Wansford’s peculiar fame is thus more than local. Perhaps the queer picture-sign of the grand old inn, representing Drunken Barnaby on his haycock, helped to disperse it over England in days when it could not fail to be seen by every passing traveller. The “Haycock” ceased to be an inn, and is now occupied as a hunting-box. It affords a pleasing relief from the Duke of Bedford’s almshouse-looking cottages, and is a building not only of considerable age, but of dignified architectural character. Stone-built, with handsome windows and steep slated roof, and carefully designed, even to its chimneys, it is, architecturally speaking, among the very finest of the houses ever used as inns in England, and has more the appearance of having been originally designed as a private mansion than as a house of public entertainment. The sign is now hung in the hall of the house, the corbels it rested on being still visible beside the present door, replacing the old archway by which the coaches and post-chaises entered and left the courtyard of the inn of old.
The “Haycock,” even in its days as an inn, was a noted hunting centre. Situated in the country of the Fitzwilliam Hunt, it afforded, with its splendid accommodation for guests and for horses, headquarters for those who had not a hunting-box of their own, and in those days stabled as many as a hundred and fifty horses.
“Young Percival” kept the “Haycock” from about 1826, and drove the “Regent” between Wansford and Stamford, in place of “old John Barker.” At that time he had more valour than discretion in driving, and on one occasion at least nearly brought disaster upon the coach at the famous bridge by “punishing” a spirited team which had given some trouble at starting. At the steep and narrow entrance to the bridge they took it in their heads to resent his double-thonging, the leaders turning round, and the whole team presently facing towards London instead of Stamford. They had to be driven back to the “Haycock,” and Barker took them on to Stamford.
That bridge would have been an exceedingly awkward place for a coach accident. It is picturesqueness itself, and by consequence not the most convenient for traffic. Originally built in 1577, with thirteen arches, it was repaired in 1674, as a Latin inscription carved midway on it informs the inquiring stranger. In the winter of 1795 an ice-flood destroyed some of the southernmost arches, which were replaced the following year by two wider spans, so that Wansford Bridge has now only ten openings. The northern approach to it from Stamford leads down in a dangerous, steep, sudden, and narrow curve, intersected by a cross-road. Now that there is no longer a turnpike gate at this point to bring the traffic to a slow pace, this descent is fruitful in accidents, and at least one cyclist has been killed here in an attempt to negotiate this sharp curve on the descent into the cross-road. An inoffensive cottage standing at the corner opposite the “Mermaid” inn has received many a cyclist through its window, and the new masonry of its wall bears witness to the wreck caused by a heavy wagon hurtling down the hill, carrying away the side of the house.
The five miles between Wansford and Stamford begin with this long rise, whose crest was cut through in coaching days, the earth taken being used to fill up a deep hollow which succeeded, where a little brook trickled across the road, the coaches fording it. Thence, by what used to be called in the old road-books “Whitewater Turnpike,” past the few cottages of Thornhaugh, and so to where the long wall of Burghley Park begins on the right hand. Here the telegraph poles, that have hitherto so unfailingly followed the highway, suddenly go off to the right, and into Stamford by the circuitous Barnack road, in deference to the objections, or otherwise, of the Marquis of Exeter, against their going through his park.
The famous Burghley House by Stamford town is not visible from the road, and is indeed situated a mile within the park, only the gate-house to the estate being passed in the long descent into that outlying portion of the town known as Stamford Baron.
There is, amid the works of Tennyson, a curiously romantic poem, “The Lord of Burleigh,” which on the part of the literary pilgrim will repay close examination; and this examination will yield some astonishing results. It is, briefly stated, the story of an Earl masquerading as a landscape painter and winning the heart and hand of a farmer’s daughter. He takes her, after the wedding, to see—
“A mansion more majestic
Than all those she saw before;
Many a gallant gay domestic
Bows before him at the door.
And they speak in gentle murmur
When they answer to his call,
While he treads with footstep firmer,
Leading on from hall to hall.
And, while now she wonders blindly,
Nor the meaning can divine,
Proudly turns he round and kindly,
‘All of this is mine and thine.’
Here he lives in state and bounty,
Lord of Burleigh, fair and free,
Not a lord in all the county
Is so great a lord as he.”