Home | History | The Cave | Confluence point
The information in this section is mostly extracted from other web pages and should not be considered definitive.
Royston is on an ancient crossroads. Geologically speaking, it lies on the north edge of the Downs, where the chalk hills finally peter out into the Cambridgeshire plain. In the Bronze Age, travellers heading from Wessex to Norfolk would follow a track along the sheltered edge of the hills, and this track is known as the Icknield Way. When the Romans arrived, they build new straight roads, and the road connecting their major cities of London, Lincoln and York was named Ermine Street. Where it crossed the Icknield Way is where Royston now is.
Wherever you have a major crossroads, sooner or later, you get a settlement. In Royston's case, that was later, perhaps surprisingly later, but there is a good reason. Despite lying in a small hollow at the base of the hills, Royston has no river, no streams, no ponds, no springs. Beneath the town there lies a thick layer of chalk (at least 10 metres thick where the cave is), and this means that even wells don't find water. No water, no houses.
This is why Royston is not to be found in the Domesday Book, even though many of the smaller communities such as Reed and Barkway are listed.
What did happen was that, as at many important crossroads, a wayside cross was erected. Quite possibly, one was established in Saxon times, but some time after the Norman Conquest, one was built by a Lady Rohesia or Roisia (Rose). The cross is long gone, but the stone that formed the base is still to be seen, next to the crossroads.
A priory of the Order of St. Augustine (the Black Canons) was set up in the late 12th Century, and King Richard I granted the monks the first market rights in 1189, and also established a 'plantation' - a new town - around the market. The market thrived - after all, it made sense to bring produce and goods there from the surrounding communities to be ported out along the major roads. This "selling market on Wednesday in every week at Roys Cross" has survived through the ages.
When the monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII in 1535 the priory became the Parish Church. It is dedicated to St. John the Baptist.
By the early 14th Century, Roisia's Cross had become Roisia's Town or Royston. It was already a "great confluence of people and trade".
The next historically interesting period happened in 1603 when the Tudors gave way to the Stuarts. Riding down from Scotland to London after the death of Elizabeth I, King James VI of Scotland (as he was then - being crowned James I of England was still to come) stopped in Royston. While there, he went hunting on the heath, and fell in love with the place. As a result, he returned frequently to go hunting, and brought at least part of his court with him.
He had a hunting lodge built in Kneesworth Street, which is now somewhat grandly known as the Old Palace. It still stands, or mostly stands. In the Georgian period (?), a project to widen Kneesworth Street forced the trimming back of the building to the line of the chimneys, and a new brick frontage replaced the Jacobean one. The desk at which King James signed the death warrant of Sir Walter Raleigh is still preserved at the Old Palace. Many other large buildings in the centre of town were the homes of nobles at the King's court.
It was during this period that James's second son Charles (later to succeed his father on the throne) and the Duke of Buckingham made a journey to Spain, trying to find wives. Although this was fruitless, they did encounter the sedan chair, and brought the idea back to England. There are few transportation methods that haven't been raced at one time or another, and Royston was to see sedan chair racing in Kneesworth Street.
Royston has the first turnpike road, from Wadesmill to Caxton, passing through it. Dick Turpin is reputed to have operated along this road and to have stabled his horse in the town.
Much of old Royston is either Georgian or Victorian.
At the turn of the 19th century there were nearly 50 public houses in Royston, now reduced to nine, including two hotels. The oldest of these is the Bull Hotel, a coaching inn dating back to before 1520.
Until relatively recently, Royston was principally a market town relying on farming and agricultural industries. In the last few decades, however, there has been an expansion of the town with the introduction of light industry. This growth has been paralleled by the development of housing with the population increasing from 6,000 in 1960 to 15,000 or so now.
Prominent Royston characters have included Henry Andrews, the original compiler of Old Moore's Almanack, who is buried in the churchyard. Thomas Cartwright, the founder of Presbyterianism in England, and Joseph Towne, medical sculptor whose models in wax stand today in the museum of Guy's Hospital, London, were both born in Royston.
At one time the hooded crow (corvus cornix)
was so common in the district that it became known as
the Royston Crow. Cromwell's Roundheads derided the inhabitants after a brawl with local Cavalier
sympathisers and called them "Crows" and the name has remained. The local newspaper is known as
the Royston Crow, and local sports teams - football, rugby and hockey - use black and white as
their colours depicting the plumage of the hooded crow.
Until the end of the 19th Century, the county boundary between Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire ran straight through the centre of the town, along the ancient Icknield Way line. However, the administrative hassles of having a town part in one country, part in the other led to the boundary being moved beyond the edge of the town. Appropriately, given the near lack of hills in Cambridgeshire and the steepness of south Royston, the move preserved that lack by moving the boundary north rather than south. Recent expansion has again spilled over the border, and again the border has been moved, this time to the line of the bypass.
A few yards from the crossroads is the entrance to Royston Cave, a bell-shaped chamber hewn from the solid chalk below Melbourn Street which is part of the old Icknield Way. As far as is known, this cave is unique in Britain, possibly the world. Its origin is unknown, but the carvings on the walls are clearly mediaeval and most of them have religious significance. The circular cave, rediscovered in 1742, has a circumferential octagonal podium which supports the theory that it may have been used by the Knights Templar before their Proscription by the Pope in the 14th century.
Royston is just by a confluence point. What is a confluence point? Well, it's a point where longiture and latitude lines intersect.
Interestingly, perhaps, the next point to the west is just outside Buckingham, which, as well as being where I grew up, was also, of course, the seat of the Duke of Buckingham previously mentioned.
Alan Bellingham 19th October 2003