oyston on the one hand, and from Royston to Odsey on
the other, and it is a pleasure to add that this fine stretch of open
country presented in the spring a perfect picture of golden yellow
gorse blossom!

The four entrances to the town by the four ancient roads were also very
different seventy years ago from their present appearance, with regard
to habitations. On the London Road on the east side was the Rabbit
Warren, and not a single house from the present Vicarage site to
Gatward's Pond, excepting the old Workhouse where Godfrey Terrace now
is, and the Old Pest House just beyond Mr. Whitehead's stone works.
For the rest, the Rabbit Warren sloped away into the valley (now
gardens), where school-boys met and fought out their differences! Here
was the old claypit, a curious geological feature embosomed in the
chalk. Paupers and rabbits were the only inhabitants of this end of
the town on the cast, and on the west the first house was, as now, the
old "Horse Shoes," on the bank. The last house on the Melbourn Road
was the turnpike near the Institute. In Baldock Street there was
nothing on the south side beyond Messrs. Phillips' brewery, and on the
north side nothing beyond the Fleet, then a private road-way to the
lime kiln and clunch pit, in the occupation of Mr. S. Eversden, now
forming the picturesque dell in the grounds of the Rookery (Mr. Henry
Fordham's). Royston, in Cambridgeshire, consisted only of a few houses
beyond the old Palace, the house now occupied by Dr. Archer, then a
boarding school kept by Mrs. Raynes, being the last house in Royston,
Cambs. Now almost a town has sprung up beyond this spot, upon what
were then open fields. This house occupies part of an old burial site
around which centres a little mystery and a solid part of the history
of our old town. It must suffice here to say that what was in the
early years of the century a school for teaching the young idea how to
shout, has twice been the residence of a doctor, while beneath its
foundations have rested for centuries the ancestors of those who were
being tutored and physicked, and that a few years ago upon the removal
of earth for enlarging Dr. Archer's house, so many human remains were
disturbed that on the wall of the old cellar (then being enlarged) was
a skull of some poor Yorick of the Middle Ages in which a live bat had
taken up its abode!

{112}

A few old sites and buildings may be here mentioned. The County Court
occupie