Last week, my parents and I took a trip to Horncastle, a small Lincolnshire town, known as ‘the gateway to the wolds’. Originally a Roman town, a little Roman wall still exists inside the local library. It’s also located on the smallest river in England.
In the eighteenth century, Horncastle was famous for its horse fair, with the phrase ‘Horncastle for horses’ being a common one in the horsey set. The fair was started in 1229 and continued until 1948. They told pit ponies, Lincolnshire Blacks - which became shire horses, and trotters for cabs. The 1839 Grand National winner, Lottery, was bought at the fair and horses could be sold for up to £600.
As a result, the town itself is full of pretty Georgian buildings, many of them former inns and stables. Like a lot of Lincolnshire, it had faded from its glory days, and while many of the buildings are picturesque, many are also a bit shabby. It’s become known as a centre of antique shops, and although I didn’t partake in any antiques, I did enjoy the second-hand book shops on offer, and my parents were very polite to wait for me while I looked around.
We principally went for an exhibition about William Marwood, although we’d missed the larger, temporary exhibition and saw only the smaller permanent one. Marwood was a cobbler a Methodist lay preacher and a hangman. He was the one who developed the ‘long drop’ method of hanging, by creating mathematical tables of heights and weights to determine the best way of snapping a person’s neck while hanging, without popping their head clean off (which did happen at earlier attempts at a long drop). He worked these out by experimenting with flour bags and sheep in the archway of an alleyway. He also created the iconic double trap door, which is often depicted in film and television depictions of hanging that take place long before its invention - looking at you Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Marwood didn’t feel remorse for his actions. He felt he was enacting legal justice in the quickest way, free from the pain and stress of slow strangulation, rather like Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. He also enjoyed the extra money, he got £100 for a hanging, unless he had to hang a batch of people, then it was £100 for the first and £50 for subsequent people. The notoriety also boosted his cobbling business, and the exhibition had a shoe probably made by the hangman.
The Marwood exhibition took place in the Sir Joseph Banks Centre, run by the Joseph Banks Society, another local lad. The local ‘big house’ for Horncastle was Revesby Abbey. It had been a Cistercian Abbey until the dissolution of the monasteries, where it had eventually been bought by Joseph’s grandfather. Banks was rich, and so bought a place on Cook’s Endeavour on the voyage to measure the transit of Venus. He brought back all sorts of plants, naming Botany Bay and setting up Kew Gardens. He became the president of the Royal Society and was a key figure in supporting and linking together key figures in the coming Industrial Revolution. I remember finding him extremely engaging in Richard Holmes’s Age of Wonder. The Centre had a room dedicated to him as well. It’s a neat little museum, staffed by enthusiastic volunteers, which made up for its size. It’s a charming museum, but not a shonky one.
Other Horncastle notables include Henry Lunn, a Methodist preacher (we are in deep Methodist land here) who formed a package trip for some church members, which became the travel agents Lunn Poly, and Edward Harrison, a controversial eighteenth century doctor who developed a system close to chiropractics and has something called ‘Harrison’s groove’ named after him, a symptom of long term asthma.
Horncastle was also the local town for the Dymokes, the first of which fought alongside Duke William in the Battle of Hastings and became known as the Royal Champion. It was then tradition for a Dymoke to ride on horseback into the coronation feast and demand challengers against the newly crowned monarch. Unfortunately, this tradition was scrapped for Elizabeth II’s coronation, I’d have loved to see it.
I love a big city, world-changing history, but sometimes it’s nice to see the intriguing, smaller stories on the doorstep. I liked Horncastle.
