Look and learn.

This edited article about the British town of Boston originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 920 published on 8 September 1979. 

One of the biggest cities on the East Coast of the United States is the port of Boston. But, like so many place names in the United States, Boston takes its name from a town in England.

England’s Boston is a small town situated a short distance away from the sea in the county of Lincolnshire. From here came some of the Pilgrim Fathers who sailed in the Mayflower. Today their American descendants still return to gaze in awe at this ancient town, where the only “skyscraper” to be seen is the Boston “Stump”.

This rather inappropriate name is the local term for one of the most famous landmarks in the whole county – the soaring, lantern tower of Boston’s medieval cathedral. From the top, you can see as far as Lincoln, fifty kilometres away. The summit is visible from more than a third of the county and is a useful landmark for ships at sea as well.

The money to pay for this magnificent cathedral came from the wool trade with the Continent, particularly with Belgium and Holland. During the 13th and 14th centuries, Boston was second only to London in the volume of trade it handled each year.

Over the following centuries, however, the importance of the wool trade declined, and with it went Boston’s prosperity.

Today, Boston is still an important town – several agricultural markets and fairs are held here each year – but it has been sadly left behind by its bigger, brasher offspring in the United States.

Bringing Boston down.

Bringing down Boston and Bostonians is nothing new, this article appeared in a Welsh newspaper called "The Leader" with offices at Portmadoc in 1951. The writer was J. Ellis Williams.

" I spent most of last week in Boston (Lincs., not Massachusetts). It is the place which the Pilgrim Fathers left to go to America. I don't blame them. Boston is flat, dull, uninteresting and uninspiring. Five days there made me feel as flat as the countryside. Five months there would have driven me to meloncholia.
I met and talked with a good many people there, and listened to the conversation of many more. Not once did I hear anybody speak of music, poetry, drama, painting or any of the arts, sorry I did hear one man speak of architecture, he was building a pigsty.

How could anyone find fault with this?

The roads around Boston are built on embankments which are a few feet above the land. On each side of the road there is a deep draining ditch. Houses built along the roadside have little bridges leading to the front door. One of the worst roads is that leading from Boston to Skegness, it follows the old cattle track which used to meander through the marshes surrounding the Wash and at each and every bend there is the same flat monotony. Towering above the town is the Boston Stump, a church tower that gives one the impression that an absent minded architect forgot to put a steeple on it."

You have to be a Bostonian and live here to understand Mr. Williams.