SHOEING CATTLE!
the road were formerly small but flourishing inns; and that an old farmer, aged eighty-three, who lived in an ivy-clad farmhouse a little farther on our way, well remembers sixteen mail-coaches passing Water Newton in the day: this was besides the ordinary non-mail-coaches, of which there were a number. Another reminder of other days and other ways, in the shape of a bygone custom quite novel to us, we gleaned from an old gaffer we met on the way. From him we learnt that in the pre-railway days, when the cattle were driven along the Great North Road from Scotland to the London markets, the animals were actually shod like horses so that their hoofs might stand the long journey on the hard highway. Several blacksmiths on the road moreover, we were given to understand, made a special business of shoeing such cattle apart from shoeing horses. So one travels and picks up curious bits of information. One man we saw gathering nettles assured us that, boiled, they made a delicious green vegetable, besides purifying the blood and being a cure for boils and the rheumatics. “Ah!” he exclaimed, “I should not wonder some day, when their virtues are discovered, to find rich people growing them in their gardens instead of spinach and the like. Nettles be a luxury. Now, if ever you suffers from the rheumatics mind you tries nettles, they beat all the doctor’s medicine; they just do.” And we promised to think the matter over. The idea of any one ever growing crops of nettles in their kitchen-gardens amused us. Still the weed, vegetable I mean, may have hidden virtues I wot not of; and possibly it is not altogether wise to dismiss as absolute nonsense every item of country folk-lore one comes upon. I always jot such sayings down in my note-book, and shall soon have quite a collection of them. I remember one simple remedy that a farmer’s wife told me of when a youngster, which, boy-like, I at once tried—and actually found it effectual! Some of the countryfolk’s cures, however, may be considered worse than the disease. Here, for instance, is one for baldness that I have not tested: “Rub well the bald parts with a fresh onion just cut, twice a day, for ten minutes at a time at least; and you must never miss a rubbing till the hair begins to grow again”!
Leaving Water Newton we drove on through a level country, passing in about a mile or so some ancient stocks and a whipping-post on a grassy corner by the roadside; these had been painted manifestly to preserve them as a curiosity. Some day, like ducking-stools and scolds’ gags, they will possibly only be found in a museum. According to a paragraph in a local paper that I extracted the gist of on the journey, the last time that a man was condemned to the stocks in England was at the village of Newbold-on-Avon in Warwickshire late in this century. The man in question was a confirmed drunkard, and the magistrates fined him 7s. 6d. with the option of being placed in the stocks: the drunkard chose the stocks which he well knew were decayed and unfit for use; so they were forthwith repaired at some expense, which being done the man suddenly found the money for the fine and so
LOCAL PAPERS
escaped the indignity of the stocks, and the doubtful honour of being the last person to be legally confined therein. When all else fails in the evenings at country inns, the local papers often afford much entertainment combined with information. The local antiquaries occasionally write to them upon matters of interest in the neighbourhood; and such communications are frequently well worth reading, for by perusing them the traveller out of the beaten track may obtain intelligence of old-time relics and quaint rural customs that he would otherwise probably never hear of, and such things are well worth knowing and preserving.
Wansford, the next village we came to, pleased us by its picturesqueness and its pleasant situation on the banks of the Nene, a wide and fishful-looking stream whose name we did not even know before we undertook this tour; so that driving across country teaches one a good deal about the geography of one’s own land, besides affording the road wanderer an intimate knowledge of it, never obtainable from the railway.
Wansford is built of stone and is a charming specimen of an old English village; its houses and cottages strike the eye as being substantial, comfortable, and enduring; for you cannot well build meanly with stone. One large house in the village street, large enough to deserve the often-misappropriated term of mansion, with its stone-slab, overhanging roof, and strong stacks of chimneys, especially pleased us; neither roof, wall, nor window seemed as though any one of them would need repairs for long years: possibly this building was originally a fine old coaching inn, for it stood close upon the roadway. Oh! the comfort of a well-built home like this, with a roof fit to weather the storms of centuries, and thick walls, so charmingly warm in winter and so delightfully cool in summer, wherein you may dwell in peace, and bills for repairs are almost an unknown thing.
The church here is a box-like structure, small, primitive, and ugly, and we merely went to view it because the rector at Water Newton had told us that the ancient font thereof was curious; it being carved round with men fighting—scarcely an appropriate ornamentation for a font in a Christian church though, one would imagine! Quite in keeping with the rude interior of this tiny fane is the wooden gallery at one end, with the most suitable inscription:—
This Loft Erected
January 1st, 1804.
I have only to add that it is an excellent example of the Churchwarden era of architecture, and you seldom find a structure of the period more ugly.