The Tenants of Walderam Hall By Avril Lumley Prior

In the eastern corner of Northborough parish on a headland between the medieval courses of the Welland and Follies Rivers lies an enigmatic collection of earthworks and a so-called pack-horse bridge, which represents all that remains above ground of Walderam Hall (Figure 1).  Formerly in Maxey parish, Northamptonshire, and strategically positioned close to the river-crossing of the old road to the Deepings, the hall has had an exciting and varied history which may be traced back as far as the twelfth-century through documentary and cartographical evidence.  

The moated site of the Walderam Hall, or rather the confluence of the Welland and Follies, is recorded as a monastic boundary point in ‘King Wufhere’s land grant to Peterborough Abbey of 664’, now considered to be an early twelfth-century forgery based on earlier authentic material.  The estate remained Peterborough’s possession after the Norman Conquest.  Richard I’s charter of 1189 confirms that Maxey, Northborough, Etton and Thurlby [Lincolnshire] were leased by Abbot Benedict of Peterborough to Geoffrey de la Mare in return for the service of three knights.

However, the earliest reference to a building does not appear until c. 1274, when Peter de la Mare, lord of the manor of Northborough, and Joanna Wake of Deeping were summoned to Edward I’s court for neglecting to pay the rent on a fishery that they had been running for over twenty years between Lemne windmill [near the Crowland boundary?] and Walraund Hall.  It is extremely unlikely that Peter lived on site, since Northborough manor house would have made a far more imposing residence.  Indeed, Sir Frank Stenton speculated that Walderam Hall was associated with Walleron [Walroun], son of Ralph of Helpston, who was active in the area between 1177 and 1189 and whose descendents farmed in Glinton during the fourteenth century.  The outcome of Peter’s and Joanna’s case is unclear.  Perhaps, they merely escaped with a fine, for when Peter accidentally drowned in 1282 while campaigning with Edward in Wales, his son, Geoffrey, became lord of the manor.

By the early-fourteenth century the abbot of Crowland was conducting a ferry service between Walderam Hall and his monastery, mainly patronised by pilgrims who probably had paid homage to St. Pega at St. Bartholomew’s chapel [‘Peakirk Hermitage’] before progressing to the shrines of St. Guthlac and Waltheof at Crowland and thence into Norfolk.  In 1330, Abbot Henry’s ferrymen were licensed to extract one penny from locals and two pence from strangers per journey but were allowed to triple the fare in ‘in stormy and tempestuous’ weather.  Furthermore, a memorandum relating to the manor of Maxey from the reign of Edward VI (1547-53) discloses that until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Edward’s father, Henry VIII, in 1539, ‘the farme at Waldranhall was an Inne and sometime greatly frequented by Pylgrimes passing to Walsingham’.

Although Peterborough Abbey had enjoyed the right of toll along the Welland from Stamford to Crowland since the late-tenth century, the earliest known reference to a toll bar appears in Elizabeth I’s Exchequer Roll for 1580.  This is corroborated by John Hexham’s ‘Map of the Fenland between Peterborough and Wisbech’ of c. 1590 which shows a ‘barre’, adjacent to the hall (Figure 2).

Walderam Hall’s location next to a crossing-place on the River Welland also was significant. A rental of 1512/3 informs us that Nicholas Baxter paid £4 for Walderam Hall to the bailiff of the manor of Maxey with an additional five shillings for the right to charge toll at the ‘crossing place for travellers with merchandise from the country to the market of Deeping with carts and horses’.  Thus, it appears that, during the late-sixteenth century at least, the toll applied to both road and river traffic.  The line of the road is clearly visible on aerial photographs and is shown on the 1900 edition of the Ordnance Survey map.   Although overgrown, it still may be traced at ground level as travelling from the hall in a northerly direction parallel with a drainage ditch as far as the twentieth-century reconstruction of an earlier stone-based ‘pack-horse’ bridge, after which it continues northwards towards the Welland, disappearing beneath the undergrowth.  The site of the river-crossing possibly was obliterated during the construction of the Peterborough to Spalding Great Northern Railway line in 1878, though it is feasible that the river was forded in the shallows below the railway bridge.

It seems that the hall and toll and the fishery functioned as separate entities during the reign of Henry VII (1485-1509), when Robert Hochyn paid an annual rent of 33s 4d to set his traps ‘between Walderam hall and the cross on le Edye [‘Kennulph’s Cross’], there in the Welland’, a stretch of water roughly corresponding with that covered by Peter de la Mare’s and Joanna Wake’s illicit enterprise.  However, a survey of monastic assets compiled after at the behest of Henry VIII in 1534/5, states that John Jonys leased the hall, toll, fishery and farm from the abbot of Peterborough for £6. 4s. 9d. per annum.  A decade later, Edward VI granted all four on a 21-year lease to David Vincent of Pilsgate.  In 1561, the estate including pasture lands across the Welland in East Deeping [Deeping St. James], Lincolnshire, known as the Waldram Parks, was bestowed by Elizabeth I upon her favourite, Sir William Cecil, whose descendent the Earl of Exeter, surrendered it to the Fitzwilliams of Milton during the seventeenth century.  The Maxey Parish Register records that their tenants included the Deepings family during the 1550s and the Hicklings, who also ran a ferry service, throughout the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth centuries.

Walderam Hall’s importance declined after 1651 when a bridge was constructed to carry the Deeping St. James road over the Welland.  The river, navigable as far as Stamford, continued to be busy and in 1664 Walderam Hall became one of the approved landing-places for horse-drawn boats.  By the end of the seventeenth century, the house was in a dire condition with its cellars and bowling green flooding on a regular basis during the winter months, exacerbated by the accumulation of rubbish blocking the drains and ditches.  The Fitzwilliam Correspondence, letters between Lord Fitzwilliam (Third Barron and later Earl Fitzwilliam) and his steward, Francis Guybon, divulge that by April 1705 plans already were underway up to reconstruct the farmhouse.  It was to be rebuilt in stone, with plaster floors to the upper storey and, against his lordship’s better judgement, a roof thatched with reed rather than tiled with slate.  Nevertheless, mindful of the expense, Fitzwilliam instructed his steward ‘to build the house strong and well, but not better than the tenant needs’.

Despite Fitzwilliam’s misgivings that the ‘fenny, moory soil’ would not support a heavy stone structure, Walderam Hall survived until the mid-twentieth century with some renovations.  A sketch made in 1714 shows a stone-walled house almost identical to one that appears in a photograph taken during the 1947 floods (Figures 3, 4).  Shortly afterwards, the building was demolished and the materials transported to Market Deeping, whilst the outbuildings remained until the 1950s.  Fortunately, Mrs Edie Merill, who spent an idyllic 1920s childhood at Walderam Hall, recalled her home in an interview with Deepings historian, Dorothea Price.  Edie remembered it as ‘a lovely old stone-built farmhouse with a red pantile roof’ and an orchard, garden and farmyard at the back, a layout consistent with that described on the 1900 Ordnance Survey Map.  The building appears to have been spacious, comprising a huge kitchen with an open fire over which dangled a large cooking pot, as well as a pantry, living room downstairs and five bedrooms upstairs, three at the front and two at the back.

Medieval fishery, ferry point, pilgrims’ hostelry next to bustling thoroughfare and navigable river, toll-keeper’s house, farm and finally a beloved family home, the Walderam Hall complex must have been a hive of activity throughout seven centuries.  How tragic that a building with such a remarkable past should virtually be erased from the landscape!  The transcript of Edie’s recollections, faded photographs and ‘living memories’ are vital to prevent Walderam Hall from being lost to us for ever.  I wonder if any of our readers have their own reminiscences or anecdotes that they would like to add to my potted history. If so, please leave a ‘comment’ on this article.