The Bell
In 1889, Albert Swift wrote in his pamphlet Half a Century of Temperance Work in St Ives:
'Half a century ago there were nearly if not quite a hundred public-houses in St Ives, while there are now only forty-eight, and some of these do very little business.'
His figure of 48 is confirmed by Bob Burn-Murdoch in The Pubs of St Ives, but Swift's claim of 100 looks like an exaggeration. Bob counted 64, still remarkable for the time. As a staunch temperance advocate, Swift may have inflated the number to stress the movement's success.
Even 64 meant one pub for every 55 residents. By that measure, today's population would support over 300 pubs. We have just 17.
Albert Swift would have known The Bell, at 4 The Waits, St Ives, a striking three-storey building overlooking the backwater that, for most of it's 250 years, served drinkers and travellers alike.
But the Bell's story is more than bricks and beer. It's about the people who lived there, the bustling pubs of St Ives and the temperance movement that sought to close them.
The early days of the Bell
St Ives had a steady trade in cheap lodgings. The Monday livestock market, one of the largest in England, drew drovers from Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. After weeks on the road, often sleeping rough or in roadside inns, they stayed briefly in St Ives before heading home. Other customers included watermen, their fen lighters moored at the Waits with goods for market, and itinerant hawkers ready for Monday trade.
Built around 1780, the Bell may have been designed from the outset as a pub and lodging house. It looked very different then, with two storeys, a mansard roof, and a row of Elizabethan cottages running at right angles behind. The tiles below come from those cottages, thought to indicate the trades carried out in each.
First called the White Swan, by 1787 it was the Blue Bell. The Bell name endured, with variations such as the Old Bell.
In the early 1800s the building was enlarged; a third storey was added and the mansard roof replaced. A panel on the chimney stack is inscribed with the dates 1800 and 1837, the latter likely marking the major alterations.
First known occupant
Without the deeds, it's hard to be certain about early owners or occupants, so the Bell's first fifty years are lost in the mists of time.
The earliest identified occupant is Staffurth Clark. In 1841, he was the Bell’s publican, aged 56, living with his wife Jane (47) and sons Staffurth (14) and John (10). He had likely been at the Bell for ten years.
Born at Warboys in 1785 and given his grandmother’s maiden name, Staffurth was not the first of that name. His elder brother had died in infancy, and the new child that arrived within months was given the same name, a common practice to keep alive the memory of the dead child, especially where the child's name was in honour of a relative.
Staffurth was a man with ambition. He married Jane Bull in 1816 and inherited the family farm, including farmhouse, stables, barn, outhouses, and 41 acres. But poor harvests, labour unrest, and the Swing Riots made farming difficult. In 1831, he sold the farm.
By 1829, he had acquired rights to collect tolls at the Green End toll in St Ives, near today’s Seven Wives pub, along a major route to the Bullock Market. In 1825, for every drove of cattle passing through that toll gate there was a charge of ten pennies per score. That's the equivalent of £80 today. Every Monday the livestock market handled 12,000 cattle, sheep, pigs, horses etc. Every animal and human was charged a toll.
The toll gate meant a steady income, receiving a percentage of the tolls. Staffurth probably employed someone to man the tolls. St Ives was
surrounded with toll gates, owned by the Duke of Manchester and auctioned to agents. In 1817, local toll gate auctions raised £556, equivalent to £50,000 today.
By 1841, Staffurth had become the Bell’s publican. It’s likely the major alterations to the building in 1837 occurred during his occupancy. St Ives’ population had jumped from 2,099 in 1801 to 3,514 in 1841, a 67% increase, creating a prime opportunity for Staffurth.
He lived at the Bell with his wife and two sons. Boarding with them were Thomas Smith, a corn cutter, his wife and two-year-old son. Behind the Bell lived John Chapman, a blacksmith, with his wife and six children. The Bell Yard housed three more households, totalling ten occupants.
Staffurth had left the Bell by 1851. He remained a toll gate keeper, living in the Green End toll house with his wife. He died in 1863, aged 79.
Monday markets; chaos, cattle and the Bell
Every Monday morning from an early hour, the noise and smell outside the Bell was far beyond modern sensibilities. Over 12,000 beasts packed into a medium-sized village whose population was rarely above 3,000, feeding London with meat.
A local resident recalls falling asleep on Sunday evenings to the 'plaintive music' of cattle lowing in the meadows surrounding the town. The occupants of the Bell heard that sound travelling from Hemingford Meadow. Many visitors arrived Sunday night, staying in inns and hostels, soon in a 'happy' state.
Early Monday morning, cattle filled the Bullock Market, packed wall to wall as shown in the photograph below from the late 1800s. In 1921, the Mayor recalled earlier days of cattle queuing along the Waits, up Ramsey Road, along the full length of St Audrey's Lane, and down into Pig Lane and Needingworth Road.
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| Bullock Market, c1880. |
The air was thick with cursing as drovers tried to control the cattle. Many swear words would pass St Ivians by, such was the variety of accents. Irish, Welsh, and Scots mixed with West Country and Northern accents.
Some drovers treated their beasts cruelly. In 1835, a bullock took refuge in Mrs Robins's shop to escape abuse. Magistrates repeatedly fined drovers for mistreatment. Read Adams, the first Mayor of St Ives, wrote a letter in 1886 about the old Bullock Market. He sought to improve the lives of the cattle. Read wanted to lessen the 'cruel blows and brutal uproar'. He wished the market 'was more like a place of business than a pandemonium'.
Residents stepping out of the Bell needed to take care. The Bullock Market could be a dangerous place. Protective rails ran down either side to shield pedestrians and buildings. In 1801, a bullock rampaged through the Royal Oak pub, trampled up the stairs, crashed through the middle window frame and landed on the street. In 1858, infant Hector Rowell got caught on an escaped cow's horns but was rescued by his nursemaid.
The Backwater opposite the Bell was equally unpleasant. Dr Grove's 1873 annual report noted stagnant water, sewage, and 'a most unwholesome and poisonous gas'.
The first chimney sweep
When Daniel Winters took over the Bell, he began the first line of sweeps to occupy the premises. In 1841, he worked from Croft's Yard, off Crown Street with his son Daniel junior. In 1846, he accused William Bright of letting a boy under 20 climb a chimney, illegal under the law. Magistrates fined Bright lightly, later noting the difficulty of cleaning narrow chimneys.
Newspapers reported that Daniel himself employed under-aged children. The 1841 Census shows three sweep apprentices living with the family; Elizabeth Harris, 20, and brothers John and Thomas White, 15 and 12. Evidence suggests all three died within ten years.
By 1851, Daniel senior ran the Bell as publican and sweep. He employed his 10-year-old grandson Robert Wilkinson. Robert is an ancestor of comedian Joe Lycett and Robert's life story was told in a 2021 edition of the BBC programme Who DoYou Think You Are? Also present was Thomas Devine, a 40-year-old sweep from Jamaica, dead within ten years. Daniel senior died in 1851, aged 61; Daniel junior in 1859, aged 48.
A dark and deadly trade
Tradition claims a chimney sweep brings luck, but the reality for young apprentices was dark, dirty and deadly.
From the 1600s, domestic coal fires increased, while chimneys grew narrower to improve draught. Sticky soot lined the flues and harmful fumes could back up into homes. Some owners tried DIY solutions, such as dropping geese down the chimney, or dragging holly up using a rope. Regular visits from the sweep became a safety necessity.
For 200 years children cleaned narrow flues, sometimes only nine inches square. Apprentices shuffled upwards on back, elbows and knees, brushing soot that fell on them, then sliding down to collect the soot in bags for fertiliser. A sweep could clean five chimneys a day.
Poor families sold children into indentured servitude; workhouse orphans were common victims. Bound for seven years, apprentices got bed and board but no wages. Escape meant court and prison with hard labour. It was common for chimneys to be hot from the last fire. Fires were sometimes lit beneath them, giving rise to the term 'I'll light a fire under you'.
The work stunted and disfigured children, causing respiratory problems, injury or death. Many were crushed, jammed or suffocated in narrow chimneys. Mortality rates were high.
In February 1875, 12-year-old George Brewster became stuck up a
Fulbourn Hospital chimney measuring 12 by 6 inches. Rescuers had to demolish a wall to free him. He died shortly after and his master was found guilty of manslaughter. George's death became the catalyst for reform.
By 1875, a new law banned the use of young children as chimney sweeps. George was the last child to die in a chimney. Around this time, inventions using brushes and canes to reach chimneys from the fireplace emerged, one of the methods still in use today. St Ives sweep Herbert Pratt used such equipment in the 1930s.
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| Herbert Pratt, a St Ives chimney sweep, c1930s. |
The last sweeps at the Bell
Samuel Mapperley took over the Bell following Daniel Winters' death. Established as a sweep in St Ives, Samuel and family first lived in
Alldens Yard. Living with them was 10-year-old sweep apprentice William Cates.
Samuel and his 16-year-old son Walter carried on their chimney sweep business while running the Bell as cheap accommodation for the poorest customers, even tramps. By 1861, six family members lived alongside twenty-one lodgers, two of whom were single, the remaining nineteen spread over six families. Confectioner John Kidman and his shoemaker son lived in the cottages out back, and in the Bell Yard were another twenty five occupants in four families.
Among them was Henry Wilkinson and his son Daniel (15), both chimney sweeps. Henry's family consisted of his wife and another eight children. By 1871, Henry had followed Samuel Mapperley's path, becoming landlord of The Queen Victoria in West Street while continuing as a sweep. His sons briefly joined the trade.
Henry died sweeping chimneys at the Unicorn Hotel in 1887, aged 70.
By 1871, the Bell had probably sunk to its lowest level. Of eighteen boarders, six were tramps, two hawkers and two pedlars. One was Thomas Cox (20), a sweep employed by Samuel. Thomas was a troubled sweep,
accused of stealing from Samuel in 1873, making
false confessions in 1879, and involved in a
drunken dispute at the Crown Inn at Fenstanton in 1880. By 1882, he attempted suicide with
laudanum while lodging at the Hoops Inn in Chatteris. The bottle was taken from him and he survived, only to die the following year, aged 31.
By 1881, Samuel still ran the Bell with twelve boarders staying, while in the Bell Yard were two families of ten people. In 1891 Samuel had handed over the reins of The Bell to his son in law, carpenter Arthur Hurl, but continued to board there. At 74, he still listed himself as a chimney sweep. Samuel Mapperley died in 1911, aged 94 years.
St Ives pubs
Although much of the Bell's income came from boarders, it was also one of forty-eight pubs in St Ives. And probably a pub very much in the original style, with a couple of front rooms used for customers.
When St Ives became a market town 1,000 years ago, beer was sold. The Old Ferry Boat Inn at Holywell claims to be the oldest pub in England, serving beer at that location 1,500 years ago. Before
aquifer water was piped into St Ives in 1890, drinking water was risky. Rivers, wells and pumps were often polluted by sewage. C
holera, typhoid, and dysentery were common, linked to dirty water. Brewing beer required
boiling, which
killed off harmful bacteria, making beer the safer choice.
Trade boomed at weekends, especially Mondays for the livestock market. The Bell was perfectly placed for the bullock sales, held in what is now the Broadway. On Sunday evenings, the town was full of visitors from across the UK, most in a 'happy' state. Pubs were male-orientated; a woman's presence was a sign of lost respectability. From the pubs, beerhouses and market crowds
nymphs of the pave found customers.
Before the Priory Road police station gained a courtroom, pubs and inns hosted the Petty Sessions. Most sittings tried at least one person for being drunk and disorderly. Offenders were often found lying senseless in the street; those still upright were ready for a fight.
Women appeared in the dock too. In 1840, Elizabeth Negus said John White threw her into a pond; in truth she and her husband were drunk and she fell in. Eleanor Bell was drunk in the Cherry Tree in Merrylands in 1907, then fell in Woolpack Lane, spilling a basket that contained two bottles of liquor.
Pubs were creative in attracting customers. In 1797, surgeon John Fryer attended the Unicorn, promising 'the utmost care and diligence will be paid in fractures and dislocations'. The Fountain hosted the Royal Albert Cricket Club in 1840.
The Golden Lion welcomed the annual meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association in 1852. After discussing grisly cases and operations, the gentlemen enjoyed 'a sumptuous dinner, consisting of every delicacy of the season'. In 1851, the Parrot displayed a whale,
'a monster' caught at Kings Lynn, sobering many a staggering pub-tourer.
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| The Parrot, Market Hill, St Ives, c1900. |
By 1887 the Parrot's publican, widow Sarah Burbidge (50), kept exotic parrots worth £3 each (today £300) in the bar. And every Monday in 1863 the White Horse exhibited 'the Young Phenomenon', a celebrated trotting horse.
The Temperance Movement
Every action has a reaction, and the active pub trade in St Ives was no different. It's a paradox that while Samuel Mapperley kept the Bell lively with trade, the Wesleyan Methodists next door plastered posters urging townsfolk to turn their back on drink.
The temperance movement arrived in St Ives in the 1840s, determined to tackle poverty and disorder linked with alcohol. The newly formed Temperance Society wasted no time. They organised regular lectures, though the topics don't sound like crowd-pullers today, their efforts attracting thinly disguised scorn in a
newspaper article of 1855.
In 1862, John de Fraine spoke on 'How to Get on in the World'. Mrs C L Balfour followed with earnest talks on 'Home Influence and Early Impressions' (1865) and 'Leisure Hours of Busy Lives and What the World has Gained by Them' (1868). Rev D Waters tackled 'Formation of the Stomach' (1872). The Band of Hope rallied local children against the temptations of alcohol. There was a grand brewing day in 1872, where the only thing brewed was water.
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'Fearful Quarrels, And Brutal Violence, Are the Natural Consequences
of the Frequent Use of the Bottle'.
One of George Cruikshanks' 1847 engravings, the collection entitled 'The Bottle'. |
Miss Geeson ran a temperance hotel and refreshment rooms in Bridge Street in 1876, a Temperance Hotel following in Crown Street by 1901. Elizabeth Warnes took charge there, advertising wholesome lodgings for cyclists and footballers, until her
shocking murder in 1913, one of the towns most sensational scandals.
By the early 1900s, the Society had fizzled out. Respectability had lost its Victorian shine, wages were rising and new entertainments like sport and cinema drew bigger crowds than any temperance movement. In St Ives, the pint outlasted the poster.
Longest resident
No one knew the Bell as home more than Emma Mapperley. Born at the Bell in 1863, she lived there for 55 years, raising six sons and a daughter.
Her teenage years were spent as a dressmaker, while her father Samuel carried on as a chimney sweep and her mother Ann managed the family and boarders. Emma must have helped, for there was always more work than one pair of hands could manage.
Just behind the Bell, in
Green Street, lived Arthur Hurl, a carpenter from Fenstanton. Emma and Arthur met, fell in love, and married in 1882 when Emma was only nineteen.
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| Emma Mapperley, possibly at the time of marriage in 1882, aged 19 years. |
Arthur probably moved into the Bell, and when Emma’s mother died in 1889, the licence passed to him. Samuel, then 72, became a boarder in what had once been his own business.
Emma & Arthur had three little boys, her father and seventeen boarders to look after. Arthur worked both as publican and carpenter. Feeding and tidying for twenty-two people was Emma's life.
By 1901, there were six sons and a daughter, ten lodgers & one boarder, plus Emma’s retired father. Lodgers weren’t provided with meals, so the switch from boarders made life a little easier for Emma. Little had changed by 1911, although the grown up children had jobs.
Then came the war. Emma sent five of her six sons to fight in the First World War.
Walter, the most prolific letter-writer, had many of his letters telling of war experiences printed in the
Hunts Post. A German shell struck his trench, killing him and his companions. He is named on
St Ives War Memorial.
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St Ives War Memorial unveiled to remember the dead, 1920.
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Arthur gave up the the Bell’s licence in 1918, and by 1921 the couple lived on the Broadway in five small rooms with family around them. By then, St Ives had received its war trophy, a
German 15cm sFH13 heavy field howitzer. It was most likely the type of gun that killed Walter.
At first hidden away, the cannon was eventually displayed on the Waits, opposite the Bell. How bitter a sight it must have been for Emma, a constant reminder of her loss.
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| A family photo on the Waits, the German howitzer in the background, c1930. |
By 1939, Emma and Arthur were elderly, living with their son Ernest in West Street. Both were listed as 'incapacitated OAP'. Emma died in 1940 aged 77. Arthur died the following year.
Watered whisky and a fall from grace
When Charles Brown took over the Bell in 1918 it was thriving. By 1921, he and his wife shared the accommodation with their three teenage children, five boarders and twelve lodgers. Most of the Bell's lodgers were casual labourers with no fixed work, amongst the poorest residents of St Ives.
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| Charles Brown and wife outside the Bell, c1918. |
In 1922 Charles left for what seemed a step up to the White Hart in 1922, a large coaching inn with wealthier patrons and more potential profit than the Bell. But with greater opportunity came greater temptation.
Whisky cost as much as three pints of beer, a luxury drink compared with the Bell's cheaper trade. Suspicions arose when customers started to grumble that their spirits tasted weak. By 1923, the Food and Drugs Inspector was on the case. He sent a man named George Burgess money to buy whisky, then marched into the White Hart himself, leaving half the sample behind for Charles. The County Analyst soon confirmed what regulars suspected; the whisky contained 15% water.
Summoned to court, Charles pleaded guilty, claiming the whisky had been watered down for his wife, who was unwell, and had been served by mistake. He insisted the only sale of that whisky was the Inspector's purchase.
Superintendent Gale didn't buy it. He testified there had been repeated complaints, and one of his own samples contained a staggering 40% water. Charles was fined £5 (today £260). The following year Charles left the White Hart.
Last publican
When Charles Brown left the Bell in 1922, the licence passed to Henry 'Harry' Dawson. A blacksmith by trade, he had been landlord of the Chequers on Ramsey Road, an engineer's fitter at a local foundry, and a fireman. With his wife, Alice, and their three young children, he moved into the Bell.
The Dawson family had long ties to the Bell. From 1957 they ran a plumbing and heating business from the yard behind the Bell, and Harry started working there for his grandfather. During the First World War, Harry was turncock for the East Hunts Water Company, controlling the street stopcocks, and was exempt from military service.
In 1915, Harry was fined £1 (today £90) for serving beer after hours, a common temptation under the Government's new wartime restrictions. The following year he was reprimanded failing to send his daughter, the grandly named Maria De Silva Dawson, regularly to school. Later that year he applied for a further exemption from military service, but when told to join the Volunteers as a condition, he protested that he 'worked very hard during the day and his legs would not stand it. He had to attend and see that the fire engine was in working order once a month'. Ordered to apologise to the Tribunal, he did.
By 1921, Harry had turned businessman. He set up as a self-employed hot and cold water pipe fitter, just as St Ives homes were being connected to the new mains supply. Harry and Alice had another two children. After his grandfather's death in 1926, Harry inherited his role as Borough Water Engineer, a position later shared with his sons, Harry Jnr and Frank.
A 1929 courtroom case shows the sort of lodgers Harry dealt with at the Bell. A man named Ian Williams, later convicted of indecent assault, had taken a room there. Harry testified that his wife thought Williams was 'too well dressed to put up there', a blunt hint at the Bell's usual class of resident.
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| St Ives Fire Brigade, 1929. Harry Dawson is fifth from the left. |
In 1930 Harry was appointed senior officer of the Fire Brigade, serving until 1946. His son Harry Jnr earned fame of his own in 1935 when he dived fully clothed into the river to save a drowning boy. For his bravery he was awarded the
Royal Humane Society's certificate, presented at a Town Council meeting.
Harry appealed for a reduction in rates in 1938, citing falling profits and the proposed demolition of nearby houses. He also complained about the Methodist church next door displaying a poster that read 'There is a close connection between beer, ill-health and disease!' Harry won his appeal, though the following year there were no boarders at the Bell.
In 1953, the pub closed. Its licence was transferred to the New Crown, on the corner of London Road and Hemingford Road. Today the spot is better known as Armes Corner.
Harry died in 1966 aged 85.
Recent residents
For a few years after the pub closed, the Bell stood empty. Then in 1970, Harry Dawson Jnr's daughter, Delphenia Packer, bought the house. By then it was in a sorry state. During restoration, a leather-backed parchment was found bearing the original plans for St Ives' water mains, installed years earlier by the Dawsons in their role as Borough Water Engineers.
Once restored, Delphenia and her family gave the building a new lease of life, running it as a bed and breakfast with ten bedrooms. It remained in theri hands until 1998.
James and Jenny Cutler owned the house from 1998 to 2014. AWAITING REPLY TO EMAIL 19/8
Linda and Mark Haslett are the current owners, from 2014. They have carried out further sympathetic restoration.
Thanks to Bob Burn-Murdoch's The Pubs of St Ives for some of the information in this article.
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