Mona Clinch's Collection of Village Memories
(extracted from her 1938 book)

The collecting of the village history went on between the years 1932 and 1938, and most of the following was gathered from the old inhabitants living in the parish at this time. Two sisters, the Misses Mary and Clara Whitlock, the one nearing 90 and the other 80, have lived in the same house in Stoke Road, and their parents before them, for over a century [now called Pandloss]. They tell us of life when they were young. At a very early age they went to a lace maker's school and learnt to make Maltese lace and Point lace. The tuition fee was 2/6. The school was held by old Mrs. Davis in a cottage in the High Street, near Alexanders shop, which was entered through a jetty at the back. They also went to a knitting school of Mrs. Packwood's. They remember an old gipsy called Mrs. Skerry who used to come into the village wearing a red cloak and riding on a donkey. She peddled clothes pegs and potato nets, the latter were string bags in general use for the boiling of potatoes. In old days all the dinner was cooked in one big pot, the different vegetables, pudding, etc., hence the convenience of being able to pull out the potatoes when ready.

From another source comes recollections of wages that were paid for farm workers some sixty years ago. A shepherd and a waggoner would get thirteen shilling a week with a cottage, the men working on Sundays when required. Plough boys received sixpence a day. Girls' wages started at one shilling a week to two and sixpence, and frequently at eighteen years of age they were receiving only nine pounds a year. The women often worked in the fields picking up stones and weeding, which was called "twitching". Children could gather acorns for their pigs or sell them to the farmers for 6d. a gallon. Practically every family kept one or more pigs. These they fed on potatoes and gleanings, and 18 to 20 score was the usual weight for the pig when ready for the table. The men on the farms usually began work in the summer months at 4 o'clock in the morning. To meet their needs large brass kettles of milk were heated in the farm houses and into these the men and boys broke their own bread before starting out to work. The children carried their breakfasts out to them, often a long way, before going to school. Prior to this time, say 80 years ago, beer was commonly drunk at breakfast and milk the alternative. Meat was rarely eaten more than once a week, the meals consisted of bread and potatoes, good suet pudding and skim milk. Tea was very expensive. One family of twelve had two ounces of tea a week which was made to go round and reached the children in a very attenuated form.

But in spite of all this the village people in the old days were happy and contented in their lot. They rarely went far from home and to them a visit to the market in Northampton in the carrier's cart was a satisfying outing. The clothing of the men consisted of corduroy breeches with leggings and jackets of cloth or corduroy, often home-made, and stout hob-nailed boots. While the women wore full woollen skirts, large white or checked aprons, shawls and bonnets, with sun- bonnets for field work. White stockings and elastic-sided boots were the usual wear. The women and girls knitted the stockings for the household from woollen yarn spun in their own homes. The cottages were simply furnished, the kitchen floors being of tiles or stone, and the flooring of the bedrooms consisting of boards with a few hand-made rugs. The children helped to make these rugs in the winter evenings. They were made by cutting old coats and dresses into strips and knitting them with large wooden needles and then sewing them together. The rent of the cottages was 6d., or at most 1/-, a week. The rents were collected for the Duke of Grafton once a year by his land agent, who came to the Royal Oak, and the tenants brought their year's rent to him there. Education was not free, one penny a week was charged for each child when the family was a large one, but 2d. to 4d. was required when there was a smaller number. Children left school at the age of eleven and went to work. Schooling was not compulsory until 1920, many boys never went to day-school at all as they started work when eight years old. There was a night school held three nights a week from seven to nine o'clock by Mrs. Packwood. She had a long cane and from her seat she could reach out and tap the children on their heads if they were inattentive or misbehaving. During harvest time a bell was rung each morning at 8 o'clock as a signal that gleaning could begin. Each family that went gleaning paid the bell ringer one penny a week. Harvesting would go on for perhaps six weeks. The corn was both cut and gathered by hand. The haulm was left standing for some weeks longer, when it was also gathered and used for thatching the roofs of the houses. This haulm was stronger and far more durable than the straw which is used for thatching to-day. After the gleaning the people would take their corn to a barn at the Royal Oak or an open space behind the Sun, Moon and Stars for threshing. At the Oak they did with a thrail or flail (a long stick with a short one joined to it by a thong of leather), and each did his own threshing.  At the Sun, Moon and Stars Mr Capell installed a threshing machine.

Families could provide themselves, in the days of gleaning, with enough flour for the whole year. An old man cutting and laying a hedge in one of our lanes with whom we stopped to chat one day, told us something of his life's work. Besides general farm work and hedging and ditching, he had the job in the spring time of shortening the lambs' tails by biting them off. He showed us how his teeth were worn down by the process, and well they might be, for frequently he had bitten off as many as three hundred tails in a day. He declared that this was by far the safest and most sanitary method for the operation. This old man compared the youth of the present day with those of his own time, saying that today young people have no idea of what real poverty is, nor of the frugal conditions in which his generation had been brought up.

Beautiful lace of Maltese and Ground Point was made by Mrs. John Lack. This lace measured anything from half an inch to eight inches in width, some of which took a first prize at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. She began to learn lace making when she was only six years old, and three years later she was working at it regularly for eight hours a day in a lace school. On her lace pillow she would often be using as many as four hundred bobbins, all quaintly pretty and attractive. At night the lace-making was carried on by the light of a rush light or candle, which was augmented by shining through clear spring water placed in glass bottles in a wooden stand arranged for them. In the early part of the nineteenth century the boys in the village were taught to make lace as well as to knit. John Chambers, the grandfather of Richard Chambers - who is now 80 years old and has just had his sixtieth wedding anniversary - had a water mill at the bottom of Chapel Lane where there was a large pond with a dam, fed by Winter Brook. [At this time the Dent family ran the water mill - so Chambers worked sublet from Dent?]  This water mill was done away with when the canal the tunnel built 1794-1805. I understand that the windmill, which was a picturesque feature of the village, was made to replace the water mill [this is quite wrong, mill sails are recorded for 17th century millers in the village]. It stood at the top of the hill behind Mount Pleasant Cottages. The mill finally fell into disuse after the Stoke Road steam mill fire.  Unfortunately the windmill had to be removed for the working of the ironstone.

During digging operations a large number of human skulls and bones was unearthed in Westley's field at the back of the Bacon Factory. This leads one to believe that there must have been a burial ground there centuries ago.  The old stocks and the pound were at the turn of Greenaway Road (now called Courteenhall Road) just above the schools, where there was a green of about 40 poles. There is a curious custom in some villages which we find has been resorted to in Blisworth on different occasions which is called drumming-out or low-belling. A description of this is given in an extract from the Northampton Mercury of May 24th 1895 and elsewhere.  The demonstration had the desired effect of removing the offenders from the neighbourhood. 

As mentioned above, there was a big windmill at the top of the village, it is believed this was run for a while in conjunction with the steam flour mill in Stoke Road.  However, after a fire at Stoke Road in 1879 a new roller plant replaced the stone ground method and this was installed in a new large mill by the canal side at West Bridge - built by J. Westley and Sons. Here as many as a thousand sacks of flour were ground each week. Mr. Westley died in 1894, he was succeeded in the business by his three sons, William, John and Alfred. The mill was closed in 1929 to the general regret of the inhabitants, for many men were thrown out of employment when this big industry ceased. The mill books* have an interesting record of an unusually early season of wheat growing in this parish. It was in the year 1893 that wheat was harvested, milled and the flour made into bread all by the month of July.  [* the 'mill books' are unfortunately now lost.]

The Grand Union Canal Co. later bought the mill building for a warehouse and demolished the great chimney. The baker's trade was carried on by the miller until 1895. In that year Mr. Thomas Sturgess took it over, and he still continues with the assistance of his son William. In those days the Bakery was in the Stoke Road, in the buildings which now house the Bacon Factory, but on the coming of the factory Mr. Sturgess moved to the High Street. It is perhaps interesting to record that the price of flour in 1895 was 17/- a sack, a sack contained 280 lb. or 20 stone. A 41b. loaf of bread cost 3d., while today we pay 9d. for the same loaf. It has always been the custom for the villagers to bring their joints of meat to the bakehouse for cooking, the reason for this being that the ovens in the cottages were very small and inadequate. At the midday hour, especially on Sundays, a stream of people might be seen carrying home their dinners in the pans in which they had been cooked. This custom came to an end in 1934 when gas was laid on to the village from Northampton. Many gas cooking stoves were then installed in the cottages and the baker ceased to light his fires on Sundays. The Blacksmith's trade which has been in the hands of the Goodridge family for over a century has practically died out. With it was combined the work of drawing teeth for the village folk. The present owner, Alfred Goodridge, still has the dentist's instruments. The patients came and sat on the anvil where the operation was performed at the price of sixpence a tooth. They tell me that it was a counsel of wisdom to keep your finger on the tooth to be extracted in order to avoid an error of selection on the "Smithy's" part !

Lace making was quite an industry in olden times. The lace that was made in the villages about here was sold to agents who came periodically from London to collect it. A strange calling, that of Registered Leggers, is fully described in a later chapter. There were always twelve of them and their work was to propel the canal barges through the tunnel.

One of the older small industries was a Pickle Factory which continued for a number of years and is still remembered by the older people of to-day. It was carried on in a building behind the post office. Pickles were made of walnuts, onions, cabbage, etc. Chutney and piccalilli being favourites.

A quaint trade known as Rabbit Scratching was also carried on within living memory, though many years ago. This consisted in trimming the fur of rabbit skins, it was done with a knife, the fur being made short and even. The pay was ninepence a turn, and there were about twenty skins in a "turn" A more domestic calling was that of mangling clothes. William Dunkley tells me that his mother did this for the village for many years. The mangle was a box some eight or ten feet long with about a ton of stone inside on the rollers. The clothes were brought already washed and the mangling was done for a penny or a penny ha'penny a family. Mrs. Dunkley combined this work with lace making and knitting socks.

The British Bacon Company introduced an important industry into Blisworth in 1923 with the establishment of a bacon factory. The site occupied is that of the old steam mill and bakehouse in the Stoke Road. The premises were converted into suitable departments for the industry including up-to-date slaughter house, cold store, bakehouses, curing cellars and a large plant installed for the rendering of lard from leaf. One of the interesting features is the making of different kinds of pies, such as pork, veal and ham and steak and kidney. A staff of ten girls with a head baker are always busy. The various processes in the curing and other departments call for skilled labour and employ on an average twenty-four men. A great variety of cooked meats is produced, brawn, cooked hams, roasted legs of pork, pressed brisket, sausages and black puddings. In connection with the curing side of the business a large number of pigs are used entirely for the pork market. Six vans go out daily with four salesmen and two van drivers delivering the products to Birmingham, Banbury, Warwick, Coventry, Leicester, Bedford, Dunstable, and to a large area in North Buckinghamshire which reaches as far as Leighton Buzzard and Aylesbury. Agents in several counties are always looking out for the good class of pigs they require and loads frequently arrive from as far a-field as Essex and Yorkshire. Most of the employees are inhabitants of the village, and the efficiency and cleanliness of everything connected with the work is very apparent. The merciful method of the electrical stunner makes the dispatching of the pigs absolutely painless. The company has gained many medals for their exhibits at the best shows.