Newsletter May 2021
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Church Street, with Pytchley Row on the right-hand side projecting beyond the smaller houses of Calico Yard c.1903. Newsletter May 2021 1 Programme of Speakers - Update It has now been over a year since the first lockdown came into effect and bought about the cancellation of our monthly meetings. At the time of writing (1st April) the committee plan to recommence the monthly speakers programme from Monday 26th July with Susan Lees of the National Trust with a presentation entitled, “Memories of Stone – Historic Graffiti in the Garden Lodge at Lyveden”. This will be dependent upon the circumstances at the time, but the society is making the necessary arrangements in the hope that the Government’s “road map” for us all to return to a “normal” life in June will prove to be effective. Please also see page 19. Our website www.finedonlocalhistorysociety.co.uk and our Facebook page will be updated, closer to the time, with the confirmation (or otherwise) of our intention to hold this talk. For those members who wish to attend this meeting and do not have access to a computer for checking the latest updates please contact Mick Britton on 07988 065010. Membership Subscriptions Thank you to all those members who have paid their subscriptions for this year. Owing to the cancellation of our monthly meetings, at which many members usually pay their subscriptions, the number of paid-up members at the time of writing (1st April) is just over 60% of last year’s membership. If you wish to remain being a member of the Society and receive the newsletter, then please forward the £5 per person annual subscription to our treasurer James Sheehan, Orchard House, 17 Ivy Lane, Finedon NN9 5NE. If it is more convenient, monies can be left with Michael Shipton at 10 Rockleigh Close, Finedon. Alternatively, if you bank online it can be transferred directly into our account. Account Name Finedon Local History Society. Sort Code 09-01- 29. Account Number 02892977. Please add your name in the reference section of the transaction. Should you choose this option then please advise James by email at [email protected]. Thank you. 2 The ‘Alms Houses’ Pytchley Row Barry Wadeson FLHS member Barry recently moved to Finedon following a career, firstly as an apprentice organ builder at Northampton before “drifting” into teaching research methods in the health care sector, and then moving to the Open University. When Barry retired he returned, briefly, to organ building, working on the new organ at Worcester Cathedral. In 2014 he became a volunteer with the Churches Conservation Trust and currently looks after thirteen redundant churches in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. To add to these responsibilities, last year Barry was appointed as the Finedon Parish Church archivist. This article first appeared in the July 2020 edition of the Finedon Parish Magazine and the society thanks the editor, Gill Barlow, for her permission to reprint this item. When I moved into 13 Church Street, one of a row of cottages formerly called Pytchley Row, I often heard them referred to as alms houses. They certainly look like alms houses and they also look older than they are. The distinctive gabled roofs and stone-mullioned front windows with their lozenge-shaped tracery give them a spurious air of largesse to the poor on the part of somebody wealthy: noblesse oblige and all that. In fact, they never were alms houses and the wealthy somebody was William Mackworth Dolben who built them as estate houses. There were alms houses in Finedon but, according to a map in John Bailey’s book Finedon Revealed, they were opposite the Bell Inn, and the row of just three houses for Finedon’s paupers was later demolished to make way for council houses. Mackworth Dolben stamped his authority on Finedon and his name on many of its buildings. Pytchley Row (Bailey says that it was originally called Quality Row) is indelibly imprinted with squire Mackworth Dolben’s initials (MD) on the diamond-shaped windows of houses 11 and 15 Church Street, and the date they were built (1847 AD) on the gables. My own gable is graced with D for Domini. Between 1841 and 1901 the population of Finedon increased from 1,378 to 4,129, and by 1914 the village had grown to be a small town that had over fifty shops, including five butchers and four bakers. This growth was driven by the boot and shoe trade, which I will come back to shortly, and quarrying. In their introduction to Finedon on Old Picture Postcards Andrew Swift and Robert Cheney comment: 3 “While all this expansion was taking place, the last squire of Finedon, William Mackworth Dolben, was indulging a passion for building which was matched by a passion for the fantasy world of medieval chivalry celebrated in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites. The result was a series of buildings which not only look much older than they are but often have an unreal fairy- tale quality to them.” In this, Mackworth Dolben was assisted by the Northampton-based architect Edmund Francis Law. It seems that the squire of Finedon had found the perfect man to realise his fantasies of a Gothic Finedon. Law was first commissioned to give Finedon Hall a makeover by adding Gothic features – including a chapel. Having spent some years on the hall, Mackworth Dolben and Law turned their attentions to the village with Pytchley Row being one of the first of their projects. Law also designed many other buildings in Finedon: Mackworth Green, the Star Finedon Parade c.1935. Coffee House and, of course, Photograph donated by Ted Amey. the ill-fated Volta Tower. Originally numbered one to eight Pytchley Row (it was still called Pytchley Row in the 1950s when the cottages were listed by English Heritage) the houses were eventually absorbed into Church Street and renumbered as five to nineteen Church Street. The architectural historian Nicholas Pevsner describes Pytchley Row in his Buildings of England: Northamptonshire as “Gothic Tudorbethan.” The Gothic Revival movement began in the mid-eighteenth century but by Victorian times had reached its highpoint under architects such as Augustus Pugin, Charles Barry and George Gilbert Scott. Sometimes called Neo Gothic, Victorian Gothic, or more disparagingly Mock Gothic, this was a movement that swept the Western world-influencing not just architecture but the arts and crafts movement that supplied the interior 4 furnishings of churches and even modest middle-class houses. The squire of Finedon and his architect were not alone in their search for the aesthetics of medieval England. To the passer-by, 5 – 19 Church Street appears to be row of Tudor Gothic cottages that have survived for centuries; only the date 1847 spread across the gables gives the game away. But if these were not alms houses who lived in them? To find out I turned to census records of 1861 to 1911. The occupants were decidedly not paupers although they may not have been well off. Instead, most Pytchley Row tenants worked in the boot and shoe trade. In the early part of the 20th century there were around 14 shoe manufacturers in Finedon; however, most of the shoes were made at home (which may explain the little barns behind the cottages). Shoemakers purchased the leather and other materials from the manufacturers and turned in their work on Saturdays. This piece work meant that if you did not make any shoes you did not get paid. It was said that in Northampton Saturday nights were a time of great drunkenness when the shoemakers turned in their work and received their pay. No doubt Finedon saw similar scenes too if the number of extinct pubs in Finedon is anything to go by. Almost without exception the residents of Pytchley Row worked either in the shoe trade or in service. Originally the houses had two bedrooms although most are now one bedroomed due to interior alteration to create an indoor toilet and bathroom (in my back yard are the remains of an outdoor toilet hut which has since been converted to a raised mini garden). Rather surprisingly, we find from census records that up to six people were living in some of the cottages, these included boarders and lodgers. In 1861 my house (then No 5 Pytchley Row) was occupied by Thomas Lawton and his wife Jane. Thomas is described as a cordwainer, someone who made shoes from a certain type of expensive leather. Their daughter, also called Jane, at the age of 14 was already making shoes, and two nephews, Henry and Frederick Panter aged 13 and 10 respectively, were likewise engaged in shoe making. No doubt this provided the Lawton’s with a decent standard of living since the nephews would have been expected to pay for their board. Perhaps the little barn at the rear acted as both workshop and sleeping quarters! The Pytchley Row cottages are constructed of ironstone at the front facing Church Street, but at the back the thick walls are made of cheaper limestone. Except for No. 11 Church Street, which became a temporary post office around the turn of the century, all the entrances are at the rear of the houses and are reached by two passageways from Church Street through Tudor style arches. No. 11 has both a front door and a rear 5 extension that now blocks what was once an alleyway that ran from one end of Pytchley Row to the other. When Ellen, the daughter of William Mackworth Dolben, died in 1912 the estate was broken up and sold.