My Adventures 3: Houghton Mill

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On Thursday the 14th April 2022, I left home and drove the hour and half drive to the National trust Houghton Mill in Cambridgeshire (PE28 2AZ).

Parking is free for members and payment for non members. Parking is only for 3 hours but staff said they don't check so not to worry. Otherwise there is limited parking by Houghton shops a short walk away.

Mills have been recorded here since 974. The mill was owned by the nearby Ramsey Abbey from its foundation. The abbey's tenants were under an obligation to have their wheat ground in the mill and part of the flour was withheld as payment by the miller. When in 1500 the Abbot diverted the river water in order to supply the mill with sufficient power, the neighbouring village was flooded. The villagers rose up in protest, and fifteen years later they were granted permission to change the course of the water in case of an emergency.

At the Dissolution of the Monasteries, ownership of the mill reverted to the Crown. The present mill replaces one burnt down in the 17th century.

The best-known miller was the nonconformist Potto Brown (1797–1871), a wealthy man who was so pious that he carried his ledgers to family prayer meetings in order to discuss with his Maker debts owed him. After his death, a bronze bust of him was erected in Houghton.

Although there has been a mill on this site for most of Houghton's history, the original mill site (certainly in the time of the Domesday book) was approximately 0.4 miles along the river towards Huntingdon. The original mill pond is still there but now appears to be a natural backwater.

The present building was probably built in the 17th century, and extended in the 19th century. It consists of three storeys and attics. the building is part brick, part timber-framed and weather-boarded.

In the 1930s, the mill was decommissioned. Local residents bought the building and it was given to the National Trust. From 1935 to 1983, the mill was in use as a youth hostel, and was one of the few YHA establishments where smoking was forbidden because of fire hazard.

In 1999, the National Trust put in new millstones. Flour is still being milled, and the building is a tourist centre, with a camping site nearby.

Visits inside to the mill by appointment only and weekends only.

I walked back to the car park and along a path beside the River Ouse and the NT Campsite.

View across the River Ouse to a church in Hemingford Abots.

I turn left inland and across Houghton Meadows.

Houghton Meadows is made up of 5 fields, some are ancient hay meadows and some are pasture. The meadows are covered from spring to summer in a sea of flowers, from the yellow cowslips to the pink spears of orchids and purple of knapweed. Once the hay is cut in July the ridges and furrows left behind when the oxen ploughed fields of the middle ages are revealed.

Surrounding the meadows are ancient hedgerows, currently undergoing rejuvenation using traditional methods. Almost hidden at the back of the reserve is a tiny brook, which joins the ox-bow of the Ouse towards Hemingford Grey. It is a refuge for an array of aquatic plants and domain of the distinctive hairy dragonfly. On its bank there are a series of venerable old gnarled and twisted willows which are home to green woodpecker and numerous insects.

Just out of reach on the other side of a brook are several alpacas in a field.

I am now following the Ouse Valley Way.

A source-to-sea route on one of England's longest rivers, it follows the River Great Ouse on its meandering passage from close to its source to the tidal river at Kings Lynn, linking many towns and villages. It passes through Stowe Park to reach Buckingham, then fringes north of Milton Keynes and Newport Pagnell. It heads via Emberton Country Park to Sharnbrook (with H E Bates connections) and visits Bedford's Priory Park and passes a Danish Camp at Willingdon, then links St Neots, Huntingdon (Cromwell's birthplace), St Ives and Earith. After Earith, the Dutch engineer Vermuyden worked to shorten the river across the Hundred Foot Washes, while the Way keeps along the Old West River where the Stretham Old Engine tells the story of the draining of the Fens. Before Ely, with its cathedral visible on the skyline, it meets the River Cam, and after Ely it runs in common with the Fen Rivers Way, crossing the Bedford Level to Downham Market and Kings Lynn, where the river finally flows out into the Wash.

I walk through St Ives Thicket before joining the Ouse again.

I am now walking into St Ives!

Here is the All Saints the Parish Church in St Ives.

The earliest recorded mention of the Parish Church of St Ives is in the Domesday Book, AD 1086, when it is stated that there was here a “priest and a church”. An old manuscript has the following note: “970 AD in the twelfth year of Edgar, surnamed Peaceful, Adnothus, Abbot of Ramsey, built St Ives Church, and dedicated to All Saints.” This original church would be small and probably of wood.

By about 1150 this had been replaced by a stone building of which the nave was about the same length as at present: there was at least a north aisle. In the thirteenth century a clerestory was added and also the south aisle and a chapel at the east end of the north aisle. In the fourteenth century the chancel was rebuilt with a vestry on the north side.

About 1470 an entire rebuilding took place. The north chapel, the nave with its arcade and clerestory, the porches, and the side aisles were rebuilt; the chancel walls were raised to their present height and new windows inserted; and the tower with its spire was probably newly added to the church and the aisles extended to its western face. The church, therefore, now presents itself as chiefly of fifteenth-century date.

A cleaner in the church was most helpful telling me the history. The spire has suffered many vicissitudes; it was blown down by the great gale of 1741 and rebuilt in 1748; it was again rebuilt in 1879. Finally in 1918 a large part was knocked down onto the church roof when an aeroplane crashed into it. The rebuilding was completed in 1924. The north porch has been very much restored and there is very little of the original work remaining.

She said a pilot took off the meadow and Royal Flying Corps station in fog and didn't see the spire and hit it, but it wasn't the crash that killed him, he was hanging from the spire for a while before he fell to his death.

I left the church and walked on into town.

As I walked along the river I passed the Norris Museum, Free entry with a suggested £3 donation.

The Norris Museum tells the stories of Huntingdonshire from 160 million years ago to the present day.

Worth a quick stop and a look inside.

The Norris Museum was founded by Herbert Norris, who left his lifetime's collection of Huntingdonshire relics to the people of St Ives when he died in 1931. The Norris Museum holds a collection on local history, including a number of books written by its former curator, Bob Burn-Murdoch. The museum was reopened in August 2017, following a £1.5m refurbishment and expansion made possible by a Heritage Lottery Fund grant. Its current director is Sarah Russell, and it is managed by the Norris Management Trust, made up of members of St Ives Town Council and the Friends of the Norris Museum.

The township was originally known as Slepe in Anglo Saxon England. In 1001-2, a peasant is recorded as uncovering the remains of Ivo of Ramsey, a Cornish Celtic Christian Bishop and hermit while ploughing a field. The discovery led Eadnoth the Younger, an important monk and prelate to found Ramsey Abbey. Slepe was listed in the Hundred of Hurstingstone in Huntingdonshire in the Domesday Book.

The importance of Ramsey Abbey grew through the Middle Ages. In the order of precedence for abbots in Parliament, Ramsey was third after Glastonbury and St Alban's. Its influence benefited the area as Slepe became St Ives and was granted a charter to become a market town, hosting one of the biggest in the country. It remains an important market on the edge of The Fens.

As St Ives was founded on the banks of the wide River Great Ouse between Huntingdon and Ely, it had become an important entrepôt for trade in East Anglia. The size and prosperity of the medieval town can be still seen in its street plan.

in the early 15th century, St Ives Bridge was constructed across the Great Ouse replacing an earlier crossing at this point. The six-arch stone bridge was one of only four town bridges in England to have a chapel. In the Early Medieval period, this had been a strategic location on the Great Ouse because it was the last natural crossing point or ford on the river, 80 kilometres (50 mi) from the sea. A flint reef in the riverbed created a ford; it was reused as the foundations for the stone bridge. Throughout the medieval period, it was a source of income for the town as tolls had to be paid by all those wanting to cross, this especially applied to drovers bringing their livestock to market.

From the 17th to the mid 19th century, St Ives remained a hub for trade and navigation in this part of East Anglia. There were inns and bawdy houses to cater for the merchants, mariners and drovers who did business in the town. Goods were brought into the town on barges and livestock rested on the last fattening grounds before being sent to London's Smithfield Market. However, with the arrival of Cambridge and St Ives branch line in the 1840s and improvements to the local road networks, commercial traffic on the River Great Ouse went into steady decline.

St Ives Bridge is most unusual in incorporating a chapel, the most striking of only four examples in England. Also unusual are its two southern arches which are a different shape from the rest of the bridge, being rounded instead of slightly gothic. After the dissolution of the monasteries in 1537, the chapel was given to the prior to live in. The lords of the manor of St Ives changed hands several times, as did the chapel. During this period, it was in turn - a private house, a doctors surgery and a pub, called Little Hell. The pub had a reputation for rowdy behaviour, and it is believed the landlord kept pigs in the basement. The additional two storeys added in the seventeenth century were removed in 1930, due to damage being caused to the foundations. The chapel features colourfully in the historical novel 'Not Just a Whore', by local St Ives resident K M Warwick, where it is described as a fictitious "Bawdy House" (brothel). The bridge was partially rebuilt after Oliver Cromwell knocked down two arches during the English Civil War to prevent King Charles I's troops approaching London from the Royalist base in Lincolnshire. During the war and for some period afterwards, the gap was covered by a drawbridge. The town square contains a statue of Oliver Cromwell erected in 1901. It is one of four statues of Cromwell on public display in Britain, the others being in Parliament Square, outside Wythenshawe Hall and in Warrington.

I stopped in the Taproom near St Ives bridge for a Wolfpack Sesh IPA, very nice it was too!

I walk onto the bridge for the views of St Ives, my walk continues over this bridge but I wanted to see more of the town so I walk back over.

I walk up Free Church Lane to Market Hill.

Here on Market Hill a farmers market is held each Friday.

The town name is featured in the anonymous nursery rhyme/riddle "As I was going to St Ives". While sometimes claimed to be St Ives, Cornwall, the man with seven wives, each with seven sacks containing seven cats etc. may have been on his way to (or coming from) the Great Fair at St Ives. On Ramsey Road there is a public house called The Seven Wives, though this is a modern pub with no connection to the ancient rhyme other than the name.

I am now back at St Ives Bridge to continue my walk.

I walk over and down to Dolphin Hotel and through the car park onto the footpath that crosses Hemingford Meadows.

An ancient meadow along hedgerows and riverside. Beautiful open aspect. In spring and summer the meadow is resplendent with the blooms of buttercups, clover and other wild flowers, the hedges full of insects. Food and snacks available. Wildlife and historic interest. Can be very muddy in winter, impassable if the Great Ouse is in flood.

I walk on out of the meadows into Meadow Lane and Mill Lane and the up Church Street into Hemingford Grey.

In Anglo-Saxon times the neighbouring villages of Hemingford Grey and Hemingford Abbots were a single estate. In the ninth century they were split into two. In 1066 "Little Hemingford", as it was known, was acquired by nearby Ramsey Abbey.

Hemingford Grey was listed in the Domesday Book in the Hundred of Toseland in Huntingdonshire; the name of the settlement was written as alia Emingeforde and Emingeforde in the Domesday Book.

In around 1140 Payn of Hemingford began the construction of Hemingford Manor, one of the oldest inhabited buildings in England, as well as the present church. The manor was then owned by the Turberville family who for a while gave their name to the village.

In 1276 the village was given its present name by the de Grey family. The manor remained in the possession of the Greys until seized by Henry VII in the fifteenth century after George Grey, 2nd Earl of Kent was unable to settle his debts. The manor was subsequently leased by the crown to a number of people, including Sir Richard Williams (the great-grandfather of Oliver Cromwell); Sir George Howard; Helena, Marchioness of Northampton; and John, Earl of Holderness. In 1721 the manor was sold by the crown, together with half the manor of Hemingford Abbots, to James Mitchell of Fowlmere.

I walk on reaching St James Church in Hemingford Grey sitting beside the River Ouse.

The church was begun around 1160, possibly by a nobleman named Payne de Hemingford, who was also responsible for the nearby manor house, one of the earliest surviving examples of domestic architecture in the county.

That first church was very simple, consisting of a nave and chancel, a north aisle, and a central tower. Of this original building, only the two westernmost bays of the nave remain.

The south aisle was added in the 13th century, and later in that century the central tower was pulled down and the aisles lengthened. The west tower was built in the 14th century and around 1500 the roof was raised and a clerestory inserted.

The church spire was blown down in a storm in 1741, giving the tower its unusual look. The spire was truncated near its base and topped by a series of ball finials.

I sit in the graveyard beside The river and have lunch, a sign on the church door asks you to keep it shut to prevent trapping the sand martins that live in the river bank. No sign of them today sadly!