This is a very rough sketch of a blend between a picture taken on the Green in Foxton before 1910, and another taken today in 2012.  It’s not particularly well done but something I will work on over summer.  I have old pictures of many locations in the village of Foxton so plenty to work on.

The picture of the little girl was sent from Foxton to Dresden in 1906.  I found it on e-bay and it was sent back to me, from Dresden in 2006.  This picture postcard has survived two world wars!

While I was taking the picture today I heard a toot and this lovely old car passed by.  Spooky!

Foxton Jubilee Celebration Team are planning a community picnic on the Rec on Monday 4th June 2012 from 2pm, hoping that the village will come together as a community to celebrate this historic occasion. As part of this, Julie Oakley and I are combining efforts to create a display of memorabilia from Foxton, past jubilees, royal celebrations, the coronation or anything else that is appropriate to the occasion. We need photographs, items or memories to create the display. We will take great care of anything we are loaned. If you have anything we can share please contact jane@commonstream.co.uk

Anyone remember Disney Dave … or Bill Oddie visiting Foxton!

This is a house in Foxton with an unbroken history since medieval times. Richard Peppercorn was living here in 1490. He rebuilt the house in October 1501 and got fined for obstructing the Market Place! About one quarter of his house still stands. Like most houses of that date it had no foundations, but the horizontal base timbers just rested on the ground. Much of the timber was reused so that some of the beams may be well over 600 years old. The floor was made of trodden clunch, which is how they were made since Roman times. In 1583 Thomas Campion rebuilt the house. Although he reused about 40 of the beams from the earlier house, he built on brick foundations. All that he built still stands. In 1620 Nicholas Campion had a ceiling inserted over the ‘hall’ to make another ‘chamber’ and that too is intact. Campions lived here until 1679. They were followed by Rayners until 1820 when the house became a labourers’ cottage. In 1919 it was sold for £70.00. The tenant in 1919 – Tim Ison – claimed the fowlhouse in the garden and the oven door! However, the oven door is still there. In 1946 Rowland Parker bought the Cottage, and the rest is history!

Another photograph taken by Robert H Clark of Royston which I found on e-bay.  As usual I have scanned the photograph and zoomed in to see more in the image than you can with the naked eye.

Edward Scott looks like a colourful Foxtonian.  I found a couple of news article about him in the Cambridge Chronicle.  Unfortunately the picture above is not Mr Scott as the photographic process hadn’t been invented by 1820!  It is one of the first recognisable pictures of a human being ever taken (Self Portrait by Robert Cornelius in 1839).

September 8th, 1820, Page 3, Cambridge Chronicle

On Friday last an inquisition was taken at Foxton before John Ingle Esq. one of the coroners for this county, on view of the body of Sarah Scott, the wife of Edward Scott, who died the previous day.  Various rumours were spread as to the manner in which is was supposed the deceased came to her death and it was therefore deemed necessary that an investigation should take place.  After a deliberate enquiry into the circumstances and the examination of two respectable surgeons who attended for the purpose, the jury returned their veridict that she died by the visitation of God in a natural way, and not by any violent means either from her husband or any other person.

An earlier story indicates Edward Scott was a violent chap!

April 25th, 1817, Page 3, Cambridge Chronicle

Edward Scott, convicted of assaulting John Williamson, of Foxton was sentenced to one weeks imprisonment, and to pay a fine of ten shillings.

Well I am finally getting to grips with making the site a useful resource for local history and genealogy.  I have made some progress but there is still a lot to do.  I have sorted out a number of mistakes on the site and worked out how best to manage the images so they don’t get lost if the site gets hacked or whatever.  Most of the the images are going to be stored on Flickr and linked to from the WordPress site.  Being on Flickr also potentially allows many people people so see them and link back to the Common Stream website.  I have also set up a Common Stream Facebook page which should also reach another, perhaps different audience.  On the site itself Facebook ‘Like’ and Facebook and Twitter ‘post’ icons have been added to the content.

Still having problems with the logins though!! … ok back to the code!

I was out cycling yesterday morning and couldn’t resist taking this shot of the Dovecote with rising easterly winter sunrise behind it. Lots of kids and parents taking the shortcut to Foxton Primary School.

A great little application that allows you to create little planet views of locations in Google Maps! Do you recognise the places?