Station Rd Part 11

STATION ROAD
Stephen Bull concludes his Series
of Articles on Station Road
"Fire, Water and Steam”

In the series of articles on Station Road over the last two years the reader has been introduced to the history of the road, so named after the arrival of the railway, and the area through which it runs, known as Church End.

Introduction:-
The articles have described how Swavesey was once a moderately thriving commercial centre with a necklace of wharves linked to the Ouse via Navigation Drain. Barges laden with coal and building materials destined for the ‘upland’ villages of Boxworth, Lolworth and Elsworth reached their final destination in Swan Pond and Market Street docks
We made a detour along Middle Fen Drove, following roughly the original road (or should we say ‘track’) to Over, and passed New Dock constructed with the arrival of the railway
We visited the church and learnt something of its Anglo Saxon origins, and its connections with the former Priory in the field to the north of the church;
Across the road from the church the Manor House has graced Church End from medieval times - being first built in 1232 with fifteen oak trees acquired by Roger de la Zouch - and we became acquainted with some of its occupants over the centuries
We then arrived at the railway station and saw how the ‘age of steam’ made its impact on the village; and finally
We entered the debate on the “Rail verses Guided Bus” controversy.
In this final article we will see how “Station Road” has been affected by ‘fire’, ‘water’ and, with the arrival of the railway, ‘steam’.

Water, water, everywhere .......!!!
The first settlers of the ‘Fen-edge village’ of Swavesey, nestled among waterways; navigable ditches and drains, found them and used them as a means of transportation. From the earliest times, therefore, Swavesey has been intrinsically linked with water, and has featured in its history and development as a settlement - eventually to become the village known to us today as “Swavesey”

The Romans sought to tame and make use of the fen area for arable cultivation. Neglect and destruction of Roman drainage works turned the Fen into a great mere and marsh from which countless fish, eels and wild fowl were to be won for the benefit of the local inhabitants. At the same time land on the edge of the Fen was regularly flooded and so provided good grazing for large numbers of cattle for the advantage of numerous Fen-edge villages including Swavesey.

The draining of the fens by Vermuyden in the 17th century was on the whole successful in its purpose of bringing new land under the plough.*¹ The tragedy was that the successes of the early drainers lead to a new series of disasters, for the ‘dry’ ground sunk - an occurrence only too obvious today while driving through many fen villages.

Consequently, flooding began again. Early records exist of payments to local residents for watching river banks during times of serious floods (F&U page 39). In 1768, the bank at Over burst and the flood was serious, eventually to be replicated with the disastrous floods in 1947.

The Great Flood: 1947
The 1947 Flood has been well documented in booklets and local newspapers, and recorded on photographs and films for posterity. A diary of events leading up to, and the cause of, the flood has been produced and is now very much part of Fen folklore (The Battle of the Banks: The Story of the Fen Floods Around Ely: 1947).

The ‘47 Flood combined a number of adverse factors at their worst, with the addition of heavy winter snow, followed by a quick thaw after a long frost. The ‘Big Freeze’ tended to make cracks in the river banks and the sudden thaw found drains and ditches frozen up. Waterlogging of the land moreover made the rush of water down from Northampton and Bedford area exceptional. To add to the adverse conditions the Spring tides were high and a raging hurricane approaching 100 miles an hour caused great waves of water to beat against the banks (The Battle of the Banks page eight).

It became obvious that the Fens’ defences were due for a severe strain and work was put in hand immediately to strengthen the banks of the River Ouse and its tributaries by topping them with bags filled with gault but, as events proved, much of the work was in vain.

Diary of Events:-
Sunday 16th March. With the water in the Wash, and the Ouse and its tributaries rising rapidly, bagging went on throughout Sunday at all vital points as the floods rose perilously near to the peak of the banks. The position became critical and matters were precipitated by a hurricane which swept the district, and forced workers to abandon their task.

Monday 17th March. Although the day broke quietly after the over-night hurricane it became apparent that the weary workers’ efforts to keep the flood in check were in vain. First light revealed a 12 foot breach in the bank of the Ouse at Over and thousands of acres were inundated. The water reached Earith and the Old West River, and the low lying areas of the villages of Over, Willingham, Fen Drayton and Swavesey, and the surrounding fenland.

Tuesday 18th March. The rising waters swept remorselessly on and began to flow over the bank of The Old West River, resulting in the flooding of Haddenham Fen, in many places 12 foot deep, and eventually reached the low-lying outskirts of Haddenham and Sutton.

[One week later the Army had temporarily staunched the flow through the gap at Over, reducing it to a trickle. With the fall in the Spring tides and the steady drop in river levels attention was turned to pumping the vast quantities of water from the various fens.]

Swavesey: stranded ..... but not submerged: Swavesey was virtually encircled with flood water and the flood revealed much about the village and surrounding Fens. mso-spacerun: yes"> Mow, Middle and Cow Fen droves; and Mare Fen were deep under muddy water. Access to the village was only along Boxworth End to the A14 (formerly A604).

Three parts of Swavesey, however, remained above the water line and few people had to leave their homes. The gravel ‘island’ at Church End, site of the church and former priory, although cut off by Church Brook was approached from High Street by the high causeway at Swan Pond. The flood thereby revealed the size of the causeway and none of the houses on the cobblestones was flooded (Ravensdale page 21).

Shoppers were ferried by boat or dinghy at Turn Bridge linking the Middle Watch ‘suburb’ with High Street. The village green was also under a sheet of shining water.

The castle mound remained exposed and stood sentry over the ancient Hale Road track leading to Fen Drayton. The railway track from Swavesey to St Ives was submerged in places and badly damaged by the rushing flood water and the railway station and goods yard were under 3-4 feet of water (See The Swavesey Meridian: August/September 2003 pages 41-43).

The author’s memories of 1947 were of the deep snow some 4-5 feet deep in our back yard and the snowman my father built!; watching flood waters trickling into Swan Pond, harbinger of the ensuing flood; and seeing the sheet of water across the fields reflecting the Spring sunlight.

The late Alfred Swain, contributor to the Meridian, related for readers his recollection of the 1947 Flood with the frozen snows, the thaw and subsequent flooding in the Meridian (April 1991 pages 17,18). He described being rowed in a dinghy “over and above” the Swan Pond rails and stopping at the high ground near the church and observing the flood water lapping the lips of the railway station platform.

Rarely does Swavesey hit the headlines, or appear in the national press, but one national newspaper published an aerial photograph of a boat on Swan Pond with the caption: “The Last Boat Leaving Swavesey” (or a heading to that effect)!!! Could this have been the same dinghy ferrying Alfred Swain?

FIRE, fire!!! The Great Fire: 1913
Fires were not uncommon occurrences throughout the history of Swavesey but the 1913 Fire was remembered particularly because of the devastation and its ferocity. Newspaper reporters and photographers had a ‘field day’ and the scenes of the effects of the fire appeared on the front page of The Daily Mirror on Wednesday 5th March. Again, the Fire was well documented and photographs abound in numerous books.

On Monday 3rd March afternoon at about 2.00 pm a fire broke out in a small thatched cottage in Taylors Lane adjoining the Railway Tavern (renamed Swan House). A very strong south-westerly wind was blowing at the time and a spark from the chimney set fire to the thatch.

The alarm was raised and before the Swavesey fire engine arrived the fire engulfed thatched houses, sheds and outbuildings (including the Railway Tavern) in Taylors Lane and the High Street/Station Road junction. The fire, fanned by the strong wind, moved swiftly towards Church End. In all 28 cottages of wattle and daub and thatch were destroyed and 63 people were made homeless, many of them uninsured. It was noted in the press that “all twenty-eight buildings had thatched roofs, and ....... they all caught fire within the hour ..... Only the cottages of brick with slate roofs (including the Swan with Two Necks and St Fabians next door) escaped”. Although 63 people, twenty-two families, were rendered homeless, by some miracle no one was killed. Those included to lose their homes and possessions were eight widows of more than seventy years of age (The Daily Mirror: 5th March 1913).

After a considerable delay the Swavesey fire engine arrived, only to find that they had great difficulty in obtaining water from the public supply. In the late afternoon St Ives Fire brigade with two horse drawn manual pumps arrived, and in the early evening a steam fire engine arrived from Huntingdon - only to find the thatched houses were smouldering ruins. The Swavesey engine (second hand and at least a century old in 1913) came under criticism after the fire but Swavesey’s P.C. Plowman stated: “We were beaten altogether by the fierceness and suddenness of it all ... I timed it all, and I’ll swear that twenty houses were blazing all within five and twenty minutes.” (F&U page 70)

The effect of the fire on the inhabitants was terrible as they walked about shocked and dazed to salvage their few belongings. Photographs depicted on the front of The Daily Mirror showed people removing pieces of furniture; the sad sight of Mr. & Mrs. Wright with their sole possessions, two tin trunks; and of Samuel Wilderspin surveying his old home, having lost all his life’s savings (The Daily Mirror: 5th March 1913).

There was a big appeal which raised a fund of several hundred pounds.*² Sightseers arrived in droves throughout the week by train, car and pony trap to see the damage and also to contribute to the local relief fund. The author is indebted for some of the above detail to Meridian contributor, ‘Fen Boy’, who gave a much more detailed account in an article in the Swavesey Meridian (December 1990 pages 11-14).

Long time Swavesey resident, the late Mrs. Jellings recorded her recollections of that fateful day in the Meridian. She remembered that the day school happened to be closed on that day because an epidemic was rife in the village. On hearing of the fire early in the afternoon together with a visiting relative they “toddled up the village to see it.” “It was a sight, all the thatched houses being burnt to the ground” and the main road was impassable. When viewing the scene a few days later she recalled “opening the oven where it originated” and seeing a “very overbaked jam turnover.”!!! According to her the fire was shown widely on the cinema screen (The Swavesey Meridian: June 1991 page 49).

The ‘old world’ beauty of Church End was completely destroyed with the destruction of those quaint thatched cottages, and one wonders what Swavesey would have looked like today had it not been for the terrible events of March 3rd, 1913 (The Swavesey Meridian: December 1990: ‘Fen Boy’ page 14). And, in consequence, photographs of thatched cottages in and around Swan Pond from the nineteenth century look very different to the scene today. Slate and tiled roofed houses and cottages replaced thatch in the gaps left by the fire; notably the “Swan House” and “Eyes of Swavesey” both dated “1913”, and the “Frere Cottages” (see note 2 below). However, Church End, Station Road is still one of the prettiest parts of the village.

Thatch, fire ..... and steam
As has already been mentioned Swavesey, was no stranger to fires and fires over the centuries invariably involved thatched cottages! Over a period of 55 years between 1844 and 1899 twenty-four fires were reported in the Cambridge Chronicle - almost one every two years! Even today some reports make interesting reading.

One such bizarre incident, a fire at Manor Farm, Station Road in 1899, reported by the Cambridge Chronicle involved fire, water and steam:-
“Farm Fire at Manor Farm, occupied by Mr. (James) Norman. The fire started in a stack and was caused by a spark from a passing (steam) threshing machine engine. (The Swavesey Chronicle 8 Sept. p8.)”

As young children we were often ‘treated’, first a pram ride and then a walk, to the railway station to watch the trains. Friendly engine drivers would wave to us while passengers alighted and climbed aboard the afternoon trains and then (I’m sure in fun) frighten us by blowing the train’s whistle and sending a plume of screaming, white steam high into the air before proceeding on the journey to St Ives. The smell of steam, and hot grease, are still in one’s nostrils!

It may be seen, therefore, that all three elements, ‘fire’, ‘water’ and ‘steam’ have, down through the years, played a role in their various ways in the history and events of “Station Road”, Swavesey!!!

Notes:-
*1 An ambitious drainage scheme - was undertaken as a private venture by a group of wealthy men led by Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford, and involved creating a new, straight channel which was named the “Bedford River” - hence the Bedford connection (A map of ye Great Levell and of ye Fens ... as it is now drained).

Russell died in 1641 and work was interrupted by the English Civil War. In 1649 his son, the 5th Earl of Bedford, enlisted the services of Cornelius Vermuyden, the Dutch engineer, and resumed the project with the digging of a second channel, the “New Bedford River”, or Hundred Foot River, alongside the first by 1658.

Interestingly, an accompanying map dated 1568 depicted a fen area close to “Swafye” (Swavesey), appropriately described as “Low ground of Swacy”, roughly covering present day Mare Fen and Mow Fen.

*2 Frere Cottages: A Fire Relief Committee, consisting of highly respected members of the community, was set up at a meeting on the Tuesday 5th and by the end of the first day the relief fund had received £167 14s 2d, but had grown much more before it was finally handed over (The Swavesey Meridian: ‘Fen Boy’: December 1990).One notable outcome was the construction of the Frere Cottages built from a trust fund, which is still administered today by representatives from the village.

Copies of the Series of Eleven Articles on “Station Road”, as outlined in the introduction above, including more research material and numerous b/w illustrations, are available from the author, Stephen Bull on 01954 781004 and costing £8.00 including UK postage.