Railway Station and Station Hotel in the early fifties

 by Doreen Blood

I grew up with railways and using the station was routine.  That was how we got to Northampton or occasionally further.  My father went to work by rail; we had no car in those days.  We were able to use Privilege Tickets (PTs) which let us travel at a reduced fare, and my father was allowed up to 6 free passes a year.  These were used for our August holiday journey and other occasional trips to see relatives in Nottingham. 

The station was busy then, with LMS main line traffic as well as local.  But it was the SMJ line I remember best – it ran along the bottom of our garden with its own signal box near the houses.  I remember often “chatting” to the signalman when I was small, and watching the men using the turntable.  Ironically, I never travelled on the SMJ.

I had, very sensibly, been brainwashed as a child never to walk on the railway line.  Such was the intense quality of the warnings that to this day I cannot walk comfortably along even a disused line, I have to walk to the side and I keep looking over my shoulder to see if a train is coming!  And I hate going over modern level crossings with no gates – I am convinced they cannot be safe.

The noise from the line was never really noticed – you just did not hear it. 

I remember in the early years my father (in his job as a passenger representative for BR) organised special trains and buses to get motor racing fans to Silverstone for the Grand Prix.  In those days most fans had no car of their own and used public transport.  The trains came to Blisworth station and a fleet of double-decker buses took the passengers on the rest of the journey.  In the evening the buses came back to the station and they caught the specials back home.  For an hour or so at either end of the day the forecourt was very busy with buses arriving and departing every few minutes.  I was allowed to watch this happening but only with a stern warning to keep out of the way of the vehicles.  My father was told that without his arrangements to get so many fans there the (then new) racetrack would probably not have survived.  So please say thank you to my father next time you watch the Silverstone Grand Prix! 

The Blisworth Hotel was owned then by John Henry Eaton-Hall and served also as the local pub for our end of the village.  The Eaton-Halls had two young children, Frances and Johnnie. At different times there had au-pairs to help, then an unusual and rather exotic idea.  Also living in a wooden bungalow at the back was Sir Francis (I forget his surname), an older chap who had helped the E-Hs to buy the hotel.  They always had several horses in the stables (a great attraction for my older sister) and were also, I think, responsible for the Lido.  They once had a miniature horse for a few months, and had an older mare, Daisy, in the field at the top of Ford Lane.  I spent many happy hours feeding her grass and occasional carrots.  I remember two beautiful grey hunters - Grey Moon and Blue Moon – but the stables were always full.  I remember the hotel once had a few members of the D'Oyly-Carte opera company staying, and I can recall hearing them rehearsing songs.

The gardens at the back of the hotel were by that time a bit run down, but I remember being told that they had been very well kept in earlier days. 

My older brother John met his wife (Joan Chambers from Pynus Cottages - Pynus from "Pyesnest" field name) at a dance at the Hotel.  Dances were held fairly regularly and were well-attended, but they had ceased by the time I grew up. 

The Hotel, in its guise as the local pub, had its regulars.  Dick Hicks from 2, Ford lane was one, together with a few other bachelors.  My father, for several years, prepared the accounts for the Eaton-Halls, but otherwise drank there only rarely.  I was taken in there once when I was eighteen and I drank half a pint of Phipps beer for the princely sum of 8d (3.5p). 

One of the fairly regular guests at the Hotel was Giles, the cartoonist.  I think he was a friend of the owner.  He stayed when he came for the racing and my father met him there.  On one occasion the Silverstone Grand Prix was due to coincide with a meeting of Towcester races, and my father unwittingly gave Giles the subject of his cartoon by casually joking to him about the need for the meetings not to get confused.  Sure enough a cartoon based on this appeared in the Sunday paper. Evidently the Giles website has no record of this particular cartoon.  [The inset photo is from Ebay as a Hotel Register was for sale recently].

The Eaton-Halls started what later became the permanent caravan site.  For a couple of winter seasons in the early fifties they let the area to a circus to over-winter various animals.  I remember monkeys and horses and several rather exotic-looking people being there with their caravans.  After that there were a few “ordinary” vans, and later it developed into a large permanent site. At first this was not popular with the locals who, sadly, just rather presumed that people living this way must be a bit dodgy.  I do not remember any such people.

There was a field at the back of the caravan site, and at the far end was a rather neglected orchard.  I do not know whether it had originally belonged to the Hotel or to The Loundes (their gardens backed on to the same spot).  Whilst a bit small the apples were still good to eat.  Behind the orchard in what looked like a piece of overgrown wasteland could still be seen the outlines of the layout of an old formal garden.  Again I do not know which property had been the owner but it was nearer to the Loundes.  I would love to know if any of this still exists or whether it has been swept away.

In the next field along, in a rather boggy dip in the middle, snakeshead fritillaries grew each spring, until the farmer decided to drain the land and destroyed the patch.  There was no protection for wild flowers in those days!