Ye Olde History Buff

10/11/2026

Loving this

Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics in a dark medieval / dark fantasy Bardco...

10/11/2026

One of the things I love about Willingham's history is the characters who crop up along the way.

Take Jabez Few, the Willingham Wizard, who apparently took exception to the church clock chiming while he was enjoying a drink at the Ringer's Rest.

Most people would have complained to the landlord. Jabez supposedly reached for his sh***un!

It's a wonderful bit of local folklore, although I doubt the magistrate was quite so amused.

And speaking of Willingham's history, **I'll be giving the presentation at Old Willingham's next history talk on Monday 30 November at Willingham Social Club**, when we'll be looking at the First World War and the experiences of those who lived through it, including some of our own local stories.

Everyone is welcome, and admission is £5 on the door, cash or card.

You can find the event details here:
https://fb.me/e/5ukILI1Z0

And do have a look at this photograph of the village clock being installed in 1887. I certainly wouldn't have fancied working on that platform!

**WILLINGHAM'S CHURCH CLOCK, A SH***UN AND THE WILLINGHAM WIZARD!**

Health and safety was rather different in Victorian times!

Take a look at this wonderful photograph from our archive, showing the wooden platform erected outside St Mary and All Saints Church when the village clock was installed in 1887.

I don't think I'd have fancied standing on that!

The clock was installed to celebrate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. It was made by W. Potts & Son of Leeds and paid for by public subscription.

But here's something that surprises people when we take them on our village history walks.

**The clock doesn't belong to the church. It belongs to the parish.**

It's Willingham Parish Council that maintains it and arranges for someone to climb that narrow spiral staircase to adjust the clock when British Summer Time begins and ends.

And believe me, that staircase is narrow. Not somewhere I'd particularly want to squeeze myself!

For around a century, somebody also had to climb those stairs every week to wind the clock by hand.

An excellent article in the **June 2007 edition of Willingham News** tells us about some of those responsible, including Bert Huckle, Arthur Beaumont and Harry Beaumont.

But the article also contains a rather wonderful story about **Jabez Few, the Willingham Wizard**.

Jabez was a local character who apparently enjoyed a drink and frequently carried his sh***un.

According to the story, sometime around the First World War, he was particularly irritated by the church clock chiming.

He threatened to shoot it if it struck again.

Unfortunately for the clock, it did.

And Jabez was apparently a man of his word!

The magistrate was rather less impressed with his marksmanship.

Thankfully, the clock survived Jabez and has continued keeping time for the village ever since.

It underwent a major overhaul in 2019 and remains a familiar part of Willingham life.

You can read the original *Willingham News* article, including photographs of the mechanism and Harry Beaumont, here:

https://www.willinghamlife.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Willingham-News-2007-06.pdf

Does anyone remember the clock winders, or have any other stories about Jabez Few and his exploits?

We'd love to hear them!

10/11/2026

**ON THIS DAY: 10 NOVEMBER 1697**

**William Hogarth was born 329 years ago today, and he certainly wasn't afraid to show the darker side of London life!**

Hogarth became famous for his paintings and engravings depicting the greed, corruption, drunkenness and downright foolishness of eighteenth-century society.

One of his best-known works is *Gin Lane*, published in 1751.

Take a good look at the picture.

There's a mother so drunk she's allowing her baby to fall from her arms, a man pawning his tools to buy more gin, a coffin being carried through the street, and even a man hanging himself in the background.

And that's just scratching the surface!

Hogarth packed his pictures with little stories, often hiding details that you might not notice until you've looked at them several times.

But he wasn't simply illustrating Georgian London. He was making a political and social statement about the devastating effects of cheap gin.

His companion engraving, *B**r Street*, showed a very different London, where people were prosperous, healthy and enjoying a pint.

It was satire, of course, and deliberately exaggerated.

But nearly 300 years later, his pictures still have the power to make us stop, look and think.

**How many details can you spot in *Gin Lane*?**

10/11/2026

**8,000 FROG BONES, A ROMAN MYSTERY AND SOME VERY HUNGRY OWLS! 🐸🦉**

For nearly a decade, archaeologists have been scratching their heads over a rather peculiar discovery at Bar Hill, just outside Cambridge.

During excavations ahead of improvements to the A14, they uncovered more than 8,000 frog and toad bones in a ditch beside an ancient roundhouse.

That's not 8,000 frogs, incidentally, but the remains of at least 350 of them.

The big question was: what on earth happened?

Had the inhabitants developed a taste for frogs' legs? Had hundreds of frogs fallen into a ditch? Was there some dreadful prehistoric amphibian epidemic?

Well, researchers from Bournemouth University and the Museum of London Archaeology have now come up with a rather convincing answer.

**Owls.**

By examining damage to the tiny bones, researchers discovered evidence that the frogs had been eaten by birds of prey, most likely short-eared owls, possibly alongside hen harriers.

Further analysis revealed that many of the frogs died during their first winter, around 1,700 years ago, during the Roman period.

And there's another fascinating part to this story.

The Cambridgeshire landscape was changing.

Woodland was being cleared for livestock grazing, creating areas of open grassland. Wetland conditions provided breeding grounds for frogs, while the increasingly open countryside offered hunting opportunities for birds of prey.

What had once seemed an inexplicable collection of bones may actually be the remains of a particularly successful winter's hunting.

And all this was happening in the countryside around Cambridge while Roman Britain was going about its business.

It's a wonderful example of how archaeology can tell us about more than the lives of people. Sometimes, a handful of tiny bones can reveal an entire lost landscape.

**And sometimes the answer to a 1,700-year-old mystery is simply that somebody was hungry.**

The new research was announced today, 10 November 2026.

Read Bournemouth University's findings:
https://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/news/2026-11-10/ancient-frog-mystery-solved

09/11/2026

**ON THIS DAY: 9 NOVEMBER 1908**

**The woman who broke down two barriers**

On this day, 118 years ago, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson became England's first female mayor when she was elected Mayor of Aldeburgh in Suffolk.

But this was hardly her first achievement.

In 1865, she became the first woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain through the Society of Apothecaries.

At a time when women were largely excluded from the medical profession, she had faced rejection from medical schools, studied privately and refused to take no for an answer.

She went on to establish a hospital for women in London, help found the London School of Medicine for Women and campaign for women's rights.

Then, at the age of 72, she became mayor of the Suffolk town where she had grown up.

Her younger sister was Millicent Fawcett, another formidable campaigner for women's rights.

Quite a remarkable family.

08/11/2026

**ON THIS DAY: 8 NOVEMBER 1974**

**The end of old Covent Garden Market**

If you'd walked through Covent Garden 52 years ago today, you'd have found a very different place from the tourist attraction we know now.

There were porters pushing enormous loads of fruit and vegetables, traders shouting across the market, delivery lorries squeezing through narrow streets and flower sellers doing a roaring trade.

But the old wholesale market was in its final hours.

That weekend, Covent Garden's historic fruit, vegetable and flower market closed and prepared to reopen at Nine Elms on 11 November 1974.

The old market buildings faced an uncertain future, with ambitious redevelopment plans threatening much of the surrounding neighbourhood.

Fortunately, local campaigners helped preserve the historic heart of Covent Garden.

Did you ever visit the old market before it moved?

08/11/2026

17/10/2026

People have literally been playing with silly anime action figures for over 1,500 years.

31/07/2026

Someone was asking about these the other day

And this is why so many old houses still have boot scrapers built into their walls. Boot scrapers became a common feature of British homes during the late 18th and throughout the 19th century, when roads were little more than dirt tracks.

In wet weather they quickly turned into deep mud mixed with horse manure, animal droppings, ash, straw and every other kind of street filth. Before entering the house, people scraped the thick layer of muck from their boots to avoid bringing it indoors.

Usually made from cast or wrought iron, boot scrapers were set into walls, doorsteps or beside front doors. Some were simple metal bars, while wealthier homes often featured decorative designs that reflected the owner's status. Many townhouses even had a scraper on either side of the entrance, allowing visitors approaching from either direction to clean their footwear.

Their importance grew during the Georgian and Victorian periods, when Britain relied heavily on horses for transport. In cities such as London, thousands of horses produced vast quantities of manure every day, while in rural villages the unpaved roads became quagmires after rain. A sturdy boot scraper was therefore an essential household feature rather than a decorative extra.

As roads were gradually paved and motor vehicles replaced horse-drawn transport in the early 20th century, boot scrapers became far less necessary. Although many were removed during renovations, thousands still survive today, quietly reminding us just how filthy Britain's streets once were.