Stamford was en route to my Vale of Belvoir cottage back in the 1980s. I even had a tryst with a lady in The George, though I drove a smarter set of wheels than the Mini in your picture.
It’s a bit unfair though to talk of Stamford ‘retreating’ in the 1960s. I reckon that the town’s leaders instead chose to ignore the vile planners and architects who were then so busy despoiling many of our towns and cities.
Stamford’s retreat became an investment in the future, so the place today remains wholesome to live and visit.
“The vile planners and architects who were then so busy despoiling our towns and cities.” What happened to so many of the historic city centres of Europe and Asia in the 1960s was probably the greatest cultural crime ever committed in time of peace.
But two wars that damaged or gutted those cities, almost within living memory, might be the reason for modernization there. Go look at pretty Paris, further out and their capitulation that saved the city from destruction has some quite odious areas. Planning is not just the buildings and style. It is who lives where and how they live too. Nowhere is perfect. But careful ignoring of modernizers can keep somewhere looking quite good.
Yes, and people made the same complains (modernization) when Paris was modernized in the mid 19th century. I like modern architecture but it does require excellence in manufacturing/construction technology. In many places (you are right) it looks bad because 3r world people live there.
Pedestrianised shopping precincts protect people from the mess of normal business with a huge toll. Our tolerance of normal life spirals downwards and exaggerates our perception of risk. & Ironically crime goes up!
I think Mr Smith was pointing to Vienna, Munich and Barcelona as examples of cities that hadn’t been drastically modernised. Munich of course was badly damaged in the war, as were parts of Vienna, but most of those cities were rebuilt faithfully according to the historic plan.
Have you been to Lviv? Like Prague, it survived World War II practically unscathed, and also got off lightly in Soviet times (it was part of Poland, of course, in the most iconoclastic era of Soviet Communism between the wars). It’s almost as lovely as Prague or Krakow, and doesn’t have anywhere near the tourist numbers. I celebrated Ukrainian independence day there back in 2013 – the neoclassical statues on the main square were dressed in Cossack shirts for the occasion, and the young men painted their cheeks with the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. This feels quite moving in retrospect, since it was just a few months before the Russians invaded eastern Ukraine.
I have East West Street on my bedside table, as yet unread.
It’s not only Habsburg Lemberg that survives, but also some marvellous remnants of Polish Lwow, such as the exquisite seventeenth-century Boim Chapel.
As for pluralism, well, yes, Stepan Bandera is held in rather high regard there. Ironically, having not been Ukrainian until very recently, it’s now the country’s most nationalistic city.
Drop me a line if you do plan a trip to that part of the world; I’m happy to recommend some of my other favourite places in Western Ukraine.
I should say it’s not really that I object to modern architecture, though much of it is not to my taste; rather, it’s that I hate the destruction of the old. If a new town was being built, I wouldn’t expect it to imitate historic forms.
I remember my parents taking me for lunch there back in the 80s too. Used to live in Peterborough back then and we’d go for family drives all around the countryside.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Sounds great – except for the BBC types crawling all over the place. Why can’t they film all their crap costume dramas on a purpose built costume drama set somewhere a long way from all the rest of us?
Martin Adams
3 years ago
Great! The description of the contrasts with nearby Peterborough is a hoot!
Sadly no real mention of Peterborough’s magnificent Norman/Gothic Cathedral, with its stunning West Front, amongst the finest in Europe.
The fine market place, with its late 17th century Guildhall also gives one a ghostly vision of how it must have rivalled Stamford, before the arrival of the Great Northern Railway in the 1850’s.The replacement of oolitic (Barnack?) limestone by brick was an aesthetic disaster.
All true! I had not before thought of the impact of brick. I suspect you’re right about how it must have rivalled Stamford. There’s quite a lot of food for thought in those comments about brick, stone and aesthetic disasters.
The Cathedral was originally a great Benedictine Abbey, one only six saved at the Dissolution by be being, as we would say, ‘re-booted’ as a Secular Cathedral.
To the immediate west of the Cathedral, the old market square is infinitely larger and more impressive that either Red Lion Square or Sheep Market in Stamford, despite the hideous brick!
Albert Kensington
3 years ago
I was interested in the fact,noted when visiting Stamford, that the town council had sought, encouraged and fostered the development of an electrical engineering factory around the beginning of the C20th. They did this to bring higher paid manufacturing jobs to the town to complement the agricultural sector – always a poor payer. This struck me as an excellent interventionist initiative,, practical and undogmatic – more than you can say for national economic policy, especially from 1980 onward, kow towing to the monstrous graven image with feet of clay that is the City of London. Maybe we should have stuck with mercantilism, works for the Chinese
“That’s if we get things right, and our small country can hold its communities together”
Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oxford, Huddersfield English towns and cities afflicted by a hideous plague which would shame the Dark Ages – pretty obvious that “we” have already got things disasterously wrong, there is little enough now to hold our small country together. Years ago it was a proud boast that people would say “this is a free county” with the strong message, “I’ll say what I like and tough if you object to it.”. No longer, “cohesion” is enforced with hurty tweets thought crime hate speech coercion. The more the diversity, increasing at a rapid pace, the less the vanishing centre will hold, the more things will fall apart. As for racism mentioned re Peterborough – two words, Ross Parker, that’s where the Dark Age re-run threat comes from
Yes, the slaughter of Ross Parker was a truly revolting killing, but not quite the harbinger of things to come.
It is nearly twenty years since that dreadful day, and yet the apocalyptic nightmare foretold by that brilliant classicist Enoch Powell has yet to arrive. But arrive it will, as surely as night follows day. Are we prepared? Off course not!
Fair point about harbinger of things to come. The reason I mentioned Ross Parker is that the author apparently fears the return of the dark ghouls of the past, and she referred to racism in Peterborough. She seems to fear the indigenous population turning on immigrants. So I felt at pains to mention the victim of this atrocious racist murder in Peterborough.
Of course there are clear more proximate harbingers to hand – the terror attacks, the tens of thousands of wannabe jihadis on MI5′ lists
And above all the rape gang scouring of the shire, here’s the latest example which the Guardian and the BBC will unfailingly swerve
I think you’re right. BLM certainly seems up for a fight.
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago
Nothing wrong with stuck in the past; other cities (regions) had to be the motors of economic modernization.
Roger Davis
3 years ago
An excellent survey of Stamford’s heritage, Mary, but did you really need to denigrate Peterborough in order to celebrate Stamford? In this respect you seem to totally ignore UnHerd’s mission statement: “UnHerd aims to do two things: to push back against the herd mentality with new and bold thinking, and to provide a platform for otherwise unheard ideas, people and places.”
The “herd mentality” amongst the literati certainly makes it easy for authors to give Peterborough a good kicking, not least because of the “worst place to live” soubriquet resulting from a ludicrous joke survey.
Just as in Stamford, we in Peterborough have a thriving Civic Society, plus, of course a very impressive Cathedral and one of Britain’s finest country parks. We must plead guilty to possessing a very efficient parkway system enabling residents and visitors to get around easily without causing congestion and pollution around our housing areas and city centre. If you visit again, you will find that the “particularly unattractive multi storey car park” you mention has in fact been demolished.
Racism? Given that we are a very diverse bunch, we seem to have managed reasonably well so far without either race riots or grooming scandals.
We do, of course, have our share of problems, most of all perhaps in terms of standards of education, an issue that is recognised and being tackled, not hidden away.
Finally, we do have some impressive stately homes, including one that forms the centrepiece of your article. Yes, that’s right, Burghley House. It’s situated over the border in Peterborough, not in Stamford at all!
Ahem, Burghley House and Park are more than a dozen miles from Peterborough, only a 20 minute stroll from Stamford.
Peterborough’s postal code extends well outside its borders. I had a similar issue when I had a Stevenage code, despite living in a smallish village nowhere near it.
OK stop right there. None of the article is worth reading. Why ? Because reasoned argument is one thing and ‘values’ are another. I have my own values already, if I am looking to test and change them I will refer to someone who does not use provocative language.
Oh, give Sarah a break, Lee. It seems most journos seem they need to put a drive-by slander of the Donald into their copy just to show that they are on the side of the angels. I don’t follow American politics closely, so I was vaguely aware that Phyllis Schlafly was opposed to the ERA. I didn’t know that her big consuming interest was actually foreign affairs and opposing the feminists was just a sideline for her that consumed more and more of her time. If that’s really true. Anyway, even if it isn’t, it opens up an interesting debate. Just treat comments that exhibit Trump Derangement Syndrome from journos writing on other topics as background noise. It’s much easier to keep one’s sanity that way.
A.N. Other
3 years ago
I love in a village just outside Stamford and can be in Peterborough almost as quickly as it is all country roads. I visit both often.
Some interesting stuff here but falls It over with the snide points about Peterborough and by giving the impression Stamford is a museum piece preserved in aspic.
Stamford is a prosperous, modern, thriving town full of independent shops, a superb weekly market, and great places to eat and drink. With amazing countryside on the doorstep. And many magnificent old buildings.
I scratched my head the first time I saw the “survey” about worst place to live. Then I looked at its origins. A site that claims 80,000 survey participants. Have a look at ILiveHere site. Basically, a site that gets people to say everywhere is a $hit hole. Troll central, full of hatred and bile. My view – having travelled all over England and having lived in Lancashire and Yorkshire for 40 years – is that Peterborough is Ok. Some tough areas. Some beautiful areas. And miles off being worst.
And then she glibly says it is racist! Oh dear. There is a huge Pakistani, East European and Portuguese population amongst others. Despite that I would say not particularly better or worse than anywhere else. We have integration issues in the UK. Shame we can’t talk about it. But perhaps I missed the race riots?
Mary, if you read this can you provide your evidence? Have you even been to Peterborough? (Passing through on the East Coast Main Line does not count).
And Peterborough “notable chiefly for being home to the UK Passport Office….”. Eh? Never heard of Peterborough Cathedral? Have a look at where it stands as rated by the critics of these things.
As bad is the central argument about rejection of the main railway line being the reason for Peterborough’s dramatic growth and Stamford’s supposed atrophy. Peterborough was chosen as a new town in 1967 when the population was around 80,000. That is why it is now 200,000.
The history stuff you can get from books. The other stuff requires some shoe leather. I think Mary may have been in lockdown when she wrote this.
Lindsay Gatward
3 years ago
Really interesting read. I bet the village of Lindfield north of Haywards Heath could rival it for listed buildings per person but probably not such exciting virile Viking action. Love the ‘happy story of integration’ and bet this is the unrecognised happenstance between the recorded historic moments of action and is what really makes us what we are?
Lindfield has been wrecked by its proximity to H.Heath. Outside the home counties, thankfully there are no H.Heaths.
Jim Cooper
3 years ago
Obviously, different women want liberation from different oppressions. As a result they’ve been “liberated” from the imperfect freedoms they enjoyed pre-feminism And imprisoned in the dual/triple burdens of worker, homemaker and amateur porn star. Well done feminists
David Morley
3 years ago
Stamford is also pretty posh. You only have to look at some of the shops in the town centre. I believe that pre Second World War it was the only town in Britain to have an actual nazi town council (can’t remember my source, so please check).
My mother grew up in Stamford, and I’ve visited regularly since I was a child. Another lesson that might be learned from Stamford and the past? The lovely pre war council houses where my mother grew up – in the days before crazed housing markets and high rise broken down “machines for living”.
Fabulous market, some really nice cafes, the meadows, kingfishers on the welland if you are lucky, and burghley house and grounds. Oh and a surprisingly good local Shakespeare company. Well worth visiting. Preserved in aspic, and can’t really be used as a model for the present – but perhaps there are lessons to be learned about how to create attractive surroundings.
Plus some lessons on what not to do – like the church turned into an ugly row of shops!
Christopher Barclay
3 years ago
The Charlton’s father was given the chance to change shift so that he could watch the match. He chose to work. Difficult to know for sure what were his motivations. However a desire to send a message to his World Cup winning sons that they were still subordinate to him may have been one.
iambetsytrotwood
3 years ago
Ever bigger, faster roads and roundabouts have wrecked the British countryside incl its towns and villages, hamlets and farms. It’s just as Larkin descibes in “Going going”. We need decent rail & less vehicles. The uk is now stuffed full of severed communities with distinctiveness seen as a moral outrage. This is seen in the intolerance of difference on the ground, everywhere.
David Gould
3 years ago
Think you must have had you jimjammies & rose tints on Mary, Stamford is changing . Ok it is stuck with four streets mainly full of old out of date pokey buildings . Try getting about the pedestrianised areas with crutches and one leg tied up out the way .
Blackstones closed and became retail shopping area with half a dozen nationals taking up the occupancies . The George pub /hotel is OK once in a while but the pub a bit further up the hill on the opposite side of the road going to the A1 was truly gopping. Sticky carpets & tables with bits of food on the table cloths . The old water mill out on the Deepings road might have become a decent multi occupancy dwelling place with time . I uderstood that Candlesticks restaurant closed because of lack of business
The local hospital was straight out of Dr Finlay’s Case book era, in the 1990’s I had surgery in there … has it changed for the better ?
The only thing I recognise the older part of Stamford for is the overspill of financially secure early retirees mainly from London , Peterborough & Leicester. Though there used to be a pub called ” The hole in the wall ” where the odd lock in took place every blue moon if you were fortunate , is it still there ?
scoobydoobz69
3 years ago
I think you need to check some of your facts! Stamford is somewhat larger than 2 square miles I can assure you & it hasn’t decided to stick in the 60’s but has kept its charm & multi storey car parks at bay because TRUE Stamfordians stick together & vote for the better of their community rather than money!
Peter B
1 year ago
Minor quibble: Melton Mowbray is mercifully well off the motorways (and not in Lincolnshire).
Very happy to be living outside “London’s blast radius”. A great phrase.
Jonathan Bagley
3 years ago
“…roadside cafes get more eccentric.” Live music – duelling banjos.
Hopefully it’s a reaction against anodyne town planning, business rates and urban infrastructure and ever wider, harder roads. Trouble is, roadside cafes do nothing to integrate communities. They are just punk fringes.
Stamford was en route to my Vale of Belvoir cottage back in the 1980s. I even had a tryst with a lady in The George, though I drove a smarter set of wheels than the Mini in your picture.
It’s a bit unfair though to talk of Stamford ‘retreating’ in the 1960s. I reckon that the town’s leaders instead chose to ignore the vile planners and architects who were then so busy despoiling many of our towns and cities.
Stamford’s retreat became an investment in the future, so the place today remains wholesome to live and visit.
“The vile planners and architects who were then so busy despoiling our towns and cities.” What happened to so many of the historic city centres of Europe and Asia in the 1960s was probably the greatest cultural crime ever committed in time of peace.
Modernization happened, like it or not.
Vienna and Munich are very pretty cities. As is Barcelona.
But two wars that damaged or gutted those cities, almost within living memory, might be the reason for modernization there.
Go look at pretty Paris, further out and their capitulation that saved the city from destruction has some quite odious areas.
Planning is not just the buildings and style. It is who lives where and how they live too.
Nowhere is perfect. But careful ignoring of modernizers can keep somewhere looking quite good.
Yes, and people made the same complains (modernization) when Paris was modernized in the mid 19th century.
I like modern architecture but it does require excellence in manufacturing/construction technology.
In many places (you are right) it looks bad because 3r world people live there.
It severs communities.
Pedestrianised shopping precincts protect people from the mess of normal business with a huge toll. Our tolerance of normal life spirals downwards and exaggerates our perception of risk. & Ironically crime goes up!
I think Mr Smith was pointing to Vienna, Munich and Barcelona as examples of cities that hadn’t been drastically modernised. Munich of course was badly damaged in the war, as were parts of Vienna, but most of those cities were rebuilt faithfully according to the historic plan.
But none are as pretty as Prague,
an absolute jewel, that has everything.
Have you been to Lviv? Like Prague, it survived World War II practically unscathed, and also got off lightly in Soviet times (it was part of Poland, of course, in the most iconoclastic era of Soviet Communism between the wars). It’s almost as lovely as Prague or Krakow, and doesn’t have anywhere near the tourist numbers. I celebrated Ukrainian independence day there back in 2013 – the neoclassical statues on the main square were dressed in Cossack shirts for the occasion, and the young men painted their cheeks with the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. This feels quite moving in retrospect, since it was just a few months before the Russians invaded eastern Ukraine.
No I haven’t, thank you for the recommendation. I have been meaning to go ever since reading Sand’s, East West Street.
I gather it is so pluralistic that it even allows devotees of a former Ukrainian unit of the Waffen SS to march through the streets.
I am very glad to hear that so much of Austro-Hungarian Lemberg survives. A miracle really, given the last hundred years
I have East West Street on my bedside table, as yet unread.
It’s not only Habsburg Lemberg that survives, but also some marvellous remnants of Polish Lwow, such as the exquisite seventeenth-century Boim Chapel.
As for pluralism, well, yes, Stepan Bandera is held in rather high regard there. Ironically, having not been Ukrainian until very recently, it’s now the country’s most nationalistic city.
Drop me a line if you do plan a trip to that part of the world; I’m happy to recommend some of my other favourite places in Western Ukraine.
Can we think about Blighty please?
Well we were chatting about the merits of Stamford versus Peterborough, so what in particular would you wish to hear about?
I should say it’s not really that I object to modern architecture, though much of it is not to my taste; rather, it’s that I hate the destruction of the old. If a new town was being built, I wouldn’t expect it to imitate historic forms.
In England’s case not quite as bad as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The same was also true in wee little Scotland.
I remember my parents taking me for lunch there back in the 80s too. Used to live in Peterborough back then and we’d go for family drives all around the countryside.
Sounds great – except for the BBC types crawling all over the place. Why can’t they film all their crap costume dramas on a purpose built costume drama set somewhere a long way from all the rest of us?
Great! The description of the contrasts with nearby Peterborough is a hoot!
Sadly no real mention of Peterborough’s magnificent Norman/Gothic Cathedral, with its stunning West Front, amongst the finest in Europe.
The fine market place, with its late 17th century Guildhall also gives one a ghostly vision of how it must have rivalled Stamford, before the arrival of the Great Northern Railway in the 1850’s.The replacement of oolitic (Barnack?) limestone by brick was an aesthetic disaster.
All true! I had not before thought of the impact of brick. I suspect you’re right about how it must have rivalled Stamford. There’s quite a lot of food for thought in those comments about brick, stone and aesthetic disasters.
The Cathedral was originally a great Benedictine Abbey, one only six saved at the Dissolution by be being, as we would say, ‘re-booted’ as a Secular Cathedral.
To the immediate west of the Cathedral, the old market square is infinitely larger and more impressive that either Red Lion Square or Sheep Market in Stamford, despite the hideous brick!
I was interested in the fact,noted when visiting Stamford, that the town council had sought, encouraged and fostered the development of an electrical engineering factory around the beginning of the C20th. They did this to bring higher paid manufacturing jobs to the town to complement the agricultural sector – always a poor payer. This struck me as an excellent interventionist initiative,, practical and undogmatic – more than you can say for national economic policy, especially from 1980 onward, kow towing to the monstrous graven image with feet of clay that is the City of London. Maybe we should have stuck with mercantilism, works for the Chinese
“That’s if we get things right, and our small country can hold its communities together”
Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oxford, Huddersfield English towns and cities afflicted by a hideous plague which would shame the Dark Ages – pretty obvious that “we” have already got things disasterously wrong, there is little enough now to hold our small country together. Years ago it was a proud boast that people would say “this is a free county” with the strong message, “I’ll say what I like and tough if you object to it.”. No longer, “cohesion” is enforced with hurty tweets thought crime hate speech coercion. The more the diversity, increasing at a rapid pace, the less the vanishing centre will hold, the more things will fall apart. As for racism mentioned re Peterborough – two words, Ross Parker, that’s where the Dark Age re-run threat comes from
Yes, the slaughter of Ross Parker was a truly revolting killing, but not quite the harbinger of things to come.
It is nearly twenty years since that dreadful day, and yet the apocalyptic nightmare foretold by that brilliant classicist Enoch Powell has yet to arrive. But arrive it will, as surely as night follows day. Are we prepared? Off course not!
Fair point about harbinger of things to come. The reason I mentioned Ross Parker is that the author apparently fears the return of the dark ghouls of the past, and she referred to racism in Peterborough. She seems to fear the indigenous population turning on immigrants. So I felt at pains to mention the victim of this atrocious racist murder in Peterborough.
Of course there are clear more proximate harbingers to hand – the terror attacks, the tens of thousands of wannabe jihadis on MI5′ lists
And above all the rape gang scouring of the shire, here’s the latest example which the Guardian and the BBC will unfailingly swerve
https://www.keighleyonline….
I think you’re right. BLM certainly seems up for a fight.
Nothing wrong with stuck in the past; other cities (regions) had to be the motors of economic modernization.
An excellent survey of Stamford’s heritage, Mary, but did you really need to denigrate Peterborough in order to celebrate Stamford? In this respect you seem to totally ignore UnHerd’s mission statement: “UnHerd aims to do two things: to push back against the herd mentality with new and bold thinking, and to provide a platform for otherwise unheard ideas, people and places.”
The “herd mentality” amongst the literati certainly makes it easy for authors to give Peterborough a good kicking, not least because of the “worst place to live” soubriquet resulting from a ludicrous joke survey.
Just as in Stamford, we in Peterborough have a thriving Civic Society, plus, of course a very impressive Cathedral and one of Britain’s finest country parks. We must plead guilty to possessing a very efficient parkway system enabling residents and visitors to get around easily without causing congestion and pollution around our housing areas and city centre. If you visit again, you will find that the “particularly unattractive multi storey car park” you mention has in fact been demolished.
Racism? Given that we are a very diverse bunch, we seem to have managed reasonably well so far without either race riots or grooming scandals.
We do, of course, have our share of problems, most of all perhaps in terms of standards of education, an issue that is recognised and being tackled, not hidden away.
Finally, we do have some impressive stately homes, including one that forms the centrepiece of your article. Yes, that’s right, Burghley House. It’s situated over the border in Peterborough, not in Stamford at all!
You voted Labour tho in the by-election just before the G. Election. That put me off everything except your cathedral.
“Everything except your cathedral? So, Burghley House included then?
Ahem, Burghley House and Park are more than a dozen miles from Peterborough, only a 20 minute stroll from Stamford.
Peterborough’s postal code extends well outside its borders. I had a similar issue when I had a Stevenage code, despite living in a smallish village nowhere near it.
In the course of that 20 minute stroll you cross over from Stamford (Lincs) into the historic Soke of Peterborough.
There can’t be that much wrong with the UK if people can find only postcode angst to obsess about.
True enough. Borders aye? Love the UK!
Very good article, thank you
‘a self-confessed groper…’
OK stop right there. None of the article is worth reading.
Why ? Because reasoned argument is one thing and ‘values’ are another.
I have my own values already, if I am looking to test and change them I will refer to someone who does not use provocative language.
Oh, give Sarah a break, Lee. It seems most journos seem they need to put a drive-by slander of the Donald into their copy just to show that they are on the side of the angels. I don’t follow American politics closely, so I was vaguely aware that Phyllis Schlafly was opposed to the ERA. I didn’t know that her big consuming interest was actually foreign affairs and opposing the feminists was just a sideline for her that consumed more and more of her time. If that’s really true. Anyway, even if it isn’t, it opens up an interesting debate. Just treat comments that exhibit Trump Derangement Syndrome from journos writing on other topics as background noise. It’s much easier to keep one’s sanity that way.
I love in a village just outside Stamford and can be in Peterborough almost as quickly as it is all country roads. I visit both often.
Some interesting stuff here but falls It over with the snide points about Peterborough and by giving the impression Stamford is a museum piece preserved in aspic.
Stamford is a prosperous, modern, thriving town full of independent shops, a superb weekly market, and great places to eat and drink. With amazing countryside on the doorstep. And many magnificent old buildings.
I scratched my head the first time I saw the “survey” about worst place to live. Then I looked at its origins. A site that claims 80,000 survey participants. Have a look at ILiveHere site. Basically, a site that gets people to say everywhere is a $hit hole. Troll central, full of hatred and bile. My view – having travelled all over England and having lived in Lancashire and Yorkshire for 40 years – is that Peterborough is Ok. Some tough areas. Some beautiful areas. And miles off being worst.
And then she glibly says it is racist! Oh dear. There is a huge Pakistani, East European and Portuguese population amongst others. Despite that I would say not particularly better or worse than anywhere else. We have integration issues in the UK. Shame we can’t talk about it. But perhaps I missed the race riots?
Mary, if you read this can you provide your evidence? Have you even been to Peterborough? (Passing through on the East Coast Main Line does not count).
And Peterborough “notable chiefly for being home to the UK Passport Office….”. Eh? Never heard of Peterborough Cathedral? Have a look at where it stands as rated by the critics of these things.
As bad is the central argument about rejection of the main railway line being the reason for Peterborough’s dramatic growth and Stamford’s supposed atrophy. Peterborough was chosen as a new town in 1967 when the population was around 80,000. That is why it is now 200,000.
The history stuff you can get from books. The other stuff requires some shoe leather. I think Mary may have been in lockdown when she wrote this.
Really interesting read. I bet the village of Lindfield north of Haywards Heath could rival it for listed buildings per person but probably not such exciting virile Viking action. Love the ‘happy story of integration’ and bet this is the unrecognised happenstance between the recorded historic moments of action and is what really makes us what we are?
Lindfield has been wrecked by its proximity to H.Heath. Outside the home counties, thankfully there are no H.Heaths.
Obviously, different women want liberation from different oppressions. As a result they’ve been “liberated” from the imperfect freedoms they enjoyed pre-feminism And imprisoned in the dual/triple burdens of worker, homemaker and amateur porn star. Well done feminists
Stamford is also pretty posh. You only have to look at some of the shops in the town centre. I believe that pre Second World War it was the only town in Britain to have an actual nazi town council (can’t remember my source, so please check).
My mother grew up in Stamford, and I’ve visited regularly since I was a child. Another lesson that might be learned from Stamford and the past? The lovely pre war council houses where my mother grew up – in the days before crazed housing markets and high rise broken down “machines for living”.
Fabulous market, some really nice cafes, the meadows, kingfishers on the welland if you are lucky, and burghley house and grounds. Oh and a surprisingly good local Shakespeare company. Well worth visiting. Preserved in aspic, and can’t really be used as a model for the present – but perhaps there are lessons to be learned about how to create attractive surroundings.
Plus some lessons on what not to do – like the church turned into an ugly row of shops!
The Charlton’s father was given the chance to change shift so that he could watch the match. He chose to work. Difficult to know for sure what were his motivations. However a desire to send a message to his World Cup winning sons that they were still subordinate to him may have been one.
Ever bigger, faster roads and roundabouts have wrecked the British countryside incl its towns and villages, hamlets and farms. It’s just as Larkin descibes in “Going going”. We need decent rail & less vehicles. The uk is now stuffed full of severed communities with distinctiveness seen as a moral outrage. This is seen in the intolerance of difference on the ground, everywhere.
Think you must have had you jimjammies & rose tints on Mary, Stamford is changing .
Ok it is stuck with four streets mainly full of old out of date pokey buildings . Try getting about the pedestrianised areas with crutches and one leg tied up out the way .
Blackstones closed and became retail shopping area with half a dozen nationals taking up the occupancies . The George pub /hotel is OK once in a while but the pub a bit further up the hill on the opposite side of the road going to the A1 was truly gopping. Sticky carpets & tables with bits of food on the table cloths .
The old water mill out on the Deepings road might have become a decent multi occupancy dwelling place with time .
I uderstood that Candlesticks restaurant closed because of lack of business
The local hospital was straight out of Dr Finlay’s Case book era, in the 1990’s I had surgery in there … has it changed for the better ?
The only thing I recognise the older part of Stamford for is the overspill of financially secure early retirees mainly from London , Peterborough & Leicester. Though there used to be a pub called ” The hole in the wall ” where the odd lock in took place every blue moon if you were fortunate , is it still there ?
I think you need to check some of your facts! Stamford is somewhat larger than 2 square miles I can assure you & it hasn’t decided to stick in the 60’s but has kept its charm & multi storey car parks at bay because TRUE Stamfordians stick together & vote for the better of their community rather than money!
Minor quibble: Melton Mowbray is mercifully well off the motorways (and not in Lincolnshire).
Very happy to be living outside “London’s blast radius”. A great phrase.
“…roadside cafes get more eccentric.” Live music – duelling banjos.
Hopefully it’s a reaction against anodyne town planning, business rates and urban infrastructure and ever wider, harder roads. Trouble is, roadside cafes do nothing to integrate communities. They are just punk fringes.