Ramblers Roundabout, c 1871

An extract from the booklet of this title by Mr. Dicey of the Northampton Mercury
with explanatory text added in light blue. Dicey was one of the owners of said newspaper
and prided their reporters in providing accurate details of the villages of Northamptonshire;
this except being one example. However, there is the odd error which is corrected here.

BLISWORTH  - "Blisworth, Northampton, Peterborough—change here !" being the call at the railway station, the branch line to Towcester (ie. the Stratford Upon Avon & Midland Junction railway), est. 1866, was perhaps not actually open to passenger traffic. However this does seem to raise a question as to the precise date of Dicey's ramble that is retold here.

The traveller by the night mail starts from his uneasy nap as the cry of the railway porter runs along the lengthy train; and, peering out into the night, forms his idea of Blisworth as of a long enclosed platform, with a refreshment room at one end and bowery tea gardens on the other with, perhaps, twinkling lights in the shrubberies, and the lingering sounds of music," and ladies' laughter coming through the shade."

In the old coaching days, a town or a village and its name were associated together; now you may hear the name of a place duly announced hundreds of times, yet never get an inkling of the place itself. Your mail coach penetrated the very heart of a town; you were familiar with its Guildhall, its market-place, its church, and its chief inn, though you never left your seat on the box. The mail train only skirts the places at which it professes to stop; the town itself may be a mile or two off, and even where you touch upon it the chances are that you are introduced only to its most squalid suburb. Great are the advantages of railways, but the advantage of seeing towns as yon travel is not one of them. Yon run by them, not through them, and to read as you run is out of the question.

Blisworth is a good mile from the station. The walk thither by the canal side in the early morning is delightful, though the introduction of steam in the canal boats, and the repair of the towing path with cinders and clinkers, have not improved it. On the left the view is bounded by the railway embankment, covered with trees; on the right meadows slope to the water's edge (currently Colin Wakelin's fields - once ridge and furrow areas extending across to the Northampton Road); here and there a fringe of willows, reflected in the stream (canal), tempts the sketcher to linger. Southward the church tower, with the lofty elms about, peopled in the early spring with busy rooks, makes a picturesque distance. As you approach the Blisworth Bridge, a red-brick wharf (we are not aware of the detail of buildings at the wharf before Westley's mill was built in 1879 and commissioned by 1883), toned with grey and yellow lichens, repeating in the water its rich and glowing tints, can be passed unheeded by nobody who appreciates colour. It is a remarkable instance of the way in which nature sets about correcting the un-picturesque works of man. Time, destroyer though he be, is a great artist, and converts the most unlovely forms into objects that arrest the passer-by, and compel his admiration.

Blisworth itself looks like a place that has been more important than it now affects to be. It abounds in sixteenth and seventeenth century houses, substantially built of stone, with good Tudor windows, stone mullioned and square hooded. Mr. Gibbs's house (this is Manor farm house, photographed incidentally c 1890, demolished c1896 and later replaced by the Burbidge family by a red-brick 'Manor House' which stands today) is a good specimen, and retains, though somewhat mutilated in the heading, the original doorway (the stone components of the fine Tudor doorway were kept in the yard by the Burbidge family for many years. A young George Freeston, b 1911, lamented the eventual destruction of the components). Some of the buildings present striking instances of the use of lines of dark coloured stone. Many houses, now occupied as cottages, were obviously built for tenants of a much higher class. One bears the date 1616, another 1631. A stone in a building, more decidedly of the cottage character, near the blacksmith's (at the Cross), is inscribed NG 1G 1613. The dead wall in the centre of the village, on the southern side of the highway, has the appearance of having been at some time an extensive building; it bears traces of doors and windows, which have been walled up, and the stone work is very substantial and well finished. Bridges makes no allusion to it (however, we recognise this building as one which once filled the gap between our recent post office and the current Spar shop; in other words a building lost in the great fire of 1798 labelled 'b' in the first map presentation of the article on the fire). He speaks, indeed, of the Manor House near the church, and says, "The old seat which stood there was formerly the residence of the family of Wake. Here was antiently a park and a warren." The wall in question can scarcely be said to be near the church in the strict sense of the word, but " near" is a vague word, and part of the appurtenant buildings may have stood here. The 'dead wall' is explained - the old house that was actually the Seat of the Wakes is of course the now entitled "Blisworth House", which is very near the church, as indicated to the researching clerk for Bridges by a curate in 1718. The Park was the pleasant fields both sides of the canal on the south side of the main road and the warren was that field now occupied by the Stoke Road allotments.

The church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, stands towards the western end of the village; it consists of a western tower that is battlemented, a nave, north and south aisles, and chancel. Within the last few years it has been restored (1856 by architect E. Law for the first Mr. Barry as encumbent), and is in substantial condition. The old high, square pews, in which our forefathers loved modestly to screen themselves from the curiosity of their neighbours, and upon the possession of which it is certain that very much dignity was supposed to depend, have (in the 1856 'improvements') given way to uniform low seats; the tower arch, which used to be blocked up by a gallery, has been opened; and the pillars of the nave have been cleaned of their many coats of paint. The interior presents no remains of an antiquity greater than the Decorated Period, unless we are to accept the font, a perfectly plain bowl on a bowl reversed, as of Norman antiquity (no one has denied that!). The chancel is of ample dimensions, and has a handsome Perpendicular screen, and stalls and panelling of the same date. A small piscina remains in the south wall. Just without the chancel are the doorway and opening above to the Rood-loft. A stained window in the chancel represents the raising of Jairus' daughter, in memory of the son of the rector, the Rev. William Barry. In the south aisle is a canopy of rather peculiar form, over a founder's tomb, and nearly in front is a fine altar tomb, which Bridges thinks may have formerly stood beneath the arch. But they evidently belong to distinct periods, and we see no reason to suppose that the tomb has been removed from its original site. It is to the memory of Roger Wake; the sides are of the freestone of the neighbourhood (perhaps so), the upper slab of marble, into which are let several brasses. One of these represents a marble figure in complete armour with the hands in the attitude of prayer; another, a female figure in a similar attitude: beneath the former are three figures of children, and beneath the latter four similar figures. At each corner of the slab is a shield charged with the arms of Wake and Catesby, and similar shields connected with the Wake knot occur on the North front and West end of the monument. There appear to have been sculptures of a similar kind at the East end, but the work is too much defaced to be intelligible. Another brass of an ornamental form is missing from the centre of the upper part of the slab. A border of brass encloses the whole, part of which is missing, in part since Bridges' time. What remains is inscribed with Bridges, in copying the legend, has given only four C's, making an error of a hundred years, and antedating the period of Roger Wake's death 1403 instead of 1503. This Roger Wake was descended from Baldwin Lord Wake, who derived the manor and advowson of Blisworth from William de Briwere, who received them as a grant from King John. He was a man of mark. Having married Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir William Catesby, of Ashby St. Ledgers, the favourite of Richard III., he espoused the cause of that monarch, with whose fortunes his own also succumbed. After the battle of Bosworth Field his lands became forfeited to the Crown, and in the third year of Henry VII. the manor of Blisworth was granted to Sir James Blounte. This attainder, however, was reversed in the same reign, and he was reinstated in his possessions, including Blisworth, where he founded a Free-school. His son, Thomas Wake, sold the manor to Sir Richard Knightley, of Fawsley, whose descendant, Sir Edmund Knightley, exchanged it for the manor of Badby and certain other of the dissolved Abbey Lands. It was then annexed to the Honour of Grafton, and his Grace the Duke of Grafton is its present possessor.

In the tower hangs a wooden tablet, recording an exploit of some of the forefathers of the village, when Blisworth seems to have cultivated bell-ringing: - "To the memory of the following ringers, John Gudgeon, Win. Peach, Benjamin Goode, Thomas Carter, and Thomas Garner, Who on ye 31st December, 1790, Did ring 45.6 scores in 3 hours and 40 minutes, which amounts to 5,000 changes. Written by B. Dunckly, clerk, May 12, 1791." Taking this inscription in its literal sense, one would be led to understand that those gentlemen all died of their exertions between December and May. We hope that was not so, and that the tablet was put up in memory of the exploit, not of the actors in it. (The burials were actually 1794, 1806, 1813, 1821 and 1856!) On the north side of the chancel there is a confessional window; and in the churchyard, which is ascended from the road by a flight of steps, are the steps of a cross now carrying a sun-dial (such is apparent in our oldest photograph of the church).

Blisworth, irregular, straggling, and covering a considerable area, is a pleasant and picturesque village, picturesque and pleasant in its very irregularity. Gardens and trees intervene between the houses; huge elder trees, roses in masses, brilliant tiger lilies, profuse wall-flowers, delight the eye, and fill the air with odour. Blisworth seems to have a special enjoyment in flowers. On the Stoke Bruerne turn Mr. Westley makes the entrance to his steam mills perfectly dazzling with geraniums and petunias, and other brilliant plants (actually located a little way, on the left, along the Stoke Road - this mistake has led some to assume the mill was roughly where Crieff House is located). A noble row of elms borders the churchyard, and the rectory is fairly hidden in trees. Almost from any point in the village, an artist may make a picture. At the North -East turn there is the tree which was once the indispensable feature in the scenery of our ancestral villages (referring here to the elm tree at the Northampton corner):

"How often have I blest the coming day,
When toil remitting lent its turn to play,
And all the village train, from labour free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree."

Blisworth lies high, and a little distance North of this point you look down upon the railroad. Descending towards it, the arch which connects the embankment over the road has a noble appearance - noble in its severe simplicity and stately proportions. We have already noticed the pleasant effect of the plantations of firs which adorn the slopes of the embankment. (by 2013 the trees on the north banking were in a shabby state and on the south banking, facing the village, Network rail had cut down all the trees to "maintain a stable slope"). 

To write of Blisworth, and to say nothing about Blisworth Gardens, would be almost like playing Hamlet and leaving out the character of the Prince of Denmark. It is a pity that the access to them from the station is not easier, or rather that it is not more obvious, for it is really easy enough. The weary half-hour which one often has to spend oscillating up and down the platform would pass lightly enough if one might pass it instead, in wandering about those really charming grounds, brilliant with flowers, and refreshing with greenest turf and shady bowers (a peculiarity in the access from the station platform to the gardens gate is not apparent from any photographs or plans of the area). People are too apt, we suspect, to think of them only on those days when they are gay with groups of merry company, and to ignore the quiet charm of them at ordinary times, when they are comparatively deserted. But a pleasanter place to saunter in with a book at noon-day, or when you desire a "nest for evening weariness," you will not easily find. Among its other attractions, it has a lawn so beautifully embanked and so smooth shaven, that it seems impossible not to play at bowls there, or croquet, or archery, or any other of those good out-of-door games which ought to be encouraged for the sake of the ladies, and the health we desire them to possess.