Why Ramsey is still a small town

Sadly as time progressed other towns in the region began to overshadow Ramsey town. St Ives for example also owned by the Abbey, not only had the navigable Great Ouse with access to the sea, but an extensive road network within reach. Other market towns that could get these forms of transport grow mush quicker than Ramsey’s. This is because Ramsey did not have the forms of transport in their reach. The monks of Ramsey Abbey with rapidly increased income from their interests in these other sites made the town suffer. Eventually the market place was built over in the 15^th Century to help the income of the town. unfortunately the cloth weaves of this small fenland town were unable to compete.

The Mere was very useful for the early town of Ramsey for many years. This is because it supplied the town with food and it also gave the people of Ramsey a job.  Ramsey Mere remained un-drained well into the 19^th Century, the Ramsey Chronicler writing in monastic times speaks of Ramsey Mere as being ‘ a delightful object to beholders, in the deep and great gulfs of which mere there are frequently taken, by several sorts of nets, as also with baited hooks and other fishing instruments, pikes of extraordinary bigness called hakedes by the country people; and though both fishers and fowlers cease neither day nor night to haunt it, yet there is always of fish and fowl no little store.