Some Boston folk.

Mr Wortleys Dairy retail shop was at the top of Portland Street, the shop was later a laundrette for a number of years.

This photo sent to me by Gary Halliday was taken in 1945 in the graveyard down Skirbeck Road (nearly opposite Hussey Tower) and shows a seven year old Janice Cochrane, far right, turning the skipping rope, with Barbara Harriett, Peter Taylor, Mavis Lawe, Maureen Adcock, Shirley Thirkell, Ted Stow, George West, Audrey Sherman, Barry Norton, and Keith Norton.

Memories of Boston.

In 1914, Mr. James Faunt (then over eighty years old) of 10, Cornhill Lane looked back and told us of West Street in the old days.

West Street he said was largely a residential street and was one of the main arteries of the town but it also had the offices and warehouses of a great many of the business firms of Boston. The dwelling houses were frequently of great age and almost the last of them (a row of particularly old houses pictured below) were demolished and the Municipal Buildings built on the site in the early 1900's.

An old mansion house stood on the present site of the Co-operative Stores and nearby the business establishment of Mr. Norris had, in its rear, a garden forming part of a paddock from which the name of Paddock Grove arose. The paddock provided a feeding space for sheep and cattle but was also used by the children of the town as a playground.

Mr.William Mumford of 9, Tunnard Street who was 82 years old in 1914 also left us some good descriptions of the town. He was born in the neighbourhood of the Workhouse in Skirbeck Road and a few years later in about 1844 moved with his parents to West Street to a house at the rear of the shop of Mr. J.H. Clarke, a fruiterer, near the Primitive Methodist Chapel (below, near present day P.C. World).

Here his father had five acres of garden, a portion of which was destined to be the the site of the present railway of which he went to the opening of in 1848.

He also remembered seeing Queen Victoria passing through the town on a train, there were some pear trees near the station and he put a ladder against one of them and climbed it to get a good view. Passing on, he remarked that we should have seen the market when all the country lads came in the town in smock frocks or slops on, and with their braided waistcoats.

He remembered a time when there used to be dancing booths open all night, there was one at the Little Peacock he said, and they had a fiddler and a cornet player. He also said that there were some good boxers in those days recalling the names of Joe East and three of the Holden family. "Tom Holden was a little fellow of about 9 stones" he continued "and I once went down to the Scalp Marsh to see a fight between him and Joe East"

"I think Joe East had the hardest head of anyone, I have often seen him run butt at a wall with his head." He would shout "You can't hurt my head, I don't care how you hit it" "I have often seen him do it where the Rum Puncheon is (below, the present day Stump and Candle)."

There used to be some fine does at the Queens Head (just over Bargate bridge) and the London Tavern (opposite the present day Waterfront pub and both pictured below) he said.

They had a free and easy at the London Tavern every Thursday night and some good singers there were too, there was "Diggery" Pearson, he used to sing some queer songs, he was a comical card.

Finally Mr. Mumford tells us that years before he used to go down Tattershall Road to the race meeting, there were many flat races and for one event "trays" were put down for the horses to jump. He had seen hundreds of people on the high bank on one side of the course, where drinking booths were erected by various publicans.

Friary Skeletons

In July 1930 Harrison & Lewin (timber merchants) of Boston were excavating for the erection of new sheds on pasture land adjoining the Workhouse on Skirbeck Road when a human skeleton was discovered four feet six inches below the surface. The site of this discovery was the old St. Augustinian Friary.
Skeletons were fairly common discoveries in Boston and, during the previous twenty or thirty years to 1930 had been dug up in all parts of the town. Fydell Crescent, part of which was the site of the old Carmelite Friary, proved to be abundant with human remains. Skeletons were found in Fydell Crescent in 1926 at a depth of four feet and twenty years before that a large skull was discovered and claimed to be that of George Ripley, a noted member of the Carmelite Friars at Boston, and an alchemist, who at one time was hailed as the discoverer of the Philosopher’s Stone. He died in 1400, and was duly buried in the Friary. The Augustinian Friars site in Boston (where the 1930 skeleton was found) was founded by the Tilney family about the time of the building of St. Botolph’s Church and was purchased at the Dissolution by the Mayor and Burgesses.
As late as the 1850’s the land between the Workhouse and St. John’s cemetery (now the playground opposite the college car park) was still known as the Augustine Friar’s Pasture.