As the expansion of Paston Reserve to the east of Peterborough grows, it is worth mentioning some of the place names that have existed in the landscape. The Paston Reserve area is bounded to the north by the Roman canal Car Dyke, to the west by the A15 Paston Parkway and to the east by Newborough Road.
A ditch-edged road with the delightful name of Bacon’s Holme Lane ran south from Car Dyke and now remains in the landscape as two parallel ditches infilled with bushes between Fletcher Way and Harper Crescent. We may presume that Bacon was the surname of a man or family who owned or used the lane. The ‘Holme’ name suggests there was either an area of raised ground or that the land there was prone to flooding. Ditches by the side of roads are used as drains in boggy areas, such as the fens, and also as barriers to stop cattle escaping when they're being led along them.
Before the A15 Paston Parkway was built, there was a farm known as Shoulder of Mutton Farm. Mutton has very much fallen out of favour in England, but is still eaten elsewhere in the world. We can comfortably assume that the farm there was a sheep farm and was perhaps noted for its mutton shoulders.
Close to Shoulder of Mutton Farm was a manor house. Little is known about the manor house and by the earliest maps of the area it had been replaced by Grenfell House. Archaeological digs found evidence of a building dated to the 16th or 17th
centuries and attributed it to Grenfell. Had it still been standing, it would have been found at the very end of Norwood Lane, close to the Paston Parkway.
Close to Grenfell House was an area known as Payne’s Nook. There are other nearby places with Nook in the title, including Milking Nook and Tucker’s Nook in Maxey. Just like Bacon’s Holme, this is likely to have been named after a man, or family, who owned or used the feature. The ‘Nook’ term could relate to the fact it’s a secluded piece of land, but is more likely to have medieval origins and be a reference to the unusual angular shape of the feature. The strangely curved shape of Payne’s Nook, which appeared on late Victorian maps as a curved dead end to Paston Ridings, is likely to have had an interesting creation, but that has been lost over time. The earlier Cassini map dated 1824-36 shows the joining of Bacon’s Holme to Payne’s Nook, which continued to Newborough Road. It now exists as a ditch-edged feature in the landscape, which is largely infilled by trees and bushes, and has been ear-marked for preservation in the new construction phase.
References:
A Program of Detailed Archaeological Monitoring at Paston Reserve, Newborough Road, Peterborough, Pre-construct Archaeology, 2014
Cassini Map, Peterborough Old Series, 1824-36
Image: by DetMold from Pixabay
