1745. Cooper Thornhill, of the Bell Inn, Stilton, near Huntingdon—in whose house, from the hands of a relative, Mistress Paulet, originated Stilton cheese—this year achieved a remarkable feat of horsemanship by way of Royston to London; riding for 500 guineas from Stilton to London, 71 miles, in 3 hours and 52 minutes.
1748. In this year, on August 18th, occurred a fire which is memorable in the annals of Barkway. The record preserved in the parish papers consists chiefly of the accounts of the losses, but it is sufficient to show that there must have been nineteen houses burned, and, as the losses were for small amounts, probably nearly all of them cottages.
I give a few of the articles and items of loss and expense—
A publican and farmer lost "hogsheads bare"; L9 in wine, L16 in "sider" (cider), 42 cheeses, silver spoons, "a chest of lining [linen] L20," and claimant's sister lost in "lining" and other things L7, and there are "30 trenchers," earthenware and wooden dishes, &c., &c.
John Sharp--my Lost at the fier as Folows--
In weat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 7 0
housal goods to the valuer . . . . . . . . . . 3 0 0
In wood to valuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 12 0
L3 19 0
Expense at Royston for two Engins and Buckets 1 10 0
Expense at Buntingford for Engine and Bucketts 0 15 0
L2:05: 0
1785. On the 16th June, 1785, there was a fire at Biggleswade, which in the space of less than five hours burnt down one hundred and three dwelling-houses and nine maltings. The want of water and the rapidity of the flames, with the falling of the houses, being so dreadful, little good could be done till evening, when the fire was happily stopped. Upwards of 60 houses in the middle of the town were burnt down, with all the shops, warehouses, stables, &c., adjoining. It is generally supposed to have been wilfully occasioned.
1786. June 3rd, the Roy-stone, at Royston, was removed from the Cross to the Market Hill by order of G. Wortham, surveyor. [Removed to present site in Institute Garden, 1856.]
There was a remarkable frost in 1786, when among other fatal results of the rigour of the season, a maltster named Pyman, of Royston, when returning home from Kelshall, was frozen to death, and a butcher's boy taking meat from Royston to Morden met with the same fate.
1787. In 1787 the following awful visitation of divine vengeance befell a man near Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. He had applied to a Magistrate, and informed him that he had been robbed by such a gentleman.—"The Magistrate told him that he was committing perjury, but the miscreant calling God to witness, that if what he had advanced was not true, he wished that his jaws might be locked and his flesh rot on his bones; and, shocking to relate, his jaws were instantly arrested, and after lingering nearly a fortnight in great anguish, he expired in horrible agonies, his flesh literally rotting on his bones."
1788. A burial ground as a present for winning a law-suit may seem an odd acknowledgment, but this was what happened in Royston during last century, when, in 1788, the following obituary notice was published which explains itself—