Background    A few of the old-timers in the village will still refer to our Village Hall in Stoke Road as 'The Old School'. The building still presents to the street a hint of its earlier form - the modest ornamental lintels over the upstairs front windows. It was re-built in that style in c.1800, after the Great Fire of 1798. It was set back from the roadside with probably three similar upstairs windows and two large windows with a central door for the ground floor. To the right of the front door was a freshwater well in the tiny front yard - in fact the well was not filled in until about 1955. This building served as the village school until 1913 when the new school was finished at Elm Tree Corner. It was open in particular to all children excluding the 'babies', ie. 4 and 5 year olds and excluding by family choice most children of Baptist faith. The building acquired its prominent gable extending outwards towards the roadside in 1861. The enlargement and the provision of the large gable window must have improved conditions for the pupils and teachers. Even with the large window there were times in the winter c.1905 when "the lamps were lit all day".

The school was a Church-of-England school but had a heritage which originates in 1504. The last of the Wakes resident in the village, Roger Wake, left an endowment upon his death of £11 per year to provide a "Grammar School and to attract a teacher of quality such as a Graduate of Oxford". The charter was to teach children to read and write, to learn certain scriptures, in Latin, and provide a church choir and welcome "as many poor children, as brought to the school, who should be taught alongside the paying scholars". Rather unwisely, the endowment trust was set up to provide a fixed amount of money each year, before tax, and by the 1700's the school had degenerated financially into an ordinary village school and had been taken over by the Church, the headmasters being a succession of curates or rectors. By around 1900, the school was managed by a committee of managers made up from the Board of Ratepayers, the Clergy and officials of the Northampton Education Authority. Under this regime, the school was designated Blisworth (Endowed School No. 20) and most teachers by then were subject to national certification. The school building had become, at some time in the distant past, the property of the Diocese of Peterborough.

The original location of the endowed school is not known for certain. At a time before the Great Fire, for example 1750, it is known that the school building occupied the same space as it does now plus around 4 yards more in the direction of the centre of the village. Next to the building was the freehold land of J. Westley senior. He had a house which spanned his frontage on the Stoke Road and behind it there was a bake-house and paddock. The fire destroyed maybe a dozen houses including Westley's bake-house, his house and the school building. In a moment of alacrity, Westley purchased the 4 yards mentioned above from the church for £40. This was a generous sum which allowed the church to quickly rebuild the school.  In turn, the extra land allowed Westley to build a house of exaggerated narrowness end-on to the road thus allowing access to a rebuilt bake-house. The narrow house was built in 1799, just before the new school, and was not demolished until the major housing developments of the 1960's.  (See Stoke Road, Demolition and Bacon Factory sections).

The Quest for a Village Hall    There is a Blisworth Parish Council minute in June 1938 acknowledging that there should be a village hall. Attention was turned to the small building in Stoke Road directly opposite the old school. This building was put up in 1874 to accommodate the infants (the 'babies') at a time when the main school was becoming over-crowded. Due to the railways and mining, the village was expanding rapidly. By 1913, or just afterwards, the infants were moved into the new school at Elm Tree Corner. Afterwards, the building, still owned by the Diocese of Peterborough, was "warmed with a good fire to serve as a quiet retreat" for the working men of the village. It became known as the Mens Institute or "Stute". During WWII the building was used by the Army Cadets, who also had a shed near the Northampton Road (in Bonsor's field).  After WWII the building was used as a youth club having been offered unsuccessfully to the Girl Guides for their sea-ranger meetings. The disused old school was maintained less well. It accommodated Church-of- England Sunday School meetings but little else. It seems odd that the parish council should think the much smaller of the two buildings as worthy of being a village hall. Anyway, by 1954, the Stute was conveyed from the Diocese of Peterborough to a Village Hall Trust whose trustees were two Blisworth Parish councillors and a solicitor. In around 1963 the building was sold to Frank Freeston and the trustees banked £1000.

Going by the contents of the parish council minutes, attention on the need for a Village Hall seemed to cool in favour of an ever-mounting push to have some good playing fields. By Len Piggott's account, the old Parish Field (for decades held by Northamptonshire CC - Towcester division) was finally bought by the Parish Council, probably for very little, and some of the banked £1000 was used to level, seed and equip a new playing field. The measures were made parochially "legal" by merging the Village Hall Trust and the Playing Fields Association into one body of trustees - with a charity status - this being achieved in roughly 1965.

Westley's narrow house and the long paddock behind it was bought in 1923 by the British Bacon Company. On this site they ran a smelly slaughterhouse until November 1960 when the company (unwisely) put in a planning application to raze the buildings and create a modern slaughterhouse facility there, combining their business which was being closed in Campbell Square in Northampton. The row that ensued saw them established instead on a green field site next to Burbidge's garage on the Northampton Road - well away, at last, from the village. Thankfully there was a wonderful collateral: the new factory was the last straw loaded onto the village sewage system which duly had to be re-established on the banks of the River Nene.

In the late 1960's, not only the bacon factory paddock but a slice of land attached to Crieff House and the bulk of the land associated with Home Farm were all being ear-marked for development. The narrow house next to the, by then, derelict old school was torn down in April 1972 as were a few other houses fronting onto Stoke Road. Then, at last, in Nov 1974, the old school was seen as a potential village hall but only after rumours had circulated that the church was intending to sell it off. The company, Buswell's, was approached and they gave to a councillor a verbal undertaking that a square of land behind the old school would be given to the village - to be associated with a vaguely perceived community centre. It was lucky they were still in the parish, for someone had to rush to get them to put this in writing so that KG Lawrence Ltd., the housing developers, had no choice but to leave the patch of ground.  The patch was consistently referred to the 'Buswell Play Area' for many years, in honour of a promise by the council to associate the name of Buswell, but the practice has lapsed and some seem keen to call it the village green.  In 1973, Mrs. Erichsen arranged to have five trees planted in the play area in memory of her husband.  There are no trees there now.

As it turned out, the patch was not directly behind the old school, for reasons unclear.  Furthermore, it was not large enough and another strip was needed. It had to be bought from KG Lawrence Ltd. to provide a car park for an as yet nonexistent village hall. None of this arranging would have been fruitful if the Diocese of Peterborough had not agreed to sell the old school building. They actually gave the Parochial Church Council, as default trustees, a first refusal since it seemed that a Village Hall could easily be managed by such a group. In the opinion of many it has become more politically correct for the church not to run the administration of a community facility - so luckily, the P.C.C. did relinquish its interests at that early time.  In the third quarter of 1975, the old school officially became the property of the merged association: Village Hall & Playing Field Association, which is on record as acknowledging that the Diocese of Peterborough had helped enormously by asking such a small sale price.  The map two paragraphs further up shows what was finally decided.  The picture inset in this paragraph shows what the developers had suggested in response to some people calling to save the cottages fronting on the Stoke Road (blue).  Note how late this was going on - the greyed area of Eastfield was already built and occupied.  New houses in some sort of "high rise" format (pale yellow) were suggested behind the old school (pink) and a supermarket and play area (green) was squeezed in - this was obviously wisely rejected without referring to residents.  

The refurbishment project was handed to the Parish Council to manage as they had the requisite legal clout. After costly alterations the building was provided with two upstairs committee rooms and a large hall with kitchen facilities at the rear. These were not alterations for the amateur; two very large steel girders were installed to support the committee room level and the building's rear wall. The untidy brick extensions on the back of the old school were demolished and much ironstone was dug out to make room for the large flat-roofed extension that was needed to accommodate the 60 foot length of the main hall. In 1975 the projected costs were expected to be up to £20,000 according to Robin Philtrip who suggested the village needed to raise some £3000 to £5000 in order to get the project started - "we would all happily pay £3 to £4 for a good night out so why not pay that just the once, for the village, to have the venue for functions in future".  Such sentiments worked and it was not long before the conversion could start.

When finished in 1978, the building was handed back to the charity association. This event was 40 years after first recorded mention of a need for a village hall.  It was, of course, the doubling of the number of households in the parish in the 1960 and 70s that had supplied the driving force. The picture here shows in September 1978, the PC chairman Robin Philtrip and clerk Tim Rogers 'opening' the new hall by cutting the tape.

A building of this type, with a 200 year-old ridge roof of 'imported' slate, is bound to have bouts of expensive repairs but it does contribute to Blisworth's distinction.  Recent repair projects include the restoration of the large gable window.  A forthcoming problem to solve is the provision of adequate facilities for the disabled.