Folklore of Northamptonshire

by Peter Hill

  We had got some fire extinguishers, which we filled with water and set one off over the top of the fairground stalls. On the other side was the constable keeping an eye on the events and he held out his hand and said: ‘Oh God, it’s raining!’ but he was the only one to get wet. It was all part of the fun.

  For many years, the children had their own kind of festival after the fair, known as a Fote Fair – ‘fote’ being the name for a cigarette card. These were given instead of money to go on the various attractions and stalls the children had set up. The fair ran for a week after school and on the following Saturday. Ann Rowlett who still lives in the town recalls:

  There was darts, card games and all sorts of things; my dad made a wooden game for me where coins were rolled down a board with numbered holes.

  In 2004, the Charter Fair celebrated its 800th anniversary in style, slightly later than usual, in June. Special sausages were made for the occasion by a local butcher, and there was a competition to see who could make the best Rothwell tarts, a recipe for which can be found in Chapter Nine.

  An old custom that has appeared in the county for the first time reflects the demographic changes that have taken place in modern times: Burns Night has become popular in Corby, with its large Scottish contingent. It is an occasion for which local supermarkets have plenty of haggis delivered. In the pubs, a kilted Scot enters the room with a steaming haggis on a tray with tatties and neeps – potatoes and turnips – and addresses the dish with a verse of Burns’ poetry before piercing it with his dirk. This is duly completed with a wee dram of whisky.

  John Lobb Douglas about to perform the Burns Night ritual in Corby by reciting the poet’s verse over the haggis.

  Finally, a youngster that looks set to be around for a few more years yet involves that time-honoured pastime of conkers. In the autumn of 1964 at Ashton, near Oundle, four local anglers had to cancel a fishing trip. After a drink or two in the Chequered Skipper, the pub facing the village green, they wandered outside and picked up some of the many conkers lying in the vicinity and decided to amuse themselves with a custom from their boyhood – playing conkers. They found some string and began playing enthusiastically until there was an outright winner left triumphantly holding his battle-scarred, though still intact, ‘conqueror’. They enjoyed themselves so much that they returned with other companions the following year and the Ashton Conker Club was formed, with a committee of eighteen setting out rules for a contest to be held annually on the second Sunday in October. The World Conker Championships were born.

  King Conker about to open the proceedings for the fortieth (ruby) anniversary of the Ashton World Conker Championships, October 2004.

  Two competitors in action at the championships.

  The contest is presided over by its own Conker King, holding a bell and crook and wearing a Union Jack bowler, with strings of conkers adorning his shoulders. The club pre-selects the finest conkers it can find, grades them according to size and strings them on leather bootlaces for opponents to use – a fresh one for every round played. Each group of players, known as a panchion, plays a round or ‘shelthred’, and opponents take three successive strikes until a conker is demolished, the competitor with the intact conker going on to the next round. The custom has now become so popular that contestants come from all over the world to participate. Entertainment on the periphery includes morris and molly dancers.

  four

  STRANGER THAN FICTION

  I have climbed the decaying wooden stairs of the old mill and looked for treasures that children search for, but I never knew the mill in its active days. I experienced a certain silence of mystery that made me wonder what noises and grindings once issued from its now ruined remains.

  This quotation from the family memoirs of Gertrude Bagshaw, about her childhood in the 1880s in Great Oakley, gives an evocative picture of the past, something we can still experience ourselves at various sites around the county, if we are willing to negotiate brambles, undergrowth and other obstacles. Many sites stand in glorious isolation and can be rewarding to visit at any time of the year.

  At least twenty-six churches have been lost in the county, mainly due to parish mergers or as the result of a settlement being deserted. However, the remains of some may still be found. The church of St Peter originally stood near the stable block of Lilford Hall, which was demolished in 1778. Attempts were made to resite the building away fom the Hall but they were unsuccessful, so it was decided to relocate parts of the fabric at a completely different location, a decision which was probably influenced by the eighteenth-century fashion for follies. Masonry was precariously carted to The Linches at Achurch, where some of the pillars and stone blocks, each piece marked and numbered for exact replication of the original construction, were reassembled overlooking the River Nene. The three arches and walls of the nave stand today virtually hidden among woodland in an evocative scene reminiscent of the Romantic landscape paintings of the German artist Caspar David Friedrich.

  St John’s at Boughton Green also forms a picturesque scene, with its crumbling walls covered in ivy, proudly resisting any further ravages by nature or human hand. The last wedding to take place there was in 1708, and by 1719 it was described as being in ruins and roofless. The steeple and tower fell down in 1780 and most of the stonework was transported to the village about half a mile away, for its new church. Only part of the east wall and various fragments still stand today.

  North-east of the churchyard at Blatherwycke, attached to the old stable block, could recently be seen the ruins of a chapel. A story as to why this should exist virtually next door to the church has been passed down. Between 1876 and 1890, a new incumbent at the church was a zealous convert to the ways of the Oxford Movement, the early and ostentatious expression of Anglo-Catholicism, which advocated continuity of the Church of England with the pre-Reformation Catholic Church and its emphasis on elaborate ornamentation and ritual. This would have been anathema to the manorial O’ Brien family, who were staunch adherents to the traditional Anglican way of worship. It is believed that they decided to opt for something more acceptable and the chapel was therefore set up for their own form of service for a period of time, certainly for the duration of the village priest’s incumbency.

  The relocated remains of the church of St Peter (Lilford) standing in The Linches at Thorpe Achurch.

  The ruined chapel attached to the stable block of the former manor house at Blatherwycke.

  The strange stone built into the churchyard wall at Loddington.

  In the west wall of the churchyard of St Leonard’s at Loddington, shaded by yew trees, is a large boulder carved with three Roman crosses. It is said to have been a dedication stone from the original stone tower before it was renovated. Before that, however, it may have one of the glacial stones deposited around the county and used for special purposes, in this case marking the sacred site that the church later took over. When this happened, it is possible that it was Christianised, with the crosses of Calvary being engraved on the façade. However, there is something of a mystery, for it is said that in the 1830s five crosses were visible.

  Other sites are more accessible, none more so than follies that were originally intended to stand out and catch the eye. They proliferated in the eighteenth century as a new fashionable craze taken up the wealthy, with no practical purpose other than acting as a landmark. Many were bizarre in design, some potentially dangerous, and all were partly inspired by the architecture seen by the young and affluent during their European grand tours to Rome, and by the fashionable taste for the Gothic instigated by Horace Walpole, novelist and pioneer of that genre. However, Northamptonshire can claim to be the home of the father of folly-building, long before the fashion took off.

  In 1577, Thomas Tresham (pronounced ‘Traysham’) began the building of Rothwell Cross, now known as the Market House, at Rothwell. At this time he was veering towards conversion to Catholicism, a dangerous thing to do in Elizabethan England. He finally converted
in 1580 and spent a total of fifteen years out of the next twenty-five years of his life in prison for his beliefs. While incarcerated, he meticulously made plans for buildings which would symbolically reflect his faith, decorating his prison walls with drawings, figures and texts in Hebrew, which unsuspecting visitors were unlikely to understand.

  The Rothwell Cross was begun before Tresham was imprisoned and was originally intended to have seven arches, gables and windows – the number of days of the Creation. This never materialised but the building is certainly unique, with ninety heraldic shields and coats of arms of local landowning families depicted on the exterior walls. For some unknown reason, the building was left unroofed until 1895 when a roof was added by a local architect, John Gotch, using plans for the building found in a secret cupboard discovered at Rushton Hall. The building has had several uses over the years, such as council offices, a library, a shop and a ‘pensioners’ parliament’. According to Lewis Stanley, a Rothwell historian:

  It has also served as a jail, and it is said that one Saturday night during the Victorian era, the parish constable arrested a man for being drunk and disorderly in the street, who was unable to find his way home. He was put in the ‘roundhouse’ until sober. On awakening, he found himself locked up and not knowing where he was, decided to break out by forcing the bars in the door, but was too fat to get through, so he took all clothes off and was thereby able to squeeze though. Finding his clothes were still inside, he threw caution to the wind and ran home through the early Sunday morning streets, hoping that no prying eyes would spot him. It has been said that he may well have been the county’s first streaker!

  Rothwell Cross, later renamed the Market House.

  Tresham’s next building was to symbolise the Holy Trinity. Known today as the Triangular Lodge, it was begun in 1595 in the grounds of his home at Rushton Hall, facing the road to Desborough, and was completed in 1595. Ostensibly built for the estate rabbit catcher, it was known variously as Connergerie Lodge, Warryner’s Lodge, Three Square Lodge and Trinity House. It was built in the shape of an equilateral triangle, with everything in sets or multiples of three: it is just over 33ft long, is three storeys high and has three triangular windows on all the three sides, each topped with three gables. Each of the exterior wall panels has a Christian motto or symbol.

  Nothing remains today, however, of Hawkfield Lodge, begun in 1596 and meant to be a companion building for the Triangular Lodge. Its exact whereabouts are a matter of conjecture, one theory being that it lies on the opposite side of the grounds, facing the road to Rothwell. It was probably built purely for ornamental purposes but, even so, a drawing that exists of the lodge shows it to have been of remarkable appearance, a multi-sided structure with a vaulted roof, central supporting pillar, two porches and three doors. The lodge was built but it is not known if the stone ball shown on the plans was added to the top of the building.

  A drawing showing the now lost Hawking Tower in the grounds of Rushton Hall. It is believed to have been built as a companion to the nearby Triangular Lodge.

  Lyveden New Bield was the last of the Tresham follies to be built; it was left incomplete on his death. It is now maintained by the National Trust.

  Bunkers Hill Farm, near Boughton Green.

  Tresham’s final folly, Lyveden New Bield, lies off the Brigstock to Oundle road and was built to symbolise the Passion. The Garden House, as it was known, was officially built as a hunting lodge and summer house with landscaped gardens. It is cruciform in design, with many carvings connected with the crucifixion. Tresham, however, died before the building was completed and it was never finished.

  Between 1764 and 1780, an extraordinary series of follies were built at Boughton by the Earl of Strafford, William Wentworth. He was a friend of Horace Walpole, who certainly encouraged him to add Gothic battlements and towers to his home at Boughton Hall – now demolished – and grottos, temples and artificial ruins in the grounds, which have also since disappeared. Some of the follies around Boughton Park have survived, however, and have been documented by a local writer, Simon Scott.

  The castellated buildings which appeared around the Wentworth estate during the 1770s were Bunkers Hill Farm, named after the site of a major British victory during the American War of Independence and still visible today; New Park Barn, now Fox Covert Hall; and a crenellated archway known as the Spectacle, which was erected as an eyecatcher in 1770, standing a short distance away from the main Boughton to Moulton road, in what is now known as Spectacle Lane. In 1764, a gigantic obelisk with an inscribed plaque hed been erected in memory of Wentworth’s friend, the Duke of Devonshire. A farmer on whose land the monument stood grew tired of his crops being trampled by the many inquisitive visitors that it attracted and erased much of the inscription on the plaque. It still stands today, some might say precariously, next to a housing estate and can be seen from a great distance, though curiously it is not visible in the immediate vicinity, until you are almost approaching it.

  The tall obelisk erected in memory of the Duke of Devonshire, a friend of the Earl of Strafford of Boughton Hall.

  The Spectacles, an eyecatcher, situated between Moulton and Boughton.

  A member of the Jeyes family, Philadelphus, was so intrigued by the Spectacle that he copied the design for the frontage of his house, Holly Lodge, which was built on the nearby main road between 1857 and 1861. A remarkable additional feature a few metres away was a farm implement gate, which incorporated twelve different tools in its design, including a scythe, flail, spade, and shepherd’s crook. The Jeyes family owned a chemist’s in Northampton and John, a younger brother of Philadelphus, took out patents on twenty-one sanitary products, including the famed Jeyes Cleaning Fluid.

  The follies of Boughton were matched by two related men who lived at different times in Finedon Hall. Sir English Dolben (1750-1837) began his folly-building with the ‘medievalisation’ of his property and newly erected outbuildings and the construction of a spike-crowned monument known as the Edith Cross which appeared in the hall grounds. It was named after Queen Edith, wife of Edward the Confessor, who was lady of the manor in the pre-Conquest era. It no longer exists, having been vandalised by local boys in 1930. In 1789, Dolben erected what later became known as the Finedon Obelisk as a waymarker at the crossroads of the town. Legend has it that it was put up in that year to commemorate George III’s recovery from a long bout of madness, an occasion which was marked by bell-ringing and fireworks in the town, but also to celebrate the beginning of the French Revolution with the storming of the Bastille; the inauguration of George Washington as the first US president; and two family matters: the birth of his fifth daughter and his father’s second marriage.

  One of the Jeyes Gates fronting the grounds of Holly Lodge on the Moulton-Boughton road. Various farming implements have been incorporated into its design.

  The commemorative obelisk erected as a waymarker at Finedon crossroads.

  Dolben’s daughter, Frances, married William Mackworth, who added the Dolben surname to his own. Like his father-in-law, he embarked on a spate of folly-building, adding Gothic arches, gargoyles and grottos to the family home and grounds and a four-storey ice tower. In 1860, he converted and crenellated a former windmill just outside the town into a dwelling, now known as Exmill Cottage, which can still be seen today on the road to Harrowden. On the opposite side of the road, heading back towards the town, he built the Volta Tower as a memorial to his son, who had died when the ship of that name capsized off the coast of West Africa in 1863. The building became a dwelling but fell down in September 1951, killing one of the occupants.

  In 1869, the uneven flagstones of the floor in the chancel of the church of All Saints at Rushton were being removed in order to level the surface. While levering up one of the uninscribed stones, workmen found a large cavity filled with powdered charcoal. Curiosity getting the better of them, they disturbed the contents and found the perfectly preserved body of a female with all its features intact. With
in a few moments of being exposed to the air, however, everything disintegrated. The identity of the woman and the date of her burial have remained a mystery ever since.

  Exmill Cottage, a castellated windmill now converted into a home.

  The Volta Tower before its collapse in 1951. It was built as a memorial to a son of William Mackworth Dolben who drowned while on active naval service.

  In Spring 1866, workmen were engaged in restoration work in St Mary’s church at Woodford when a beam was removed from a transitional arch in the nave and a broken stone recess was discovered, which contained a circular bamboo box covered in coarse cloth. It was subsequently found to contain an embalmed heart, believed to be that of Roger de Kirketon, a knight who died in 1280. It can be seen today behind a glass panel near the top of a pillar in the south aisle. Another heart can be found in the church at Yaxley, just outside the county near Peterborough.

  The crusader’s heart concealed in the stonework of a pillar at the church of St Mary in Woodford.

  In 1790, a lock of woman’s hair was found in the churchyard, in a perfectly preserved state. Probably Anglo-Saxon, it was a yard in length, flaxen in colour and plaited. For many years, it was kept in the vestry but over time its length gradually diminished to 2ft, probably as a result of people wanting a keepsake. Its whereabouts today are unknown – if indeed anything ever survived the actions of souvenir hunters or the fingers of the superstitious!

  On the north wall of the nave of the now redundant church of Holy Trinity at Blatherwycke hangs an unusual benefactors’ board, a seventeenth-century bequest by two prosperous villagers for the provision of a plum pudding annually on Christmas Day for the oldest poor males in the village. The plum pudding would not have been the kind eaten today, being a combination of spiced gruel and prunes or other dried fruit.