He continued to thrive, though because, probably prior to 1860, he built the grand mansion Islington Lodge on land which he had bought from the Eau Brink Commissioners in 1850 and where he farmed with pigs, potatoes and wheat. Savage’s made a whole range of agricultural and fairground machinery and perhaps the competition was too strong for Mr Harding and his partner, Joseph Turner, because they closed their business in 1858, Mr Harding announcing in the London Gazette of 5th February of that year that he would be responsible for all debts owed by the business and would receive all moneys owed to it. He would doubtless have been in head to head competition with Lynn’s biggest industrialist of the time, Frederick Savage, who arrived in the town from Dereham in 1851. In the mid-19th century Mr Harding was in business at King’s Lynn as a manufacturer and repairer of steam engines, a lucrative enterprise in the days when the Fens were still being drained and steam was taking over from the horse as the primary motive power on the farms. (Commissioners of Sewers were responsible for land drainage in specific areas such as the Fens from the 17th century until the introduction of internal drainage boards in the 1930s).

In the latter years of the 19th century he served as engineer to the Bedford Level Corporation, responsible for the upkeep of the various rivers of the Fens and the drainage of thousands of acres of the finest farm land in Britain in addition to his responsibilities for ensuring that the many pumps, sluices and locks and the miles of embankments were maintained in good order, this Mr Harding was also the superintendent of the River Great Ouse Outfall Board and a Commissioner of Sewers. William’s wife, Louisa Harding (nee Burcham), as a young girl. William Derisley HardingĪ good claimant to the title has now emerged in the form of William Derisley Harding, engineer and farmer and, by the sound of things, very much the archetypal Victorian public servant. The man who gave his name to the area which is now the Doorstep Green has been the subject of speculation and a favourite talking point for friends of the Green ever since its opening in 2004.

Who was the Mr Harding of Harding’s Pits?

Reclaimed river savage