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AD 986 The
local landowner Aethelstan Manessone dies and leaves the village
of Slepe to Ramsey Abbey.
1001 The supposed
bones of St Ivo are found near Slepe and taken to Ramsey Abbey.
“St Ivo’s Priory” is built on the spot where they
were found.
1086 Slepe is recorded
in Domesday Book. There are 52 men in the village (no-one bothers
to count the women and children) and it is valued at just £16.
c.1090 A monk named
Goscelin writes a book called The Life and Miracles of St Ivo, the
first evidence that Ramsey Abbey is developing a cult of the saint.
1107 A Ramsey Abbey
charter mentions a bridge at St Ives, the earliest evidence of a
bridge across the Ouse here.
1110 King Henry I
grants Ramsey Abbey the right to hold a fair at St Ives once a year,
starting on the Wednesday after Easter and lasting for a week.
1200 King John grants
Ramsey the right to hold a weekly market at St Ives.
1354-5 St Ives bridge
is repaired using ash trees from Houghton and timber from Warboys
- showing that the bridge was then built of wood.
1426 The altar in
the bridge chapel is consecrated, probably marking the completion
of building the new stone bridge.
1449 Local people
attack St Ives Priory. They take fish from the fishponds, hurl timber
and lead from the roofs into the river and fill the fountain with
ordure.
1518 The bishop of
Lincoln inspects the Priory. He finds that the buildings are in
a poor state of repair and that the behaviour and conversation of
some of the monks is unacceptable.
1539 The Dissolution
of the Monasteries: St Ives Priory is closed down. The Prior is
given a pension of £12 a year and allowed to live in the bridge
chapel.
1544 Henry VIII gives
the Priory buildings to one of his courtiers, Thomas Audley.
1570 Elizabeth I gives
the bridge chapel to one of her courtiers - this presumably means
that the Prior has now died. The chapel is used as a private house
(and for a while as a public house!) until the 1920s.
1631 Oliver Cromwell
moves to St Ives and farms here for five years. In 1636 he inherits
his uncle’s estates at Ely and goes to live there.
1645 During the Civil
War King Charles attacks Huntingdon and Godmanchester. To prevent
it happening again Parliament orders the breaking of all the bridges
across the Ouse, including St Ives bridge.
1679 Dr Robert Wilde,
St Ives-born clergyman and poet, dies. His will establishes the
annual Bible Dicing ceremony.
1689 Fire destroys
122 houses, probably about a third of the town.
1719 The St Ives Mercury
is founded, one of the earliest local newspapers in the country.
In 1722 it prints something that offends Sir Edward Lawrence, the
town’s biggest landowner, and it is forced to close.
1741 The spire of
the parish church is blown down in a storm. It is rebuilt in 1748.
1745 A force of volunteers
is raised to fight Bonnie Prince Charlie. Near Abbots Ripton they
meet a band of volunteers from Huntingdon, fight them instead and
return home.
1774 John Wesley
visits St Ives and writes that he preached to “a very well-dressed,
and yet well-behaved congregation.”
1801 The first census
reveals that St Ives has a population of 2099, living in 478 houses.
1808 The open fields
around St Ives are enclosed: the strips of land dating from Saxon
times are replaced by a modern landscape of fields and hedges.
1822 The New Bridges
are built across the flood plain to the south of the town. Just
in time - the following year sees the highest flood of the 19th
century.
1847 St Ives railway
station is built and the lines to Cambridge and Huntingdon are opened.
The line to Wisbech is opened the following year. A line to Ely
is built in 1878 but closes in 1931.
1851 A census gives
the population of St Ives as 3522, an increase of nearly 1500 in
the last 50 years. But the population then falls back steadily,
to 3001 in 1881.
1874 St Ives receives
a royal charter to elect its own mayor and corporation.
1886 A new cattle
market is built, in an effort to match the market built at Cambridge
the year before. (It is nowadays the bus station and car park).
1901 The Cromwell
statue is unveiled on the Market Hill. It celebrates (a little late)
the 300th anniversary of Cromwell’s birth in 1599.
1902 The Roman Catholic
church at Cambridge, designed by Pugin, is dismantled and re-erected
in Needingworth Road, St Ives. And the Victoria Memorial is unveiled
in the Broadway, commemorating (a little late) the Queen’s
diamond jubilee in 1897.
1918 The spire of
the parish church is knocked down by an aircraft from the Royal
Flying Corps station at Wyton. It is rebuilt in 1923-4.
1930 The bridge chapel
is restored after being used as a house for 400 years.
1931 Herbert Norris
bequeaths his antiquarian collections to St Ives together with the
money to build the Norris Museum. It opens to the public in 1933.
1934 Mr George Wright
Ingle gives the Holt Island, just across the Backwater from the
Museum, to St Ives. 75 years later it is a nature reserve.
1947 March brings
the highest floods of the 20th century.
1951 This year’s
census gives the population of St Ives as 3078, hardly altered since
1881.
1959 The railway line
to Huntingdon is closed, followed by the lines to Wisbech in 1967
and Cambridge in 1970. The railway station is demolished in 1977.
1961 The population
shows a slight increase, to 3800. By 1971 it has doubled, to 7148.
1967 The St Ives Industrial
Estate opens, an important step in the town’s expansion.
1972 The world’s
first pocket calculator, Clive Sinclair’s Sinclair Executive,
is designed and made at St Ives.
1974 Local Government
Reorganization sees St Ives Borough Council reduced to a Town Council,
while Huntingdonshire becomes a District within an expanded Cambridgeshire.
1980 The St Ives bypass
is opened, taking through traffic out of the town centre and relieving
pressure on the old bridge.
1981 The population
has again increased dramatically, to 12,331.
1988 St Ives is twinned
with Stadtallendorf in Germany.
1991 The population
is now 15,314.
1994 The dual carriageway
A14 is opened, completing St Ives’s fast road links with other
parts of the country.
1998 But some things
are still beyond our control: Easter brings the highest floods for
50 years, with a repeat performance in 2003.
2001 The big increase
in population is tailing off - 16,001 people now live in St Ives.
2006-7 The Environment
Agency spends £8 million building flood defences to protect
local homes.
2008-10 More than
£100 million is spent to build the world’s longest guided
busway between St Ives and Cambridge.
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