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This website contains a selection of 'scraps from the past' - documents and photographs covering aspects of the lives of some young people who lived in and around Ramsey between 1600 and 1920.
Originally created as a pack for schools, it was produced by a volunteer at Ramsey Rural Museum and funded through a grant from Huntingdon History Society Goodliff Fund.
The material is organised in sections:
The Fen Child in School
The Fen Child in Danger
The Fen Child in Trouble
The Fen Child at Work
The Lotting Fen Child
Ramsey town rests to the north of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire and is surrounded by the black, flat and fertile fen land of East Anglia. The town is of historical importance developing alongside the prosperous Abbey on an island at the edge of the fen.
Once the fourth richest in the country and one of the most important monastic houses in England, Ramsey Abbey was destroyed on the orders of Henry VIII in 1539. Following the dissolution, Ramsey sustained further misfortune: the destruction of the town by Parliamentarians during the English Civil War (1642–1651), death of a large section of the population in the Great Plague of 1666, and a series of fires during the 17th and 18th centuries ruining large areas of the town. From Medieval times a river ran through the centre of the town and was used by all boat traffic, until it was covered over in the 1850’s. Today, the town has a thriving community currently experiencing a period of expansion and development.
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