Review by Tony Kirby published in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society XCIV pp. 225–226 (2005); reproduced by kind permission of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society.

The Anatomy of a Victorian Village: Whittlesford 1800–1900. 

Tony Carter 2004

Whittlesford Victorian Group, xi + 158 pp

£15 (inc p & p) from Jack Sutcliffe, 34 Maynards, Whittlesford, Cambridge CB2 4PN

In spite of its proximity to the M11, the A505 and the Cambridge–Liverpool Street railway line, Whittlesford remains one of Cambridgeshire’s most attractive villages.

Thanks to Nathan Maynard (1806–63) and his son George Nathan (1829–1904) it is also one of its best documented. Nathan was a minor entrepreneur, owning shops in Whittlesford and Duxford and kept a detailed diary of local events and personalities. George Nathan continued and expanded this, collecting documents  relating to Whittlesford and surrounding villages.

He sold the shops in 1873 and, after a brief period   in London and on the strength of an established reputation as an antiquarian, became curator of Saffron Walden Museum. He remained here for the rest of his life. In later years, his material was put into scrapbooks, most of which are in the Cambridgeshire CRO although some material remains in Saffron Walden.

George Nathan’s methods would appal modern archivists. He thought nothing of pasting documents into the scrapbooks: but without this and his careful transcriptions, much of Whittlesford’s history would have been lost. It was from the scrapbooks, and other

sources, that Tony Carter (a long-time Whittlesford resident and a geographer by profession) set out on this ambitious reconstruction of the topography, economy,

society and mores of the community in the 19^th century. Sadly, he died before seeing the fruits of his work, but thanks to Tony Cartwright, Jack Sutcliffe and Pat Carter, who undertook the necessary editorial work, we have a unique insight into the life of a

Victorian village.

There are four sections.

The first describes the landscape of Whittlesford down to Enclosure and helps explain why any walk from the centre of the village produces a variety of ecologies.

The second looks at village life and social organisation. The strength of nonconformity is evident: half the population were Baptists in 1825 and in 1897 two-thirds were Dissenters. The poverty and deprivation that were the lot of most Victorian villagers are well described, together with the efforts the better-off could make when faced with a real crisis, such as the 1871/2 smallpox outbreak: thanks to a makeshift isolation hospital, there were no fatalities.

Part 3 looks at both the leading players on the village stage, the Hollick-Tickells, Raynors, Thurnalls and the Maynards themselves, and the cast of tradesmen and

workers. Like most Victorian villages, Whittlesford was well supplied with local goods and services. It also had an agricultural engineering works, owned by another branch of the Maynard family, although many, especially women, were employed in the paper

and leather works at nearby Sawston.

The final section is two guided tours of the village, in 1841 and 1881. Here we find out where families with whom we became familiar earlier in the book lived and worked: anyone who has ever tried to repopulate a 19th century village from census and directory material can only marvel at how well this has been achieved.

The village was already changing in 1881: some old families had died out or emigrated,

although the small settlement at Whittlesford Bridge had grown rapidly since the arrival of the railway in 1845. A walk around modern Whittlesford acquires a new dimension thanks to these chapters and accompanying maps.

Completing Tony Carter’s work was ‘a tribute to a man who did so much for the village he loved’. A fitting tribute indeed: the book deserves to become a classic of local history