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Chapter 10The Buildings of Ailsworth Introduction

Today, old and new houses, large and small, stand side by side, the result of the natural growth of the village ofAilsworth. It is now difficult to imagine what the village used to be like. Until the late 1940s there was a definite feelthat Ailsworth and Castor were completely separate, each a village in its own right. There were no bungalows inAilsworth and the houses in Thorolds Way, Castor had not been built. Fields divided the villages; only footpaths andthe main road joined them together.

The variety of the housing styles we see today adds to the friendly feel of the village. No particular house or style ofhouse dominates the village. There was no influence of an important estate on the design of the cottages. The largerfarmhouses were built within the village, bigger and detached, alongside employees’ houses. People needed to live nearto their places of work. The Stationmaster’s house in Station Road was the only house in the parish built away fromthe heart of the village. This was demolished in 1965. The oldest properties were situated in Main Street, HelpstonRoad, Peterborough Road and Maffit Road - the core of the old village.

The cottages were built close together, often directly onto the road or footpath and mostly of local stone. Roofs werethatched, clad with clay tiles, Collyweston orWelsh slate. Many of the cottages were built inlong terraces and usually had small gardens, oftendetached from the houses. They had a range ofoutbuildings for the toilet, the wash house, fuelstore and animal shelters. Life was veryneighbourly in these conditions!

The largest buildings were the two public houseson Peterborough Road, the Chapel in Main Streetand farm buildings. The pubs were importantmeeting places for the locals to socialise and airtheir views, and also for the passing trade. TheMethodist Chapel was built in 1863, in the centreof the village. Today it nestles between an oldstone cottage and a modern house.

Peterborough Road

Peterborough Road is the major road runningthrough the village. Here the Paper Shop and theVillage Butcher’s shop continue to be the hub ofvillage trade and chit-chat. The old houses are allon the South side of this road. These all have directaccess to the pavement, the variety of stylesdenoting the different ages of the properties. Someof these properties housed the old village shops.115 Peterborough Road was The Barley MowPub that closed in the 1950s. After the pub wasclosed one of the ground floor rooms was used asan office for the local coal merchant. Now the oldpub has been converted into flats.

111 & 111a Peterborough Road, are a pair of

Fig 10b. The Wheatsheaf Pub.

Fig 10a. 111 & 111a Peterborough Road.

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three-storey houses, built of stone in the early 19thcentury. There was a butcher’s shop in the righthand lower room until the early 1970s, and then itwas a ladies hairdresser’s until the 1990s. Thehouses have been recently refurbished. The formerWheatsheaf Pub, which was built in the early19th century but closed in the 1990s also had abutcher’s shop in the single storey extension.There are now three new houses built on the oldcar park. The two newer shops and former PostOffice and Garage were built in the 1950s. TheGarage buildings have recently been demolished tomake way for two new houses. The smallestbuilding in the village is the brick bus shelter witha shingle roof, built in 1952 as a war memorial.

Main Street

Many of the older houses have been pulled down;in the 1960s a lot of cottages were condemned andthen demolished, and replaced with new homes. Itis now difficult to imagine that there was a row ofcottages between numbers 19 and 33 Main Street.Many people will still remember the other oldcottages in Main Street. Ailsworth today is a farcry from the village of yesteryear. Cottages huggedthe sides of the road, the majority having one roomdownstairs and one upstairs. Indoor toilets andbathrooms came much later. Most of the oldproperties had outside wash houses and outsidetoilets, some were for individual use, others morefriendly ‘two holers’.

Part of number 10 Main Street was for some yearsthe village Fish and Chip shop and it also had beenthe home of Harry Haynes and family. 15 MainStreet was for many years the Sharpe familyhome. There used to be a shed in the garden thatwas the cobbler’s and the barber’s. Walnut Housein Main Street dates back to the 17th century. Inthe 1970s the huge walnut tree in the garden wascut down and 2a Maffit Road was built on the site.

The Methodist Chapel was built in what was thenthe heart of the village. The houses to the North ofthe Chapel in Main Street are built on the site ofold buildings belonging to Manor Farm, oldcottages and a haulage depot which later becamean agricultural depot for Brown & Butlins. Ruddleand Wilkinson Architects planned the presenthouses and they were designed to look like a groupof old village houses. At the time the scheme wonan architectural award. Across the road, BarnCottages and the two bungalows in Maffit Roadwere built on Mr Bass’s old farmyard which hadsince become the coal depot. Four houses werebuilt within the curtilage of Manor Farm in the

Fig 10c. 15 Main Street.

Fig 10d. Walnut House.

Fig 10e. Straw Cottage.

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1970s; high stone walls enclose these houses.Stone walls of varying heights are a feature of thevillage scene, some are remnants of the old farmwalls. Four detached bungalows were built atKings Acre, Main Street in the 1990s, on the siteof a pair of semi-detached council houses, for theneeds of the senior citizens.

41 Main Street is now called The Old Brewerybut is still remembered by some as Miss Sharpe’sshop. (The brewery used to be in the outbuildingsin front of the house along with the bakery). Thegeneral shop closed in 1971, when thedecimalisation of money was introduced. Stringand brown paper hung from the ceiling to wrap thebacon, ham and cheese. Boxes of goods werestacked from floor to ceiling filling the shop withnostalgic smells. Village people used to take theirSunday joints to be cooked in the baker’s oven.The house is dated EWB 1758 on the East gablewall. It is part of a stone terrace, running throughto Maffit Road. Two of the other cottages in therow have thatched roofs; the third has a claypantile roof.

44 Main Street is a 17th century thatched cottage,its gable-end faces Main Street and its Northelevation faces onto Cross Street. For many yearsthis cottage was owned by Manor Farm.Afterwards it was bought by the NatureConservancy and became the home of the Wardenfor Castor Hanglands. John Robinson and RoyHarris were two of the last Wardens to live there.It is now a private house.

55 Main Street was built in the 17th century. It isa large thatched house that was extensivelyupdated in the 1960s. It has also been known asJasmine Cottage and Rose Cottage.

Most old cottages have been altered and extendedand show little resemblance to the original. Inrecent times old farm buildings have beenincorporated into new homes, fields and farmyardshave become sites for new developments and theold pubs, stables and barns have been convertedinto residential accommodation. Old barns andstables in the former farmyard at the top of MainStreet have been converted into houses. Thedovecote in this yard is now a garage. 50 and 52Main Street, the oldest parts of which were builtin the 17th century, were formerly known asManor House Farm. 50 Main Street is now adental surgery. 59 Main Street is built on DrakesFarm once farmed by Mr Sharpe.

Fig 10f. Kings Acre.

Fig 10g. 44 Main Street.

Fig 10h. 50 & 52 Main Street.

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Maffit Road

There was evidence of an old dwelling along thetrack leading from the top of Maffit Road to thebypass. This was known as Frog Hall. The lastremaining link with this ‘house’, a group of fruittrees, was removed in the early 1990s.

At the beginning of the fifties there were only threeproperties in Maffit Road, or Back Lane as it wassometimes called. Numbers 2, 4 (now joined) and15 all belonged to the Popple family. 15 MaffitRoad, the Maltings, is the only red brick propertyin the village. Number 6, at the top of the Jittybetween Maffit Road and Main Street, was formany years a farm cottage for Manor Farm. Thefirst new house to be built in the road was Number1, the home of Len and Lorna Fisher. More houseswith an individual style were soon built on the oldsmall field-garden plots.

Helpston Road

In Helpston Road there are houses dating from the17th or early 18th century that sit amongst newerhouses. Thatchcroft (number 28) was for manyyears the home of the Pell family. Southviewdirectly to the rear was the Jinks family home.These two cottages abut the side of Helpston Road.

The former council houses, built in the 1920s werehighly sought after. They had spaciousaccommodation and large gardens, everything theold cottages did not have.

Old farmhouses include The Manor House, inHelpston Road, which acquired the name ManorHouse in relatively recent years. The Limes, also inHelpston Road, was built at the end of the 19thcentury. The last farmer to live there was MrFletcher. There used to be a smithy at the rear ofthis house where numbers 3a and 3b are now built.The chalet bungalows to the North of this onHelpston Road were built on part of Manor HouseFarm in the early 1960s.

Larger new developments

In the late 1950s Shelton’s builders built newbungalows along Helpston Road leading into a newestate - Singerfire Road, Casworth Way andAndrew Close. The houses in Holme Close werebuilt in the early 1970s. The footpath leading fromHolme Close to Helpston Road is part of the oldpath formerly known as Church Walk, andsometimes now called Chapel Walk. The nameused obviously depended on where you were going.

Fig 10i. Thatchcroft.

Fig 10j. Southview.

Fig 10k. Manor House.

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NotesThe information about these buildings is taken from the Listedbuildings of Peterborough City CouncilSee appendix nineteen and The Royal Commission on HistoricalMonuments, Peterborough New Town.

Fig 10l. 1960s ‘new development’.

Fig 10m. Map of Ailsworth showing Parish boundary with Castor. Listed buildings marked.Reproduced from Ordnance Survey mapping on behalf of The Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office

© Crown Copyright 100042620 2004

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A Gibbons’ Robey steam enginethreshing at Manor Farm Sutton (FredHolmes’) May 1916: back to camera MrMatchet (gamekeeper), Billy Brownwith wheels on right, Charlie Clark ondrum, Bob Gilbert (with fork) and FredGibbons beside it.

Map of Sutton, listed building noted by letter. Reproduced from Ordnance Survey mapping on behalf of The Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office © Crown Copyright 100042620 2004