Collection Spotlight

We will endeavour to refresh this page on a regular basis by putting in the spotlight one particular collection. This may be a formal grouping of items perhaps gifted to the Society by one person or family, or a grouping of items that merely go together such as our amazing selection of cameras, or coins. We hope you enjoy the taster that this spotlighting gives you and encourages you to visit us to see all the collections at first hand.

The Black Book of Sewers

The illustration shows the inside front cover and first page of this manuscript book, which is a recent donation. The note on the inside page was made by "Maurice Johnson" and refers to a court case in 1691. It was therefore probably inserted by the father of Maurice Johnson, the founder of our Society in 1710. The book itself is a compendium of laws and by-laws relating to sewers around Boston, Lincolnshire. At that time, the word "sewers" was used for any open waterway, whether natural or man-made. Such waterways were crucial to the management of drainage and transport in the low-lying fens, and from the early sixteenth century at least they were managed by a statutory body in each area known as a "Court of Sewers".