Blisworth Houses and Quarries

This is to put the record straight. The question has been:-  what sources of stone were used for the notable houses in the village?
Not all contention is dispelled by this paper. Perhaps the only way to clear up doubts would be to get stone samples analysed.

Before 1800, Blisworth had a couple of limestone quarries towards the east of the parish, quite near to the Courteenhall Road. They are marked as Lime Kilns in Bryant's map of 1825. The quarries could have been opened in medieval times for providing stone for building and repair of cottages in the village. By the time of the fields enclosure in 1808 they were officially assigned to provide stone for road maintenance and, apparently, the Duke of Grafton instructed his agent to find a new quarry in order to sell stone. His agent (Mr. Roper) was actually already selling stone at the time and so he knew a likely place to establish a new quarry, that being just adjacent to one of the "road" quarries and in 1821 he opened it for business, opening onto the Stoke Road.

Two buildings can be directly associated with the new quarry:
(1). The Stoneworks "Office" on the Stoke Road.  It was built with stone from mere 100 - 200 yards distant, the date it was established is not recorded but assumed to be c.1830.
(2). The Pair of Villas built at the junction of the road to the railway station with the Northampton Road. A new agent, Mr. Gardner, suggested to the Duke in 1838 the site for the Villas as appropriate for advertising the quarry to anyone going to/coming from the station. So the date of the villas is 1839.

The quality of the stone in buildings (1) and (2) is similar and not very durable. Pieces of stone detail have fallen off due to weather spalling over the 150 years since they were built, in particular repairs to the villas were made in the 1990s and new lettering in stone was installed at the head of the Stoneworks building. Many limestone cottages and garden walls have also suffered badly over the years and have been liberally dressed with mortar at stone joints to minimise the weathering. Such cases are thought to be due to the weak stone from the Stone Works quarry.

Consider two more buildings:
(3).  The Old Rectory built next to the Church and finished in 1842 for the Revd. W. Barry. The reverend had very high standards and was probably the wealthiest rector that the village has seen, coming we believe from the Whitby, Yorkshire area and from a family involve in shipping.  This is what George Freeston said of the house in his 4-weekly Church News Letters of January 1971, "It certainly appears that, with all this sudden change around his old Rectory, within his first three years of coming to Blisworth the Rector was prompted to build a new Elizabethan style Rectory a little further to the southwest of the old building. Although the Parish had a first class Stone Works and Quarry on the Stoke Road established in 1821, he chose to procure his stone from a quarry opened up on the Towcester Road at the Rectory Farm."  Well, George was right in saying that the Stone Works quarry was shunned but totally wrong in declaring that the quarry on rectorial land was used instead. We know this because there is no stone in the Blisworth area that is robust to weathering, yet the Old Rectory has faired very well, at least for the elevations that show smooth ashlar faces (not so well regarding the chimneys). The rectory quarry stone is very shelly and friable, it is however of scientific interest and the access hole has been labelled a SSSI for a number of years. There is further comment about the "Rectory Fm quarry" in the next paragraph. Unfortunately, we have no information on this rectory building and who the architect was. The diocese has no resident expert who could help. Photo was taken in 1906 of the rear elevation.
(4).  The Church  This is what George has said and was copied into the out-of-print book on Blisworth: "A substantial old quarry on glebe land, near Rectory Farm, provided the stone for the 15th century changes to Blisworth church".  George also mentioned that N. Pevsner had told him this. But the statement is not included in Pevsner's book on Northamptonshire buildings. That's just as well because it would have been a major 'howler'. The rectory quarry did not exist as far back as 1727 and the site in question was not glebe land then, let alone in the 15C, and we know this because it does not appear on the Grafton survey map of 1727. Instead, at that location, was a "ridge and furrow" field given the name "Shelly Lye Furlong" thus describing a particular stony nature of the soil there. By the time of the Ordnance Survey in 1883 the site was labelled "Limekilns" which speaks for the poor quality of the limestone there compared with the main quarry that was in business from 1821 to 1913 - though the latter part of that period found market for the stone only as flux for the Northampton blast furnaces. We know and are thankful that the stones for the church are of robust quality and even at the wind-scoured edges the stone shows moderate erosion for 500 years. Furthermore there is demonstrated a knowledge of the robustness of iron-bearing local stone (in the building of the church) as mentioned in the last paragraph below.
(5).  Blisworth House  We gather that the site was taken by a house, a Manor House, occupied by the Wake family from 1253 to 1522 when the widow of Roger Wake sold the entire 'manor' to John Knightley of Fawsley. Thus the Lord of the Manor was not resident for a while. We can identify a house in existence by 1650 when Thomas Tibbes, from London, bought it (in the 'Crown sales') and lived there for ten years. His widow then relinquished the house to the Crown and it was then rented by the Plowman family until 1779 when their farming business petered out. The Plowmans established some unknown house improvement dated 1702 (and that date-stone still exists). The mapping of 1727 shows two stories with a dormer level (four dormer windows) in a thatched roof. We know that the house was improved by 1838 by the Stone family. They added a large front central porch that covered the date-stone and a rear extension that doubled the floor area and with a double roof. It was photographed in about 1890 as a structure similar to its present state; ie. with  elevations raised to three stories with a slate roof, all three stories re-modelled in Georgian style. The front elevation was partly covered in ivy in 1890 and has subsequently been rendered and scribed with a faux block-work pattern reminiscent of very shallow rustication. The side elevations shows extensive use of squared limestone blocks and very little ironstone. The rear elevation was photographed in 1906 and shows only two storeys compared with the three at the front because the roofs are not equal. There are no indications regarding the origin of any of the stone. The 'core' of the house dates back to pre-1650 though it might be a problem to identify that core.

In preparing for the book Bridge's History of Northamptonshire, questions in 1718 were asked of a number of reliable people in each village. The curate Revd. Bullyer commented Blisworth was in possession, for building, of a white stone at the Saltway and a good Red stone. We can identify a number of locations for white stone and the one at the Saltway must have been in Slatpitt Furlong. There is no obvious remnant of the red stone which we assume must have been an ironstone ie. a sandstone incorporating enough iron oxides to be extremely robust without being of 'ore grade' which would usually be unworkable. Revd. Bullyer made no suggestion where the red stone may have been found - comment is provided in the review of Blisworth Mining and a mapped view of all possible quarries may be found here. There is a further suggestion, following this paragraph, for the site of a viable ironstone quarry. Many of our old cottages appear to have been based on a wall-plate consisting of ironstone, for example the cottages opposite the general store in the High Street and the house at number 31 Stoke Road - see below. The use of a mix of red and white stones, sometimes random, layered or banded, is common-place around the village and represents building activity from 1600 to 1880. The heavy use of ironstone may originate well before 1600 although the listing notes by English Heritage does not include that view. It has been occasionally mentioned that the period 1590 to 1650 marked a village cottage improvement phase, seemingly discounting much building activity before 1585.

Possible Ironstone Site

The figure is a Lidar scan of the Towcester Road with features marked thus, P = Pynus Cottages, PF = the Parish field and GF = Glebe Farm. The field boundaries and road alignment from 1727 mapping are overlaid. Depressions and other surface features are revealed by sunlight rendering from the NNE. SP = Slatpitt Quarry, FI = the first known ironstone ore quarry and U1, U2 are U3 hitherto unknown depressions possibly quarries. The feature in the 1727 mapping that draws one's attention to the depressions is the "yard" to the south of the road which, if the lines are taken literally, seem to extend the field that became the parish field. There is another area to the east that suggests an animal enclosure. Both this and the yard are close to depression U1. The kink in the field boundary around U2 also lays some emphasis on the depressions. According to Tonks (Eric Tonks' book The Ironstone Railways of the Midlands - Blisworth and its surrounding area is covered in part III) it was at the site FI, in 1852 (after the Great Exhibition in 1851), that a Mr. Clare and Mr. Hickman began extraction. Their project failed for a lack of an effective carrier arrangement to get the stone to the canal. This site was where Grafton agents presumably directed the miners so it seems very plausible that the general area to the south of the road was for the red stone mentioned by curate Bullyer in 1718. Since the curate suggested no particular place we may assume that the site was disused by then (yet the mapped yard feature remained by 1727). The question of the location of an ironstone quarry is clearly a tantalising one.

Notes on the Use of an Ironstone Wall-plate    Not very many houses show the use of an ironstone wall-plate. They are listed below with comments. Some may say that, in view of the probable age of most of these houses, ie. 300 years plus, the frequent traces of a wall-plate is quite indicative of what may be regarded as a building convention, not necessarily afforded in every case.

At the time of building these houses there was clearly an available supply of ironstone that was used by the Crown managers or the Duke of Grafton's agent in providing houses sufficient for the population. which might have been ~300 in 1500 - 1600. In some cases the wall-plate may be considerably older than the main fabric of the house. No evidence was seen for timber supports in the outline of the building. Note that there are a number of well constructed houses, particularly Stoneacre (High Street) and Thackstone (Stoke Road) that show no use of an ironstone wall-plate at all, unless such courses are located below the ground level. The data assembled here does not prove a link between a cottage of considerable age and being built with an ironstone wall-plate. The data is presented mainly to place the constructions on record and merely suggest that maybe the smaller cottages were the norm in ancient times (with wall-plate) but were superceded by  more substantial gable-to-road houses at a time when such wall-plate was deemed unnecessary as robustness in the foundation was provided in some other way. With this hypothesis I lay out my shaky stall and await discussions. Note that everyone of these houses are built high enough in the village to have their foundations resting on an ironstone strata. From No. 44 High Street, onwards, the substrate is blue clay.

Elmtree House (photo) - the base is coated with a thick and strong mortar layer, to a height of about 14 inches. The wall surface and some of the mortar is supporting growths of lichen. The ironstone edges occasionally hint of the wall-plate behind.
No. 32 High Street (photo) - a wall-plate that is much eroded by frost, ice and salt attack is periodically repaired with an amateurish use of stone and engineering brick. The effect is ugly but one wonders how old is the iron-stone that remains. This cottage is near one previous recorded adjoining the blacksmith's shop, now demolished, that displayed the date 1613 with the Goodridge initials NG . IG.
No. 34 High Street (photo) - a similar wall-plate as shown at No. 32 but without so much erosion. Neither of these cottages are listed by EH - presumably because they have been subjected to too much modification.
Crieff Cottage (archive photo) - this cottage is actually a relatively modern cottage that has been refurbished in the1990s. Back in 1920 there was a high gable end facing the street with a substantial ironstone wall-plate but now there is left only a 6' high garden retainer wall with the same foundation. This gabled house was quite prominent and stood only a gate's width apart from the L-shaped Crieff House (before the fire damage of 1798 , see building labelled 'c' on Stoke Road in this reference ).
No. 31 Stoke Road (photo) - this is a remarkable house that was built entirely in ironstone and in two separable phases, the second of which consisted of the addition of a barn on the north gable end. The two phases are distinguished in the photograph. Clearly the house rests on an ironstone wall-plate but that is completely hidden by a strong layer of mortar.
No. 4 Northampton Road (photo) - this house has no obvious ancient features but, until the 1980s, there were upstairs a few separating walls consisting of willow/birch hurdling covered with daub, being testimony to its age. The wall-plate is partly preserved while the wall carries exuberant randomness in the stonework. Note also the use of ironstone block work for a repair - see below.
Nos. 9 and 11 High Street (photo) - display an incomplete wall-plate layer.
Willow Cottage at Elmtree corner (archive photo) - a substantial building that is setback from the roads. Recorded in 1727 as a house but in 1838 as an unoccupied garden house behind the house next to Elmtree House, ie. behind 7 Courteenhall Road. Its varying status is a mystery that might relate to a dire roof condition at some stage.
Building at corner of Little lane and Chapel Lane (archive photo) - clearly built primarily of ironstone but demolished in 1938. The corner stones are set to provide a curve for easement for horses and carts.

The following is a list, with comments, of houses in the village that carry, or carried, a notable amount of ironstone coursing within a substantially limestone construction. These are simply examples - there are others.

No. 35 Stoke Road (photo) - a building known to have been built in 1652, re-roofed in c. 1850 with slate and refurbished generally in 1960. There is a prominent course of ironstone at the level of a presumed thatch eaves-line, evident in coarse blocks to the east (to the right) and well cut blocks to the west. The latter are presumed to have been placed in 1960  along with the panel of whimsically cut blocks above it. Clearly there must have been a source of well cut ironstone blocks in 1960 but would that have been in the village?
The High Street mail sorting house (photo) - demolished in ~1960, constructed entirely in ironstone at some time since 1850 at which time availability was evidently no problem. The site was once occupied by a very substantial building until it was destroyed by fire in 1798.
Cottage near the Chapel (photo) - demolished c. 1938 because it had become unsafe. Built without much ironstone but repaired with some well cut blocks at an unknown time. The original build date is unknown but probably before 1727.