SAID OF THE EXHIBITION (Chronicle & Echo) -

"Very few local villages indeed could mount an exhibition of local life and crafts to rival that which may be seen in Blisworth parish church during afternoons and evenings until next Monday.

"That Blisworth is able to present such a rewarding view of its history, especially of the last couple of hundred years, is due to the intense interest in its affairs of Mr. George Freeston around whom has accumulated an extraordinary miscellany of artifacts. The present exhibition is 99 per cent his collection, coming as a matter of fact, from under his bed, although one thing notably absent among all the pots and pans, is the receptacle one might expect to find beneath the bed of, with respect, an old-fashioned countryman. However this omission may soon be remedied. He was, at least, recently told of the presence in the village of a closet which flushed by an emission of sand (a sand closet as opposed to a water closet) and one hopes that this too may eventually find its way into the collection. It needs little imagination to conjure up the activities which called into employment the household and farming implements, the dairying equipment, beautiful churns and ladles and butter pats and the barrel-making tools of the cooper. Looking at the flat irons, the washboard, the purposeful carpentry of the washing dollies, bleached in dunking the dust from countless village shirts, one is ready to concede that the washing machine brought about a great revolution, although, alas, not a quiet one.

"And wouldn't meat, roasted before a fire in the Dutch oven which Mr. Freeston exhibits be more succulent more deliciously aromatic than the modern, relatively high-speed Sunday joint for which some or us pause? In more recent times faces emerge from the past in a remarkable assortment or village photographs including school classes and football teams. Canal life is not overlooked. The colourful paraphernalia of the narrow boats reminds one of the excellent British Waterways museum nearby at Stoke Bruerne. What has been accomplished there allows one to hope that something will be done to make Mr. Freeston's collection permanently available to the public.