Elizabeth Woodcock
Mrs Elizabeth Woodcock, a resident of Impington and wife of Daniel Woodcock, went to Cambridge market on Saturday 2nd February 1799. She sold her eggs and butter and started to return home. Her last stopping place was The Three Tuns at the top of Castle Hill. Heavy falls of snow had already occurred when she replenished her flask with brandy and left for home on her horse. She was thrown from her horse in the fields to the east of Impington, and was unable to remount. Shaken and numbed with cold she took shelter under a hawthorn hedge. The snow drifted over her until she was completely covered. Early next morning she heard the church bells ringing for morning service. She also heard the voices of passers-by in the distance, but was unable to attract attention. On the Monday she made a hole in the snow above her and made a flag of her red handkerchief which she tied on a stick. This flag led to her discovery but not till another week had passed.
Elizabeth Woodcock Memorial in the snow 2013
Elizabeth Woodcock
Elizabeth Woodcock’s House
On the following Sunday, the Parish Clerk of Impington, William Munsey, saw the flag while out walking, discovered Mrs Woodcock, got help, and rescued her. She had been buried under the snow for eight days, and was conscious most of the time. She heard a church clock striking the hours, and the church bells on two successive Sundays. After her rescue, tragically she did not survive long. When rescued it was soon obvious that she was badly frost bitten. Gangrene set in. She died, bed bound, six months later and died on 24th July at the age of 43..
Her situation had become well-known throughout the county and many visited leaving gifts of money and gin. At the end of her burial notice appears the following note: “She was in a state of intoxication when she was lost. Her death was accelerated (to say the least) by spirituous liquors afterwards taken, procured by the donations of various visitors.” News of her adventure spread around the country, and numerous engravings of her were published at the time.
Elizabeth Woodcock Plaque
Original Stone Memorial
The New Memorial
A stone memorial was placed at the scene of her imprisonment under the snow to commemorate her miraculous survival. However, by 1849 it had become so marked that a new memorial was laid its place. The original stone is now part of the Folk Museum’s collection.
It was moved to its present position (one of the fields on Chivers’ farm) when the railway was built.
As was typical of the time, at least one street ballad was written (thanks to Gary Brockman for digging this out):
The verses appear in “The Every-day book and Table Book or Everlasting Calendar of popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, incident to Each of the three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and present times; forming a complete history of the year, months, and seasons, and a perpetual key to the almanac;” … by William Hone vol.II London, printed for Thomas Tegg and Son, 73 Cheapside 1838. The tale of Elizabeth Woodcock is on page 175 and starts with this verse.
She was in prison, as you see
All in a cave of snow;
And she could not relieved be,
Though she was frozen so.
Ah well-a-day!
For she was all froze in with frost,
Eight days and nights, poor soul!
But when they gave her up for lost,
They found her down a hole.
Ah, well-a-day!
c. 1800 Financed from public subscription, a memorial stone was erected at the site of Mrs Woodcock’s entombment. It was replaced by the surviving memorial pillar in 1849
What Happened to Eliza Woodcock’s Children
After 1800 the family disappears from Impington to avoid, it is said, the continuing notoriety that persisted after her death. Here is what we know.
Elizabeth Williams was born around 1756. She was not christened but her elder and younger brothers were. In 1785 she married small farmer John Sockling, who was a tenant of the Impington Hall estate. Their family home (Woodcock Cottage, Station Road) still stands opposite the Baptist Church.
Their eldest son John was born the same year. Over the next ten years there followed five further Sockling children: Mary 1787, Elizabeth 1789, Martha 1792, and William 1794. However, all was not well. Infants Martha and William were dead by 1794. Their father died the same year leaving the widow Eliza Sockling, pregnant with three surviving children, on her own. New baby Martha died shortly after birth in 1795.
In 1795 Eliza made the decision to marry agricultural labourer Daniel Woodcock. With his physical help she could continue farming. A year later son William Woodcock was born. Eliza was forty years old.
Daniel Woodcock, was left to care for his young son, William, and three stepchildren. Within a year Daniel too had died leaving four orphans.
John Sockling and sisters Mary and Elizabeth were 14, 12 and 10 years when their mother died. John fathered a son Ephraim with Mary Thurlbourne in 1816 but the baby died at 2 months. In 1841 John, recorded as a labourer, was living near the boundary with Impington, probably off Kings Hedges Road. In 1841 his neighbours included James Thurlbourne and his sister Mary. Were John and Mary still an item? Mary died in 1845 followed by John (at Chesterton Union Work House) five years later. Both are buried in Histon Churchyard.
Of Elizabeth Sockling and William Woodcock, we can find no further record but Mary appears to have married William Game/Gamm in Cambridge in 1805. William died before 1861. In 1871 a Mary Gamm, widow, has returned to Impington living in a cottage on Station Road whilst acting as an elderly housekeeper at The Gables on Histon High Street (opposite Tesco’s). By 1881 she was living with relatives in Oakington and appears to have died later that Summer. If she is our Mary Sockling, she was 94 years old!