The lost boys

In a shady area near the gate to Linton Infant School there's a tiny grave, perhaps the saddest in St. Mary's churchyard. It is overgrown with weeds and surrounded by a low, rusted iron railing. The headstone, half obscured by lichen, reads:

 ARTHUR HENRY

SON OF

WILLIAM P AND

LOUISA A CHALK

WHO DIED NOV 26

1865

AGED 9 MONTHS

ALSO OF

THE TWIN BROTHERS

OF THE ABOVE

WHO SURVIVED THE BIRTH

TWO DAYS

Before the age of modern medicine, the death of a child must have been an almost universal experience - which doesn't make the loss of these babies any less tragic. It's a comfort to know that William and Louisa Chalk went on to have other children, all girls, who survived and grew up and married, and no doubt brought much joy to their parents...but I'm sure they never forgot the little boys who might have been. Both parents were eventually buried in a family tomb close by their babies.

Grist to the mill

It continues to amaze me, how easy it is to walk past something countless times without seeing it, and then once you've spotted it you wonder how you ever missed it.

A friend was visiting from America recently, and of course I dragged her down to St. Mary's to inspect the graffiti and other Linton treasures. As we wandered around we made a new discovery!

Embedded in the exterior of the east wall of the church are two round stones (possibly two and a half) which I believe were once used for grinding flour. They are not huge like the stones seen in wind or water mills, but a hand-span size (about 20cm), the right scale for domestic use. A little internet research tells me stones like this come in pairs, with a "quern" on the bottom and a "handstone" for turning on the top. Grain is poured in through the hole in the handstone, to be ground between the two surfaces. The technology is centuries old and has been used the world over for grinding wheat, corn, rice or whatever the local grain might be.

I don't know how old these particular stones are - they could be Medieval, maybe even Roman. The church has been restored, altered and repaired down the years (including this past year) and I don't know at which point these round stones became part of the building, but quite possibly it was during the early 14th century. Online I can't find many similar examples of stones like this being used in church construction - which is not to say there aren't lots out there, they may just not have been recorded.

Since Linton had a long history of milling it feels appropriate to find a nod to this built into the fabric of the church, which is the traditional heart of the village. I suppose the stones may have been just lying around and handy to use, or did they have some special significance? A form of blessing on local millers or farmers? A nice idea, though I have no proof at all.

Everywhere a Whiffin...

Wherever you go in Linton, a Whiffin (or Whiffen) is sure to have gone before, and some have left their mark. I'm gathering a nice collection:



On St. Mary's church, carved into a window surround near the south porch: 

I [for J] E WHIFFIN

JEn 27 [for JAN or JUN? - seems like Whiffins played fast and loose with the vowels]

1813

I've started looking but have not yet traced this particular Whiffin.

Written in lead pencil on a door frame, north side of the church:

E D Whiffen
If [for Is] a A Fool

S[???]ed _____

E [followed by D? K? or R?] WHIFFEN

[???] 1816 [or 1916? or 1956?]

There have been numerous Edward, Edmund and Edwin Whiffins and Whiffens in Linton down the years and I've no idea which one was considered a fool. I'd need to convince myself of the date before launching into a search. Also the handwriting styles are quite different - the first looks much more old-fashioned - so they may date from different times altogether.


My most recent find, tucked behind some Virginia creeper on Market Lane:

M. WHIFFIN 1951

It looks like it could be 1851 but I suspect it must be a century later because it's close by another 1951 - plus a plaque elsewhere marks the wall as having been built in 1912. Does anyone know of any older M.Whiffins in the village? No, I don't plan to name-and-shame, but it'd fun to know if he (probably he) is still around.

Jurassic Brick

Our house was built around 1902. It's the most modern building at our end of the lane (the house opposite, for example, dates back to the 17th century). As such it has always felt less historically interesting than our neighbours' homes - until today when I discovered that it's built with prehistoric materials!

I was poking around in the alley that runs between our house and next door, and noticed several bricks with baked-in fingerprints. On closer inspection I realised that every single brick is unique, because they are all handmade. That's quite a thought in itself. This is not a tiny house. So much human effort went into it even before it was assembled.

Brickmaking was a lowly trade requiring the back-breaking lugging of heavy clay and bricks. The clay was moulded in forms, stacked and fired in kilns. By the late nineteenth century a degree of industrialisation had come into play and rather than coming from a local small-scale brickyard our bricks may have been made at a large commercial brickworks and brought to Linton by railway.

What of the clay itself? As with many buildings in East Anglia, our house is made with yellowish, greyish Gault bricks. In the June 1998 edition of the British Brick Society newsletter you'll find as much information about the history of the use of Gault as you will ever need to know. Cutting to the chase, Gault is prehistoric clay deposited in the Lower Cretaceous Period. Jurassic stuff, which is even older, also gets thrown into the mix. It contains fossils and coprolites (dinosaur poo - there was a whole local industry in mining coprolites, but that's another story) and is found mainly in this part of England.

So, in quite a real sense we live in a prehistoric house. And it's completely handcrafted, down to the very bricks. Henceforth I shall regard it with a new respect.

Info on Gault: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gault;  http://www.arct.cam.ac.uk/Downloads/bbs/bbs-74.pdf
Info on bricks: http://www.bricksandbrass.co.uk/design_by_element/external_wall/bricks_and_brickwork_in_period_home.php; 
http://www.tewkesburyhistory.com/trades/brickmaker.html; 

Linton, Cambs, Great Britain, The World, The Universe...

I found this on a wall that marks the entrance to a large house at the end of Green Lane in Linton. If the evening sunlight hadn't caught it just a certain way I would have missed it:

W. Fuller
Linton
Camb
DEC 1, 1910

Linton, Camb? Reading it, I immediately wanted to add "Great Britain, The World, The Universe..." It had to be the work of a child.

According to the 1911 census, William Robert Fuller lived on Green Lane in Linton, the only child of older parents. His dad, William Henry Fuller from Newton, was a domestic gardener - perhaps at the house where this graffiti appears. Little William's ma was called Emily and came from Trumpington (mis-recorded as Kumpington on the census) where William himself was born in 1903.*

So in December 1910 William was about seven years old, and he would have been attending Linton National Church of England School - now the Infant School. On this site I found a 1910 photo of the infant class II (I hope it's OK to reproduce it here). I think our William must be one of these children:

An age of innocence, 1910. At least the boys in this picture would still have been too young to serve in the Great War, when it came. I have tried to trace William Robert Fuller to find out what became of him, but have not come up with anything solid - did he grow up and marry? Did he serve in World War II? Did he emigrate? It's difficult to trace someone when all you really have is a few words scratched on a wall.

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