Roman and Medieval Stamford The Romans built
Ermine Street across what is now Burghley Park and forded the River Welland to the west of Stamford, eventually reaching
Lincoln. They also built a town to the north at
Great Casterton on the
River Gwash. In 61 CE
Boudica followed the Roman legion
Legio IX Hispana across the river. The
Anglo-Saxons later chose Stamford as the main town, being on a larger river than the Gwash. In 972
King Edgar made Stamford a borough. The Anglo-Saxons and Danes faced each other across the river. The town had grown as a Danish settlement at the lowest point that the Welland could be crossed by ford or bridge. Stamford was the only one of the
Five Boroughs of the Danelaw not to become a
county town. Initially a pottery centre making
Stamford Ware, it had gained fame by the
Middle Ages for its production of the
woollen cloth known as Stamford cloth or
haberget, which "In Henry III's reign... was well known in Venice." Stamford was a walled town, The site stood derelict until the late 20th century, when it was built over and now includes a bus station and a modern housing development. A small part of the curtain wall survives at the junction of Castle Dyke and Bath Row. In 1333, a group of students and tutors from the
University of Oxford, including some from
Merton College and
Brasenose Hall, dissatisfied with conditions at the university, left
Oxford to found
a rival institution at Stamford. Oxford had seen violence between students and masters hailing from Northern and Southern England, and those who left for Stamford were Northerners. Oxford and
Cambridge universities petitioned
Edward III, and the King ordered the closure of the college and the return of the students to Oxford; this took several attempts, but seems to have finally been achieved in 1335.
MA students at Oxford until 1827 were obliged to take an oath: "You shall also swear that you will not read lectures, or hear them read, at Stamford, as in a University study, or college general." The site and limited remains of the former Brazenose College, Stamford, where Oxford secessionists lived and studied, now form part of Stamford School. Stamford has been hosting an annual fair since the
Middle Ages. It is mentioned in Shakespeare's
Henry IV, Part 2 (Act 3, Scene 2). Held in mid-Lent, it is now the largest street fair in Lincolnshire and among the largest in the country. On 7 March 1190, men at the fair who were preparing to go on the crusade led a
pogrom, in which several of the Stamford Jews were killed, and the rest, who escaped with difficulty, were given refuge in the castle. Their houses, however, were plundered, and a great quantity of money was seized.
Religious houses and hospitals Stamford's importance and wealth in the Middle Ages meant that a number of religious houses and hospitals were established in or near the town. The monasteries and friaries were all closed at the Dissolution by 1539. Street names are indicative of their presence: Priory Road, Austin Street, Blackfriars Street etc.
Monasteries • Benedictine
Priory of St Leonard – certainly established by 1082 with the possibility of it having been founded originally in the 7th century. Part of the church still stands on Priory Road. • Priory of St Michael – this was a nunnery established by an
abbot of Peterborough in or before 1155 in Stamford Baron. It was a large establishment for about 40 nuns. In 1354 it was amalgamated with the Augustinian nunnery of Wothorpe which had been depopulated by plague. The
reredorter is a
Scheduled Monument.
Friaries At least five orders of Friars were established within the town of Stamford from the 13th century onwards. Stamford was sufficiently poor, financially and demographically, that in 1548 it had to amalgamate its eleven parishes into six and its population had reduced to 800. However, by the second half of the 17th century, after almost 150 years of stagnation, the population started to increase. As Stamford emerged into the 17th century, leather and fibre working (in the widest sense; weavers, ropers and tailors) were the main activities along with wood and stone working. In the 1660s the various efforts to make the
River Welland navigable again were finally successful. Stamford then became a centre for the malting trade as the barley from nearby fenlands to the east and heathlands to the north and west could make its way more easily and cheaper to the town. The
Great North Road passed through Stamford. It had always been a halting town for travellers; Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, James I and Charles I all passed through and it had been a post station for the postal service journey in Elizabeth's reign. By the later 17th century roads start to be used more for longer distance travelling. In 1663 an Act of Parliament was passed to set up
turnpikes on the Great North Road, and this was to make a notable difference to Stamford's fortunes in the following century. , 1611-12 During the
English Civil War local loyalties were split. Thomas Hatcher MP was a Parliamentarian. Royalists used Wothorpe and Burghley as defensive positions. In the summer of 1643 the Royalists were besieged at Burghley on 24 July after a defeat at Peterborough on 19 July. The army of
Viscount Campden was heavily outnumbered and surrendered the following day.
Bull Run For over 600 years Stamford was the site of the
Stamford bull run, held annually on 13 November,
St Brice's day, until 1839. Local tradition says it began after
William de Warenne, 5th Earl of Surrey had seen two bulls fighting in the meadow beneath his castle. Some butchers came to part the combatants and one bull ran into the town. The earl mounted his horse and rode after the animal; he enjoyed the sport so much that he gave the meadow where the fight began to the butchers of Stamford, on condition that they continue to provide a bull to be run in the town every 13 November. During the Second World War, the area round Stamford contained several military sites, including RAF station, airborne encampments and a
prisoner-of-war camp. Within the town, Rock House held the headquarters of
Stanisław Sosabowski and the staff of the
Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade. A memorial plaque was unveiled there in 2004. A 2,000lb bomb was dropped on St Leonard St on 31 October 1940, which never exploded. 1,000 people were evacuated, until 3 November 1940.
Stamford Museum occupied a Victorian building in Broad Street from 1980 until June 2011, when it succumbed to Lincolnshire County Council budget cuts. Some exhibits have been moved to a "Discover Stamford" space at the town library and to
Stamford Town Hall. ==Governance==