Cory Santos

By Cory Santos corysantos

The idea of a tramway system in Lincoln today would seem extremely difficult to operate. With the sheer volume of vehicles crammed onto streets, laid out in Roman, Viking and Medieval times, there would be little room to run the tracks required. However, just a century earlier, when the motorcar was in its early throws, Lincoln surprisingly had a thriving tram system. What was this system, where did it run and why did it disappear?

The original idea for a tramway in Lincoln was devised and approved in 1880, after £20,000 of capital had been raised by the Lincoln Tramways Company. The first designs of the system called for two lines within the city: one from Bracebridge to St. Benedict’s Square along Newark Road and the High Street, and another running from Carholme to the Arboretum. For unknown reasons, but probably due to financial difficulties, only the line along the High Street was built, being completed and opened for business on 8 September 1882.

The last Lincoln horse tram, whose driver died in an electrical shock incident. Photo: Tramways and Light Railway Society

The trams were single carriage and held between 16 and 32 passengers, depending on the car in operation. Set on rails and pulled by horses, the trams took roughly 20 minutes from their depot on the corner of Newark Road and Ellison Street (the building was known as the ‘Tram Stables’) to St. Benedict’s Square, with the only stop being Cranwell House (located by St. Botolph’s Church), although like any other mode of travel in the city it would often have to stop at the level crossings. The service was fairly successful, but really became a hit with the people of Lincoln when , in 1901, a half-penny charge was introduced for workers.

Despite the success of the horse trams, the city soon sought to remove them from the streets. This was due to the rise of electrically powered trams throughout Britain, a trend the city council wanted to emulate. As a result, in 1905 they purchased the line from the Lincoln Tramways Company, establishing Lincoln Corporation Tramways and beginning to electrify the lines.

The method for electrifying the trams was a system of studs placed along the High Street, a system rarely seen elsewhere in England (the only other instance I could find was on Mile End Road in East London). This system, known as the Griffiths-Bedell stud system was very advanced, but unfortunately also very susceptible to failure, sometimes in spectacular fashion. Whereas previously the citizens of Lincoln would be liable to avoid the menace that was horse droppings, now they occasional had to avoid the tracks inspection boxes on the High Street, which exploded around them!

The opening of the electric tram line in Lincoln in 1905 was a big event for the city. Photo: John R. Prentice collection

The reasons for these explosions were a combination of the studs, the tram cars and a nasty gas leak. Gas from the mains would occasionally seep into the electrical conduit which ran along the route and when the metal brush of the tram sparked on the studs, with the results being spectacular (and dangerous!).

Such was the case on 6 June 1908 when one Mrs. Blatherwick was struck and injured in one such explosion. The studs proved faulty in other non-explosive ways as well, as various bits of metal on the road would often come into contact with the studs and the trams, shorting the lines and shutting down the system. As a result, in 1919 overhead lines were installed, to minimize the dangers and faults of the service.

Regardless of the dangers involved, the electrification of the trams proved an instant success. Within the first week of service, over 3,000 journeys had been made on it. The travel times as well were much improved with electrification: 15 minutes from Bracebridge to Cornhill, rather than the 20 minutes plus with the horse drawn service.

Map of the route of the Lincoln tram system.

What success the tram achieved, however, waned shortly after the end of the First World War. With the increased availability and affordability or motor cars, the trams quickly became more of a white elephant than an important mode of transport. As a result, the system was officially closed in 1928, never to return.

The idea of a new tram system in Lincoln sounds enticing. But the reality is that unless the High Street is pedestrianised completely or some other city-changing public works occur, modern Lincoln and its medieval streets simply could not cope with it. The story of the trams, however, does represent a great period of British history — when private and public enterprises flouted costs in a constant battle of technological one-upmanship.

A model of a Lincoln tram built especially in Bristol for Richard Woods’ family. Photo: Richard Woods

Cory Santos is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Lincoln who specialises in the social history of Britain during the Second World War. Besides his main research focuses, he also enjoys local history and the interesting tales it often turns up.

By Cory Santos corysantos

George Boole

The city of Lincoln has long been associated with great men and women. From the ecclesiastical giants of St. Hugh and Robert Grosseteste, to great musicians, such as William Byrd, the famous Renaissance composer, and even actors, such as John Hurt, who attended school here.

One of the greatest names associated with Lincoln, however, was a self-taught teacher and mathematician, who would revolutionise logical thought: George Boole.

George Boole was born on Silver Street on November 2, 1815. The son of a local merchant, having received only an elementary education and no further academic training, Boole began a strict regimen of self-education, becoming well versed in modern languages and Latin by his early teens.

By 16, he had become a teacher; first in Doncaster at Heigham’s School, and later in Liverpool, before returning home to Lincoln. By the age of 19, in 1835, Boole opened his own school, which he operated for four years, before briefly taking up a post as head of a school in Waddington.

Following this, in 1840, he opened a new boarding school, located at 3 Pottergate, which he ran for a number of years before his departure to Ireland.

Boole’s school in Pottergate.

During his time as a teacher in Lincoln, Boole began an association with the Lincoln Mechanics Instituion, where with the help of Sir Edward Bromhead, a prominent mathematician and the Rev. George Stevens Dickson of St. Swithin’s Church, he began the long and arduous task of teaching himself calculus.

Following his mastery of calculus, Boole began to explore much deeper in mathematics, theorising and writing widely on probability, differential equations and other complex (and frankly confusing) areas, making many contacts in the academic world. The importance of his work, particularly what came to be known as Boolean logic (though this was much later, in 1854), earned him wide renown in the maths world, and in 1848, he was made the first professor of mathematics at Queen’s College, in Cork, a position he held until his death in 1864.

Now I am sure that many of you are thinking, “a local, self-made and taught lad, found success in life and was a great mathematician. So what is so important about Boolean logic?”

To put it simply, Boolean logic is the foundation for modern computer programming. An advancement on algebraic thinking, instead of variables being numbers, in Boolean logic the variables are expressed as either true or false. These variables are often expressed as either ‘1’ or ‘0’, the very familiar binary language utilized by modern computing. Without the ground breaking work of George Boole, the modern world would likely look much different technologically.

The logical and mathematical developments of George Boole make him truly an inspiring and celebrated Lincolnite (a crater on the Moon is named in his honour), but his familial connections also provide some rather quirky (and loose) connections between Lincoln and the wider world.

His wife, Mary, for example was the niece of George Everest, the surveyor-general of India, who charted much of the Himalayas and for whom Mt. Everest is named. His grandchild, Sebastian Hinton, invented the jungle gym in Chicago in 1920 and Sebastian’s daughter (Boole’s great granddaughter) Joan Hinton, was a renowned nuclear physist and worked on the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb.

So there you have it. George Boole: self-taught man, mathematical and logical innovator, professor and more importantly, Lincoln’s link to the world’s tallest mountain and the jungle gym.

Cory Santos is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Lincoln who specialises in the social history of Britain during the Second World War. Besides his main research focuses, he also enjoys local history and the interesting tales it often turns up.