Medieval Route

A1-The Great North Road

The Bullock Road

Hindle recounts Taylor’s study showing how routes along the line of Ermine Street in Cambridgeshire altered during the medieval period. He says: Here the Roman road seems to have been abandoned for drier routes to the west, notably through Coppingford and Ogerston, neither of which now survives as a village. This route is no longer a through route, as the A1 has largely reverted to the Roman line.

Paul Hindle's Map.

Let’s take a close look at the route from Alconbury Hill to Wansford first, as shown on the modern 1:50 000 OS map.

The line from Alconbury Hill to Upton is a direct continuation of the Ermine Street from Godmanchester. There is no trace on the map at first but the supposed route stays on the high ground, while Ermine Street, turning northward at Alconbury Hill descends Stanegate Hill from almost 50 metres to 10 metres at Sawtry. From Upton, a village at the top of the hill, a public footpath is marked, following the ridge, to Coppingford, where a medieval moat is shown. This is the moated site of a manor house, probably built by the Copmanford family about 1200. Coppingford village has completely gone, the church disappearing about 1700. The route is now easy to follow, as a wide holloway through the village site, first as a public footpath and then as a minor road, actually bearing the name 'Bullock Road'. Keeping to the ridge top, there are some grand views. On a clear day one can see right across the fens to the Wash and to the Urals if only the world was flat. The road continues for 10 kilometres passing Ongutein Manor Farm, marked as Ogerston on Hindle’s map. Ogerston was a property of the Knights Templar but there is nothing left of it. Taylor points out that Ogerston is named on the 1360 Gough Map and suggests that this is evidence of the route's importance at the time. The road, which forms the parish boundary between Steeple Gidding and Sawtry, passes Coldharbour Farm, a name that Hindle tells us is often associated with Roman roads, perhaps referring to a roadside shelter. (There's a Cold Harbour near Whetstone, London and another near Grantham on that part of Ermine Street known as High Dyke.) There used to be a second farmstead called Cold Harbour a little further north near Ogerston where we are met by the other route from Sawtry. This can also be followed along minor roads or footpaths, through Glatton, Denton and Caldecote (a name with a similar meaning to Coldharbour), to the 'Motte and Bailey' at Washingley. This route does not follow a ridge top but is certainly on higher ground than Ermine Street. The eastern route continues, past another old moat at Folkworth before turning north-west through Morborne to Haddon, keeping parallel to Ermine Street but at the edge of the low ground some 10 metres above the Street. North of Haddon the path climbs to over 50 metres before descending to Chesterton and rejoining the Roman road. The western branch, from Ogerston, leaves its ridge to drop into and across the valley of the Billing Brook. It rises obliquely up the valley side to continue towards the high ground of Sibson airfield but the route cannot be traced north of the Elton – Chesterton road. North of Elton it probably follows the modern road, forming the main street of Wansford.

The dogleg at Folksworth on the eastern route is curious but makes more sense when a footpath between Stilton and Folksworth is considered. It is marked on the mid 19th century OS map and the modern one and would make a continuous road from Stilton to Chesterton on ground a little higher than the Roman road. Perhaps it should be added to Taylor's and Hindle’s maps of Medieval roads.

For a better image go to Old Maps

Was the footpath between Stilton and Folksworth once an alternative Great North Road?

It is curious that Taylor does not mention this possibility in his detailed analysis of the medieval routes. He looks particularly at Stilton as lying both on an east-west route and also on the Roman road without considering a north road from Stilton via Folksworth. Here is Taylor's sketch and description:

If we look at Stilton village (Fig. 58) very carefully we can see that the parish church is at the western end, quite remote from the Roman road, and alongside an east to west street. It is obvious that before the Roman road came back into use Stilton village had grown up along an east to west trackway which was then the main one in the area, so we may hazard a guess and say that in the ninth or tenth century, or perhaps a little earlier, when Stilton was developing into a village, the Roman road was not important. However, as traffic developed along the latter it tended to alter the shape of Stilton. Growth of the village came to be concentrated along the newly developing north to south road, not the original east to west one, presumably in response to the commercial advantages to be gained by building inns or shops on the new main road.

And at the other end, on the hill south of Chesterton, a Roman Signal Station is marked. Perhaps the Romans walked this way when they had forgotten their wellies. A track leading from the north-south Bullock Road eastwards through Stilton and along Fen Drove as per Taylor's 'Late Saxon track way' might have been used by drovers breaking their journey for some grazing and fattening in the fenland to the east.

Taylor and Hindle were not the first to recognize the alternative to the Great North Road described above. This route formed part of the Bullock Road, a road that extended further south.

Samuel Lewis, writing in 1831, distinguished between the Roman and a British Ermine Street:

The British Ermin-street appears to have entered the county from the neighbourhood of Cæsar's Camp, in Bedfordshire, and to have run by Crane hill, in the track since known by the name of Hell lane, whence, passing through Toseland, Godmanchester, and Huntingdon, and by Alconbury, Weston, and Upton, and falling into the line now called the Bullock road, it entered Northamptonshire at Wansford. The Roman Ermin-street entered this county from Cambridgeshire, in the vicinity of Papworth-St. Agnes, and proceeding, nearly in the line of the present high road, to Godmanchester, thence followed the course of the British Ermin-street, to the vicinity of Alconbury, where branching off to the eastward, it resumed the line of the present high road, through Sawtry, Stilton, and Chesterton, to the station of Durobrivæ, where it entered Northamptonshire.

The Giddings have an informative website, which amongst much else mentions that our lost road was the Bullock Road - an old droving road used to take livestock from the North of England to London.

The height of droving activity was in the 18th and early 19th centuries, when the London market was supplied with sheep and cattle, sometimes held in East Anglia for fattening, but originating from as far away as Scotland, driven down the Great North Road and using Sewstern Drift and this Bullock Road as an alternative to the regular road. As we have seen, the Romans chose a low-lying route for Ermine Street between Sawtry and the River Nene. Despite being maintained in medieval times; ...in 1242, John de Neville, Baliff of the King's Forests, was ordered to cause a trenchia (cutting) to be made through Sawtry Wood, Coppingford Wood and Upton Wood of sufficient width for the security of travellers..., the road must always have been subject to periodic flooding and very muddy going for much of the year, especially following a herd of cattle. It must have been to everyone's benefit if stock used the Bullock Road. With the introduction of turnpikes and their tolls another incentive for avoiding the main road arose.

A little to the East of the Great North Road, St. Ives had a large cattle market. It seems likely that northern cattle were traded here, perhaps after some fattening in the lush pastures around the Great Ouse, before continuing their journey to London.

The following passage from Borrow's Lavengro, published in 1851, describes the soggy situation half a century earlier.

At length my father was recalled to his regiment, which at that time was stationed at a place called Norman Cross, in Lincolnshire, or rather Huntingdonshire, at some distance from the old town of Peterborough. For this place he departed, leaving my mother and myself to follow in a few days. Our journey was a singular one. On the second day we reached a marshy and fenny country, which, owing to immense quantities of rain which had lately fallen, was completely submerged. At a large town we got on board a kind of passage-boat, crowded with people; it had neither sails nor oars, and those were not the days of steam-vessels; it was a treck-schuyt, and was drawn by horses. Young as I was, there was much connected with this journey which highly surprised me, and which brought to my remembrance particular scenes described in the book which I now generally carried in my bosom. The country was, as I have already said, submerged - entirely drowned - no land was visible; the trees were growing bolt upright in the flood, whilst farmhouses and cottages were standing insulated; the horses which drew us were up to the knees in water, and, on coming to blind pools and 'greedy depths,' were not infrequently swimming, in which case, the boys or urchins who mounted them sometimes stood, sometimes knelt, upon the saddle and pillions. No accident, however, occurred either to the quadrupeds or bipeds, who appeared respectively to be quite AU FAIT in their business, and extricated themselves with the greatest ease from places in which Pharaoh and all his host would have gone to the bottom. Nightfall brought us to Peterborough, and from thence we were not slow in reaching the place of our destination.

The church at Little Gidding has long attracted pilgrims including the poet T. S. Eliot. A community was established in 1636 by Nicholas Ferrar who was inspired both by the Catholic and Protestant teachings of the time, but wanted to create a community where the best of both could be used in harmony. He also wanted a community in which married people with children could live alongside those committed to the single life. The hamlet had been deserted, the previous inhabitants being victims of the Black Death. Although the community sought seclusion from the world, people were interested in the way of life they had established. Others found refuge there, or in nearby houses, including Catholic priests and even King Charles I shortly before his arrest.

T.S. Eliot was a prime mover in creating the friends of Little Gidding and wrote a poem inspired by his visits to Little Gidding in his "Four Quartets", describing a visit to the church in these words...

                                                    "...You are not here to verify,
                                                    Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
                                                    Or carry report. You are here to kneel
                                                    Where prayer has been valid...
                                                    Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
                                                    Is England and nowhere. Never and always."

The above piece about Little Gidding came from the Wellsprings Website, where there is more information and some nice pictures.

One may wonder about the significance of the Black Death in the depopulation of this area and the possible effect on the maintenance of a road. Little Gidding was found deserted in 1636. To the north, Washingley also declined. Domesday list a church but it was vacant in the 15th century and gone in the 16th. The Motte and Bailey marked on the OS map is the site of a 13th century Manor House with fishponds and moat.

The high ground has long been favoured for communication though technological change has led from cattle droving to radio. The Morborne Hill towers stand by the Bullock Road and are visible on the western horizon from the A1(M) just north of Norman Cross. The concrete 'pencil tower' was built about 1962 as part of the then GPO's microwave system. At the time it was considered to be more attractive than an lattice steel tower. Lots about the history of this communication system and its defence origins here. The taller, 500 foot, mast is for television. The Billing Brook flows in the little valley at the bottom of the photo.

There is more about the old Drove Roads at my pages about Sewstern Drift and Hambleton Drove. There's a nice essay about the development of roads generally and drove roads in particular, from a Welsh perspective, at the Llansamlet History page.

Cambridgeshire County Council describe a pleasant walk, starting a Sawtry, visiting the Giddings and making use of the Bullock Road. There is a route map at their website that includes this note: Bullock Road is an ancient trackway. This section of road from Stamford to Huntingdon was the main safe route for communications and stock transport until motor transport dictated the use of the Roman Road that is now the A1. A shorter walk through Aversley Wood and along the Bullock road is described here. The varied landscape of permanent pastures bordered by ancient hedgerows and small spinneys and groups of mature trees lead Peterborough Bird Club to suggest this is as a fine area for bird watching.

Aversley Wood is managed by The Woodland Trust. They claim that nightingales live here and Richard Shotbolt found 61 species of fungus in the wood and posted a list of their names here. It is a short walk from the centre of Sawtry. Archer's Wood is another small piece of ancient woodland, a mile south of Sawtry. Another wood, Ashton Wold, a couple of miles west of the Bullock Road near Lutton, has yielded 109 species of fungus including Pseudombrophila ramosa(Vel.) Brumm. a new British record, previously only known from the Czech Republic. And while we are at Ashton Wold we had better find out about Miriam Rothschild. The largest wood in this area, and another nature reserve, is on the east side of the Great North Road. Monks Wood is one of the oldest nature reserves and home to the leading environmental research institute, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

And if you prefer your wildlife not quite so wild try Hamerton Zoo.

With the construction of the A1(M), there are not many ways of getting off the main road to explore the delights of the countryside round here. Norman Cross and Sawtry are now the only junctions but the old A1 still runs along the east side from Alconbury Hill to Norman Cross, still open and very still.

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