The Loading Wharf by Sandlanding Bridge

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It seems likely that before the building of the canal and its Northampton Arm, this area shown as Lot 21 in the general map was merely the most northern limit of Blisworth parish common land.  The land had probably been common land for over 500 years and would have been included in the Honour of Grafton by Charles II and conferred upon a young Fitzroy in 1705, the first Duke of Grafton.

The Arm was established in 1815.  Ordnance Survey maps dated 1899 show a brickworks adjacent to the Arm, as in the general map, but there is no reference in the Grafton rent records to a brickmaker until 1919 when William T. Asplin purchases, prior to auction for the sum of £875, this loading wharf and the 13 acre field, Lot 22, on the other side of the railway (see inset map).  There is no record of how long brickmaking had been practiced in this general location but it seems likely to have sprung up, as in other places, alongside the intended path of the Grand Junction Canal, ie. circa 1793.  Evidently Asplin used the wharf for moving bricks and sand and it was probably used by  Mr. Savage before him.  In 1922 there is an interesting letter from Millner reminding Asplin that the use of the boat "GJCCC Blisworth" will be charged at 5/- per day.  And we thought the only boats that were named Blisworth were part of the canal company's sea-going shipping line.

The main Lot 20 was purchased by the GJCCC with tenancy rights in favour of Asplin.  However, there is a chance reference by a labourer to Asplin taking down his brickworks and reestablishing them on the other side of the canal at a time shortly after 1919.  This suggests that arrangements with GJCCC had not gone well for him and he was setting up brickmaking within his 13 acre field, as has been independently confirmed.  Asplin's bricks are easily recognisable; they have no frog but instead have a series of holes running through them.  This feature allows a more compact furnace arrangement in which hot gasses pass through the bricks during kilning.  Bricks from other Gayton and Milton Malsor brickworks are plain and wire-cut on three axes.

The descendants of William T. Asplin c1950 were Milton farmers along with a sister living in Milton Malsor and another farmer, Henry Thomas Asplin, who lived at Home Farm, Blisworth.  In 1948, by which time brickmaking elsewhere had become very industrialised, an 8 acre portion of the field, including a gravel pit, was sold to the engineering firm Kottler and Heron Company and in 1951 the remainder was sold to the Stroud family (F. Stroud and Sons) who also bought the (Old) Arm Farm, 150 acres - roughly that area run by the Dix family and later the Savage family.  Kottler and Heron eventually acquired the rest of the Asplin plot c1960 from William Capell who had by then bought the farm.  Kottler and Heron also demolished Asplin's brickworks leaving one general purpose building.

The strip of land referred to in Deeds as a loading wharf, original Lot 21, was sold in 1951 to John C. Mason who is believed to have used the plot as a base for landing by canal and storing road stone (granite and chippings) either for his own work or by arrangement with a 'local' road-mender employed by the Towcester Rural District Council.  Note that the house at the top of Little Lane in Blisworth had a similar status up until the 1980s with a steam-roller shed built next to it.

Mason subsequently sold the plot to Frank P. Lantsbery (Transport Driver) and his wife in 1962.  It is believed the property was given the name "Fairlawns" by the Lantsberys and in a rapidly newly expanding Blisworth, before the advent of postcodes, it became a problem for many people to recall where on earth this place could be, the local roads layout being hard to fathom.  It was under the "Lantsbery watch" that the plot acquired a rather idyllic charm harmonising with a shady and peaceful reach of canal water.   The Lantsberys used the wharf as a weekend/holiday retreat from Northampton and converted one of the buildings from the rudimentary accommodation set up by the previous owner into a more comfortable holiday abode. Commercial traffic had ceased on the canal by this time.  The leisure industry was just beginning and the Lantsberys experimented with the hire of Indian Canoes and rowing boats. When this proved to be more trouble than it was worth, they sub-let the moorings on the wharf to a succession of boat owners. They even leased the adjacent field from British Waterways and sublet moorings there.

When the wharf, with the same plot as specified in 1919, was bought by Philip Lizius and Mrs. Linda Childerhouse in 1993 it was renamed "The Sand Landings" in recognition of the fact that the nearby bridge (No. 3) was known as 'Sandlanding' presumably because of Mr. Asplin's or any earlier brickmaker or builder's activities at the wharf.

The plot retains the same appeal.  In the summer of 1996 there was a visitor to Sand Landings, an elderly gentleman who, as a small boy in the 1920s, had led his uncle's boat horses down the flight.  The boats carried bricks from a Milton brickworks to build new houses in Far Cotton - very likely the Asplin brickworks on the other side of the railway.  Asplin lived at Milton but his works near Sandlanding bridge were* in Blisworth parish.  It was a pity the man didn't leave his name for there might have been a link with men discussing, in 1961, the use of the wharf, which we have on tape.

* The Kottler and Heron site and a large square of land to the south of it was transferred to the Parish of Milton Malsor in the 1980s, by unilateral application by the Milton Malsor PC to the Boundaries Commission, because it was expected that they would benefit from "rates" revenues.  The larger square was in anticipation of a substantial expansion in a commercial estate that was eventually abandoned.  It was a pyrrhic move, for even if a commercial activity is allowed in future, the result of a policy change in local government funding means that parish councils can no longer obtain such rates income!