History Turn the pages of history...
slide 1 A Brief History of Ramsey Mereside
slide 2 
Introduction
This is a short history of the village of Mereside, which stands three feet below sea level on what was once a great mere covering 680,000 acres. The first part of the story deals with a documented history of the village, the second part is the recollections of some of the older inhabitants.
I am extremely grateful to Con Bradfor, Harley Bellamy, Albert Smith and Ernie Dunkling for allowing me to tape interviews with them and use this material. I am also grateful to all the people who lent me their treasured photographs to copy, without you all this little story would not have been possible. Last but no means least to Wendy for putting up with the last four months and for her help and local knowledge. I hope you all enjoy the story
D.S.Cumbridge.
slide 3 The first recorded tribe to inhabit this area, after the Ice Age were the Iceni.
In the early years of the 11th Century, the Danes conquered England and settled in East Anglia. England was ruled over by the Danish King and his son Knut ( or Canute ). Knut ruled over England from 1016 to 1035 as part of his great Scandinavian empire and was succeeded by his son who died in 1042.
Canute is said to have had a hunting box at Bodsey ' gravel' which he reached along a causeway across the Mere from Peterborough. It is recounted that Canute's children went from Bodsey to a school at Peterborough and that two of his children were buried at Bodsey. History informs us that he ordered his men to fell the reeds along this causeway from Bodsey to Peterborough with their swords and in fact the track they had prepared was later called King's Delf or Swords Dike. At this time however, Canute named it Canute's Dike, ( Dike was the Anglo-Saxon word for path ). The reason Canute decreed that the soldiers should make a path along the causeway was that on one boat trip, King Canute and his friends and servants were passing Whittlesea Mere from Peterborough to Ramsey, and were enjoying their voyage by singing and jollity, when they were surprised by a sudden storm and turbulent winds that gave them cause for alarm. There were many lives lost including those of two of his sons.
Ramsey Mere was mentioned in 1241, when it was said, that as a result of a drought, the Mere became so dry that no boat was needed to cross it. In 1250 however, disaster struck the area by the invasion of a great flood of salt water, which carried all before it and devastated a great deal of the land and vegetation.
slide 4 In a Ramsey Abbey Chronicle the Mere was called HRAEFN ( or Ramesmere ). It was on the edge of a great fen that once covered 680,000 acres. The fen was drained of all the water in 1769 and a drainage board was formed. At this time, the only habitation along the causeway was an Oilmill, which was sited in the corner of the field, which is now the property of Mr R.Dyer 291 Oilmills Road. The causeway at the time was called Swords Dike. In the 18th Century Mr Fellowes and some gentlemen 'adventurers' put up the money to drain Ramsey Mere and it was said that Mr Fellowes stood at Johnson's Point and watched the last of the water being pumped.
By the middle of the 19th century, Whittlesey Mere had become very shallow and as it was apparently becoming more shallow, as the years passed, a group of Fenland landowners, in conjunction with the Middle Level Commissioners, financed a scheme to drain the mere and by using a newly invented centrifugal pump, they pumped out the water from the mere and in 1850 it was dry. The bed of Whittlesea mere was mostly made up of shell covering a layer of peat. A Silver incense boat, a silver censer and chandelier were found in the bed of the mere and from the ram's head on one of these pieces, it was thought to have come from Ramsey Abbey. Also in the bed were found pieces of quarried stone, which had undoubtedly fallen from a barge on the way to the Abbey. To test the fall in the level of the peat, an iron post was sunk upright at Holme Fen in 1851, with its top level with the ground and with its base set on oak piles driven into the underlying clay. The post was replaced in 1963, set to the level of the first and now stands well above the ground level, showing how the Fens have shrunk from being 5 feet above the silt level to a level very much below this.
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In tracing the history of Mereside and on viewing old maps of the area, it was noted that Sword Dike ( now Oilmills road ) from Ponds Bridge ( now Pondersbridge ) to Bodsey, was bounded to the North East by Glass Moor and to the South West by Middle Moor.
LIt was thought interesting to note some of the names of the inhabitants of Mereside, who may be related to some of the villagers of the present day Mereside. If not related, perhaps some of our older villagers may remember some of the names, or have heard members of their families mention them. These residents were connected with commerce and were mentioned in the Kelly's Directories of the second half of the 19th Century.
In 1869, for example, there was in Mereside a miller named John Bradford and farmers John Caton, William Rose, Joseph Shepperson and Stephen Whittome. The Minister of the Baptist Chapel was the Rev.Thomas Baker. William Jones was a farmer at Ramsey Mere.
In 1877, it was mentioned that Patrick Harkins was a beer retailer and that John Hill and Henson Infield were farmers at Oilmills. Stephen Papworth joined the farming community at Mereside.
In 1890, many others are mentioned and among them, Edward Bellamy was described as a Landowner at Mereside. Whether farms changed hands or whether the following were additions to the farming community, it was not quite clear, but Stephen Papworth Jnr. was a farmer in Mereside; Thomas Thompson was a grocer and farmer; Abinger Whittome was a farmer and Edmund Whittome a farmer, hay and straw merchant etc. at Mereside. Stephen Whittome Jnr. was a farmer and milk contractor at Mereside. William Green was described as a beer retailer and farmer at Mereside.
slide 6 At Oilmills, Benjamin Greenword was a farmer and in Oilmills Road Thomas Hemmington was a beer retailer and farmer. Mrs Mary Infield and Frederick Ingle were farmers. Ellis Smith was a farmer and was also the beer retailer at the Salutation Public House. William Henry Longland was a wheelwright in Oilmills Road. In 1898, George Newton joined the farming community in Mereside and Thomas Short was a baker and grocer.
In 1903, Robert Barlow was a farmer in Mereside and John Dean a farmer in Oilmills Road. Joseph Wade was a beer retailer in Mereside. In 1906, there were a few more changes in Mereside. Cornelius Bradford was a shopkeeper and George Bradford was a farmer in Mereside. Charles Butler and William Smith were beer retailers in Oilmills Road. Daniel Dyer was a shopkeeper in Oilmills Road, Frederick Ernest Palmer was a beer retailer and Frank Short was a baker and grocer, both in Mereside.
In 1902, on the other side of Oilmills Road, at Middle Moor, the Middlemoor End School was built for 150 children. The average attendance was 130. Percy Peacock was the Master at the School. In 1914, a School was built in Mereside and perhaps holds many memories for the older residents of Mereside Village.
Ramsey town has several villages on its outskirts, namely Ramsey Mereside, Ramsey Forty Foot, Ramsey St. Mary's and Ramsey Heights.
Mereside, today is home to a population of approximately 600 people and the school has been converted into a private residence, as has the Chapel in Oilmills Road.
slide 7 In the past three to four years, the village has expanded considerably, with many new houses and bungalows being built. The old Village Hall, on its large playing fields, had to be demolished when it became unsafe to occupy and the villagers hope that within the very near future a new Community Centre will be built, in order that the community spirit and the friendliness of the village will not be lost.
The old Council Houses on Oilmills Road were subsiding and had to be demolished, and in Marriotts Close more modern houses and bungalows were built to house these residents.
There are many memories of village life in Mereside in the minds of some of the older residents in the village and I have attempted to revive these memories by having casual chats with some of them and by obtaining old photographs, which some villagers have so kindly lent, in order that the history of the village may be recorded.
The following pages of stories have bee taken from these chats and have been recorded, to retain the past history of our village for posterity.
slide 8 This part of the story starts about 1800 when a few houses started to be built close to the only building that existed along the causeway, the old Oil Mill. By 1835 the village had grown to some 80 dwellings nearly all occupied by farm workers and farmers. These times were extremely hard, with the workers living in bad conditions, sometimes as many as 10 or 12 in a family living in a two bedroom cottage, with scarcely enough to eat especially in winter. Some of these recollections portray the way in which they survived by making their own amusement. The stories they tell are sometimes handed down and sometimes their own, told through personal experience.
By the turn of the 19th century the village had grown to include four public houses. "The Wheatsheaf", which stood where the Marex Inn now stands. "The Plough", which stood where Dr Rennies house now stands. "The Salutation Inn", which stood at the Pondersbridge end of the village on the left hand side where a bungalow now bears its name.
"The Red Cow" stood in no-mans land down Marriotts Drove. There was also a Chapel, a Mission Church, two shops, a butcher, two carpenters shops, an undertakers, a cycle shop, a fish shop and a Reading Room. There were also traders who came to the village and carriers, a term used to describe people who would fetch products from the bigger towns for a fee. At this time many of the people because of the damp and bad conditions suffered from "the shakes and the ague" and a popular cure for this was laudanum [a mixture of opium and alcohol]. It was also said that they dipped their babies dummies in laudanum to keep them quiet in the fields whilst their parents worked.
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A relative of Mr Frank Short who owned Mereside Stores at that time says he remembered laudanum being sold under the counter". It seems to have been consumed in lots of families for various illnesses at this time, and seems to have worked quite well. We must bear in mind that a lot of families could not afford the doctor or to lose time from work as no work meant no pay, and that meant no food for the family.
These were the days when the men took cold tea and a thumb bit to work for their docky (lunch break), a thumb bit consisted of about a third of a loaf of unsliced bread, with a lump of lard and a piece of fat bacon, or cheese on top. You then put your thumb on top and cut a lump off with your shut-knife. If they ran out of drink they would fill their bottles in the nearest dyke, and sometimes had tadpoles swimming in it.
The farmers usually walked down to the fields and took their men's cooked tea. It was not uncommon for the man of the family to have the meat as he was the breadwinner and the women and children often had plain or onion roll.
The children sometime had to walk more than two miles up the muddy droves to get to school and very often arrived wet through. Most classrooms only had one coke combustion stove in the centre of the classroom and the children had to stand round this until they dried out.
slide 10 There was no water in the village and the only supply came from the tanks that caught the rainwater off the houses plus the two village pumps. One stood opposite where the Post Office is, at the top of the roadway which is still there, and one stood outside the school. These drew water from the leading dykes for all the cattle and horses. Every smallholder had a horse and many families had a cow as well. These animals were moved frequently along the roads; in fact some of the cows were allowed to graze along the roadside. It requires very little imagination therefore to visualize the state of the roads as these were mostly only granite at this time. A man was kept employed cleaning up the droppings and piling them in heaps at the side of the road in a vain effort to make the roads passable.
Everyday a postman called Mr Lack walked his round from Ramsey Post Office to East view at the Pondersbridge end of the village and back. It was said that at Christmas, a boy was also employed to help him carry the mail because of the extra parcels.
A man called Joe Fisher had a blacksmiths shop opposite the Post Office and he also walked every day from Ramsey, by way of Stocking Fen Road, down Brick Kilns Lane and across the footbridge down Sraggs Bank and up the public footpath which ends at the side of 219 Oilmills Road.
These were a breed of people who really ventured too far outside their area, in fact even today there are fen people who have never been to London or many of the other big cities.These were the people whose ancestors fought the Romans, causing the Roman leaders to send a message to Rome to say that they feared the local people were ungovernable. People who also fought for their lands with Canute, who fought with Cromwell against King Charles 1 and then fought Vermuydens men when they tried to drain the Fens and earned themselves the proud name that has been handed down through history, they were the "Fen Tigers".
Page 11 The village shop (now Mereside Stores) was built in 1885 and at the turn of the century was owned by Mr Frank Short; it had a bakery in the building at the side which still stands, and at its peak baked 600 loaves a day. These were delivered by Mr Short with his horse and cart. He was known locally as the midnight baker.
A reference more to the time he came home and less to the time he was in the bake house. At this time the average wage for a farm worker was approximately 25 shillings per week (£1.25p) working from 7 in the morning until 7 at night at harvest time. Beer was 2d a half pint (1p), 5 Derby Cigarettes 2d and 10 Woodbines for 6d (2.5p).
It was said that the ladies of the village used to take their Sunday joint up to the bake house and Mr Short would cook it for 4d, because at this time the cooking facilities in homes were limited. Mrs Short served in the shop which was quite small in size, an old customer said of her "If you went in for some sweets and they weighed too much she would bite one in half". At about this time a man called Newmand lived in a railway carriage at the end of Marriotts Drove and he made wattle hurdles for a living, which he sold to the highland sheep farmers.
He was said to be an excellent man at his trade, but was sometimes difficult to find because of his habit of going off to The Plough and, if he sold a couple of hurdles, he didn't return until he was broke.
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Opposite where Mereside Stores now stands was Cades Carpenters Shop and a man called Joe Ward made the coffins. At this time in the village were two characters called Gid Enfield and Fred Ingle and one night they were in the shop talking and Joe Ward was about to finish the coffin when he was called out.
They decided to have a game, so Gid Enfield said I will get in the coffin and you hide under the bench until he comes back. They removed the lid and Gid climbed in and Fred put the coffin lid back on, but Gids knees were sticking up a bit and it didn't quite fit. Joe Ward came back and started to move around the lid, at this point Gid exclaimed, Ease that lid a bit more". Well they said you couldn't see Joe for dust, Gid said afterwards, "I never thought a man could move as fast as Joe did that night."
Later on Billy Richardson took over making coffins and nearly all the coffins he made were carried at the funerals by four brothers all named Smith. Very little money ever changed hands though, as when they wanted a new shaft in their hoe or fork it used to be squared up this way. The hearse at this time was pulled by two black horses with beautiful black plumes on their heads.
As there were still few cars to be seen, Billy Richardson ran a Taxi service with a horse and buggy to take people to Ramsey or Whittlesey to the doctors etc. Most people still walked however and it was said that Wally Bulls mother walked from Pumping Cottages down New Rd to Whittlesey every week to do her shopping.
The first radios that appeared cost £100 and were square boxes with horns on the top. A Ford B car with no windows or doors and a canvas top cost about £100 new.
The Wheatsheaf stood approximately where the Marex Inn now stands but it was situated right on the edge of the pavement. One room was once a butchers shop and the other a tap room.
Page 13 Bert Greenwood was a popular character who frequented the pub, he was quite a good fiddle player and after playing in The Wheatsheaf one Christmas night and consuming in the process a number of free beers, he decided he would go over the road to Florrie Ingles and play for her. So with several friends in tow, he sallied forth to stand under her bedroom window and played " Hark the Herald Angels Sing". As this occurred at two oclock in the morning her response is not recorded for posterity.
The Plough was only an ale house, so it could only serve beer as it had no licence for spirits. The Salutation Inn was originally called the Black Swan and had its name changed in about 1910. Con Bradford took over the pub in 1925. One of the first aeroplanes seen close to the village, crashed near there soon after it took off. Con remembered as a young lad taking the Peterborough Standard around the village for 4d (1.5p) per dozen and for that price he had to fetch them from Ramsey. One of the stories he told of his time in the pub was, "I remember one night some gipsies came in the bar and wanted to sell some rabbits. Roley Hodson said he was hungry so he would buy one, and damn me if Aub Dean didnt get out his shut knife and skin it in the bar. George Abblitt cut a piece off the leg and stuck it on his shut knife and held it over the fire to cook. After a while they took it off and shoved it in Roleys mouth; he really had to chew on it."
Two more of Cons stories were "I remember I had a Ford 8 car and one night a man came in the tap room, he had this lovely car and said he thought perhaps he would sell it. Well after a bit of haggling, we struck a deal, £80 and my Ford B for his. Some days later we were cleaning out the car and found some personal papers with a name and address on so we thought we would return them, so we got in touch with the previous owner, it was a bad move as the Police came and fetched the car away, it turned out it had been stolen. Three of us had to go up to Leeds and give evidence and the man got five years.
Page 14 When R..... got real drunk, Pat his wife used to fetch R.....s mother, Mary Liz and she would get the copper stick and thrash him with it and he really used to squeal like a stuck pig; it never cured him though. There used to be a man called Wally Green and he was a rare one for buying goats in fact he always reckoned he had the best. One night while he was in the pub Jack Ablitt and a few others went up to his house and pinched his goat and tied it up outside the "Sally".
"Well Wally", Jack Ablitt said, you want to see this goat I got? They went outside and Wally said "I will buy that off you". So Jack Ablitt sold him his own goat, and drunk the proceeds.
The Red Cow was down Marriotts Drove in the middle of no-where, it was said that you could get a drink there anytime as they opened all hours. One day such a commotion was heard near the Red Cow and when villagers got there, there was a group of Irishmen dead drunk and fighting mad. The landlord had got them out on to the drove and they were fighting one another. When they finished there was an ear on the ground, one of the Irishmen had bit the others ear off.
Smith and Bradford were big names in the village then. "Grandmother Smith had 10 children spread over 30 years, 3 years between each. She was 50 years old when "Tip" Smith was born and he fed at his mothers breast for so long that when they went gleaning for corn, he carried a stool for his mother to sit on while she fed him."They needed to glean a bag of corn for each month [12 bags] to feed their family for a year. The bags of corn were taken to Whittlesey to be milled into flour.
Page 15 Mr Bradford kept the butchers shop, which stood on the corner of Marriotts Drove. He used to kill and dress the pigs for people in the village and also sell the meat in the shop. He owned a cottage opposite, which sold in 1925 for £11, complete with orchard.
Another family in the village was the Owens. Nearly all of them were sportsmen of some sort. Acky Owen was a fighter who became quite good, he fought men like Freddie Mills and Jack Turpin in his time. "I remember he came to the Plough when we all sat outside having our beer, he couldn't have been above 17 years old, he said " Do you know I'm the best man here? Well we couldn't have know that, could we? So we though we would show him; do you know when he had finished, he was, the best man!" His brother George was a very good runner and hurdler - "The finest in the Fens" and won many a purse in Marathons of the day. Their father was a character too. When the midwife at that time, a Mrs Rowlis, was delivering one of his babies, she said to his wife "How on earth do you always manage to have such lovely children?" Mr Owen senior who had been celebrating the birth rather early said. "Gel if you got a minute come up to the bedroom and I'll soon show you".
After the 1914-18 war the village acquired a Memorial Hall. This was brought from Grantham on two trailers pulled by traction engines, a considerable journey for those days. They got as far as East View and rested overnight before continuing on to the site the next day. It was erected by the men of the village and lasted until it was destroyed by fire in the late 1960's.
In the early days concert parties used to come to the hall to entertain the village. Next door to the hall was a little Mission Church which was built by the Dean family. No weddings or funerals were held there but some christenings were. They also held regular church services and Con Bradford remembered singing in the choir.
Page 16 The church eventually fell into disrepair and was pulled down. Next door to the Church was a Reading Room. These were popular in most villages at the time and the daily papers were kept there so that people could go along and read in peace, or sometimes play a game of dominoes or cards.
During the war if potatoes went for cattle feed they had to be dyed blue, and it was the very devil to get off anything. "I remember T... H..... used to go round doing this for the farmers. He had a very big moustache, and while he was using the dye his snout kept itching, so he kept rubbing it and at the end of the day he had this beautiful blue moustache, it was blue for months until it eventually wore off."
With the Memorial Hall being used for functions, the Reading Room was no longer a necessity, so it was turned into living accommodation and a lady called Mrs Henshaw lived in it until it was demolished.
It was not unusual to see six shire horses on a threshing drum pulling it through the mud down Marriotts Drove. The landlord of The Red Cow had to haul his barrels down by horse and cart as the dray could not get down to his pub in the winter.
The village only had 4 street lamps, they were paraffin and Billy Richardson used to look after them. He used to go out in the afternoons with his pair of steps and trim the wicks and fill them up with paraffin ready for the night. When it got dark Billy used to go out and light the lamps. We used to wait until he moved on to the next one and then we used to open the door with a stick and of course if it was windy, the lamp would blow out. Billy used to turn round and see it out and come back muttering about the bloody wind.
Page 17 Rivers used to be frozen over then in the winters, and there was no work for the men, so they used to go skating. This sometimes gave them a chance to win a joint of meat for a meal in one of the races. A man used to sit on a box at the side of the ice and fix your skates on for 2d.
A certain well known farmer in the village had a son who was a bit wayward and he had gone off one day on his fathers new bike. Much later that day his father came by and said " Have you seen anything of V.....", "he went by early this morning" we said, "Why? "Well," he said he's only gone and sold my sty of pigs to a butcher in Ramsey and he's done a runner with the money and my new bike" [his fate when his father caught him is not recorded].
When the Second world war broke out some of the men from the village left to serve in the forces but in most cases agriculture was an exempt occupation. Some of the remainder volunteered for the Home Guard or "Dads army". "One night I remember we set off to attack Ramsey Drill Hall; they formed us up at Forty Foot and we made our way up the back of Hollow Lane and by the Lion Yard to the Drill Hall. By this time we were all a bit hungry so when we got to the bottom of the Lion Yard and there were these lovely apples on some trees, we succumbed to temptation and we all climbed up and filled our pockets.
Well, you get 40 men and you make a bit of a mess of the crop. Well there was a captain who had retired from the army wounded that kept The Lion then, and the next morning he had us all parade in front of him and we had to pay for all the apples.
