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Blisworth Hotel , Blisworth, Northamptonshire, UK. All pictures are presented at relatively low resolution. There will be hundreds of pictures on this site - there is an economic limit to the webspace available. The point of this presentation is that you can see for yourself the extent of the collection and return later as the collection expands - as it surely will. Any interest in copies of a picture at a higher resolution (ie. clarity) should be directed through contacts given in the Blisworth "Round and About" parish council publication or using the comment form on the home page. In some cases the pictures are not available due to copyright restrictions. However, permission has been obtained, where possible, to include them here. Printed below each image is the photographer's name, if known. |
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05-01 Very early postcard, date unknown. Across the wide yard to the right was the main station building. The hotel was opened by Thomas Shaw, owner of the Angel Hotel in Northampton. It was seen as a logical business extension for hotel and coaching services based on the railway. |
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05-01a 1908 - evidently at a time when Tom Upton was the licensee. Note the gate in the distance with the sign over, "Blisworth Gardens" The extension building next to the gardens gate is clearly a pub with somewhat modernised frontage compared to that shown in 05-01 above. |
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05-02 Date c. 1938.
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05-03 This picture shows a corner of the station building. It is quite early (the wing to the left is not converted to part of the house) and may well have been taken from a hot air balloon shortly after taking off from the gardens. A transcript by GF of a poster which mentions a balloon flight from the gardens has since been found in the 2002 collection and is available here. Balloon flights were common in the 1840s, however no one knows whether the tradition continued into the 20 century. | |
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05-04 A commercial photograph
from the 1980's taken in floodlight. Although it shows the new
front portal and many windows have been replaced, it presents the
building as a fine example of Victorian architecture. The hotel has been managed by a
succession of owners since the 1980's and is currently called "The
Walnut Tree Inn". It has also been known as a coaching inn
and a sign remains
screwed onto the railway bridge over the canal as evidence of
that. The first owner of the hotel, Thomas Shaw, and his coaching
business provides justification that the place was at least a coaching
terminus - see the few old
posters in the GF collection. Does any reader known of other names used for the 'hotel'.
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05-05 World War I, 1916, Red
Cross fundraising tea party at "The Lowndes" - the Victorian
house adjacent to the hotel. The railway arch, The Lowndes and the
hotel were all built by Richard Dunkley who went on to be a prominent
builder of public buildings, schools etc., in the county.
names are, left to right, back three, Gladys Digby, Rene Young, May Denny, next, Doris Green, Ivy Griffin, Lilly Mallard, Nellie Robinson, Hazel Goodridge, Gertrude Griffith. Seated, Phyllis Sargeant, Claude Ray, Violet Carter, Jessie Lack with Doris and Kathleen Snelson in front. |
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05-06 Peasants Ball 1948, see Occasions section | |
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05-07 An interesting 1960s
aerial picture of the hotel, courtesy of D Turnbull at the Walnut Tree
Inn (see panel 05-04 to explain name).
That the field to the right, once the Gardens, had become a private caravan site (emergency housing approved by the county council) by 1960 is suggested by one or two caravans in view but in fact there were by then 70 dwellings. When the bypass was built, the extension of Station Road to the right, ie. to the north, from the hotel front was subsumed into the site which had become by 1975 a park of mobile homes and prefab style dwellings. The building at the base of the picture is Blisworth Station. |
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