestion by Rev. John Whittaker in his ‘Life of St Neot’ of 1809, that the lock was actually lowered by church devotees to help give strength to the legend. The trick obviously worked, as his extreme shortness is still the popular belief to this day!

Moses the ‘horned one’

If you’re familiar with your art history, you’ll know that for a period of time Moses was depicted with horns growing out of his head! Most famously in Michelangelo’s Moses in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome. As with many things, this was due to mistranslation of the original Hebrew text into Latin.  The Hebrew word karan or qaran for ‘radiant’ or ‘shining’ bears a close resemblance to keren or qeren, which, you guessed it, means ‘horns’. According to the Torah, when Moses descended from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, his face was glowing with radiance. One slip in the translation meant that poor old Moses sprouted horns instead…

Giving up the ghost

Sticking with the bible, another slightly sloppy translation that appears in the King James Bible in the early 17thC, is the term ‘Holy Ghost’ rather than the more accurate ‘Holy Spirit’. The Greek word pneuma that it’s translated from, is closer to ‘breath’ or ‘spirit’ in meaning, and less a supernatural entity. The use of ‘ghost’ in the King James Bible led to the origin of the phrase to “give up the ghost”, meaning to expire or die, and therefore adds an unfortunate touch of comedy to passages like Acts 12:23: “And he was eaten up of worms, and gave up the ghost” and Mark 15:37: “And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.”

The (accidental) father of Sci-Fi

When Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli began mapping Mars in 1877, he labelled what he thought were natural channels in the planet’s surface with the Italian word canali. Understandably, this was later interpreted as ‘canals’, the meaning of which suggests a purposeful, manufactured origin. This sparked the theory that there could be intelligent life forms on Mars. In 1894, Percival Lowel, a Boston based astronomer, concluded that the canals were indeed artificial, and dedicated much of his career to mapping them. He believed the canals were created to carry water from the polar caps to the equatorial regions of the planet, supporting the life forms that lived there. The idea that there could be life on Mars, has preoccupied humanity ever since!

Not quite the ‘Abominable Snowman’

According to the OED, the phrase ‘abominable snowman’ dates back to 1921, translated into English from the Tibetan term metoh-kangmi by a journalist named Henry Newman. Newman was stationed as a reporter for The Times newspaper in Darjeeling, India, where he had the opportunity to interview members of an expedition to Mount Everest, led by explorer C. K. Howard-Bury. Whilst on the mountain, the expedition team had apparently spotted enormous humanlike footprints in the snow. The local Sherpa guides recognized these as belonging to a legendary creature they called the ‘wild man of the snows’. However, Newman mistook the word metoh, meaning ‘wild’ for a similar word metch meaning ‘dirty’ or ‘dishevelled’, and in his report, single-handedly turned the ‘wild-man’ into a snowman in real need of a bath! The legend of the ‘abominable’ (as Newman named it) snowman became hugely popular, launching an obsession with the creature (also known as the Yeti) that continues on to this day.

If you enjoyed this blog, why not try our ‘Unicorns – a brief history’ or ‘Unfortunate royal epithets‘ blogs.

This summer, the museum is bringing back the popular ‘Marble Mania’ installation! And, to tie in with the theme of play, we’ve also added a new toy display upstairs. Read on to learn more on the history of playtime…

If you didn’t catch our giant magnetic marble run in 2019, then here’s a second chance to come and play! Have a go at making a marble run along the gallery wall, and then test your creativity by letting those marbles loose!

Did you know, the humble marble has been a popular children’s toy for thousands of years? There’s no conclusive evidence for where marbles actually originated, but they have been found in various forms worldwide. 4,000-year-old small clay marbles have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, likely used as game pieces in the ancient game of Mehen, meaning ‘coiled one’, named after a snake deity. The playing board itself took the form of a coiled snake! Greek and Roman children are also known to have played with marbles in a game known as ‘Nux’ or nuts. Sadly, the game rules have been lost to us, but we know that, often, nuts themselves were used to play.

Homemade play

While you’re visiting the museum, you can also head upstairs to see a new display of local children’s toys dating from the early 1900s to the 1950s. The toys include a charming doll’s pram, complete with a china-headed doll, that belonged to a young girl who grew up in New Street, just a short distance from St Neots Museum. Also on display is a small peg doll dressed as a bride. She dates from around 1910 and is actually made from a wooden ‘dolly’ peg, used to hang washing on the line! The term ‘doll’ is thought to derive from a shortened pet name for ‘Dorothy’, which gradually began to be associated with any human like figure (which may also be where a ‘washing dolly’ gets its name from, due to its (albeit vague!) resemblance to a human.)

Peg dolls were popular during times of hardship, such as wartime Britain, when people had little to spend on toys. This particular doll is dressed in cotton lace with a veil, and silk fabrics stitched to the peg underneath to form her undergarments and booties. Her arms are made from pipe cleaners, which enables her to carry her delicate real dried flower bouquet. Sweet!

Another example of an Edwardian homemade toy is the wooden ‘jumping jack’ sailor, who moves his arms and legs when you pull down on his string. Just like marbles, toys like this have also been found dating as far back as ancient Egypt. They were particularly popular in 18^th century France, where the toys (called ‘Pontins’) were highly collectable and sought-after items, particularly those that imitated popular public figures of the time. In the Victorian period, paper ‘jumping jacks’ were popular, as they were easy to make and provided a low-cost option for poorer families.

Mass-produced toys

Other toys on display include a small selection of lead soldiers. Toy soldiers also have a very long history dating back to prehistoric times, including (you guessed it), in ancient Egypt! Tin soldiers were the first kind to be mass-produced in Germany in the 1700s. In 1893, the British toy company ‘William Britain’ revolutionised production by devising the ‘hollow-cast’ method, making soldiers that were lighter (and therefore cheaper!) than their German counterparts. In the Victorian period, toy soldiers were also being made of lead; at this time, there was only a limited understanding of lead as a poisonous substance that could cause serious illness and even death. Certainly, the harm that lead-poisoning could do to young children was not fully realised until the 1960s, when laws banning the manufacture of toys containing lead came into force in 1966.

Our tin doll’s tea set is another example of the cheap and cheerful children’s toys produced for a mass market in the early 20th century. Early tea sets like these from the 16^th century would have been made from copper or pewter, though porcelain was also an option for those with the money! The popularity of these sets really took off during the industrial revolution, when they became more easily produced, and, by the 19^th century, England was one of the leading producers of tin tea sets in the world.

The final addition to our collection is a 1950s Meccano set, given to the museum by a man who grew up in Russell Street. Meccano was invented in Liverpool in 1898 by Frank Hornby, who had originally intended it as an educational tool for children to learn the basics of mechanics. Marketed as the “toy of the century” during the height of its popularity in the 1950s, Meccano enabled users to build models of structures, vehicles and engines, complete with moving parts and motors.

We love a toy in the museum! Do you remember these from your own childhood? Perhaps you had your very own doll’s tea-set, or were a real whizz with Meccano! We’d love to hear your memories, and, as always, would be glad to receive any local donations!

Now, off you go and play…