Navigation Wharf to Woodyard at Eynesbury

Once upon a time you could obtain almost anything you needed to sustain life within 100 yards or so of the parish church at St. Neots. If you need a new wooden door you must make a journey or order it for delivery. Living 50 yards or so from Tebbutts Timber & Builders merchant in Eynesbury I could saunter around two corners and buy a wooden door and walk back with it perched on my head with the aromas of wood shavings and decades of in-gained sweat and toil amongst the random set of sheds and buildings. The view from the church tower over Brook Street and the ATS Tyre depot shows the extent of the yard and the Kaysor-Bondor factory beyond. The site by the Hen Brook had been a wharf, probably created from a riverside meadow by 18th century dumping of building materials and other rubbish. An Eynesbury family had gained the navigation rights to the Great Ouse up to Bedford and used the site for maintaining their barges. It was also used for loading and off-loading goods for the Market. The coming of the railway in the 1850’s saw the decline of river traffic and the Hen Brook wharf. Around 1880 the area was sold to a new firm of timber merchants, Daintree and Jewson whose business did not prosper and they sold the site on to C.G Tebbutt in 1889. It became a thriving family business until the rise of the out of town ‘sheds’ in the 1970’s caused it to fade away in the early 80’s as an increasingly mobile population preferred a supermarket version against a traditional local firm where you asked for items rather than pick them off a shelf.. The site was redeveloped as a residential area. The St. Neots Museum (free to locals) has more on the influence of the river on town life and business and the people who lived their lives in the parish. If you have memories or photographs of the woodyard and its workers do let it know. The museum also has an excellent shop with many books and items unique to the town suitable for the whole family. It includes a reprint of St. Neots (1978) by C F Tebbutt from which material in this article has been taken.