44. William Cartwright’s description of Spalding

In 1846 local lawyer William Cartwright described Spalding  with each letter of its name as follows:

Since first I knew thy muddy lakes and bogs

Putrid with stench and organised with frogs;

A poor man’s cow, if had no winters keep

Lay bleak and starved, and rotten were his sheep;

Drained, ditch’t, and fanc’d with good and thriving thorn,

Is thy rich soil, and covered o’er with corn;

Numerous in cattle, sent away in flocks,

Got turnpikes good and pebbled o’er like rocks.