Continuing our republished series, “A Question of Royston”, covering the little-known history of Royston, as written by the late Councillor F John Smith (1932-2021).
Highwaymen Real and Imagined
Until Angel Pavement was built in the 1960s there was a pub at the Market Hill end of the site called the Red Lion. This was Royston’s second hostelry of that name, since there was at one time a post house in the High Street also called the Red Lion. This probably was demolished some 200 years ago, although an assembly room attached to it was dismantled and then re-erected to become what we now know as the ballroom suite of the Old Bull Hotel, better known to older Roystonian’s just simply as “The Bull”.
One proprietor of the High Street Red Lion in the 18th Century was a Mrs Gatward (still a common name around the area). Alfred Kingston in his 1893 book “Fragments of Two Centuries” tells how her son became an highwayman who was eventually caught and hung, his body being left to hang on the roadside gallows until it blew down. This may well have been the gibbet that can still be seen at Caxton by the restaurant at the roundabout where the A1198 crosses the A428.
However the most famous highwayman known to the public was Dick Turpin, whose name has been given to Turpins Ride on the Grange Estate. All the Grange Estate roads are named after Royston “worthies”. All the same it is extremely unlikely that Turpin ever operated around Royston, although he was said on one occasion to have backed his horse down a well at the Hoops public house in the High Street in order to deceive pursuers; again the full story can be found in Kingston’s book.
There is nonetheless a grain of truth in the tale, since we know that there were underground stables in at least one cellar off the High Street, below what is now The Food Centre!
You can find out more about Royston’s history in the book “A Royston Miscellany” by F John Smith, available to borrow or reference in Royston Library
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You can find out more about Royston’s history in the book “A Royston Miscellany” by F John Smith, available to borrow or reference in Royston Library
