Chapter XX

THE summit of this convenient Golgotha is the place where the North Road and the Great North Road adjust their differences, and proceed by one route to the North. Not a very terrible hill, after all, despite the way in which it figures in the letters and diaries of old travellers; but nowadays a very lonely place, although it is the meeting-point of two main roads and that of a branch one. It was once different indeed, and the great “Wheatsheaf” inn and posting-house, which stood a hundred yards or so away from the junction, used commonly to send out thirty pairs of post-horses a day. This establishment was kept in its prime by John Warsop, who lived long enough to see his business ruined by railways. Let no one imagine the “Wheatsheaf” public-house, standing where the roads meet, to be the representative of that old posting-house. Face north, and you will see a private house of considerable size standing on the east side of the road, behind a hedge and lawn. Not a beautiful house; in fact, an ugly house of a dingy whitey-buff brick, the colour of pastry taken out of the oven before it is properly baked. Approaching nearer, it will be observed that this building is now divided into two private residences. This was once the “Wheatsheaf.” In the bygone days it possessed a semicircular approach from the road, and afforded all the year round, and round the clock of every day and night, a busy scene; with the postboys, whose next turn-out it was, sleeping with spur on heel, ready to mount and away at a minute’s notice, north, south, east, or west. Those times and manners are as absolutely vanished as though they never had existed, and even although there are yet living those who remember the old “Wheatsheaf” of their youthful days, perhaps not one wayfarer in a hundred has any idea of that once busy era on Alconbury Hill. How many of all those who pass this way have ever noticed that pathetic relic of the “Wheatsheaf’s” bygone prosperity, the old post from which its sign used to hang? It is still to be seen, by those who know where to look for it, facing the road, a venerable and decrepit relic, now thickly covered with ivy, and somewhat screened from the casual glance by the shrubs and trees growing close beside it.

Travellers coming south could have a choice of routes to London from Alconbury Hill, as the elaborate old milestone still standing at the parting of the ways indicates, showing sixty-four miles by way of Huntingdon, Royston, and Ware, and four miles longer by the way we have come. This monumental milestone, now somewhat dilapidated, railed round, and with some forlorn-looking wall-flowers growing inside the enclosure, is a striking object, situated at a peculiarly impressive spot, where the left-hand route by Huntingdon is seen going off on the level to a vanishing-point lost in the distant haze, rather than by any dip or curve of the road to right or left; the right-hand road diving down the hill to Alconbury Weston and Alconbury at its foot.

[Picture: Alconbury Hill Junction]

The descent, going north, is known as Stangate Hill, and leads past the lonely churchyard of Sawtry St. Andrews, whose church has disappeared as utterly as Sawtry Abbey, which, less wealthy than the great abbeys of Ramsey, Thorney, Crowland, or Peterborough, stood beside the road, and was besieged by mediæval tramps:

“Sawtry-by-the-Way, that old Abbaye,
Gave more alms in one day than all they.”

Thus ran the old rhyme. To-day, the only vestiges of that vanished religious house are in the names of Monk’s Wood, to the right of the road, descending the hill, and of the Abbey Farm.

The foot of Stangate Hill is no doubt the place called by Thoresby and others “Stangate Hole,” where highwaymen were confidently to be expected. De Foe, writing about 1720 of this road, says: “Some Parts are still paved with stone, which strengthens the conjecture that the Name Stangate was given it from thence. It traverses great woods between the Two Saltries.”

In his spelling of “Sawtry,” in that last line, although he does not follow the invariable form, he has hit upon the original. For “Sawtry” was in the beginning “Salt Reeth.” Salt marshes and creeks crept inland even as far as this, past Ely and Ramsey.

Stilton lies some three miles ahead, and, two miles before reaching it, the old “Crown and Woolpack,” a very large red-brick posting-house, part of it still occupied as an inn, the rest used as cottages, while the stables are given over to spiders and lumber.

Passing this, the road presently begins to rise gently, and then, level again, widens out to almost treble its usual width, where a long street of mingled old houses and cottages, a medley of stone, brick, and plaster, stands, strangely silent. This is Stilton, dreaming of bygone busy times. Had the railway touched here, things would have worn a very different aspect at Stilton to-day. Let us, therefore, thank the shades of that Marquis of Exeter, and of the others who resisted the railway, and by causing it to describe a wide loop instead of hugging the road, unwittingly contributed to the preservation in a glass case, as it were, of this old coaching centre.

Night and day the coaches kept Stilton awake, and if for a few minutes there was no coach, the post-chaises at one end of the social scale, and the fly-wagons at the other, kept the inns busy. Stilton buzzed with activity then. From the far North came the drovers, doing twenty miles a day, with their sheep and cattle, their pigs and geese; animal creation marching, martyrs in their sort, to Smithfield. At Stilton they shod the cattle, like horses, and one blacksmith’s business here consisted of nothing else than this.

The glory of Stilton has departed, and the “Bell” and the “Angel” face one another, dolefully wondering in what channels the tide of business now flows. The “Bell” is more racy of the soil than the “Angel,” just as it is also much older. We are here in a stone district, and the “Bell” is a building of that warm yellowish stone characteristic of these parts. Built at the very beginning of the seventeenth century, it was already of a respectable age when the brick “Angel” opposite began to rise from its foundations. The older house is the feature of Stilton, its great sign, with the mazy quirks and curls of its wrought-iron supports, projecting far out towards the road, and arresting the eye on first entering the street. The sign itself is painted on copper, for the sake of lightness, but has long been supported by a crutch, in the shape of a post. With this ornamental iron-work, incomparably the finest sign on the road, it was in the old days the subject of many wagers made by coachmen and guards with unwary strangers who did not, like those artful ones, know its measurements. It measures in fact 6 ft. 2¾ inches in height.

The old “Talbot” inn still has its coach gallery, or balcony, in front.

The “Angel,” in the best days of posting, became the principal house at Stilton, and the little public-house of that name next door to the commanding brick building which is now a private residence was only the tap of the hotel. But the “Bell,” that has seen the beginning and the end of the “Angel,” still survives, with memories of the days when the delicacy which renders the name of Stilton world-famous had its origin. Allusion is hereby made—need one explain it?—to “Stilton” cheese. They say those old stagers who knew it when its local reputation first began to be dispersed throughout the country—that Stilton cheese is not what it was. What is? The “English Parmesan,” they called it then, when their palates first became acquainted with it, but it deserved better of them than that. It was a species of itself, and not justly comparable with aught else. But Stilton cheese is not, nor ever was, made at Stilton, or anywhere near it. It originated with Mrs. Paulet of Wymondham, near Melton Mowbray, who first supplied it to Cooper Thornhill, the once celebrated landlord of the “Bell,” for the use of the table provided for the coach passengers and other travellers who dined there. Mrs. Paulet’s cheeses immediately struck connoisseurs as a revelation, and they came into demand, not only on Thornhill’s table, but were eagerly purchased for themselves or friends by those who travelled this way. Thornhill was too business-like a man to give away the secret of the make, and he did very well for himself, charging as he did half-a-crown a pound. Then the almost equally famous Miss Worthington, of the “Angel,” began to supply “Stilton” cheeses, so that scarce any one came through the place but was asked to buy one. Nor did travellers usually wait to be asked. If it happened that they did not want any for themselves, they were usually charged by friends with commissions to purchase as they passed through. Smiling waiters and maidservants, Miss Worthington herself, rosy, plump, benevolent-looking, asked travellers if they would not like to take away with them a real Stilton cheese. Miss Worthington, the kindly, whose lavender-scented beds were famed along the whole length of the Great North Road—there she stood, declaring that they were real Stilton cheeses! Nor were travellers for a long while any the wiser. Stilton folks kept the secret well. But it gradually leaked out. A native of those parts, too, was the traitor. “Pray, sir, would you like a nice Stilton cheese to take away with you?” asked the unsuspecting landlady, as the coach on whose outside he was seated drew up.

[Picture: The Bell, Stilton]

“Do you say they are made at Stilton?” he asked in reply.

“Oh, yes,” said she.

Then came the crushing rejoinder. “Why, Miss Worthington, you know perfectly well that no Stilton cheese was ever made at Stilton; they’re all made in Leicestershire, and as you say your cheeses are made at Stilton, they cannot be good, and I won’t have one.” The secret was then, of course, exploded.

Which of these two inns could it have been to which Mrs. Calderwood of Coltness refers in her diary when, travelling from Scotland to London in the middle of the eighteenth century, she mentions at Stilton a “fine large inn,” where the linen was “as perfit rags as ever I saw: plain linen with fifty holes in each towell.” It would be interesting to know, but it is hopeless now to attempt to identify it.