Cape Town Lens: St Botolph’s Church, Boston, England

A Cape Town Camps Bay tagged image from photographer – Billy Wilson Photography as published on Flickr.

St Botolph’s Church, Boston, England

Image by Billy Wilson Photography

"St Botolph’s Church is a parish church in the Church of England in Boston, Lincolnshire. Its tower, 266 feet 9 inches (81.31 m) tall, has been nicknamed the "Boston Stump" since its construction. It was long used as a landmark for sailors, and on a clear day can be seen from Norfolk.

The church is one of the largest parish churches in England, and has one of the tallest Medieval towers in the country. The tower is approximately 272 feet (83 m) high. It can be seen for miles around; its prominence accentuated by the flat surrounding countryside known as The Fens. On a clear day, it can be seen from East Anglia on the other side of The Wash. The nickname, Boston Stump or simply The Stump, is often used as a reference to the whole church building or for the parish community housed by it. The formal name is Saint Botolph’s Parochial Church of Boston. The name "Boston" is thought to have evolved from "Botolph’s Town".

Boston is a town and small port in Lincolnshire, on the east coast of England, about 100 miles (160 km) north of London. It is the largest town of the wider Borough of Boston local government district. The town itself had a population of 35,124 at the 2001 census, while the borough had a total population of 66,900, at the ONS mid-2015 estimates. It is north of Greenwich on the Prime Meridian.

Boston’s most notable landmark is St Botolph’s Church ("The Stump"), the largest parish church in England, visible for miles around from the flat lands of Lincolnshire. Residents of Boston are known as Bostonians. Emigrants from Boston named several other settlements around the world after the town, most notably Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States.

The name "Boston" is said to be a contraction of "Saint Botolph’s town", "stone", or "tun" (Old English, Old Norse and modern Norwegian) for a hamlet or farm, hence the Latin villa Sancti Botulfi "St. Botulf’s village").

After the Norman conquest, Ralph the Staller’s property was taken over by Count Alan. It subsequently came to be attached to the Earldom of Richmond, North Yorkshire, and known as the Richmond Fee. It lay on the left bank of The Haven.

During the 11th and 12th centuries, Boston grew into a notable town and port. In 1204, King John vested sole control over the town in his bailiff. That year or the next, he levied a "fifteenth" tax (quinzieme) of 6.67% on the moveable goods of merchants in the ports of England: the merchants of Boston paid £780, the highest in the kingdom after London’s £836. Thus, by the opening of the 13th century, Boston was already significant in trade with the continent of Europe and ranked as a port of the Hanseatic League. In the thirteenth century it was said to be the second port in the country. Edward III named it a staple port for the wool trade in 1369. Apart from wool, Boston also exported salt, produced locally on the Holland coast, grain, produced up-river, and lead, produced in Derbyshire and brought via Lincoln, up-river.

A quarrel between the local and foreign merchants led to the withdrawal of the Hansards around 1470. Around the same time, the decline of the local guilds and shift towards domestic weaving of English wool (conducted in other areas of the country) led to a near-complete collapse of the town’s foreign trade. The silting of the Haven only furthered the town’s decline.

At the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII during the English Reformation, Boston’s Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite, and Augustinian friaries—erected during the boom years of the 13th and 14th centuries—were all expropriated. The refectory of the Dominican friary was eventually converted into a theatre in 1965 and now houses the Blackfriars Arts Centre.

Henry VIII granted the town its charter in 1545 and Boston had two Members of Parliament from 1552.

The staple trade made Boston a centre of intellectual influence from the Continent, including the teachings of John Calvin that became known as Calvinism. This, in turn, revolutionised the Christian beliefs and practices of many Bostonians and residents of the neighbouring shires of England. In 1607, a group of pilgrims from Nottinghamshire led by William Brewster and William Bradford attempted to escape pressure to conform with the teaching of the English church by going to the Netherlands from Boston. At that time, unsanctioned emigration was illegal, and they were brought before the court in the Guildhall. Most of the pilgrims were released fairly soon, and the following year, set sail for the Netherlands, settling in Leiden. In 1620, several of these were among the group who moved to New England in the Mayflower.

Boston remained a hotbed of religious dissent. In 1612, John Cotton became the Vicar of St Botolph’s and, although viewed askance by the Church of England for his nonconformist preaching, became responsible for a large increase in Church attendance. He encouraged those who disliked the lack of religious freedom in England to join the Massachusetts Bay Company, and later helped to found the city of Boston, Massachusetts, which he was instrumental in naming. Unable to tolerate the religious situation any longer, he eventually emigrated himself in 1633.

At the same time, work on draining the fens to the west of Boston was begun, a scheme which displeased many whose livelihoods were at risk. (One of the sources of livelihood obtained from the fen was fowling, supplying ducks and geese for meat and in addition the processing of their feathers and down for use in mattresses and pillows. The feathery aspect of this is still reflected in the presence of the bedding company named Fogarty, nearby in Fishtoft.) This and the religious friction put Boston into the parliamentarian camp in the Civil War, which in England began in 1642. The chief backer of the drainage locally, Lord Lindsey, was shot in the first battle and the fens returned to their accustomed dampness until after 1750.

The later 18th century saw a revival when the Fens began to be effectively drained. The Act of Parliament permitting the embanking and straightening of the fenland Witham was dated 1762. A sluice, called for in the act, was designed to help scour out The Haven. The land proved to be fertile, and Boston began exporting cereals to London. In 1774, the first financial bank was opened, and in 1776, an act of Parliament allowed watchmen to begin patrolling the streets at night." – info from Wikipedia.

Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.

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