Every month Jeremy kindly personally writes a new episode for thisisholbech.co.uk. This month we present...

Sponsered by 'A Neat Little Town' by Jeremy Satherley

1. Episode 1 - Holbeach History
2. Episode 2 - No more leaves on the line, at Holbeach Station
3. Episode 3 - Shall We Dance - for 12 hours non-stop?
4. Episode 4 - Keeping the wheels of Holbeach turning
5. Episode 5 - The Holbeach card players

Episode 1 - Holbeach History

Is one of self-sufficiency, scholarship and ingenuity, all emanating from an area that was hardly environmentally-friendly to begin with.

The site for Holbeach happened to be a convenient spot on a silt ridge, bordered by the encroaching sea on one side, and undrained fen on the other, with a river running through it for good measure. Mists and fog were regular features of the resulting damp and humid conditions, with malaria a recurrent threat to anyone plucky enough to be travelling through - when the 'tracks of hoof' were passable, that is.

In the 7th century however, it suited the Gwyre ('marsh dwellers'), largely a group of loners and social rejects, plus a few possibly on the run, to settle in this difficult and largely inaccessible area. Their abilities in fishing, wildfowling, cattle rearing and salt manufacture were early indications of a talent that has always made the most of the land around Holbeach - a process that was taken a useful stage further in the 12th century by enterprising lords of the manor such as Conan, Son of Ellis (1152-1218), with their efforts at proper land drainage between the fen and the sea bank.

The growing status of Holbeach as a result of these developments was reflected in the building of a church and its 14th-century replacement, the present All Saints, a market granted by royal charter, and the presence of the lord of the manor's house in Hallgate.

Over the 16th and 17th centuries, the town's agrarian-based economy continued to develop, despite recurrent floods and subsequent wrangles over ownership of land drained or reclaimed from the sea under Cornelius Vermuyden's initiative, which the Crown and sponsoring aristocrats claimed as their own with little regard for the local inhabitants, although occasionally the latter were able to take advantage of further natural silt accumulations before anyone else noticed. Wheat, oats and barley became successful 17th century crops, and in 1724, the visiting Daniel Defoe remarked on the 'rich land' which fed 'prodigious numbers of large sheep and also oxen of the largest size' in an area which had become noted for cattle and sheep fattening, and horse-breeding. But the agricultural depression in the first half of the 19th century forced Holbeach's farming industry into a change of direction. The answer lay in specialising to survive, concentrating on potato crops and later on, bulb growing, thus laying important foundations for the sophisticated mix of growing, distribution and marketing which we see today in the likes of Worth Farms, QV Foods and Taylors Bulbs.

While it lasted (1858-1965) the railway link through Holbeach was a major factor in helping to establish and distribute the area's specialised products. Passenger rail traffic was a casualty of 1950s unprofitability, but the main station building and both platforms survive intact, just across the road from the mill.

An early spelling of the Holbeach name was 'Holobech', meaning 'deep stream', referring to the river which once flowed through the centre of the town alongside Church Street and present-day Park Road, and spanned by a bridge in the Woolworths/Drydens area. The Holbeach River drained eventually into the Welland beyond Holbeach Hurn and would have provided the means of bringing the Barnack stone by boat with which to build the present Church. But after centuries of abuse as a convenient receptacle for health-threatening sewage and rubbish, it was covered over in 1853. A remnant of it lives on however in the exposed drain alongside Park road opposite George Farmer. Nearby, in an area bordered by Park Road, Park Lane and Edinburgh Walk is the Cemetery, dating from 1855 and including at its centre an unusually divided Chapel of Rest, with a spire that dominates the central avenue of trees full of cooing pigeons.

Architecturally, Holbeach displays a blend of the traditional at its heart, bordered by the more modern constructions of the last eight decades. Inside the centrally-disposed Conservation Area, we have All Saints Church, built 1339-1361 and a largely complete example of the late Decorated style, featuring an unusual twin-turreted North Porch; the 1681 Mansion House in the High Street, bearing a blue Heritage plaque as the birthplace of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Sir Norman Angell; Nos 71-77 High Street, a fine terrace featuring a distinctive central archway, and built 1846 as dormitories for the boys of Holbeach Grammar School; the early Victorian completeness of Albert Street - including the 1845 Baptist Chapel - and at the Fen Road end of Barrington Gate, the graceful residences of Barrington House - originally the mill owner's house - and next-door Serpentine House, with its graceful stairway to the front door, and until 2003 the home for many years of Eric Angell Lane, nephew of Sir Norman Angell.

The Reading Room, so named and given to the town in 1901 by the trust deed of ironmonger William Snarey to lure young men away from pubs to the pleasures of books, dates from 1870 and is situated next to the Library in Church Street. It is the meeting place for the Holbeach & District Civic Society and several other groups and associations.

All the public houses and hotels are long-established. Some, such as the Bell, Horse & Groom, and String of Horses were certainly trading in the 1820s, but the Red Lion, Chequers, and Crown are even older, the last two reputed to have been rebuilt and built respectively by William Stukeley's father in the 17th century. John Stukeley also replaced the original 13th-century market cross, but his later version, thought to have stood near what is now the old Lloyds Bank building on the Church Street corner, disappeared sometime in the 19th century. A more lasting monument, however, is the millstone situated at the junction of Spalding Road and Wignal's Gate, laid in 1959 to mark the exact spot where the Greenwich Meridian Line crosses Holbeach.

Holbeach notables include the famous antiquarian, physician, scientist, author and clergyman William Stukeley (1687-1765) who lived as a child in what is now Barrington Gate; Sir Norman Angell (1872-1967), rancher, journalist, author, lecturer and a tireless, lifelong campaigner for the exercising of peaceful defence measures, negotiation and co-operation to solve international differences; Susannah Centlivre (1667-1723), actress and playwright, and historians Henry Peet (1856-1938), the Revd. Grant Macdonald (1846-1923), and Kathleen Major (1906-2000). Three members of the Burges family (a name still extant in Holbeach) were respectively Chaplain in Ordinary to Charles I, fought at Culloden in 1745 against Bonnie Prince Charlie, and died a hero's death at sea against the Dutch at Camperdown in 1797.

A great benefactor was Herbert Carter (1862-1944), a self-made landowner who began farming at the Hurn in 1885. As with his contemporary George Hovenden Worth, his enlightened methods added a new dimension to potato-growing and he was a keen supporter of farming co-operatives and workers' welfare groups. In 1929 he gave Carter's Park to the town, thus providing a leisure area that continues to benefit the town in the 21st century, thanks to a recent upgrading of the children's play area by the Friends of Carter's Park, and also including within its confines tennis courts, a bowling green, and the Tigers (Holbeach United) Football Club. Carter's second wife, the South African Frances Ethel Orr, founded the Holbeach Women's Institute in 1936, largely funding its building costs herself.

Where Holbeach industry is concerned, milling and agricultural engineering has been carried on for nearly 200 years. The mill at Barrington Gate, begun in 1828 with an eight-sail windmill, is now a sophisticated computerised operation run by a minimum of staff around the clock, with well-known household food names among its customers.

As for agricultural engineering, the foundries and blacksmiths situated around the town looked after every need, not only manufacturing ploughs, seed drills and tools, but by coming up with some original ideas of their own, such as the Bettinson potato lifter, introduced in the early 1940s, or from Cranmore Lane, Peter Cunnington's series of elevators of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, which achieved worldwide export status. Lighter industry thrives on the Fleet Road Industrial Estate, from industrial flooring and stainless steel fabrication, to pine furniture manufacture and weighing and packaging machines. Meanwhile, behind the old station buildings, Lin Secker's family welding business enjoys a national reputation.

In 2006, Holbeach continues to surprise. So far it has successfully resisted the total imposition of pay parking, while the story goes that it has more takeaway outlets per head of population than any other town in the country!