In medieval times
Eynesbury green extended from the present green to Montague Square including
all the land that is now Luke Street and Berkeley Street. 16th
century buildings around it included St Mary’s Church, the Nags Head Inn and a blacksmiths. The land
towards Hen Brook was raised by about two feet to prevent the village from
flooding.
It was the centre
and heart of the village. Boys used to play football and girls played
traditional rounds, skipping, and singing games. In the summer the adults used
to meet and gossip leaning on the railings on the east side of the green.
In the autumns as
late as the 1850s people used to bring their gleanings (heads of
wheat they had picked up from the fields). They had been threshed at
home with a short stick to separate the grains from the stalk. These were then
sieved on the green and the wind used to separate the heavier wheat grains from
the lighter chaff (seed coverings). Later the grains were taken to the windmill
on Duloe Road or the watermill in Eaton Socon to be ground into flour.
It could then be made into bread, cakes or biscuits. The miller kept the
bran as payment.
When elections
were held the candidates used to assemble on the green for meetings attracting
large crowds of people. Many people in Eynesbury were very radical (wanting
reforms – changes – in the laws). The wealthier residents of St Neots
were very conservative – not wanting to change the old laws.
Communal buildings
like the schoolhouse and parish workhouse were built on the edge
of the green. There was also a pond on the northeast side near what is now
Ferrars Avenue. A fence ran across the pond leaving half in Old Close and half
on the green. Horses were taken to the pond to drink and on Mondays the
villagers would collects buckets of soft pond water to
clean their clothes and bed linen. It often used to freeze in the winter and
people would skate on it.
The pound was a
fenced in section of the green, where stray animals were kept until the owner
paid the churchwardens a fine for them. Before the enclosure act cattle used to
be driven to market past the green so the pinder, (pound
herder) had an important job rounding up strays. Even after enclosure a new
pound was ordered in 1859. It was 15 feet square, had 6 feet high wooden
walls and a strong oak gate with a lock.
(Source: Tebbutt, C.F.
(1978), St Neots – History of a Huntingdonshire Town, Unwin Brothers,
pp.349-350)