Set In Stone

Today we're setting our course for the village of Barnack in that curious geographical anomaly known as the Soke of Peterborough. This small area was once part of Northamptonshire, but in many ways independent. Then in 1888 it became a separate county. Later it was amalgamated with Huntingdonshire till that county, and the Soke, became part of Cambridgeshire. No wonder Bing Maps is confused enough to think that Barnack's in Lincolnshire!

Barnack and its neighbouring villages certainly don't look like part of Cambridgeshire. Lets have a leisurely wander around on this unusually warm day. 

Most of the buildings here are constructed of honey-coloured stone. This remote corner of Cambridgeshire is one of the very few places in the county that has any good building-stone and it's been used (and re-used) over the centuries so that many houses display a complicated history to the inquisitive passer-by. The house above dates back, in part, to the 13th or 14th centuries. It was altered in the 16th century. It's roof by the way, like many around here, is made of Collyweston Stone, quarried just a few miles away. It readily splits into thin sheets, a bit like slate.

Many farm buildings use the same materials, like this handsome dovecote that stands in a field grazed by horses.

Well, a horse and a pony anyway, both desperately seeking out a bit of shade from the sun.

There are even stone walls around some fields and farms, something you won't find anywhere else in Cambridgeshire. A little tuft of Stonecrop has made a home for itself in one of the cracks.

The stone, Barnack Rag, takes its name from the village and, although it is used locally for all kinds of mundane structures, it is one of the most prestigious building materials this country has. It was used in building both Peterborough and Ely Cathedrals, as well as the many great abbeys of the Fens - Ely, Thorney, Ramsey, Crowland. When the life of the abbeys was brought to an abrupt end by Henry VIII, much of the fabric of those great buildings was re-purposed for the construction of the Cambridge colleges.

You could easily study the geology of the British Isles by just looking at the building materials used in old cottages and farm buildings. Although good stone was moved long distances to make churches, mansions and large public buildings, the common people always used whatever was at hand locally.

Thatch is used here and there. This cottage was home for many years to the artist Wilfrid Wood, famous for his intricate townscapes and a series of posters for the London Underground.

And here's the Wesleyan Chapel dating from 1898. It looks to me as though this is now a private house.

But how do you account for this? It appears to be some sort of old church window which has found its way to being part of a barn or stable. It says much about the historical richness of the village that neither this, nor the chapel above merit any mention in the records of listed buildings.

This house is included, of course. It was once a (very grand) vicarage, but is now known as Kingsley House. Charles Kingsley, author of The Water Babies, spent his childhood within these imposing walls.

I find myself more captivated by the more modest dwellings which, far from making a bold statement, whisper secrets and conundrums into the ear of those willing to linger in their presence. When did they swap to using pantiles on the roofs? Presumably when the quarries at Collyweston ceased operating. And why is this little house built at such an odd angle to the road? I really have no idea!

The garden flowers are set off beautifully by the colour of the stone walls and also make me loiter along my way.

Here someone has had built, relatively recently I think, their dream of what an English country cottage should look like. Not all that close to the real thing, but with a certain Wow-factor nevertheless. And you should see what they've done with their front hedge....

I love it, though I wouldn't want the job of keeping it trimmed. But we'll end our perambulation of the village with another of those idiosyncratic old houses that seems to have grown out of the very ground on which it stands - which in a way it has, being constructed of such local stone.....

The observant and insightful reader will have noticed the very top of a church spire appearing above the trees and will have guessed where I might be heading next.

Take care.