Chapter 10 the Buildings of Ailsworth

Chapter 10 The Buildings of Ailsworth

Introduction

Today, old and new houses, large and small, stand side by side, the result of the natural growth of the village of Ailsworth. It is now difficult to imagine what the village used to be like. Until the late 1940s there was a definite feel that Ailsworth and Castor were completely separate, each a village in its own right. There were no bungalows in Ailsworth and the houses in Thorolds Way, Castor had not been built. Fields divided the villages; only footpaths and the main road joined them together.

The variety of the housing styles we see today adds to the friendly feel of the village. No particular house or style of house dominates the village. There was no influence of an important estate on the design of the cottages. The larger farmhouses were built within the village, bigger and detached, alongside employees’ houses. People needed to live near to their places of work. The Stationmaster’s house in Station Road was the only house in the parish built away from the heart of the village. This was demolished in 1965. The oldest properties were situated in Main Street, Helpston Road, Peterborough Road and Maffit Road - the core of the old village.

The cottages were built close together, often directly onto the road or footpath and mostly of local stone. Roofs were thatched, clad with clay tiles, Collyweston or Welsh slate. Many of the cottages were built in long terraces and usually had small gardens, often detached from the houses. They had a range of outbuildings for the toilet, the wash house, fuel store and animal shelters. Life was very neighbourly in these conditions!

The largest buildings were the two public houses on Peterborough Road, the Chapel in Main Street and farm buildings. The pubs were important meeting places for the locals to socialise and air their views, and also for the passing trade. The Methodist Chapel was built in 1863, in the centre of the village. Today it nestles between an old stone cottage and a modern house.

Peterborough Road Fig 10a. 111 & 111a Peterborough Road.

Peterborough Road is the major road running through the village. Here the Paper Shop and the Village Butcher’s shop continue to be the hub of village trade and chit-chat. The old houses are all on the South side of this road. These all have direct access to the pavement, the variety of styles denoting the different ages of the properties. Some of these properties housed the old village shops. 115 Peterborough Road was The Barley Mow Pub that closed in the 1950s. After the pub was closed one of the ground floor rooms was used as an office for the local coal merchant. Now the old pub has been converted into flats.

111 & 111a Peterborough Road, are a pair of Fig 10b. The Wheatsheaf Pub. 115 three-storey houses, built of stone in the early 19th century. There was a butcher’s shop in the right hand lower room until the early 1970s, and then it was a ladies hairdresser’s until the 1990s. The houses have been recently refurbished. The former Wheatsheaf Pub, which was built in the early 19th century but closed in the 1990s also had a butcher’s shop in the single storey extension. There are now three new houses built on the old car park. The two newer shops and former Post Office and Garage were built in the 1950s. The Garage buildings have recently been demolished to make way for two new houses. The smallest building in the village is the brick bus shelter with a shingle roof, built in 1952 as a war memorial.

Main Street

Fig 10c. 15 Main Street. Many of the older houses have been pulled down; in the 1960s a lot of cottages were condemned and then demolished, and replaced with new homes. It is now difficult to imagine that there was a row of cottages between numbers 19 and 33 Main Street. Many people will still remember the other old cottages in Main Street. Ailsworth today is a far cry from the village of yesteryear. Cottages hugged the sides of the road, the majority having one room downstairs and one upstairs. Indoor toilets and bathrooms came much later. Most of the old properties had outside wash houses and outside toilets, some were for individual use, others more friendly ‘two holers’.

Part of number 10 Main Street was for some years the village Fish and Chip shop and it also had been the home of Harry Haynes and family. 15 Main Street was for many years the Sharpe family Fig 10d. Walnut House. home. There used to be a shed in the garden that was the cobbler’s and the barber’s. Walnut House in Main Street dates back to the 17th century. In the 1970s the huge walnut tree in the garden was cut down and 2a Maffit Road was built on the site.

The Methodist Chapel was built in what was then the heart of the village. The houses to the North of the Chapel in Main Street are built on the site of old buildings belonging to Manor Farm, old cottages and a haulage depot which later became an agricultural depot for Brown & Butlins. Ruddle and Wilkinson Architects planned the present houses and they were designed to look like a group of old village houses. At the time the scheme won an architectural award. Across the road, Barn Cottages and the two bungalows in Maffit Road were built on Mr Bass’s old farmyard which had since become the coal depot. Four houses were built within the curtilage of Manor Farm in the Fig 10e. Straw Cottage.

116 1970s; high stone walls enclose these houses. Stone walls of varying heights are a feature of the village scene, some are remnants of the old farm walls. Four detached bungalows were built at Kings Acre, Main Street in the 1990s, on the site of a pair of semi-detached council houses, for the needs of the senior citizens.

41 Main Street is now called The Old Brewery but is still remembered by some as Miss Sharpe’s shop. (The brewery used to be in the outbuildings in front of the house along with the bakery). The general shop closed in 1971, when the decimalisation of money was introduced. String and brown paper hung from the ceiling to wrap the bacon, ham and cheese. Boxes of goods were stacked from floor to ceiling filling the shop with nostalgic smells. Village people used to take their Sunday joints to be cooked in the baker’s oven. Fig 10f. Kings Acre. The house is dated EWB 1758 on the East gable wall. It is part of a stone terrace, running through to Maffit Road. Two of the other cottages in the row have thatched roofs; the third has a clay pantile roof.

44 Main Street is a 17th century thatched cottage, its gable-end faces Main Street and its North elevation faces onto Cross Street. For many years this cottage was owned by Manor Farm. Afterwards it was bought by the Nature Conservancy and became the home of the Warden for Castor Hanglands. John Robinson and Roy Harris were two of the last Wardens to live there. It is now a private house.

55 Main Street was built in the 17th century. It is a large thatched house that was extensively updated in the 1960s. It has also been known as Fig 10g. 44 Main Street. Jasmine Cottage and Rose Cottage.

Most old cottages have been altered and extended and show little resemblance to the original. In recent times old farm buildings have been incorporated into new homes, fields and farmyards have become sites for new developments and the old pubs, stables and barns have been converted into residential accommodation. Old barns and stables in the former farmyard at the top of Main Street have been converted into houses. The dovecote in this yard is now a garage. 50 and 52 Main Street, the oldest parts of which were built in the 17th century, were formerly known as Manor House Farm. 50 Main Street is now a dental surgery. 59 Main Street is built on Drakes Farm once farmed by Mr Sharpe.

Fig 10h. 50 & 52 Main Street.

117 Maffit Road

There was evidence of an old dwelling along the track leading from the top of Maffit Road to the bypass. This was known as Frog Hall. The last remaining link with this ‘house’, a group of fruit trees, was removed in the early 1990s.

At the beginning of the fifties there were only three properties in Maffit Road, or Back Lane as it was sometimes called. Numbers 2, 4 (now joined) and 15 all belonged to the Popple family. 15 Maffit Road, the Maltings, is the only red brick property in the village. Number 6, at the top of the Jitty between Maffit Road and Main Street, was for many years a farm cottage for Manor Farm. The first new house to be built in the road was Number 1, the home of Len and Lorna Fisher. More houses Fig 10i. Thatchcroft. with an individual style were soon built on the old small field-garden plots.

Helpston Road

In Helpston Road there are houses dating from the 17th or early 18th century that sit amongst newer houses. Thatchcroft (number 28) was for many years the home of the Pell family. Southview directly to the rear was the Jinks family home. These two cottages abut the side of Helpston Road.

The former council houses, built in the 1920s were highly sought after. They had spacious accommodation and large gardens, everything the old cottages did not have.

Old farmhouses include The Manor House, in Helpston Road, which acquired the name Manor Fig 10j. Southview. House in relatively recent years. The Limes, also in Helpston Road, was built at the end of the 19th century. The last farmer to live there was Mr Fletcher. There used to be a smithy at the rear of this house where numbers 3a and 3b are now built. The chalet bungalows to the North of this on Helpston Road were built on part of Manor House Farm in the early 1960s.

Larger new developments

In the late 1950s Shelton’s builders built new bungalows along Helpston Road leading into a new estate - Singerfire Road, Casworth Way and Andrew Close. The houses in Holme Close were built in the early 1970s. The footpath leading from Holme Close to Helpston Road is part of the old path formerly known as Church Walk, and sometimes now called Chapel Walk. The name used obviously depended on where you were going. Fig 10k. Manor House.

118 Notes The information about these buildings is taken from the Listed buildings of Peterborough City Council See appendix nineteen and The Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, Peterborough New Town.

Fig 10l. 1960s ‘new development’.

Fig 10m. Map of Ailsworth showing Parish boundary with Castor. Listed buildings marked. Reproduced from Ordnance Survey mapping on behalf of The Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office © Crown Copyright 100042620 2004

119 A Gibbons’ Robey steam engine threshing at Manor Farm Sutton (Fred Holmes’) May 1916: back to camera Mr Matchet (gamekeeper), Billy Brown with wheels on right, Charlie Clark on drum, Bob Gilbert (with fork) and Fred Gibbons beside it.

120