The Cambridge, Ely, and King's Lynn Road: The Great Fenland Highway

by Charles G. Harper

Puckeridge itself, standing where the roads branch, grew in the old road-faring days from a tiny hamlet to be considerably larger than its mother-parish of Standon, a village nearly two miles distant, to the right-hand. That it developed early is quite evident in its two old inns, the fifteenth century Falcon, and the Old George, scarcely a hundred years younger.

XVI

We will first take the right-hand road to Cambridge, by Barkway, for that would appear in early days to have been the favourite route. Braughing, the first village on this route, is soon reached, lying down below the highway beside the river Rib, with the usual roadside fringe of houses. The local pronunciation of the place-name is "Braffing."

The road now begins to climb upwards to the crest of the Chilterns at Barley, passing the small hamlets of Quinbury and Hare Street, and through a bold country of rolling downs to Barkway, whose name, coming from Saxon words meaning "a way over the hill," is descriptive of its situation. Few signs of habitation are seen on the way, and those at great distances; Great and Little Hormead and Ansty peering down upon the road from distant hillsides.

Since the coaches left the road, Barkway has gone to sleep, and dreams still of a bygone century. At the beginning of its broad street there stands the old toll-house, with the clock even yet in its gable that marked the flight of time when the Cambridge "Telegraph" passed by every day, at two o'clock in the afternoon; and old houses that once were inns still turn curiously gabled frontages to the street. The Wheatsheaf, once the principal coaching house, still survives; outside it a milestone of truly monumental proportions, marking the thirty-fifth mile from London. It stands close upon six feet in height, and besides bearing on its face a bold inscription, setting forth that it is thirty-five miles from London and sixteen from Cambridge, shows two shields of arms, one of them bearing a crescent, the other so battered that it is not easily to be deciphered. This is one of a series of milestones stretching between this point and Cambridge; a series that has a history. It seems that Dr. William Mouse, Master of Trinity Hall, and a Mr. Robert Hare, left between them in 1586 and 1599 the sum of £1600 in trust to Trinity Hall, the interest to be applied to mending the highway along these sixteen miles; as the Latin of the original document puts it, "in et circa villam nostram Cantabrigiæ præcipue versus Barkway." Whatever Trinity Hall may have done for the repair of the road in the hundred and twenty-six years following the bequest, there were certainly no milestones along its course until 1725, when Dr. William Warren, the then Master, set up on October 20th the first five, starting from the church of Great St. Mary in Cambridge Market Square. On the 25th June, in the following year, another five stones were placed in continuation, and the next year another five. The sixteenth was not placed until 29th May 1728. Of this series the fifth, tenth, and fifteenth were about six feet in height, with the Trinity Hall arms carved on them; in heraldic jargon described as "sable, a crescent in fess ermine, with a bordure engrailed of the second." The others were originally small, with merely the number of miles engraved on them, but were replaced between 1728 and 1732 by larger stones, each bearing the black crescent; as may be seen to this day.

These stones, very notable in themselves, and more so from the open and exposed character of the road, have not only the interest of the circumstances already narrated, but gain an additional notability in the fact that, excluding those set up by the Romans, they are the earliest milestones in England. Between Roman times and the date of these examples the roads knew no measurement, and miles were a matter of repute. It was not until the Turnpike Act of 1698 that, as part of their statutory obligations, Turnpike Trusts were always bound not only to maintain the roads on which they collected tolls, but to measure them as well, and to set up a stone at every mile.

BARLEY.

The road between Barkway and Barley is a constant succession of hills; steep descents, and correspondingly sharp rises, with the folds of the Chilterns, bare in places and in others heavily wooded, rising and falling for great distances on either hand. It was while ascending Barkway Hill on the up journey that the "Lynn Union," driven by Thomas Cross, was involved in a somewhat serious affair. Three convicts were being taken to London in charge of two warders, and the whole party of five had seats on the roof. As the coach slowed to a walking pace up the ascent, one of the gaol-birds quietly slipped off at the back, and was being followed by the other two when attention was drawn to their proceedings. The principal warder, who was on the box-seat, was a man of decision. He drew a pistol from his pocket, and, cocking it, said, "If you do not immediately get up I'll shoot you!" The one who had already got down, thereupon, with a touching faith in the warder's marksmanship, returned to his place, and the others remained quiet. They finished the remainder of the journey handcuffed. It is, indeed, surprising that they were not properly secured before.

The road on to Barley is of a switchback kind, finally rising to the ridge where Barley is perched, overlooking a wild treeless country of downs. Barley is a little village as thoroughly agricultural as its name hints, and consists of but a few houses, mostly thatched, with a not very interesting church on a by-way, and a very striking inn, the Fox and Hounds, on the main road. It is the sign of the inn, rather than the house itself, that is so notable, for it is one of those gallows signs, stretching across the road, that are now becoming so few. The illustration sufficiently describes its quaint procession of fox, hounds, and huntsmen, said to have been placed here in allusion to a fox that took refuge in a dog-kennel of the inn.