Founded shortly after the Conquest of 1066, Boston rapidly grew to become the most successful English port outside of London. The growth of the wool trade in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries led to the building of St Botolph's, the largest parish church in the country. During the seventeenth century the town was strongly Puritan, causing some inhabitants to emigrate to America to found the new city of Boston, Massachusetts. Some of the Pilgrim Fathers were imprisoned in the medieval Guildhall, which survives to this day. Boston's story is brought right up to date, celebrating the complete history of this fabulous Lincolnshire town in a volume that will delight locals and visitors alike.
Founded shortly after the Conquest of 1066, Boston rapidly grew to become the most successful English port outside of London. The growth of the wool trade in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries led to the building of St Botolph's, the largest parish church in the country. During the seventeenth century the town was strongly Puritan, causing some inhabitants to emigrate to America to found the new city of Boston, Massachusetts. Some of the Pilgrim Fathers were imprisoned in the medieval Guildhall, which survives to this day. Boston's story is brought right up to date, celebrating the complete history of this fabulous Lincolnshire town in a volume that will delight locals and visitors alike.
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Overview
Founded shortly after the Conquest of 1066, Boston rapidly grew to become the most successful English port outside of London. The growth of the wool trade in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries led to the building of St Botolph's, the largest parish church in the country. During the seventeenth century the town was strongly Puritan, causing some inhabitants to emigrate to America to found the new city of Boston, Massachusetts. Some of the Pilgrim Fathers were imprisoned in the medieval Guildhall, which survives to this day. Boston's story is brought right up to date, celebrating the complete history of this fabulous Lincolnshire town in a volume that will delight locals and visitors alike.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750956949 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 03/03/2014 |
| Series: | Story of |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
| Age Range: | 12 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Story of Boston
By Richard Gurnham
The History Press
Copyright © 2014 Richard GurnhamAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5694-9
CHAPTER 1
THE CREATION OF A MEDIEVAL 'NEW TOWN', 1086–1300
Origins
Boston was one of the great success stories of the High Middle Ages. Famously unmentioned in Domesday Book in 1086, it was to become, in little more than a hundred years, the busiest provincial wool-exporting port in the country. Its merchants would pay more taxation to the Crown than those of any other port except London itself, and by the late thirteenth century its fair was to be one of the largest in the country and of international importance, visited by merchants from across Europe. In 1334 it was the fifth richest town in England and, in 1377, the tenth largest.
The town's remarkable growth in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries owed much to its position at the mouth of the River Witham. The river's importance as the principal means of communication between the city of Lincoln and the North Sea was the chief reason for Boston's foundation and early growth as a port. In the eleventh century Lincoln was already a rapidly growing metropolis, handling a considerable trade in wool and corn, both of which were regularly shipped down the river. Boston would also benefit from its position as an island of higher ground in an area prone to flooding, and from being the lowest bridging point on the river.
In 1086, Boston was already in existence but it was as yet only a very small, unnamed hamlet, growing up as a western extension of the older and larger settlement of Skirbeck. It would seem, however, that it was already large enough to have its own church and its own priest. Domesday Book lists two churches and two priests in Skirbeck Hundred. It can probably be assumed that one church would have been that of St Nicholas in Skirbeck proper and the other that of St Botolph, which would later give its name to the new town. Nothing can be seen today of the original church – the great church that now stands was largely completed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – but the foundations of a smaller, earlier stone church about 4ft beneath the present building were found during restoration work in the 1850s. From this evidence, the architect responsible for much of the restoration work, G.G. Place, felt able to describe the Norman church as 'very similar to the church at Sibsey. It consisted of a nave, with aisles, tower, and chancel ... the nave about twenty-five feet by sixty, aisles twelve feet by sixty, and tower nine feet square.' This, of course, is a description of the church as it would have appeared at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The church of 1086 was almost certainly smaller than this. The original church would probably have lacked the aisles that Place found. As the town grew rapidly in the thirteenth century, however, it would have been necessary to increase the size of the church and it was probably at this time that the aisles were added.
To the north and west of the little settlement at the beginning of the twelfth century stretched the vast, flat, undrained Fens, which for much of the year were marshy and full of dark bogs which would swallow up the unsuspecting traveller. But Boston was not entirely without road communications, for here the river was both shallow and narrow enough to be fordable. Consequently it was close to this site that two ancient trackways met, one running south from the Wolds, approximately followed today by the A16, and the other running roughly parallel with the coast, linking the Townlands villages of Leverton, Benington, Butterwick and Freiston, a route followed at least in part today by the A52. Both tracks followed a line of slightly higher ground. The Townlands are a broad stretch of land lying between the inland Fens and the Wash, just a few feet above both. The Wolds road across the Fens followed a causeway known as 'the stick', from the Old English word sticca. This name still survives in the names of two of the villages that grew up along it: Stickney and Stickford, which can be interpreted respectively as 'the island called Sticca' and 'the ford in the narrow island called Sticca'. The original island nature of Sibsey, the village closest to Boston on this route, is also preserved in its name, which is also Old English: 'Siegebald's island'. This was a very ancient route used in prehistoric and Roman times.
Just how long Skirbeck's little western suburb had been in existence by 1086 cannot be known. There is no evidence at all that the seventh-century missionary St Botolph founded a monastery on the site, as has been claimed, but his missionary work – which seems to have been focused on Suffolk – may have extended as far north as the Lincolnshire Fens. The name Boston is a combination of the Old English personal name Botwulf, the Saint's Anglo-Saxon name, and the Old English stan, a stone. Although little is known about his life, St Botolph was by the eleventh century an extremely popular saint, especially venerated in East Anglia; sixty-nine other churches and four other towns and villages are dedicated to him. The name, 'Botolph's stone', may refer to the foundation stone of the first church, and to its dedication shortly before the compilation of Domesday Book, or it may have earlier origins, if St Botolph did preach in this area. Although he dismissed the idea that St Botolph was buried at Boston, as some had claimed, Eilert Ekwall in 1936 stated that he believed: 'Boston no doubt got its name from a stone or a stone cross at which St Botolph preached Christianity to the Middle Angles'.
The name Skirbeck is Scandinavian, from the Old Norse words skirr and bekkr, meaning the 'clear brook' or 'bright brook'. The stream to which it referred would later form part of the defences of the growing town of Boston. It would also mark the boundary between Boston and Skirbeck, although part of its original course was lost when the Maud Foster drain was constructed in the sixteenth century. It entered the Witham approximately where the drain does today, and its outfall came to mark the southern boundary of the new town. The village of Skirbeck may, however, be older than its Scandinavian name suggests. Professor Kenneth Cameron believes that its current name may well have replaced an Old English name with the same meaning.
By 1086 the larger part of the Skirbeck Hundred – the manor of Hallgarth (on the east bank of the River Witham) – had been given by William the Conqueror to his cousin Count Alan Rufus as part of a very substantial land grant. This later became known as the Honour of Richmond, and included ninety-seven holdings in Lincolnshire alone. He was the highest ranking layman in Lincolnshire and William had rewarded him handsomely for his support in taking and holding the English throne. As well as his numerous Lincolnshire estates he had also been given nearly 350 manors in Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Nottinghamshire, Hampshire and Dorset. He was the son of Eudo, Count of Penthièvre in Brittany and he had commanded the Breton contingent at the Battle of Hastings. As Count of Brittany he was 'first subject', next in rank to the Royal Family.
Although neither market nor tolls are mentioned in 1086, it is possible that at least some unofficial trading was already occurring here, and that at least some of the nineteen freemen listed at Skirbeck made a living partly by providing the services needed at a small port. Early in the tenth century, when Lincoln's trade began to grow and prosper under its new Danish lords, the site of the later town would simply have been a trans-shipping point, but the advantages of a proper port, with some warehousing facilities to store the goods awaiting transhipment, must always have been apparent.
However, Count Alan's Anglo-Saxon predecessor as owner of Skirbeck (and one of Edward the Confessor's greater thanes), Ralph the Constable, had apparently done little to develop the potential of the site. Not only was it still unnamed; it was also extremely small. Domesday Book lists only thirty-two families in Count Alan's portion of Skirbeck Hundred, plus two priests. If even half the inhabitants were living at the port, there could not have been more than a total population of about seventy.
The Development of the Port in the Twelfth Century
The building of the church of St Botolph was the count's first step towards the development of his new town. Domesday Book captures a snapshot of the settlement very early in its development, but the next steps must have followed soon afterwards. One would have been the building of a manor house for the count's bailiff to live in while he supervised the little port's development. We know that this stood approximately where the Boys' Grammar School stands today, several hundred yards south of the new church, on what became South Street and was probably already an ancient trackway running from the ford to Skirbeck. The distance of the manor house from the church seems surprising but it perhaps indicates the ambition of the new Norman lords and their confidence in the success of their new venture.
The earliest known reference to the Market Place appears in the early thirteenth century, but it is likely that it was laid out early in the town's history, probably in the early twelfth century. The earliest market area may have been in front of the manor house, what later became known as the mart yard, or the hallgarth. It stood close to where the Grammar School playground stands today. The first mention of a fair at Boston only appears in a charter of 1125 but it may already have been established by this time. Between 1088 and 1093 the count gave the church of St Botolph, together with a mill and at least eighty acres of farmland to the Abbey of St Mary at York, a Benedictine house which he had also recently founded. The later charter was given by one of his successors – his brother Stephen – to the monks of the abbey, confirming his brother's gift and giving them permission to erect their market stalls both inside and outside the churchyard, beside St Botolph's during fair time, and to lease them to visiting merchants. It is quite possible that the monks were already doing this, but sought the charter to confirm their right to do so. Count Alan and his immediate successors may also have encouraged the growth of the little port by settling fellow Bretons in the town. Documents relating to Boston in the late twelfth century contain a number of Breton names.
The expansion of the town in the twelfth century can be traced, at least approximately, through the evidence of surviving charters as the town's lords sought to profit from the growing trade of the port and had their surveyors set out streets and divide up their lands into building plots. The nucleus of the settlement, including St Botolph's church, its churchyard and the rest of the area set out for the market and fair, lay on the east side of the river. It lay entirely within the lands of Count Alan's successors, known from about 1136 as the Earls of Richmond. In the last decades of the eleventh century, and probably well into the twelfth, the new town stood entirely on the east bank and was wholly the property of the earls. However, by the middle of the twelfth century the town was growing sufficiently rapidly for other Norman lords, whose families had been granted lands by William the Conqueror to the west of the river, to also 'cash in'. These were the descendants of two Norman lords listed in Domesday Book as Guy de Creoun and Eudo, son of Spirewic, both of whom had been granted substantial estates in Lincolnshire. Their lands in Boston would become known as the Creoun Fee, which lay immediately across the river from the church and, a little to the south of this, the Tattershall Fee (as Eudo was also Lord of Tattershall and this part of Skirbeck came under that manor's control). The latter was sometimes also referred to as the Skirbeck Quarter, a term which survives today.
By about 1160, the town's eastern boundary, not including its fields, was delineated by a bank and ditch – the Barditch. This ran from where it joined the River Witham, about 300 yards north of the church, round the north and east sides of the church in a wide arc, to Strait Bargate, and then southwards for about another half a mile until it rejoined the Witham, close to where the Skirbeck Road joins South End today, just south of the Boys' Grammar School. This may have been part of the original layout of the Count of Brittany's planned development; alternatively, it may have been added later to give the town and its fair at least some form of defence on this exposed side. If this was the case, it was probably dug during the dangerously anarchic years of Stephen's reign (1135–54). A town wall is mentioned in the thirteenth century, when tolls were levied for their upkeep, but this was probably the earth bank wall of the Barditch. Neither timber nor stone were easily available in this area and it is therefore quite likely that any wall would simply be an earthen one, like the walls frequently being thrown up at this time as river banks and sea banks. If it was an earthen wall it would also explain why no trace of it has ever been found.
The earliest plots laid out were immediately to the north of the church along a lane running out towards a deep tidal pit, known as the Depol, which was probably a deep pool at a bend in the River Witham, where the northern part of the Barditch was constructed. The mill given to St Mary's of York by Count Alan was probably on the Depol. The pool gave its name to this part of the town but the lane may have later become known as Withamgate, and later still as Wormgate, a name that happily still survives in the town today. Plots also seem to have been marked out very early on the east side of the area set out for the fair. These first plots seem to have been of uniform length and width, as at Louth, where the bishops of Lincoln were at this time developing their town. The plots that ran from the Market Place to the Barditch were all approximately 200ft long and about 24–25ft wide, or 12 perches by 11/2 perches: the surveyors used long poles, each about 161/2 feet long (or one perch) to measure the plots. The earls were also able to keep close control over what was built on them, at least in the early stages of the town's growth. Earl Stephen gave his representative in the town, Geoffrey d'Auredus (1125–1135), permission to build whatever house he wished on the plot granted to him, but thirty years later his grandson and successor, Earl Conan, gave instructions to the monks of Easby that the house they wished to build must be comparable to the one already constructed by the monks of Kirkstead.
By the mid-twelfth century we find plots being subdivided and broken up into smaller ones, with arrangements, therefore, being needed to ensure access for a horse and cart to and from the new sub-plot. Thus in 1160, Nigel, son of Halden of Boston, granted to Ralf the tailor of Norfolk part of his plot 'next on the west to one given by his brother to Ralph ... in which Nigel's father dwelt, being fifty feet long, and of the same width as the front building ... (and) Ralf (the tailor) is to have free access at fair times and at other times with cart and horses, from the great street to the land'. This subdivision of plots was so common by this time that the original, full-length plots were by now being called vicus to distinguish them from the new, smaller plots.
As the town grew, attracting more and more inhabitants, we find development across the river, on the west bank. A bridge is not mentioned until 1191, when reference is made in a charter of that year which conveyed a small plot of land on the west side of the river 'to Alexander the clerk ... at Bridgend' but it might have been built many years before this (probably in 1142). In that year, Alan de Creoun was said to have built a sluice or cataract on the river, and it is likely that the first bridge was built at the same time. The sluice would have improved the port by scouring the outfall, thus reducing any silting-up of the river, which might otherwise prevent the larger ships reaching the port. A quay must already have been built on the west side of the river as well as on the east side, for both river craft and larger sea-going ships; the de Creoun family was keen to both exploit and protect the opportunities that the growth of the town presented. The bridge was probably built over the sluice and would come to mark the limit for sea-going ships and river craft.
At the end of the twelfth century, the town was still located mainly on the east bank. The west bank was still only sparsely populated, but a new road had been laid out on the west side running down to the bridge, close to the river, and plots were marked out ready for tenants. A charter from about 1184 tells us that in that year Maurice de Creoun granted to Hubert of Lynn 'a plot on the river bank between Robert son of William and Alan son of Toly, with a road seven feet wide between the plots and the water'. Hubert of Lynn, like his new neighbours, Robert and Alan, was almost certainly a merchant, keen to have his house close to the river. He may also have had his own private staithe and he seems to have prospered sufficiently to have acquired another plot nearby a few years later. In about 1190 another charter recorded that one of his neighbours had granted 'to Roger son of William ... a plot of the fee of Maurice de Creoun between Hubert of Lynn's holdings ... running from the road to the water'. A third charter also from about 1190 refers to a grant of land 'where the ships tie up'. These would be prime sites, running down to the river and the quayside and close to the road and the bridge. The little 'seven feet wide' road was presumably one of the many little lanes which by now ran between the plots; in this case the road ran from the quay on the west side of the river to the new road which ran parallel with the river. It would later become known as Gowt or Goat Street, surviving as High Street.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Story of Boston by Richard Gurnham. Copyright © 2014 Richard Gurnham. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
Foreword,
Acknowledgements,
one The Creation of a Medieval 'New Town', 1086–1300,
two The Late Medieval Town, 1300–1500,
three Reformation and Incorporation, 1500–1558,
four The Elizabethan and Jacobean Town, 1558–1642,
five The Civil War and the Interregnum, 1642–1660,
six Restoration and 'Glorious Revolution', 1660–1700,
seven Georgian Boston, 1700–1837,
eight Victorian and Edwardian Boston, 1837–1914,
nine The Twentieth Century and Beyond,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Copyright,