The Hardy Home in Broad St Ely

This post builds on information posted previously on the Hardy family in Ely. Its focus is the Hardy family home in Broad St Ely near the River Ouse. Hardy family members lived here from at least 1813 but possibly earlier, to 1918 - across three generations of Hardy families.

Peter Hardy, a descendant of Robert Ebenezer Hardy, advises me he has seen a burial record for George Hardy Senior who died in 1813, indicating that he lived in Broad St at the time of his death. George Hardy Junior left the house to his son John who was born there. John lived at Broad St until 1918.

The Hardy house was part of a row of what are referred to as "Tudor timber cottages" on Broad St. These houses survived until the 1930s when they were demolished.

John was a wool merchant and fellmonger like his father George. The Broad St location very near the Great Ouse river would have suited this business given that the trade in leather and hide used the Great Ouse for transport.

John was born 13 March 1834 some two years after Charles Hardy. When John died on 7 September 1934 age 94 he was reported to then be the oldest inhabitant of Ely. The report of John's death states that on his "retirement from business" in 1918 (then aged 84) John went to live with his daughter Mrs F.C Palmer in Market St. John's second wife Susan Claxton had died in 1918.

Below are two photographs of Broad St. Both are said to date from the early 1900s.

The UK TV series of Time Team programmes include the excavation of the Broad Street site. This was Episode 7, 2001 called The Island of Eels. It used to be able to be viewed on You Tube but it appears it has recently been blocked for copyright reasons.

A summary of the findings from the Time Team archeological dig is set out as follows;

Early History

The earliest documentary records for the excavation site date from 1250, while Ely's famous cathedral is Norman (work on it began in 1083). But Ely was already a thriving settlement several centuries earlier, as Bede's description would suggest.

The Saxon princess, Etheldreda (later St Etheldreda), first established a monastery on the island in 673, when its location between the kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia gave it a strategic as well as religious importance. Its remoteness and difficulty of access were to make it a favoured stronghold in various conflicts over the years. As well as being the location of Hereward's last stand against the Normans in 1070-71, for example, it was also a centre for revolt during the Anarchy in 1140. By the time Oliver Cromwell inherited a large estate in Ely in 1636, it had long been a rich and thriving city.

The excavation 'battlefield'

The site on which the excavation took place was a 180 x 25-metre strip of land between the river Ouse and the cathedral precinct. Formerly an industrial area, occupied most recently by a Jewson's timber yard, the land was originally sold for a new housing development, but following a public outcry it was bought back by the local council. It was agreed to use it instead as a public open space, which will reconnect the cathedral with the river for the first time since the medieval period.

The area fronting Broad Street turned out to have had a series of buildings on it from different periods. A 1933 photograph showed three cottages, and among the first archaeology to be uncovered was a well-preserved 16th-century bread oven at the back of these cottages.

Underneath what remained of these were earlier buildings, including a large aisled hall constructed around 1280. Beneath that was what Tony Robinson described as a 'forest' of huge post holes relating to another aisled hall on a different alignment. This was the earliest-known building in this part of Ely and would have dated to when Broad Street was no more than a cart track. Since the size and number of the post holes matched those of the later hall, it was thought that this earlier hall might have been dismantled and rebuilt on the different alignment when Broad Street was first laid out as part of a speculative development by the monastery.

The archaeology on this part of the site proved to be so interesting that a short extension was agreed, so that the excavation continued for a few more weeks. Then, just three days from the final deadline, came the discovery that everyone had been hoping for. A number of ditches were found, which could be dated to around 725 from a couple of pieces of Saxon Ipswich ware found in situ.

The discovery of the ditches – marking out boundaries between properties in the mid-Saxon period – helps to fill in the map of Saxon Ely. It now seems that the Saxon settlement was much bigger than had once been thought, extending about two kilometres from west to east. It must now be thought of as one of the bigger Saxon settlements in the country, according to the experts.

The Broad St site which runs from Broad St down to the Ouse was turned into gardens and a walkway as a Silver Jubilee project in 2002.