An account about cattle herding at Blisworth Station.

This following narrative comes to you from a Doctor Leonard Griffith who together with his wife live in British Columbia.  Leonard's parents lived at Cliff Hill Farm where he was born, the property is now owned by the aged Mr. George Bonsor.  Doctor Griffith's father was a foremost Midlands cattle dealer, as well as trading extensively in Gloucestershire which was well serviced with a Railway system connected to Blisworth Station.

On occasions c. 1900, writes Doctor Griffith, cattle were sometimes herded off the trains in the vicinity of the Hotel frontage in preparation to being driven to nearby fields or Northampton market. The Hotel had a permanent resident - a splendid Grey Amazon talking parrot.  While the cattle were being controlled by dogs and the whistle calls of the drovers, striving for mastery of an agitated bunch of animals, the parrot did its bit by copying the whistles and shouts.  This added much confusion to the scene, for the dogs just could not differentiate between man and bird.

Doctor Griffith's second story tells of cattle arriving and being started on their walk to fields adjoining the Northampton Road.  The animals after their journey in cattle trucks badly needed a drink but this was generally not provide.  As they approached Stockwell Bridge over the canal, just a few hundred yards from the station, they smelt the canal and some of them would leap over the bridge parapet wall, or were perhaps pushed over by the pressure of other beasts as they squeezed together between the narrow bridge walls, and would land in the canal suffering no apparent discomfort.  Recovering the cattle from the towpath would not have been easy.  On one hard Winter day however, the canal was deeply iced over.  About 20 animals likewise smelling the water of the canal went over the parapet wall and broke the thick ice.  Some of them, in attempting to climb out, got into deeper water and some became trapped under the ice.  There they drowned and Doctor Griffith said that it was weeks before the thaw came and released the corpses that could be seen under the ice - a sad story indeed.

At this point of the narrative some of you, knowing of the five foot high walls of the bridge today, may doubt these words but, since those days, Stockwell Bridge has been rebuilt.  The former bridge was very hump-backed, narrower and possessed much lower walls.

G Freeston - date unknown, possibly a Round & About 'Gossip Time' piece