An account about cattle herding at Blisworth Station.

This following narrative comes to you from a Doctor Leonard Griffith who together with his wife live in British Columbia.  Leonard's parents lived at Cliff Hill Farm where he was born, the property is now owned by the aged Mr. George Bonsor.  Doctor Griffith's father was a foremost Midlands cattle dealer, as well as trading extensively in Gloucestershire which was well serviced with a Railway system connected to Blisworth Station.

On occasions c. 1900, writes Doctor Griffith, cattle were sometimes herded off the trains in the vicinity of the Hotel frontage in preparation to being driven to nearby fields or Northampton market. The Hotel had a permanent resident - a splendid Grey Amazon talking parrot.  While the cattle were being controlled by dogs and the whistle calls of the drovers, striving for mastery of an agitated bunch of animals, the parrot did its bit by copying the whistles and shouts.  This added much confusion to the scene, for the dogs just could not differentiate between man and bird.

Doctor Griffith's second story tells of cattle arriving and being started on their walk to fields adjoining the Northampton Road.  The animals after their journey in cattle trucks badly needed a drink but this was generally not provide.  As they approached Stockwell Bridge over the canal, just a few hundred yards from the station, they smelt the canal and some of them would leap over the bridge parapet wall, or were perhaps pushed over by the pressure of other beasts as they squeezed together between the narrow bridge walls, and would land in the canal suffering no apparent discomfort.  Recovering the cattle from the towpath would not have been easy.  On one hard Winter day however, the canal was deeply iced over.  About 20 animals likewise smelling the water of the canal went over the parapet wall and broke the thick ice.  Some of them, in attempting to climb out, got into deeper water and some became trapped under the ice.  There they drowned and Doctor Griffith said that it was weeks before the thaw came and released the corpses that could be seen under the ice - a sad story indeed.

At this point of the narrative some of you, knowing of the five foot high walls of the bridge today, may doubt these words but, since those days, Stockwell Bridge has been rebuilt.  The former bridge was very hump-backed, narrower and possessed much lower walls.

Bringing this piece of George Freeston's a little more up to date are the comments by Peter Griffith.  First of all, Leonard's father was John Griffith and lived at Cliff Hill 19-- to 19--.  Leonard's brother was an Earnest Griffith whom we have come across organising the Blisworth Horse Shows in the 1950s.  Earnest was also a cattle dealer.  One of his four sons recall living at the bungalow by the station with a triangular plot of land extending to Stockwell Bridge over the canal.  Some cattle kept on that plot manage to learn that neither bank of the canal was sharply defined in those days (1940s) as pilings had eroded away and could wade across the canal and graze on the expected greener grass there.  All that Earnest had to do was shake a bucket of nuts and the cattle would romp and splash back to where they belonged.  Earnest also had groups of cattle delivered to the station and Peter and his brother's were press-ganged to get on their bikes, at least three of them, to keep ahead of the rampant herd as it set off up the Gayton Lane beyond the end of Station Road.  Their intended destination was Upper Farm, Tiffield, and this meant sealing off by bike and boy with waving arms outlets from the road at fields on the way, at the main Blisworth to Gayton Road, where the cattle were expected to proceed straight-on over the crossroads, at the Huckerby farm road, at the pathway which used to be called Pattishall Road and at the bridge over the SMJ line.  Finally the herd had to be turned into the farm drive before to avert havoc down in Tiffield.  Earnest followed redfaced shouting "get ahead of um" etc.

Bonsor's son-in-law now farms fields part of Cliff Hill farm.  All the buildings have either been taken down or converted into modern residences.