Drunken Iveson and the very dry job

Drunken Iveson and the very dry job

Talk given to the Huntingdonshire Local History Society by Bob Burn-Murdoch, curator of the Norris Library and Museum, in 1992. The image shown in this article of the message found beneath the attic floorboards of the Town Hall is a copy of that published in the Society's annual booklet of talks. The bottom part of the message was not shown in the booklet.

Stanley House, St Ives. Now the Town Hall.

The demolition or alteration of an old building sometimes reveals marks or signatures left by the original builders. These marks are usually carefully hidden, in such a way that they only come to light when major alterations are carried out. In this way, the builders plainly hoped that their marks would not be found until long afterwards and that the discovery, when it came, would be made by their fellow craftsmen.

Masons' marks are probably the best-known example. In her book Memory in a House, Lucy Boston describes the masons who helped to restore the Manor House at Hemingford Grey: 

The masons — who must have been the last of their kind — were fascinating to me. They were father and son, and claimed to be descended from Huntingdon masons back to the Middle Ages. They said there was no church or old stone building in the county not built by their forefathers, and that this was proved by the family mark, which they showed me. It had a kind of comet's tail to which each generation added a tick. It was always placed underneath the stone, so that it did not show until something fell, when the culprit was identified and had to answer for it “in this world or the next”.

Less dramatic, perhaps, are the builders' signatures that are sometimes found behind skirting boards or under floors. They usually consist of just the craftsman's name and the date of the job, but a recent discovery at the Town Hall in St. Ives provided many more details than that.

The illustration shows a message written with a soft-leaded carpenter's pencil on a piece of board about 13 inches by 6. It was found in the spring of 1992 during alterations to the Town Hall attics, and had been carefully hidden. It was found beneath the attic floorboards, laid on the ceiling of the room beneath with the written side facing down. It could not possibly have been found unless the attic floorboards were removed, and might have escaped notice even then. (It was discovered by the contractors, G. Hookham of St. Ives; I am grateful to them and to the architect, Mr. J. Woolmer of Huntingdonshire District Council, for his help).

The writing is clear, with occasional misspellings. I have added punctuation to the following transcription, to make the meaning clearer:

This House in ye Market Place, St. Ives, was built in the year 1850 by Mr Herey Bennet & Son, Builders, Whittlesea, for Mr Walner, currer (?late) a Butcher in the above Market place. Mr Wollard his foreman and Broadbent & Harrison from Yorkshire pre pared the said Stone work. Willm Bunday foreman of the Joinering work & Benjamin Holdich & John Smith, Croxen Grant, Thomas Johnson, George Phillipps Carpenters. Drunken Iveson, Edward Wilton, Hubbard Abram Sharpe, T. Jackson, J. Smith, Easterra Herro, Carter, Bight &c in the Brick (illegible) department. Young Warner layed ye first Stone & gave five Shilling among twenty men. Benjamin Holdich & John Smith took the Old House down, the wood work, and Edward Iveson & others the Brick work, and the Old wood was used up in those atticks. The old House was three Storey high but it was a verey dry Jobb as they men had not much Ale gave them by Mr Warner. All (?put) together too Pounds would have paid the whole up to September from April, the Commencement
1850
Mr Allen, Artetct, St Ives
1850 Victoria Queen

St. Ives Town Hall was a private house, called Stanley House, until the Borough Council bought it in 1924. The builders referred to must be the Henry Bennett and Son, builders and contractors, who appear in the Whittlesey section of Slater's Trades Directory of 1850. The “Mr Walner” for whom the house was built was in fact John Warner (the surname is spelled correctly elsewhere in the inscription). He was a currier by trade – that is, he dressed and coloured leather after it had been tanned. The currying trade was quite important in 19th century St. Ives, as might be expected in a town with an important cattle market.

Some of the names given for the workmen are a little difficult to disentangle. The spelling is probably not reliable, and it is not always clear which are Christian names and which surnames. For example, the “Croxen Grant” mentioned here must the same man as the “Grant Coxeell” whose name, with that of John Smith, was found on the back of another piece of wood, discovered during alterations to the first floor of the Town Hall a couple of years ago. “Drunken Iveson” is presumably the “Edward Iveson” mentioned further down in the inscription - or perhaps there were two Ivesons on the job. “Easterra Herro” sounds like a foreigner. The workmen were probably Whittlesey men, and so a study of Whittlesey census returns might enable some of them to be more accurately identified.

The “young Warner” who “layed ye first Stone” was probably John Warner's son William Wigston Warner. He was born in 1834, and so would have been about 16 when the house was built. He went on to become an alderman and five times mayor of St. Ives, and bequeathed Warner's Park to the town when died in 1905. It would seem that laying the foundation stone was the traditional occasion for giving a tip to the workmen. The writer of the message doesn't say whether he considers “five Shillings among twenty men” to be adequate. In view of his later remarks about the beer allowance, he probably didn't.

The description of the house that used to stand on the site includes the details that it was three storeys high and that wood from it was reused in the attics of the new house. Mr. Woolmer has confirmed that much of the woodwork in the attics had plainly been used before. Most vivid of all is the complaint about the “verey dry Jobb”. Two pounds would have bought a great deal of beer in those days – 30 gallons, with beer at twopence a pint. But even 30 gallons wouldn't go far when shared between 20 men over a period of six months.

The architect may well have sympathised. The “Mr Allen” referred to in the last line was George Allen of St. Ives. Stanley House must have been one of his last commissions, as he died of cholera in 1854. At the inquest into his death his brother told the coroner that when he last saw the dead man “he appeared to have been drinking, to which he has latterly been addicted” – but he was otherwise in good health until the cholera struck. He was taken ill in a London street and died a few hours later in Westminster Hospital. 

Meanwhile, Drunken Iveson and his fellow workmen would have returned to Whittlesey, consoling themselves for their dry job with the thought of the small timebomb they had planted in the attic of Stanley House. One day, probably long in the future, John Warner's tight-fistedness would be revealed to the world!