A load of old cobbles

Sweetly evocative of a past we never knew, but a nightmare for cyclists, cobbled streets were once a lifesaver for our working horses, explains Harry Pearson

- Harry Pearson

THERE are few sounds more evocative to the British ear than that of horses’ hooves on a cobbled street. The rattle of iron against cobble stone is as much a part of our national collective consciousness as the sweet tang of strawberries, the hum of bees in lime trees and the scent of dog roses after June rain. Many of the nation’s most beloved streets— Norwich’s Elm Hill, The Shambles in York, Rye’s Mermaid Street, Frome’s Catherine Hill, Steep Hill in Lincoln, Frenchgate in Richmond, North Yorkshire—are cobbled. There’s something about the knobbly vernacular style that awakens a nostalgia for a past we never knew.

It’s little wonder that one of our favourite television adverts, for Hovis, featured the cobbled sweep of Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset, a boy in a flat cap pushing a bicycle and the sound of Dvo ák’s Symphony No 9. In our minds, the cobbled street is either bathed in a buttery late-afternoon sunlight or glistening beneath gaslight, submerged in mist at the start of a Conan Doyle story.