Up in Smoke

30/03/1886

Information

The City and Volunteer fire brigades attended a huge fire at English’s timber yards. They could do little to stop a blaze that destroyed three saw mills, the engine and boiler house, three timber sheds; four cranes; eleven railway trucks and a multitude of other machinery and stock pieces across the near 2-acre site. The cost of the damage was estimated to be around £20,000 - a significant sum in 1886. (Mellows, W.T., ‘Peterborough Municipal Jubilee’, Peterborough Standard, 1924)

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.

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Woodstons Fair

1268

Information

Its position abutting the Nene has provided Woodston with both fertile growing land and access to and from the water. This access has made it desirable as a place to disembark if travelling from the west, for the Peterborough toll could be avoided. It is possible that Wharf Road was the toll road used.

The Abbot of Thorney had been granted the right to hold a regular market in Yaxley by William the Conqueror. Goods and people travelling there would disembark in Woodston, which was also in the possession of Thorney Abbey. The abbot asked for a market to be held in Woodston on the day before Yaxley market in 1268.

In the same year the abbot requested a fair to celebrate 'the vigil and feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist'. Woodston fair would fall on the 29th August, despite sounding like something more appropriate for 31st October! There is no evidence that this fair ever took place, but a fair to celebrate a beheading must have been an interesting sight.

Reference:

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hunts/vol3/pp233-236

Picture Credit: