Listed Building: Dryland Fountain (1051644)

Summary A drinking fountain of around 1907. Reasons for Designation Legacy Record – This information may be included in the List entry Details. History The historic core of Kettering centres around St Peter and St Paul Church, Market Place to its north-west, and the immediate network of streets around it. Originally a Saxon village and later a market town, Kettering was for much of its history a relatively small linear settlement comprising what are now Gold Street, the High Street, Market Street, and Market Place, and Sheep Street to the south. This core layout of medieval streets persists today, though the majority of the surviving buildings date from the C19 and early C20. Kettering was at the convergence of several important routes and benefited from this and from the wool industry, but it was the arrival in 1857 of the Midland Railway which enabled larger industries, particularly the boot and shoe making industry, to expand the town significantly beyond its historic core. The wider town is still characterised by numerous former factories and associated terraced housing. Historically the site of the Dryland Fountain formed part of the extended gardens of the town’s manor house, which was, until the Reformation, under the ownership of Peterborough Abbey. A map from the 1720s shows the site occupied with orchards. By 1884 however, the site was occupied by the Royal Ironworks. This structure had been demolished and the road widened by 1900, and in 1904 the town library was built on the site. In about 1907 the fountain and horse troughs were erected in front of the library to commemorate Dr John Winter Dryland, following his sudden death in 1906. Dryland had been the council medical officer and was instrumental in the foundation of the town’s isolation hospital in 1897. Details MATERIALS: carved limestone. DESCRIPTION: tall rectangular limestone pedestal with an entablature and carved finial. The north and south (side) faces are decorated with carved swags of flowers and prominent scrolls or volutes at the base, above a limestone horse trough. The western face reads ‘A MAN / GREATLY / BELOVED’ in a roundel and ‘ERECTED BY / PUBLIC / SUBSCRIPTION’ in a lower panel. The eastern face reads ‘TO THE / MEMORY OF / JOHN WINTER / DRYLAND / M.R.C.S L.M L.S.A / J.P / 1834-1906’. At the base, the water fountain lets into a semi-circular ribbed or ‘gadrooned’ basin. In a panel above the volutes, an inscription on the south elevation has become too eroded to read, the equivalent panel on the north elevation reads ‘HE PRAYETH WELL/ WHO LOVETH WELL / BOTH MAN AND / BIRD AND BEAST’. A small brass plaque above the basin records that the monument was refurbished in 1994 by KG Wright (Builders) Ltd, supported by the Civic Society of Kettering, the county council and Anglian Water.

Record last edited

Nov 18 2022 9:34AM