The Blisworth Book - End of the print run

If you prefer to download a 17KB PDF file, from which printing may be more "orderly" on your computer, Click Here

After nearly a year, the print run of the book “Blisworth - the Development of a Village” is nearly sold out at the Newsagents and I have only a few copies left. I only propose to start another short run if I accumulate at least a few dozen orders. At a rate of less than one being sold each week it would take nearly a decade to break even on a similar repeat run.

Those Latin pests; Errata and Addenda. Now is the time to own up to the mistakes and fill out some topics with more detail. First, an apology to all those sensitive to canal terminology - it is boatmen that live on narrow boats please note - barges (as referred to frequently) are usually wider craft afloat elsewhere.

Regarding the 15th century Blisworth Manor that was occupied by the Wake family, I misinterpreted the 1727 Grafton rent records (page 5). The site of the manor has indeed been supposed to the north of the church, according to the oldest Ordnance Survey map. The mapping of this area took place around 1835, when a converted tithe barn rented by Benedict Roper occupied the site. The map was not drawn at a sufficient scale to show "Manor House" at that place until 1885. The survey was carried out by qualified soldiers - thought by some to be a contradiction in terms when they began their protracted work but, in fact, they were from Companies of Royal Engineers and Miners. An archaeologist with them was charged with the task of keeping up with their theodolites and discovering items to include from learned tomes, the civil authorities, the landlords and church officials. I have found nothing in the church terriers about what may have occupied the site before the tithe barn, which was built in the second half of the 18th century. There is nothing definite in Bridges "History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire" (1791). There the manor is merely stated to be once near the church and have a park and warren associated with it. Similarly, the Grafton survey of 1705 associates the house with a park and warren. Both, as we know, are to the south of the church, so how did the Ordnance Survey come to place the house site to the north?

A document which Eileen Rose brought to my attention recently is more helpful however. It was written as notes by Wm. Taylor of Heyford and was used by Bridges is his compilation. Taylor visited the parish around 1719 and consulted the curate, Revd. Mr Bullyer who told him that there was "just one seat in the parish in which Mr Plowman now lives and was formerly the dwelling house of Sir Robert Wake who owned the whole town - it is now upon ye Duke of Grafton's hold". This was more than enough to divert interest towards the grounds of Blisworth House as a probably site for the 'seat' of the Wake family. There would have been more scope there for accommodating his retainers in a classic ring-fenced enclosure, when visiting Blisworth. It is fanciful of me but the immediate grounds of Blisworth House do seem to form a roughly circular plan. However, the maps since 1727, the earliest we have, show a succession of barns and stables built and demolished over the years so it would probably be pointless trying a geo-physics survey. No old stone foundations have been found there within living memory. Regarding Robert Wake, perhaps the Reverend Bullyer meant to say Roger Wake. There was a Robert Wake who might have rented a house from Sir Charles Knightly of Fawsley (purchaser from Wake's widow) as late on as 1570 - but no Wake since Roger in 1504 "owned the whole town".

At any rate, we now know of a documented reference to Blisworth House (or the grounds there) as the place where the Wakes had their "Seat". It seems that the Ordnance Survey had got it wrong. There are no documents from them - all except those relating to a handful of counties were lost in the Blitz. In the 1830's, the surveyors would have Taylor's notes on arrival in Blisworth and would be keen to mark up the old "seat". But the 1702 Plowman date stone at the door of the house was covered by a large stone porch in 1825 and the last farmer Plowman, a William, had sold up by 1779. He, or his family was living in the house that has been later named "Plowmans" by George Freeston. The rector, Revd. Ambrosse, was probably absent and may well have been in prison, thus not available to help. My conjecture is that someone indicated the fields that Plowmans farmed in the previous century, ie. Pond Bank, and the surveyors "just took a stab at it" knowing that the Gibbs family farmed there at the time and lived on the High Street nearly opposite the church.

The Blisworth Hill railway of 1800-5 was initially planned to extend as far south as Cosgrove but was only built as far as Stoke Bruerne bottom lock aligning roughly with what is now called Green Lane in Stoke (page 11). The line of the tunnel was initially set up with the use of 20 vertical shafts and not four. As the excavation was widened after being aligned, most of the spoil was removed at the ends and via a few of the shafts. Much of it would have been good blue clay and probably sold for brick making rather than dispersed on the neighbouring fields. Incidentally, there has come to light a 1920's 'Canal' letter referring to an abandoned vertical shaft, 200' east of the line of the existing tunnel. Its position is carefully recorded and, along with other features pointed out to me by William Irlam, it is clear that two unsuccessful starts on the tunnel excavation were made and not one - this is written up in a feature article on this site. The material is new and not referred to by Blagrove in his recent tunnel book. He does, however, allude to a subsidiary tunnel which was briefly considered by the engineers but does not offer a reason for it - the new work explains it quite well as a means for safely crossing under the troublesome Fisher Brook.

In 1797, The Sun, Moon and Stars building, then called "The Half Moon Inn", was extended from an earlier building purchased by John Linnett (not Linnell) on Grafton land (page 14). From an early time, the inn was designated a Manchester Odd-fellows Society Travellers Lodge. It was No. 2645 - a meeting house where benefits for needy society members would be administered and one of a chain of inns to which a doctor could be called to alleviate ills. A sun, a moon and a ring of seven stars, along with the ubiquitous 'all seeing eye', are all part of the logo of the society and I think this explains one of the inn's name changes in Victorian times.

The classic Ford tractor is not known as a Dexter - “DEXTA” is correct (page 26). The sweet shop at The Cross is indicated correctly in the text as Mrs Huggett’s for times around 1930. However, at an earlier time the shop was at the nearest door on the right of the picture (page 46). The sign over the door indicates Rowntree’s but you need a computer to prove that.

There have been further developments in the account of milling history. We know that water milling was already an attenuated activity around 1720 under the Dent family - well before being totally discontinued in 1796 due to the building of the canal. According to the English Windmill Index, Blisworth had just one windmill on Cliff Hill - a post mill with two common and two spring sails, brake and tail wheels which worked with the steam mill in the stoke road until the latter burnt down.  There is now seen to be a continuity of wind-milling, also under the Dent family, with Richard Dent in charge in 1815 according to Grafton records. However, in a 1839 Grafton survey, which appears to have been overlooked, an Ann Westley is shown in charge of the windmill and having freehold of the site on which the Westley Buildings were eventually built. In 1855 an Elizabeth Westley refers to her ‘tenement at the end of South Street’ in her will and leaves it to her second son Richard, having handed over the sizeable baking and milling businesses to her entrepreneurial first born, Joseph. By the way, in a will, ‘tenement’ simply meant a plot with fixed buildings. The will, together with the map and genealogy by Sally Edwards, proves that Ann and Elizabeth are the same woman - Elizabeth nee Campion. The survey and later censuses indicate that her 8 cottages, in 1839, had expanded to around 13 by 1841. From the 1851 census, it seems that 14 -16 units were established and Ann, aged 62, lived in one of them with her daughter Mary Ann, aged 21. They described themselves as annuitants. By the time of the 1861 census, all the buildings were probably finished, comprising about 28 units. They were referred to as ‘Westley’s Yard’ - extending over the site now occupied by our surgery and the white house next to it. The house now known as Victoria House, on the southern-most tip of Ann Westley’s land, may well have been a little mansion that Ann had built for herself before the final expansion. Another point is that the Westley buildings have been presumed to be for bake-house or mill workers but this is not indicated at all from trades that tenants disclosed to the census enumerators. Perhaps the houses were for the village generally.

To explain the Dent-Westley transition, I propose that Elizabeth Campion, who was 27 in 1815, was probably Richard Dent's assistant at the windmill while Samuel Westley, same age, was a baker under his aging father Joseph senior. The two were married in 1820. Samuel died in 1832, perhaps of lung disease, and Richard Dent at about the same time was incapacitated - presumably. This would leave Elizabeth, known of course as Ann, to take over the windmill and pave the way for her son, Joseph junior, to become both miller and baker. In 1841 Richard Dent was clearly not in too bad a health, at the age of 70, for he described himself as a labourer to the census enumerator. He lived next door to the late Samuel Westley's bakehouse - perhaps his experience of flour earned him work there.

The alternative is that Samuel Westley was the assistant to or replacement for Richard Dent. This raises the question who was then in charge of the bakery. Since he died in 1832 and his widow was the acknowledged miller by 1838 (some say 1825), how would she have received sufficient training? In any case, it seems she was amazing - achieving much in a village almost totally owned by the Duke in an age when women were not expected to be so influential.

I report incompletely (page 24) when referring to two excellent head-teachers at the County Primary School. There was a Mr Arthur Green, who ran the old school in the Stoke Road from 1907 and the new school from its opening in 1913 until he departed with ill health in 1928.  Then a Mr Bailey was acting head-teacher for six years of difficult times for the school; chiefly muddy playgrounds, buildings repairs, staff shortages and child sicknesses. Then a Mr. Cole took over in 1934 until Len Piggott arrived in 1958. All three were excellent teachers and are well remembered in the village by the longer established families.  In fact, Mr. Cole received the MBE for services to education on Feb 26, 1957.  So to correct my earlier statement, the village school has actually had a run of five head-teachers we can be proud of.  The start and finish dates of the teachers is recorded in PDF files (see Schools section)

There are a few other very minor slips - the paths near Nunn Wood are, in fact, bridleways (page 48) and some of the dates on pictures are more suspect that I first thought. Dating errors have been corrected as far as possible on this website.

There is one error which is not really my fault - that is, as long as you accept that I could not verify every detail found in George Freeston’s notes. It crops up in a few places in the book. I refer to the patch of land between Church Lane and the Stoke Road as “The Baylis”. It must have been the 1839 survey which George had noted at some stage because there is a label to the field - “The Baylis”. However, I got a shock when I looked later at the photographs I had taken of the map. What is printed is actually Tho Baylis which refers to the current tenant in 1839, Thomas Baylis. In Victorian times, the field could have been referred to as Baylis’s field, I suppose. Unfortunately, in my book, I find a plausible justification for the name derived from “berry leys” and in the centrefold map I give the name undeserved status. While we are on the subject of that field, the picture on page 30 of an open-air sawmill is now thought to not be the Grafton sawmill off Church Lane - the chimneys and gables in the distance do not fit our knowledge of the houses at the time but there is a much better fit for the Burbidge sawmill site on the High Street. I hope you will attach this supplement to your copy of the book.

R&A article   Oct  05   Return to the List