by Peter Hill
The incident revolved around the extra-parochial areas of Old and New Sulehay, which lie close to the boundaries of both villages. For centuries, Old Sulehay was considered to belong to the parish of Yarwell and New Sulehay to Nassington but that year an inspector from the former Local Government Board was sent to meet the overseers of each parish and, after deliberating on the matter, awarded both areas to Nassington. This obviously did not go down well with the folk of Yarwell, as the residents of Old Sulehay attended their church, the men worked on a Yarwell farm and the women gleaned in the fields there. Officially the protests stopped but Yarwell had other plans and when harvest time came and the first field was ready for gleaning, the women got there first and began gleaning long before the Gleaning Bell was sounded. When the women of Nassington arrived, the gleaning was almost finished. They ordered the Yarwell women to leave and a scuffle broke out as the leader of of the Nassington group got an unexpected response, finding herself being pushed across the boundary ditch. This was followed by a loud shout: ‘Get back to Nassington where you belong!’
Crop gatherers in the fields around Collyweston.
From the sixteenth century, the county began to develop as a cordwaining, or shoemaking, centre. In Northampton, it became the largest single occupation and this was intensified when the town secured military contracts in the following century, using the welted sole process and handstitching. Further military demands necessitated expansion, which also meant a lucrative income for those with the financial means to establish a workshop, such as Thomas Gotch who set up in Kettering in 1776 and soon began to prosper and draw further local competition. By 1835, it was a full-blown industry, especially after the introduction of sewing machines and the process of rivetting shoes, which was developed later that century, which also saw a boom in sales, albeit at the expense of village craftsmen around the county.
The shoe trade had specialist names for some of its workers and processes. The highest paid craftsmen were the skilled ‘clickers’ who ‘skived’ (cut) all the leather and shaped it in the required fashion. Most people, however, used machinery for their particular role in the factory. There was an amusing side to the work, as explained by Norman Mason who, like most other people in the Kettering area, worked in the trade for many years:
We used to say that when we walked to the bus after work we could tell which factory people worked in by the way they walked ... A lot of the people worked in factories where there was piecework and that meant they got paid by the number of pairs of shoes they handled and worked on so they worked at a much faster rate and it showed in the way they walked.
Women of all ages learned how to make lace to support themselves or to supplement family income. They often sang special worksongs, the movement of the bobbins being timed by the modulation of the tune.
Charles E. Kimbell of Boughton described one such person at work in the village during the 1880s:
fixing in a round hard cushion which the worker held on her lap, was an intricate grouping of pins, each one attached by white cotton to a bone bobbin. The bobbins varying in shapes and colours lay flat on the cushion and were manipulated by the deft fingers of the worker who seemed to ply the bobbins mechanically, swirling them over at such a rapid speed that anyone unititiated into the mysteries of lace making would watch the process with wonder and marvel at the delicate pattern of the white lace issuing at the base of the pins.
The earliest references to woodturning in the county appear in the sixteenth century, when just one woodturner was recorded in the Rockingham Forest area. This was mainly due to the restrictions of Forest Law regarding the use of timber. After the decline of the law in the late 1600s, however, the craft really began to develop, flourishing mainly in Kingscliffe, where abundant supplies of cheap or free wood were available. It reached its heyday in Victorian times, when at least ten different craftsmen could be seen working in groups outside their houses. The finished product, for which the village became renowned, was known as ‘treen’ and visitors came from far and wide to see and buy the high-quality goods. A description of the woodturners at work during the early 1880s has come down to us from a Yarwell villager, Lucy Adela Lock, who thoughtfully wrote down a description of life in Rockingham Forest and her visits to Kingscliffe as a little girl in Memories of a Villager:
I would watch them work in their shops. They would sit in front of their lathes, which they worked with their feet. One man sat on a wooden block and chopped logs of wood into ‘billets’ of the right length for a wooden tap, tool handles, etc. The next man shaped it roughly with a tool and passed it to another who used finer tools, which made it more like the article it was intended to be. The last man bored holes and used chisels which made it more smooth and shapely. The finishing was done by hand. I have seen a woman using a small poker which she burnt patterns on things e.g. egg cups, candlesticks, etc. Then they would be rubbed with sandpaper, and polished or varnished: Oak, cherry wood, box-wood (for taps), apple wood (for tool handles), willow (for spoons, bread boards), etc. It was fascinating to watch shavings curling away from the lathes. The people fetched them to light fires and put under mats, or on damp floors.
A fissile form of limestone exists in the north of the county around Deene, Wakerley and Collyweston. It was celebrated from Roman times onwards as the ideal material for roofing, being of a hardwearing and durable nature. These thin layers, known as ‘logs’, were formerly made into Collyweston slates, which enjoyed a high reputation for many centuries. They were somewhat heavy and required great skill in order to manoeuvre and fix them into position. The slaters of Collyweston certainly possessed this skill and their services were in great demand. Only a dedicated few now carry on the tradition, which began to decline when the coming of the railway brought cheap slate from Wales.
The hard, finely grained rock which lies at the base of the limestone beds was extracted from the quarry during the winter months and the logs laid out on the ground to be exposed to night frosts. They were watered to keep them wet, which allowed the frost to penetrate deeply. When they were ready, they were split with special chisels which were inserted into the cracks by the slaters. Yellow-white or with a bluish tinge, the finished product or ‘colleys’ were sought-after everywhere. Different names were given to the colleys according to their size, given here in inches:
6
Even Mope
6.5
Large Mope
7
Even Mumford
7.5
Large Mumford
8-8.5
Job
A group of Collyweston slaters pose with their tools in the early twentieth century, behind a screen erected to protect them from the wind.
9-9.5
Short-un
10-10.5
Long-un
11-11.5
Shortback
12-12.5
Middleback
13-13.5
Longback
14
Batchelor
15
Wibbett
16
A Twelve
17
A Fourteen
18
A Sixteen
19
An Eighteen
20-21
In Bow
22
Short Ten
23
Middle Ten
24
Long Ten
A lot of iron ore-deposits lay near the surface in parts of the county and these were initially worked by hand, using the precarious plank and barrow method, where ironstone was placed in wheelbarrows, carted along narrow lengths of wood which spanned deep chasms below and loaded directly into railway wagons, or transported by horse and cart to the nearest railway station. Falls from the planks were a common occurrence, with injury or death a distinct possibility, a risk which was part of the job until as late as 1930. A vivid account of those years was given by Annie Wignall, the daughter of a local doctor, in 1974. She described the life of
the workers:
A Collyweston slater, Robert James Spaull, at work with his specialist tools in Collyweston churchyard in the late 1960s.
...a workman trundling his barrow across a springy plank would sometimes lose his balance and crash to the rocky strata some 30 feet below. A messenger would then dash by bicycle to fetch a doctor – if there happened to be such a machine at hand. But not every ironstone worker owned a bicycle. They mostly walked to work ... By modern standards it was a tough life, but to quote one of the workers: ‘Ah, we’d have fun, those times. If a man fancied a walking or running match, he could have it. If he cared for a good game of cricket or football, he could have it. And if anyone wanted a thick ear, he could have that too, for the asking!’
Equally as dangerous was the task of processing the iron into steel. At the Corby steelworks, accidents were inevitable with the chance of burns, concussion and even death always present. In the 1960s, Colin Eliot recalled the days when his father undertook dangerous missions as a maintenance fitter, always having to be on call to release the explosion doors which had jammed at the top of furnaces:
The ‘plank and barrow’ system used for transporting newly quarried ironstone at Corby in the 1890s.
When I was a small boy I remember him being severely burned; I screamed in terror at the sight of the burns hanging like grapes ... I realised why my mother dreaded the sound of the ‘knocker up’ either knocking on the window, or throwing stones to wake up my father in the middle of the night.
A similar number of accidents occurred during the construction of viaducts when the railway came to the county. These accidents were mainly fatal, as the number of inscriptions on tombstones testify. However, some were lucky enough to escape with their lives, albeit at some cost, as with the case of a Geddington railway worker named Talbot who was working on the viaduct spanning the valley at Harpers Brook, between Great and Little Oakley. Surviving his fall, he ended up with an injured leg that henceforth led to villagers calling him Bent Axle Talbot, a name that he graciously accepted for the rest of his days.
Watermills and windmills could also be dangerous places. In September 1597, it was reported that William Miller, ‘the son of Will Miller’ was buried after a fatal accident:
he fell into the water and the stream carried him under the new corne mill wheele, which quashed him all to pieces.
A particularly grisly incident occurred at Bulwick in November 1863: a miller, Jeffrey Sarrington, was going about his daily work at the watermill when he caught his sleeve on a cog wheel and was pulled into the machinery. A report of the incident described the ensuing events:
He shouted to his apprentice to stop the mill and bring a knife, with which he attempted to sever his mutilated arm, but being blunt, it needed whetting. He gave the knife to the boy and ordered him to sharpen it, but a suitable means was impossible to find. Whereupon, the miller asked for a metal candlestick that stood nearby, to take off the rough edges. He then naggled away at his arm and kept at it, but became exhausted after a while and asked the boy to finish the task. Eventually, he disengaged the stump leaving the mutilated part between the wheels, then he bound the stump in a handkerchief, went home and took to bed. It was near midnight when a messenger was sent to the surgeon at Kings Cliffe to come and attend to the miller. On examination it was found necessary to remove more inches from the arm.
The post mill at Great Oakley, scene of a tragedy in 1865. The sixteen-year-old son of the miller, James Pain, collapsed and died whilst helping his father at work.
Even work that seemed innocuous could be fraught with danger for our ancestors. To keep newly-sown seed or growing crops in the fields free from stones and hungry birds, boys were often employed to patrol an area, usually with a rattle, stick or gun. What may seem a relatively harmless task could end in tragedy, such as the fatal shooting recorded in the journal of an Aldwincle farmer, William Coales:
the above poor boy, John Allen Coales, met with a sad accident this Day, July the fourth 1863. He was scaring Crows away from some Potatoes at the 2nd Gates, and was Laying or Hanging the Gun on the Bushes of an Ash.
The well-being of livestock was always of paramount concern, although those entrusted with that care might seem unusual to us today. Living at Syresham during the 1870s was a small man nicknamed Doctor, who had a prominent nose and who was always seen carrying a shoulder stick slung over his back with an old tin can attached to the end. He was a self-appointed vet, who boasted that he could cure all kinds of animal, or anything else for that matter. He asserted that ‘what he did not know wasn’t worth knowing’. His wife used to help him when she was not gathering horse manure around the streets and lanes for her garden, travelling great distances to get a sufficient quantity. Legend has it that on one occasion Doctor was called upon to examine a cow and a horse at a nearby farm and the farmer ordered a ploughboy to assist him. The task took a few days, during which time the young man took a great interest in what the ‘vet’ was doing and asked him why he was giving the same stuff to both the animals, to which he replied:
Me lad you don’t know – you’re born to it. You got a lot to larne. Shake it up and down for the horse – backwards and forwards for the coo!
Housework in olden times was much more strenuous and wearisome than it is today, with a variety of daily or weekly chores that had to be done and were vigorously adhered to at all times, without the aid of technology and labour-saving devices. Chores that would have been familiar around the county for many up until the Second World War were recorded by Mary Hercock, the daughter of a Blatherwycke gamekeeper, in 1980:
Every day the oil lamps had to be filled and the wicks checked and trimmed. The sticks had to be chopped, wood to be sawn and the coal bucket filled. In the bad weather we collected the coal left at the bottom of the field on a sledge. The fireplace in the kitchen, containing an oven and small boiler for hot water, had to be blackleaded, and we also had an oil stove with two burners and an oven. Outside the house was a copper to heat water for baths and the weekly wash, the water obtained from a pump in the garden. Candles had to be ready for upstairs light.
Of course, some household tasks did not always run smoothly, for potentially devastating accidents were always waiting to happen, a case in point being one which occurred at the Queen’s Head, Yarwell in the 1920s. Lance Lock recalled the incident in his memoirs:
Frances Simmons, worked there as a girl with Mrs Stafford. They did the washing one day when the copper wouldn’t go. Mrs. Stafford decided to put some gun powder on the fire and probably put too much on – ‘one hell of a bang,’ said Frances, ‘which blew the copper door and blew soot all over the wash house and the clean washed clothes’.
Fairs and markets
Of course life was not all work and hardship. Going to a fair or market was a great social affair, an occasion for making new acquaintances, meeting old friends, bargaining and buying and in some cases hiring labour, and enjoying oneself. Holding such an event would have been prestigious and lucrative for any town or village. Some were granted by charter from the King and others were set up by the lord of the manor, who could make a lot of profit from levies and tolls on trade during the event. Fairs were usually held annually, to coincide with a saint’s day or an event in the agricultural year, and lasted three days. In most cases, fairs were dedicated to the saints of the local church. Markets, on the other hand, were held weekly and were mainly for the sale of food items, attracting both buyers and traders from a wide area both in the county and from outside. A lord of the manor was responsible for keeping law and order, settling disputes, preventing bloodshed and keeping drunken individuals in check.
Boughton Fair was one of the most important and widely attended fairs in the Midlands. It was proclaimed annually, somewhat unusually, by a representative of the lord of the manor long before the event itself, to allow for the bidding of stalls and booths. Traders would come from all over the region, selling cakes from Banbury, rakes from Weldon, Corby and Gedd
ington, and ‘treen’ (woodware) from Kingscliffe. Held on the triangular green outside the village between 23 and 25 June, the first day was devoted to the sale of items of woodwork and metalware, the second day to horse racing, wrestling, games and sports and the third day to the mass sale of cattle, sheep and, above all, horses. In the late afternoon, after the main event, there were sideshows with curiosities, theatre acts and displays of animals – some exotic – accompanied by widespread drunken revelry which went on well into the evening with constant outbreaks of fighting – and petty theft.
Robert Lucas (1747-1812), vicar of Hardingstone and later Pattishall, wrote a poem about the fair, beginning with a detailed description of various folk getting ready for the event and then conjuring up the atmosphere of the fair itself:
See! Pots capacious, lesser pots entome,
And hogsheads barrels gorge, for want of room!
From their broad base, part in each other hid,
The lessening tubs shoot up in a pyramid,
Pitchforks and axes and the deepening spade,
Beneath the pressing load are harmless laid,
While way out behind where pliant poles prevail
The merry waggons seem to wag his tail.
Theatre
The eighteenth century saw the theatre becoming a very popular form of entertainment in the county, performances often being given in a venue such as a hotel or inn. Northampton was the obvious choice, being the main town. However, some of the larger villages were able to experience the theatre without having to go into a town, as travelling theatres came to them, setting up a stage on a green or some kind of booth. Such was the case in Brixworth, Earls Barton and Kingscliffe.