Discarded ‘Shagbag’ street sign leads to the discovery of Newmarket’s cockfighting past

The discovery of an old cast iron street sign in the garage of a long-serving Newmarket town clerk took his son on a journey more than 300 years into the town’s past and the world of cock fighting.

Julian Crabbe’s father John had been clerk to Newmarket Urban District Council from 1935 to 1969.

When he died in 1984 Julian set about clearing the garage at his late father’s home at Stetchworth. There he came across the discarded street sign bearing the name Shagbag. It was to lie in his own garage for nearly 40 years until, when downsizing, he re-discovered it and decided to trace its past.

“During my father’s term of office he must have received some complaint about the street sign and had instructed the town surveyor to remove it,” said Julian.

“When was it last seen on an official document? I found that out by accident when I was trying to find the date of construction of our Newmarket home, in Exning Road.

“An ordnance survey map dated 1901 did not show our house but it did show Shagbag Alley. It was a cul-de-sac off Albert Street, now Moulton Road, which now bears the name Sackville Street, after Sackville House stables which are nearby.

“The Concise Oxford Dictionary describes shag as rough growth or mass of hairs, a course kind of cut tobacco and a crested cormorant,” said Julian. “The cruder meaning is well known and it is that which may have led to the removal of the sign.”

But it was on a trip back to Newmarket from his York home, while taking a photograph of the old sign above its replacement, that Julian found out the likely reason for the street’s name.

“While standing in the street we held up a motorist who poked her head out of her car window and said ‘That was the old sign’. She told us of a house further up the street, the owners of which had details of its history and how it had a past linked to cockfighting,” said Julian.

He was invited into the back garden of Boyce House, a property believed to have been built in 1690, and it was there he was shown an original pit used for cockfighting.

“The pit was about 14 feet across and about six feet deep,” said Julian, “but the biggest surprise was the two tunnels that led off from the side of the pit. One was thought to be for keeping the cocks ready for fighting, each having a sack or bag over their head, while the other was perhaps an entrance or exit route and may well have lead to another house or hostelry.”

Julian’s research led him to an article by June Drury in a booklet published by the late Newmarket historian Joan Shaw called Five Newmarket Houses, which showed Boyce House had been built around 1690 in the area where Sir Charles Bunbury, whose Diomed won the first Derby in 1780, had his stables.

Shagbag Alley housed one of the many cockpits in the area. Others were under the old town hall, now Wildwood restaurant, and believed to have enjoyed royal patronage from Charles I time at Newmarket in the early 1600s, The Bushel pub in The Guineas and, much later, The Golden Lion in the High Street.

Ms Drury wrote: “The tunnel is well constructed from red brick and has several arched alcoves to the left side. Some of these are at least 15 feet deeper than the tunnel floor.

“Over time debris and rubble has confused the tomography, but the tunnel is dry and about six feet wide plus alcoves. It leads across the garden to Old Station Road, but is bricked up at the Boyce House boundary and the original end unknown.”

The name shagbag was a corruption of shake bag – the bags that cocks were kept in before a fight. They were then shaken which disorientated the birds and made them more aggressive.

Such bags were used mostly in the lower class pits, like the ones which most probably existed in Shagbag Alley.

So, Julian had succeeded in his quest to find the origins of an old street sign found in his father’s garage and, in doing so, uncovered another piece of Newmarket’s fascinating history.

“Chance is a fine thing,” he said. “If I had not found the old sign and held up a motorist, I would never have entered the world of cockfighting.”