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Louth now and then

Work is under way to preserve and improve Louth’s ‘green’ areas

Words: David Robinson Pictures: David Robinson and John Smith

Last October an unprepossessing brick and pantile building on Church Street (formerly Malden Row) came up for sale. If you look carefully at the wall plaque over the door, you can just make out the words ‘OPEN AIR SWIMMING POOL’. For a number of people it evokes chilly memories.

To the left is a gaping hole once occupied by Dales’ sweetshop – very convenient for children after a swim. And to the right is a refurbished dwelling, formerly The Globe Inn (until 1950).

The key to understanding the history of these and adjoining buildings is a pit which once housed a waterwheel in the ground-floor of the entrance building to the swimming pool. It takes us on a fascinating journey back in time to the eighteenth century and beyond.

A short distance to the south is The Gatherums, an ancient trackway winding along the foot of the valley slope, now linking Church Street and Aswell Street. The first part of the name derives from the Danish ‘gata’, meaning a way. Issuing at the foot of the slope are two clear freshwater springs – St Helen’s which the Cistercian monks of Louth Park Abbey channelled into the Monks’ Dyke to supply their fishponds and the Aswell Spring. The flow of the latter was turned to industrial use in medieval times for fulling woollen cloth – that is treading or walking on the cloth in flowing water. The present nearby Queen Street was once called Walkergate.

By the late eighteenth century a mill dam had been built to create a head of water to drive a waterwheel. The mill pond would become a swimming pool; the tailrace ran down the open street (Maiden Row) and along Eastgate (then Watery Lane and within a few feet of where my house is now) and into the River Lud. As the town began to grow rapidly in the 1820s it was culverted. The undershot waterwheel powered a corn grinding mill.

Using directories, we can trace the millers and bakers through the nineteenth century: Thomas Paddison, William Farrow, Newby Atkinson, James Scarborough and his son William. By the mid-1870s William Scarborough had moved to the corn windmill on Horncastle Road, the mill dam was taken over by William East, brewer, for washing barrels, and the three-storey dwelling house part of the property was rented to shopkeeper Smith Sharpe.

Later shopkeepers were John Markham, Emma Crowston, and Alfred Dales from the 1930s. That was the building which had to be taken down as unsafe two years ago. Meanwhile, with the demise of brewing (the last firm was Soulby Sons & Winch), the mill dam was converted into a swimming pool in 1924 by George Bateson and run by his son Reginald and wife Ivy until 1955, when it was leased to Louth Borough Council and run by Ray Priestley. The pool had been opened by a swimming medal-winner and instructor ‘Professor’ Hobson Bocock of Mablethorpe.

Entrance from the street was up narrow wooden stairs, pay sixpence at the window on the right, and find a (basic) changing room. On the ground floor next to the waterwheel pit was a large, coke-fired boiler which heated the water for showers. Many people have childhood memories of being taken from school for swimming lessons and meeting the mixed smells of chlorine and boiler fumes. Coins were thrown into the pool to encourage youngsters to dive in the cold water for them. Any not retrieved were collected when the pool was drained for cleaning every fortnight. It was also regularly repainted – blue. During the Second World War the pool was used by troops stationed nearby, even when covered by ice in winter.

The pool finally closed in 1970 when the Borough Council built the present covered and heated facility near the Riverhead. The former mill dam was filled in and the only evidence is a blue line not covered in concrete. Most of the brewery became Allinson (& Wilcox) printing works, and they have now moved to purpose-built premises on the Fairfield Industrial Estate. The former maltings are now occupied by Waltham Tannery, which also owns the swimming pool site.

Let’s go back to The Gatherums, and Springside – so called because of the tightly packed terrace houses built either side of the pathway near the springs in the 1840s and 1850s. These disappeared a century later under slum clearance, leaving open grassy areas and a few trees, with the spring streams now underground. Although a useful pedestrian route into town, more recently the area had become neglected and subject to anti-social behaviour and graffiti.

Seven years ago a Gatherums and Springside Regeneration Group (now a registered charity) was formed to improve the quality of the pathway, not least for wheelchairs, to provide a pleasant recreational area with seating, and to celebrate the history of the area which is crossed by the Greenwich Meridian, the line from which world time is measured.

Working with Groundwork Lincolnshire, and assisted by East Lindsey District Council which owns most of the land, and Louth Town Council, events and consultations were undertaken to publicise the project and seek opinions about the design of improvements. One of the difficulties was the need to remove two trees, one to enable disabled access from the adjoining car park and the other because of its poor condition. Grant funding was secured and by last autumn, work on the main part was complete, including seating and the Meridian feature. The area is now enjoyed by people who would not have used it before, and the trustees, ably led by Janet Hawson, can feel pleased with the success of the project.

However, that was only stage one; the eastern section where the land is owned by the district council. The western section, still a rough track, though Aswell Hole which floods in wet weather, and up the ‘Horse Steps’ to Aswell Street, has the problem of there being no known ownership of the footway. The trustees are now seeking a solution, or solutions, before the planned improvement works can be carried out. The ‘Horse Steps’ are narrow York stone slaps set in the cobbles to assist horses negotiating the steep incline from Aswell Hill.

At the other end of town is our country park – Hubbard’s Hills, the history of which and plans for the future of I wrote about in the last Talk of the Town (December 2005). Since then, and bearing in mind the forthcoming centenary in August this year of the opening of the park, the district council has drawn up plans for remedial improvement works, pending consideration of longer term management plans. Perhaps not unexpectedly, some of the short-term plans sparked concerns that the naturalness of the area would be spoiled. Maintenance is essential, not least tree management, as implied in the original conveyance – ‘that the natural beauty of the property and its rural character is to be forever maintained’. Concern was that any work should ‘tread lightly’. The works to be carried out this year involve improved disabled access at the town end, repair of steps and rail on the valley side to the south end, path improvements particularly at eroded areas on the top path and the Devil’s Walk, restoration of the Pahud Memorial, and treatment of the much-used children’s play area by the river. First proposals for the latter caused most concern during the public consultations. Health and Safety require a new style of handrail by the traditional stepping stones (where has the facility for adventure gone?), but the riverbank will now receive only soft treatment to maintain optimum naturalness.

The river which flows through the valley is an important chalk stream within the Wolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and is part of a project to enhance the quality and wildlife value of chalk streams being undertaken by the Wolds Countryside Service which is based in Louth. Incidentally, a book about the history of Hubbard’s Hills is planned for publication by Louth Museum in August.

In the Museum library is a small booklet describing aspects of Old Louth, written by the then curator, J W White, in 1960, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the museum. In it is a section about the Louth Anacreontic Society. Founded in 1804 by Adam Eve, mercer and carpet-marker who started the still extant Eve & Ranshaw house of fashion, it was limited to twenty-one members, all of whom had to be traders. They met every Saturday evening at the Fleece Inn, where the sole business was to place bets on a matter of small consequence. The stake was a bottle of wine, the loser to pay the rest to drink his health.

Careful records were kept, and one in 1852, when Union Street had just been made, noted that ‘Mr Lundie (plumber, Walkergate) bets Mr Jackson (auctioneer), one bottle of wine that the distance from the Union Workhouse gates is nearer to the Spout Bridge by the new road and Grays Road than by going down the hill (Broadbank)’. Mr Lundie lost. It doesn’t record who paced it out, but you can verify it: the gates are now the entrance to Louth Hospital and there is still a bridge over the Lud at Spout Yard.

The other green open space in Louth is known as the Old Cem. On the north side of the river, it is the site of Louth’s first church, St Mary’s and its graveyard. The building is long gone, without trace, but the graveyard continued to be used. So much so in fact that by the nineteenth century former interments were being dug up, and bones put into a pit, to make room for new burials. It is said that the ghostly sound of the sexton’s squeaky wheelbarrow full of bones can still be heard. The Old Cem was finally superseded by the public cemetery on London Road in 1855.

In recent years the gravestones were moved and stacked in ranks (much to the frustration of family historians) to create an open grassy area with a footpath across. Fortunately, a record was made of some of the epitaphs – here are a couple:

‘In this place are deposited the remains of Thomas Mason Surgeon who departed this life August 5th 1815 aged 25

Stranger or friend, here stop and shed thy tears over the tomb of departed usefulness: his sun of life had scarcely beamed into meridian splendour, and was shedding its peculiarly vivifying influence around ’ere it was obscured by a dark and fearful cloud. Alas it has set prematurely in the grave, Reader, let this impress thee with the uncertainty of human life: depart then and improve the short space thou has left in doing all the good thou canst’.

‘In memory of Joseph Dawson who departed this life September 16th 1818 aged 74 years

My sledge and hammer lie declin’d

My bellows too have lost their wind

My fires extinct, my forge decayed

My vice is in the dust all laid

My coal is spent, my iron gone

My nails are drove, my work is done

My fire dry’d corpse lies here at rest

My soul smoke-like soars to the blest’.

They don’t write them like that any more.