Update on the White Horse.

I recently received an email from T. J. Glendinning, a volunteer at Fydell House,  telling me that the White Horse that once
graced the front of the White Horse Hotel in West Street and now stands in the back garden of Fydell House was being
repaired and brought back to its former glory. With the email were three pictures of the horse, see below.
Thank you Mr. Glendinning.

The White Horse Hotel that once stood in West Street, the horse figure can clearly be seen in the centre of the building.

Dunhelms Shop now occupies this site.

Carriers Carts and Omnibuses.

Carriers formed a vital link between scattered communities prior to the coming of the railways in the late nineteenth century and even later in isolated rural communities, providing transport for goods and people between the various locations. They continued to trundle into Boston on market days - albeit in gradually diminishing numbers - throughout most of the 1920's and as late as 1932. They were to be found (amongst other places) parked for the day in that part of West Street near the end of Emery Lane, the old White Horse Hotel was in that area and some owners parked in the Hotel yard.

This picture, taken in West Street, Boston in February 1932, shows the Perseverance which was one of the horsedrawn carrier carts in Boston. The owner, Lawrence Richardson, is sat on it driving the horses Betsy and Daisy.

 

These carts, as E.P. Jenkinson remembered them were smallish (perhaps 10 ft. by 7 ft.)  horsedrawn, four wheeled, flat bottomed canvas canopied vehicles designed chiefly for the carriage of parcels and other packages, but which had a wooden form along each side to accommodate some seven or eight passengers.

 

A photo taken outside the main Post Office in Wide Bargate.

 

They really, I suppose, represented a kind of rudimentary rural bus service in the days before motor buses came to the town, which was (Mr. Jenkinson thought) in about 1922.

Boston's first Bus service was operated by a company called the Underwood Omnibus Company, replaced some three or four years later by the United Omnibus Company. Very soon afterwards, local enterprise in the person of a Mr. Smith augmented the area bus network with his "Smith's Safety Services" comprising two double decker buses proudly named "Lion" and "Lioness". By the late 1920's there was a reasonably adequate bus network throughout South Lincolnshire, although some of the more rustic routes only saw a bus on a couple of days a week, hence the continued existence of a few, at any rate, of the carrier carts well into the late 1920's.

 

Some of Boston's early buses, again outside the Post Office.

 

The late Harry Fountain, an old Bostonian, said fifteen public houses catered for the carriers and their horses by providing a big yard or frontage and stables. He recalled that the Corn Exchange Hotel (that once stood on the Marks and Spencer site) had six carriers on the frontage and put up 12 horses in 3 stables.

Some of the other public houses concerned were:

The Axe and Cleaver

The Cross keys

The Falcon

The Globe

The Kings Arms

The Peacock and Royal

The Ram

The Red Lion

The Red Cow

The Waggon and Horses

The White Hart and the

White Horse.

White Horse found !!

In a previous blog entry ( March 2011) entitled "Keightleys / White horse" I didn't know what happened to the statuette of the White Horse that was on the front of the White Horse Hotel in West Street for many, many years so was delighted to receive an e-mail from Ashley Groombridge who works at Fydell House to inform me that the horse was, in fact, in the gardens of Fydell House. I paid a visit to Fydell house a few days later and took the following picture of the horse and would once again like to thank Ashley for getting in touch with me. What a sight it must have been on the old building.

Keightley's / White Horse

In September 1958 work began on demolishing the White Horse pub in West Street to make way for a new department store to be built on the corner of West Street and Emery Lane by H.E. Keightley the drapers and furnishers.

The White Horse, on the corner of West Street and Emery Lane.

An artists impression of how the new store would look after the White Horse was demolished.

Keightley’s had another shop at the other end of Emery Lane called the “Civet Cat” which sold dress fabrics, haberdashery, handbags and leather goods but why was it called “Civet Cat” ? Even Mr. Cyril Keightley one of the firms directors wasn’t sure, he said, “I think there used to be a perfume shop there once and part of the animal civet cat was used as a base for some of the perfume, that’s as near as I can get”.

The Civet Cat shop in 1899 (now Cash Generators)

No plans had been made for the fate of the model of a white horse which had decorated the front of the old hotel for so many years, but the architect Mr. Alan Meldrum believed that it would crumble away as the demolition workers reached it, I think eventually an unknown Boston lady retrieved it and it ended up as a feature in her garden*.
The Keightley’s store was eventually built on the White Horse site and it continued for many years, after it finally closed the shop was used by Grandways Supermarket for a while and is now Dunelm’s shop.

The site of the White Horse in 2011.

* SEE "WHITE HORSE FOUND" in April 2011 of blog.

Homes of our Forefathers

I came across an old book entitled “Homes of our Forefathers” which was printed in 1889. It was written by an American called Edwin Whitefield from Boston Massachusetts who visited Boston U.K. for the special purpose of “sketching and hunting up whatever there might be of interest in the Boston which gave its name to our own city” Below are the 21 sketches he made.

An old house in Archer Lane, off Wormgate. Now demolished.

The Bell Inn, on the site of the present Stump and Candle pub.

Blackfriars, now a theatre.

Burton Corner is at the junction of Sibsey Road / Wainfleet Road.

At the end of Wormgate, opposite the Stump.

Near the Stump, building is now vacant, its last use was a shop called "Spooky's"

Now demolished.

The Grammar school.

The Guildhall.

Better known as Gysors Hall, was next to the Magnet Tavern in South Square. Now demolished.

Formerly stood on the west side of the road leading to the sluice near the west end of North Street.
Tradition reports this building to have been erected with the stones taken from the church of St. John of Jerusalem; a stone in the northern gable of the house bore the date 1659, and the initials W.E.R.
Heron's Hall was taken down in 1811.(Pishey Thompson). Now demolished.

or HusseyTower as it is better known.

The caption for this picture said, "This is a portion of a large house which is believed to have been built by a Flemish merchant in the reign of Edward I. The initials E.R. (Edward Rex) are plainly marked on the gable."
I think this may be Pescod Hall.

Pishey Thompson says "The site of the hospital of St John was on the west side of Maud Foster or Bargate Drain, immediately opposite to Hospital Bridge. There is nothing remaining of the hospital, except an old house, called Jerusalem House, but which appears to have been built from the materials of the ancient hospital, rather than to have formed a portion of the original buildings". Now demolished.

Rochford Tower.

Shodfriars Hall.

The caption in the book said this house belonged to the Robinson family and Pishey Thompson says "There are several ancient brick houses in Stanbow Lane among others one which belonged to the Robinson family, formerly of great distinction and influence in this place. An immense open fireplace, and other marks of antiquity, yet remain in a room at the back of this house". Now demolished.

The Stump.

The ThreeTuns in the Market Place, Oliver Cromwell is said to have slept here the night before the Battle of Winceby in the English Civil war. Now demolished.

The old Town Bridge.

The White Horse, White Horse Lane, Now demolished.

Even more Pub pictures.

Eight more Pubs in Boston.

The Rum Puncheon and The Angel in the Market Place.

The White Hart near the Town Bridge.

The Rose and Crown (extreme right) on the corner of Witham Place and Union Place.

The King William IV on Horncastle Road.

The Queen's Head near Bargate Bridge.

The Three Tuns that stood on the corner of the Market Place and Church Lane.

The Wormgate Inn (now called Goodbarn's Yard).

The White Horse that used to stand in White Horse Lane.