Spalding is where I was born and where I have lived most of my life to date. I state “feeding from beyond the Fens” because this has many meanings. The River Welland feeds into the Wash and its waterways and navigations fed inland to Stamford, Bourne and beyond. In modern times Spalding feeds a supply of people into the food and farming industry. Indeed as agriculture and the food industry grew it feeds the country. Online you can encounter various claims that the South Holland Area, and sometimes Spalding specifically has between 18% and 65% of the nation’s food consumption pass through or produced in the area. When you consider the items grown, packed, processed and distributed from the area this is certainly significant.
Spalding is a highly successful town that has evolved over time. By success I measure it in terms of the fact it has survived and grown over time with few periods of contraction or stagnation of economic activity. It was almost certainly navigated through in Roman times with considerable activity in the area and developed as the bridging point of the River Welland feeding into the Wash and into the Fens and uplands beyond at Bourne depending which way you travelled. In my informed opinion it developed as a priory town, a seaport town, a market town and an industrial town.
Roman occupation in the Spalding area was most likely from the invasions that are recorded from about 12 BC onwards. Lincoln as a Roman garrison town developed from about 48 AD. Archaeological finds in the Spalding area seem to be dominated by evidence of salt pans, an important and valuable commodity. To call the local salt pans Roman is really just a marker in time, it could be that local people developed salt pans in that era to fulfil the need and trade opportunity that the Roman’ s created. That there were people in this area during that time is undoubted, but the area was not occupied enough to warrant a Roman name such as Caister or Lincoln.
The derivation of Spalding is often attributed to it being derived from the word “Spald” meaning “the shoulder” in mediaeval English or even a Latin derivation thus Spalding refers to the tribe on the “shoulder” of the marsh. I strongly disagree with this interpretation. Many Latin words for the body survive today in medicine and the nearest word that is similar in location and sound is the “scapula” or shoulder blade. This derivation appears to have originated from some nineteenth century directories and then has been repeated thanks to the un thinking internet. The word “spalden” can be found in Middle Low German and Middle Dutch meaning “to split” as in splitting a fish or splitting wood. This works better for me as it could describe how the rise in the banks approaching the River Welland and the river itself splits both the fens and the marshes of the area. It could also refer to a split in the river caused by the then navigable Westlode that headed towards Bourne. [i]
Apparently the first written reference to Spalding as a place was in the charter dated 716 (or 714 depending upon the source) granted by King Ethelbald of Mercia granting Crowland Abbey its rights and privileges. Whilst I have been unable to identify where this document exists, it does seem to be both agreed and undisputed that this is the earliest written reference to neighbouring Spalding. My opinion is that the Priory of Spalding was founded around the same time but evidence of this was lost most possibly due to the actions of Dr Richard Bentley.[ii] However, it is clear at that point Spalding became a thriving priory town, but did not have the consistent strength of Crowland or Ramsey . As a result it was possibly re-founded as a cell of Crowland around 1052 possibly as an “asset grab” as trade between Northern Europe grew. Sadly much is unknown about Spalding Priory with the dissolution seeing the materials spread across the town and surrounding area.
Whilst Spalding Priory surrendered to dissolution in 1540, the importance of Spalding as a port had grown before that and it would be an evolution into a port town. The preservation of navigations in the area was considered important until the establishment of the railway in the region. Drainage of the surrounding area saw an expansion of Agriculture. The revolution of Agriculture and increased enclosures saw the increased development as a market town. Spalding supplied a place of settlement, transportation by water both locally and internationally. Furthermore, prior to 1815 Spalding was the lowest bridging point of the River Welland before the sea with Fosdyke being a more risky tidal fording point. This meant that Spalding was a significant crossroads for road traffic seeking to go between Lincolnshire and the neighbouring counties of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. The expansion of Agriculture and the increase in traffic stimulated economic activity, wealth and supporting industry. Warehouses were built, mills created. Spalding saw the production of lime and milled animal feed for farmers; boats, ropes, sails and biscuits for sailors, but little development of anything other than localised light industry.
1848 saw the arrival of the railway in Spalding at the detriment of the port which declined into disuse over the next hundred years. However, it expanded the market and is the date I choose to describe Spalding’s primary description as a “market town”.
Food production became more industrialised and the period from the 1930’s saw the origins of large scale food processing and production and the growth of horticulture and flower production to industrial levels. In my opinion, by the late 1970’s Spalding started to lose its description as a “market town” and had become an “industrial town”. It is perhaps the nature of Spalding that it seems to sleepwalk from one description to the next. Many do not regard it as an industrial town to this day as they have a narrow view of “Satanic mills”, manufacturing and engineering as being dominant industries. Spalding’s primary industry is food. Food packing, processing and distribution. If you took away all the produce that has been through the greater Spalding area you would start to see a lot of gaps on the shelves of your local supermarket. Spalding also has a secondary industry – horticulture. Horticulture encompasses food such as fruit, salads and vegetables as well as flowers and plants. Horticulture has shrunk somewhat, but I do believe that it is likely to see a growth in the area fuelled by ingenuity, automation, need and the ability to be highly energy efficient. If I was to pick a date where Spalding switched from being a market town to an industrial town I would choose 1978 simply because this was a year that Spalding saw its first out of town Supermarket open in the Spring of that year. Their advert from March 1978 possibly sums this up:
“This week the Key Market Kops brought a whole new way of shopping to Spalding called Super Key. With thousands of the lowest prices for miles you’ll find your weekly shopping will work out cheaper and easier than ever before.”
This supermarket, favouring the car driver with its large car park and cheap petrol was opened in Wardentree Lane between Spalding and Pinchbeck. It is perhaps ironic that this heralded a huge change in how people were to buy most of their food that would expand the food processing and distribution in the Spalding area to levels it had never seen before and at the same time see the decline of the market, market town and ultimately the decline of retail shopping in the twenty-first century.
[i] E H Gooch in his History of Spalding (1940) agrees with this his source was from notes handwritten by Maurice Johnson.
[ii] In 1981 I was a pupil of Spalding Grammar School and was asked to compile a history of the school in preparation of an anticipated future celebration of its four-hundred years centenary. I was not at that point a member of Spalding Gentlemen’s Society, but had access to the museum thanks to my father, the then lanternist and the generosity of the then curator Norman Leveritt. In my research I came across hand written notes by Ashley Maples from the 1950’s that were an annotation and translation of writings by Maurice Johnson. I found this most helpful, for my Latin is very poor. In these notes was an almost personal tirade against the former Grammar School master Richard Bentley whom he accused of stealing the Charter and other documents belonging to the Priory of Spalding and taking them without authority to Trinity College where they were apparently “lost” in a trade of documents between the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Whether this is true or not I had no other source. However Norman Leveritt seemed quite upset that I had found this reference. When I wished to refer to these notes further they had “vanished” and I was referred to other helpful documents to my task in hand. I subsequently spoke to his successor, John Belsham about this and he said that Mr. Leveritt did not like controversy and it would be in his nature to “squirrel away” such a reference never to see the light of day. Dr Richard Bentley was well known for his arrogance, but he is regarded as one of the founders of classical Greek study in England. However, I have subsequently found reference to him taking away Spalding Priory’s documents and a copy of the Gospels including a letter he wrote to a friend that he had “obtained some very curious manuscripts” at Spalding and he was “thinking of publishing them.”
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