The four entrances to the town by the four ancient roads were also very different seventy years ago from their present appearance, with regard to habitations. On the London Road on the east side was the Rabbit Warren, and not a single house from the present Vicarage site to Gatward's Pond, excepting the old Workhouse where Godfrey Terrace now is, and the Old Pest House just beyond Mr. Whitehead's stone works. For the rest, the Rabbit Warren sloped away into the valley (now gardens), where school-boys met and fought out their differences! Here was the old claypit, a curious geological feature embosomed in the chalk. Paupers and rabbits were the only inhabitants of this end of the town on the cast, and on the west the first house was, as now, the old "Horse Shoes," on the bank. The last house on the Melbourn Road was the turnpike near the Institute. In Baldock Street there was nothing on the south side beyond Messrs. Phillips' brewery, and on the north side nothing beyond the Fleet, then a private road-way to the lime kiln and clunch pit, in the occupation of Mr. S. Eversden, now forming the picturesque dell in the grounds of the Rookery (Mr. Henry Fordham's). Royston, in Cambridgeshire, consisted only of a few houses beyond the old Palace, the house now occupied by Dr. Archer, then a boarding school kept by Mrs. Raynes, being the last house in Royston, Cambs. Now almost a town has sprung up beyond this spot, upon what were then open fields. This house occupies part of an old burial site around which centres a little mystery and a solid part of the history of our old town. It must suffice here to say that what was in the early years of the century a school for teaching the young idea how to shout, has twice been the residence of a doctor, while beneath its foundations have rested for centuries the ancestors of those who were being tutored and physicked, and that a few years ago upon the removal of earth for enlarging Dr. Archer's house, so many human remains were disturbed that on the wall of the old cellar (then being enlarged) was a skull of some poor Yorick of the Middle Ages in which a live bat had taken up its abode! {112} A few old sites and buildings may be here mentioned. The County Court occupies what was then a tinker's shop and a farm-yard behind; the pedal stone of the ancient Cross, now in the Institute garden, was then at the back entrance to the Bull Yard, near Mr. Innes' shop, having been removed from the Cross a few years before; the market place could only be approached from the High Street, through the inn yards. Of the ponds of Royston, Gatward's Pond, on the Barkway Road, was open and unenclosed. It was not a very savoury bath, but in its turbid depths so many boys used to disport themselves, that it was commonly remarked in the district that Royston had no water, and yet more boys learned to swim here than anywhere else in the district.