Part 14 (2/2)
Gosling's); Mrs. Towne, wife of the minister at the New Meeting in Kneesworth Street (1804); Mrs. G. H. Raines, Ladies' School, Melbourn Street (and also at one time in the house now Dr. Archer's in Kneesworth Street); Henry Watson, Day School, Fish Hill, (under the Vestry Room).
The old Post Office at the time of the Battle of Waterloo, was at a cottage on the London Road, opposite White Hall, and was kept by Mrs.
Daintry and her daughter. The number of letters was very small and one delivery and collecting of the money for them about ten o'clock in the morning was sufficient.
Though mail bags were despatched at different hours of the night according to the arrival of the mail coaches, it was thought unnecessary for anyone to be on night duty, but the postmaster, or postmistress, would appear at an upper window in a night cap and let down the mail bag by a stout cord with a hook at the end, from which the coachman would take it. The old rope and hook with which this used to be performed through a small window at the old Buntingford Post Office (late Mr. Charles Nicholls) are, I believe, still in existence.
Just before the introduction of the Penny Post we find the Post Office in Melbourn Street (master, Mr. Thomas Daintry) closed at ten o'clock, but letters were received ”between that hour and eleven on payment of sixpence each”! At that time, however, there was an arrangement known as the ”Royston Penny Post,” comprising the parishes of Barrington, Fowlmere, Foxton, Melbourn, Meldreth, Shepreth and Thriplow.
The posting and delivery of a letter was a different affair then from now. Envelopes and postage stamps had not been invented. The postage was paid by the person receiving the letter, and it did not depend upon the weight of the letter at all, but upon how many sheets it contained.
Two very small sheets or small pieces of paper would count as two letters and double postage, but an immense sheet of foolscap, or even folio size, containing many times the writing of the other two, would only count as one, and letters were as a consequence often curious looking doc.u.ments.
As to the cost of postage of a letter the following were the rates prevailing between Royston and the places named:--Cambridge 4d., London 7d., Norwich 8d., Huntingdon 6d., Newport 10d., Brandon 8d., Cheshunt 7d., Bedford 6d., Buntingford 4d. In the few cases {116} where persons had friends in America, a letter to them cost 2s. 2d.; to Gibraltar the cost was 2s. 10d., Malta and the Mediterranean 3s. 2d., postage in these cases being prepaid. The charge was based upon a scale according to the distance, commencing with 4d. not exceeding 15 miles. The transmission of money was ”by wagon,” and instead of a creditor asking for a remittance by return of post it was ”by return of wagon.”
Of the old Inns in Royston it may be of interest to add that the Red Lion ball-room continued to be a centre of fas.h.i.+onable gatherings until, with the decay of the posting and coaching business for which the Red Lion had been chiefly famous, the Bull Hotel (the same owners) became the leading house. The Red Lion was afterwards given up, the ball-room, with its a.s.sociations going back to the Old Royston Club, was removed and re-erected as the present ball-room or billiard-room of the Bull Hotel, while its rampant lion which had presented a bold face to the High Street for more than a century, was removed to a higher position on the top of Reed Hill, where it now does duty, and has given a sign to the house standing there. Here, for the sake of auld lang syne, it gets a bright new coat of paint now and again, and worthily holds its own as the last relic of a famous old inn, around which so much of the public life of the town and neighbourhood had revolved for some generations!
The Bull was originally the ”Black Bull,” and the Boar's Head the ”Blue Boar's Head.” The Bull had stabling for a hundred horses. The Green Man was a sign that explained itself when, at the beginning of the century and for some years afterwards, upon an angular sign on the front of the inn, with faces two ways, was the painted figure of a man in the green habit of the archer and forester. The ”Jolly Butchers” or ”Ye three Butchers,” on the Market Hill, and the ”Catherine Wheel,” in Melbourn Street, have ceased to be inns.
Such was the outward sh.e.l.l of Royston in the hectic flush of the ”good old times.” The taking of the census recently suggests a word with regard to the population of the town and how it was ascertained in times gone by. At least, at one decade (1821) the Overseers were paid a penny per head for taking the population. In 1801 the population was only 1484, and in 1831 it was 2008. Further particulars of the population of the town and of the villages in the neighbourhood will be found in an appendix at the end of this book.
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CHAPTER XII.
PUBLIC WORs.h.i.+P AND EDUCATION--MORALS AND MUSIC.
When the reforming spirit which brooded over the two centuries touched the subject of education, its advocates became enthusiastic! Here is what an old writer said in 1806 about a proposal to establish evening schools for the instruction of farm servants:--
”We should hear the humble countryman talk of the heroes of old, catch the patriotic inspiration from the action of his great forefathers, while wisdom would extend her protecting hand and claim the nation for her own”!
However much we may be inclined to smile at this grandiloquent prophecy of the fruits of an evening school, in the light of present difficulties of instilling four standards into the bulk of the childhood of the nation, it is impossible to move a step among the footprints of the common people of sixty years ago without finding how enormously the progress of education has transformed the face of society, though not quite on the cla.s.sic lines of the old writer just quoted.
Of education for children in the villages there was none at the beginning of the century. Over and over again the answers to the Bishop of Ely's questions in 1791, show that there was no school in the parish, and, as Sunday Schools were not generally established till many years afterwards, it may safely be said that during the first few years of the present century, not one person in ten of the labouring population could read, much less write.
The Sunday School movement, the real beginning of the education of the people, both secular and religious, commenced at a very early date in several parts of Hertfords.h.i.+re, but in the beginning these schools were very different from what is now understood by that term. So far as Royston is concerned I believe the Nonconformists generally claim that they were the first to start a Sunday School in the town--that the first Sunday School was established in connection with the Old Meeting, now John Street Chapel. If by a Sunday School is meant what it now means--the voluntary service of lay workers in teaching the children, this may be true, but taking the word in its more general sense of teaching children on Sundays, the first step of which I can find any {118} record would be that taken by the Church people. In July, 1808, there occurs this entry in the Royston vestry minute book--
”At this Vestry it is considered that the Churchwardens Do put the Galary in proper Order for the Reception of the Children belonging to a Sunday School.”
From the wording of this minute it is evident that the Sunday School in question had just been established, and this is confirmed by what follows in the same book--
”Boys to be admitted at the age of 6 years and continue to 12, girls to be admitted at the age of 6 years and continue to 14.”
”The Masters to receive the scholars at 9 o'clock in the morning and to go with them to Church at 11. The scholars are to return to school at 2 and go to Church at 3 and return from Church to school, and _continue there till between five and six o'clock_”!
”The master, H. Watson, jun., to be paid six guineas a year for his trouble.”
This Sunday School was established during the inc.u.mbency of the Rev.
Samuel Cautherley, a name still honourably connected with Sunday School work in the town.
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