A monochrome view of bare winter trees standing in a grassy field under a pale, overcast sky.

Trees near Upware (MoC133/57)

Upware Data

A row of tall, thin trees lines a flat, unpaved path with an open field to the left and a low, grassy bank on the right.

Near Upware, 1924 (MoC)

1862 ‘Upware Bustle’

The village was part of a major coprolite mining are and at Rogationtide there was a fair and festival. The miners decided to have a ‘Bustle’ in Upware on one of the Rogation days and arranged for the setting up of dancing-booths, skittle alleys and shellfish stalls. Many houses open to sell beer, as ‘Bough Houses’, a Rogationtide tradition.

On this occasion by late morning fights had broken out. Police came in from Wicken but were driven off. It was claimed that the ‘King of Upware’, alias Richard Ramsey Fielder, who lived at the ‘Five Miles from Anywhere Inn – No Hurry‘ had encouraged the fighting. (See Tales of Old Cambridgeshire by Polly Howat, 1990)

A man in a hat pushes a wheelbarrow filled with stones across a narrow wooden plank spanning a body of water near a barge.

Unloading a barge c.1900

Mike Petty’s Scrapbook

https://archive.org/details/UpwareScrapbook1897To1990

An older man in a flat cap and sweater sits outdoors between a spade and a wooden wheelbarrow, with a black dog by his side.

Harold Sennitt, 1980, last peat digger

Projects

Upware

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