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Brief History of Blisworth A shallow valley sheltered from east winds, a liberal supply of good spring water emerging from a limestone bed and some fine alluvial meadows were no doubt likely to prompt early farming families to settle here. For the Domesday records the settlement was named Blidesworde (Blide’s Enclosure or “Blithe, ie. happy, Enclosure”). It was noted to possess a small watermill and about 50 inhabitants. A warrior clan named “The Wakes” later established their manor ‘seat’ here from 1265 and the last of them, Roger Wake (died in 1504), set up a tiny grammar school that eventually slid under the wing of the Anglican Church for 400 years, until by government edict the Council School in the village was established in 1913. The Tudor Crown appropriated a vast tract of land as a hunting park in Northamptonshire in 1541 that absorbed the village and, as an obligation to a branch of the Royal family, the area known as the Honour of Grafton fell into the ownership of the FitzRoy family in 1673 that was led by a series of Dukes of Grafton. From about 1720 to 1830 Blisworth was rather caringly brought through the period of gradual land enclosure by the fifth Duke of Grafton A certain amount of land enclosure was actually initiated in Cromwell's interregnum (c1655) and, as is recorded in 1718, a minor portion was enclosed by then. There next occurred an industrial development of the parish, encouraged by the Duke of Grafton, that resembled some other locations in north Northamptonshire in that it was centred on quarrying but encouraged, indeed facilitated, by two sweeping changes in the name of transportation: the canal in the 1790s and the railway in the 1840s. A
detail of local geography meant that the canal, which was being built to
join Birmingham to the south, was established by 1795 as far south as
the centre of Blisworth where wharves were built to serve the main road
that linked Towcester and Northampton. There the construction halted for 10 years while a long
tunnel was dug through the prominent hill that lay to the south.
Blisworth briefly became an inland port for
transhipment of goods both onto the main road, duly upgraded to a
turnpike (which merely meant that repairs would be funded), and onto a
tiny horse-drawn railway over the hill to continue by the other part of
the canal to London.
Another detail of geography places Blisworth within five miles of
Northampton yet separated by both a low valley and Hunsbury Hill.
When Stephenson planned in 1838 the London to Midlands railway he
could not get across these obstacles and so built a station at Blisworth
that would have to serve Northampton as well, at least for the
“through expresses”. Because
of this geography, the village eventually became a 'crossroads' for rail access from Banbury
to the south and Northampton and Peterborough to the north thus adding
to its rail connections to Birmingham and London and the already established road and canal connections.
In Blisworth and some neighbouring parishes, the availability of
these connections encouraged the landowners to develop the region
industrially. Hence from
the 1810s there was limestone quarrying, and from the 1850s iron-ore
quarrying, so that there were plenty of labouring jobs in Blisworth in
addition to the needs for manpower expressed by both railway and canal.
The population rose to around 1000.
The Duke of Grafton built many new houses in the village but
hardly enough, due to his mounting debts, for by 1900 tiny cottages were
crammed with families and lodgers.
Most people now regard it a blessing that the mineral resource
ran out in the 1914 – 1922 era; being inaccessible to working with
only a shovel, ie. without
machinery. In any case, the
availability of both men and horses to work them also vanished, for
reasons of the Great War. Death
duties brought an end to the Grafton Estate and, in 1919, virtually all
cottages and farms were sold to the occupying tenants or, at least, to
some wealthy villagers that encouraged a continued tenancy.
Blisworth acquired gas, electricity services and some council
houses in the 1930s but no mains water until 1955.
Blisworth, at the low ebb in population of only 750 was using
those springs that probably helped spawn the original settlement.
Throughout the
WWII the springs were augmented by district council water tankers; only a tiny number of refugees from London’s bombings
could be housed here because of that limitation. This
was a poor area, a church and chapel based community of labourers and a few
professionals such as shopkeepers, a milling family and a doctor.
Employment ceased at the mill in 1930 but, by then, a meat processing
business had been set up in the Stoke Road. It was The British
Bacon Company and comprised an abattoir for the slaughter and butchering
of pigs and a factory area for making pork pies and other meat
products. The business was required to move to the edge of the parish in the
1970s because of the hygiene demands placed upon abattoirs by the
government. Digging for iron-ore re-visited the parish
from c1948 - 1967; this time using giant electric powered diggers and a steam rail
network that connected with the public railway lines. Other than generating noise
at the time and subsequently
an adventure playground for our children, this enterprise had little
contact with the villagers, employing only few on account of the
mechanisation. By the 1960s more jobs were available in Northampton to replace the needs of a dwindling canal and the closure of Blisworth railway station in 1960. Soon the M1 motorway brought migrants from London in enormous numbers and a flush of housing estates sprung up in the village. That event, in combination with the baby-boom, sent the village population to over 2050, being a doubling in a decade, and encouraged the rejuvenation and broadening of village life with many newly formed societies. Our population now resides at around 1800. As in every parish, farms have coalesced and spawned mini-industrial estates, homes have hosted businesses and some residents typically commute 10 to 40 miles to work, some by the rapid rail connection as far as London. Our purchasing and commuting habits that we share with nearly everyone have generated the need for a village bypass that was completed in 1991 and has led to our streets being over-crowded by our own cars and vans. Now we have all walks of life represented here in a quiet semi-rural community that differs little from many others in the Midlands. However, the old village heritage is still with us as many families realise they had a grandfather or great grandfather who worked in a quarry or as engineer or porter at the railway station. A Blisworth-coined term for the collective additional population that lack such heritage is affectionately upheld; they are our "Blow-ins". From the start of the 21st century the quiet village has been buffeted by heavy local traffic and continued pressure to enlarge its housing base. There are some signs in response - there is now a community plan and a stronger parish council compared with the one that has prevailed for over a decade - so maybe we will successfully resist much more expansion.
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