Church Street, with Pytchley Row on the right-hand side projecting beyond the smaller houses of Calico Yard c.1903.

Newsletter

May 2021

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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.

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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:

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“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. Pytchley Row was bought by Thomas Holley a local shoe manufacturer, an investment that included not only cottages but tenant workers in the shoe trade. From then on, the cottages were sold as a complete lot to various property companies and in 1937 were put up for auction with an annual rental income of £106 – 12s from tenants, around 5s 2d per week per house. The houses continued to change hands to property investors and developers until the 1980s when single houses began to be sold to private owners.

And so, it is that I now come to own 13 Church Street (formerly 5 Pytchley Row). The house has been neglected over the years with ill-fitting and rotting windows and door, broken panes in the delightful, mullioned windows at the front and falling fences. I am slowly but painstakingly restoring the cottage to what I hope will be its former dignity under the guidance of the local conservation officer. It has many quirks, the back of the house is wider than the front, the stairs are uneven and there is a rather quaint little balustrade on the landing. The entrance door is short but exceptionally wide and it is almost impossible to find a straightforward right angle. The builders seem to have regarded the architect’s drawings as advice rather than instructions!

13 Church Street, Finedon.

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My first act was to put in loft insulation ready for the winter months and I have had the broken panes repaired. At the rear, the windows have already been replaced in a style (with Georgian bars) like the originals and the new door will be following shortly. By the time I have finished I will have used all the money that I made on my old house in Milton Keynes, but I think it is worth it to live in a house with a bit of character. Thank you William Mackworth Dolben and Edmund Francis Law.

An Abolitionist at Christ Church: Sir William Dolben

Dr Nigel Aston

This article was published in the September 2020 edition of “e-Matters”, the online monthly newsletter of Christ Church College, Oxford. I must thank society member Rachel Terry for bringing it to my attention and to Dr Aston for giving permission to reprint his paper.

Nigel Aston recently retired from twenty years teaching in the School of History, Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester to take up a Residential Research Fellowship for 2019-20 at Durham University, that was curtailed by the outbreak of Covid-19.

His book “Enlightened Oxford? The University and the cultural and political life of eighteenth-century Britain and beyond” is to be published by the OUP in 2021. Here, in a fitting introduction to a number of articles which were published in e-Matters during October 2020, designated Black History Month, Nigel writes in honour of Sir William Dolben:

Sir William Dolben (1727-1814), the sponsor of the legislation to which he gave his name: Dolben’s Act, 1788, is a figure little known to House men and women. But Dolben undoubtedly deserves better.

Eighteenth-Century Oxford is still commonly misrepresented as sunk in port and prejudice, a deeply regressive institution out of tune with the Age of Enlightenment, and ready to embrace whatever reactionary cause was to hand. Dolben was one of the many Oxonians who gives the lie to the appealing caricature. He came up to Christ Church from Westminster in 1744 from both a clerical and landed background. Later, as one of the University’s two MPs continuously between 1780 and 1806, Dolben strenuously served Oxford’s interests and was one of the most respected members of the House of Commons in his day. But he also put his abundant energies into causes other than those that concerned just the University and the . Black lives certainly mattered for Sir

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William Dolben, so much so that even as Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and company began to organise and mobilise public opinion against the Slave Trade, Dolben was independently pushing legislation through Parliament to end the right of slave owners and captains to cram as many slaves into a ship’s hold as they possibly could. He wanted action, he wanted government backing, and he wanted abolition of the trade. Before his death in 1814 he got all three.

Dolben was an unlikely reformer. He was a baronet, the squire of Finedon in Northamptonshire, the grandson of an , the son of a canon of Durham, a graduate of Christ Church, Oxford. Had there been a Bullingdon Club at Oxford in the 1740s he might have been invited to join (and he would probably have refused). He matched his high Anglicanism with high Toryism and was as opposed to giving in to the rebellious American colonists as he was to the French Revolution. But he was also proud of his independence in Parliament and his vote could never be taken for granted by ministers. If there was going to be an attack on the vested interests of the slave trade then someone Sir William Dolben like Dolben was just the man you might Christ Church College, Oxford choose to lead it: an establishment figure Portrait by Mather Brown with the right sort of contacts in Church (1761 -1831) and State, unbribable and beyond intimidation.

It was above all Dolben’s Christian humanitarianism that drove him. He was horrified after seeing for himself what conditions were like for the human cargo below decks aboard some slave transport ships anchored in the Thames. Dolben acted. In spring 1788 he introduced a bill that stipulated minimal conditions of comfort for carrying them and steered it on to the statute books as the Slave Trade Regulation Act – Dolben’s Act - principally through his own determination and a lot of help from his friends, led by Prime Minister Pitt the Younger. It was a very modest measure. It proposed that the number of slaves permissible on any vessel must be in proportion to its tonnage. And it would be only for a trial period of a year, to be reviewed and renewed in Parliament. Additionally, all British slave ships were to have a doctor on board who was required to keep records of

8 sickness and death on the voyage. Modest it may have been, but it attracted a storm of criticism from the slavery lobby plus their allies in government and Parliament. Abolitionists like Dolben knew full well what they were up against. But he also knew a start had to be made and he doggedly persisted. Wrecking amendments were successfully moved in the Lords, Cabinet ministers counselled caution and postponement, and Pitt was forced to step in. He went straight to White’s club to get his recalcitrant supporters back into line and back into Parliament and told opponents that if they persisted and Dolben’s proposal failed he and they could not continue members of the same government. It did the trick. Dolben’s bill, though much amended, passed into law in July 1788.

It was a start, an encouraging start for the abolitionists. If the resistance to be expected from the slavery lobby had been underlined, so had the support of a vigorous young Prime Minister. As for Dolben himself, every year he acted to prevent his legislation from expiring, and he was also regularly the chairman at the committee stage of successive slave trade abolition bills. Dolben was a realist. He knew that the slave trade would not be abolished in one fell swoop, but what he had enacted had a huge symbolic importance that contemporaries recognised, and for which he received much acclaim. Contemporaries included former slaves such as Ottobah Cugoano, the African author of Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of Slavery, who predicted that in time Dolben’s ‘noble name shall be revered from shore to shore’. Instead, Sir William Dolben has been largely forgotten. Christ Church should be proud of him, and there is no better time in which to give this modest man the recognition that he shunned in his own lifetime.

Christ Church College, Oxford. Image: freepix.com

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May Day Celebrations From the collection of the late Derek Richardson

May Day celebrations in the gardens of Obelisk House (now part of Rockleigh Close). In the background can be seen Cromwell Terrace (demolished in the 1960s), at the junction of Rock Road and Thrapston Road.

May Day celebrations, 1949. Finedon Church Sunday School Entertainment Society. Pat Godfrey is the May Queen.

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abethNicholls.

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Eileen York. Front Row (right): ?, ?,(right): ?, Rosemary & Eliz York. Row Front Eileen

May Queen & Entourage, Finedon Vicarage MayEntourage, Finedon Queen &

Valerie Valerie Blackwell, Susan Hawkins, Elanor Bailey, ?. Front Row (left): Marion Liggins, ?,

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Back Lynn Hopkins, Underwo Christine

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Memories of Finedon in the 1920s and 1930s relating to the Finedon Urban District Council

Carolyn Smith

In 2016 the Finedon Local History Society held an exhibition following its research into the Finedon Urban District Council, from its formation in 1896 to its closure in 1935. As part of that exhibition, I interviewed Phil Gobbey, then aged 93, at his home in Rushden for some of his early recollections of Finedon in the 1920s and 1930s.

Housing

My family was one of those who moved from an old house to a brand-new council house. Our old home was in Regent Street, at the entrance to Albion Yard, our back door went into the yard, and our front door led on to Regent Street. Our home had one room and a large pantry downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. My parents, three brothers and three sisters lived there.

Albion Yard, 1927. The Gobbey home lies to the rear and on the left of the arch leading into Regent Street. Image donated by the late John Bailey Our toilet was up the yard; we did not have a flush toilet and had to use a bucket of water when the toilet had been used. A full bucket of water always stood by the toilet door. Next to the toilet was the wood and coal barn that also contained a gas-fired copper to heat the water for baths and for

12 washing clothes etc. There was also a cold water tap outside the back door to supply all our water needs, although we could also use the pump in the yard if necessary. On bath night the water was heated in the copper then carried in buckets into the house to the hip bath that was put in the large pantry to give a little privacy to the bathers. My three brothers used one lot of water and then a new lot was used for the girls. Those who worked were supposed to take it in turns so that each had a week when they had the water first but there were always arguments over whose turn it was to go first. As I was the youngest, I was lucky as I had my bath in front of the fire in the living room. When the girls were bathing, I had to stand guard at the pantry door to make sure no one when in.

We only had the one room downstairs. This room contained a large scrub top table where mother did her baking and we also sat to eat our meals. The workers in the family did not have any breakfast, just a drink before work and a pack up to see them through to mid-day when the main meal of the day was served. In this room was a fireplace that had a coal fire in the middle, an oven to one side and a water tank on the other. For the part of the year when we needed a fire to heat the room the oven was hot enough to cook our meals and the water tank provided the water for drinks etc. In the summer, when the fireplace was not in use, we had a gas cooker to cook meals. The only day of the week when they had breakfast was on a Sunday, it was usually a rabbit stew with crusty bread. At midday we would then have a roast dinner that had been taken to the bake house to be cooked; the baker charged us two old pence for this.

Upstairs we had two bedrooms. One room was quite large; in this room was my parent’s double bed and wardrobe. This room had been divided into two by a silk screen divider and my sisters slept in a double bed on the other side of this screen from my parents. My three brothers slept in the other bedroom. When the girls got older, they slept out at Mossy and Mrs Groom’s. Mrs Groom charged six old pence a week for bed and bed linen, but no breakfast provided. Our house was lit by gas light.

When I was 13 years old, we moved to a brand-new house in Wentworth Road, by that time there was only my mother, my brother and myself at home. Although we still had an outside toilet this one had a flush and was positioned next to the back door of the house.

Downstairs we had a front hall, living room, kitchen and bathroom. The bathroom was off the kitchen and contained the bath and the gas fired copper for heating any hot water that we required. So, we no longer had to go outside to get any hot water that we needed. Also off the kitchen was the coal hole, so although we could get coal for the fire without going

13 outside it also meant that when the coal was delivered the coalman had to carry the sacks of coal through the kitchen to the coal hole. The door to the walk-in pantry was opposite the bathroom door in the kitchen, we also had a gas cooker in the kitchen that was supplied free of charge.

Moving on through the kitchen into the living room there was a fireplace with a range oven that mother would use to cook on when there was a fire in the grate. This would save on gas as then we did not need to use the cooker. A door from this room led to the hall and a staircase that led to three bedrooms. The house was lit by electricity.

Gas Street Lighting

The Council was responsible for lighting the streets. There were not that many streetlights. The ones I remember were outside the Coop drapery Church Street, [now Margaret Rose Funeral Directors], and outside the Girls School Church Street. The next one was on an island in the middle of the road at the junction of Regent Street and Bell Hill. Others were in Dolben Square and at the top of Laws Lane, with a couple along Wellingborough Road.

The gas lamp at the junction of Regent Street and Bell Hill. c.1904 Image donated by the late John Bailey Mr Cheney and his wife lived in rooms at the Town Hall that were accessed from a door that faced up Orchard Road. He was responsible for going round twice every evening to light and extinguish the lights. He had a bike, a long pole with a taper at the end and a stave with a hook on the end. He would first put the hook through the chain on the lamp and pull the chain to let the gas con through. He then lit the gas mantle with the taper. He would

14 then go round at the end of the evening to extinguish the lights. I believe each lamp had three gas mantles.

Mr Cheney’s job became redundant when Mr Law was employed by the Council to fit clocks to the lamps. The clocks were set to a start and stop time, so that the gas supply would automatically switch on and the pilot light would then light the mantles. When the stop time was reached the gas supply would be cut and the lights would be extinguished. Mr Cheney was a man who was as wide as he was tall and always had a cherry red face.

Sewage Farm

This was situated at the bottom of Harrowden Lane, on the right-hand side just above the Ise Brook. The council owed the land here, the sewage farm was situated on the lower half of the land, and the other half was higher up the lane, and was rented out to a Mr Tompkins, who had a small holding where he grew a wide variety of seasonal vegetables that he sold to several greengrocers in Finedon. He was ideally situated for a ready supply of manure for his crops.

The Council only had one employee at the sewage farm, this was a man called Charles Drage, known to everyone as Nazzle or Naz. When the effluent arrived at the farm the liquid was drained off into the Ise Brook, and the solids were spread across an area of land to dry. Once this piece of land had dried Naz would then plant tomato seeds that would quickly flourish into particularly good healthy plants. Anyone from Finedon could then go and get plants from him. Naz was a nice chap and I believe he did not charge for these plants.

Location of the FUDC Sewage Farm on Harrowden Lane. O.S. Map, 1929. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

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In Audrey Ellis’s book “Memories of Finedon” Naz Drage’s grand daughter, Eileen Garley, recalls that her grandfather had a very traumatic First World War and spent three years in hospital. As he was not then able to cope with confined spaces, he was not able to work in a factory, so working in the open air on his own suited him best. She also recalled that she would spend his lunch times in a wooden hut on the site, presumably this was provided to store his tools. Eileen also remembered that her grandfather would collect any marbles or tennis balls that had gone down the drains, he would scrub and clean them up and then give them to any village children who did not have much.

Recreation Ground

Although the recreation ground in Wellingborough Road was already open it was not used for the Hospital Fete and Parade during this time. The parade always ended up in Mr Knight’s field just off Orchard Road; the entrance to this field was just by the eastern entrance to St Mary’s Avenue. The parade would finish at about 4 pm, everyone would then go home for tea to return at 6 pm for the evening’s entertainment. This consisted of running races and boxing matches. Mr Remmington and Jack Martin (landlord of the Bell) would judge the bugle band display. This was always followed by the fire brigade competition where several local brigades would compete to get the fastest possible time. I think there was a cup to be won but I do not recall Finedon ever winning this cup.

Finedon Hall Walled Garden

Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth is a member of the FLHS and the Northamptonshire Gardens Trust (NGT). In her capacity as a member of the NGT, Elizabeth was asked to lead a research team recording as many of the county’s walled kitchen gardens as possible. During the last 6 years of investigation, many other aspects of garden history have come to light, one of them being bowling greens. With a keen interest in Finedon, Elizabeth chose to make the walled kitchen garden at Finedon Hall her first site and during that research came across the map referred to below on which were shown not only the bowling greens, but other interesting features around Finedon Hall.

As well as showing a wealth of information about the walled kitchen garden, the hand-drawn, coloured map, thought to be pre-enclosure, shows that Finedon Hall had not one, but two bowling greens (indicated by the green

16 arrow) just to the west of the Hall itself. These bowling greens are another indication of the high status enjoyed by the family.

Bowling greens were fashionable from Tudor period onwards and, where possible, were created on level ground to save the expense of moving large quantities of earth to create a suitable area; partly which partly explains their positioning at Finedon Hall. Bowling was of course a domestic pleasure and the bowling green would naturally have been placed as close to the house as possible for the convenience and entertainment for both residents and guests. The fact that two bowling greens are shown would appear to be a very unusual feature.

Pre-enclosure map of Finedon Hall, date and provenance unknown. Kindly donated by Michael Sumner of Harrowden Books, High Street, Finedon. Julia Dolben, (1783- 1866) was the daughter of Sir John English Dolben (4th Baronet). She was an accomplished artist and chose the bowling green as one of her subjects in her 1815 book of miscellaneous sketches drawn from scenes around the country.

The temple was described as “in the shrubbery” and dedicated to Joseph Wilcocks 1792. Wilcocks lived in Barton Seagrave and was a great friend

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of Sir John English Dolben. Born in January 1724 at Westminster, he was an author and philanthropist. Both Wilcocks and Dolben had attended and were elected to Christ Church College, Oxford, thus explaining their deep friendship which continued during their membership of the Society of Antiquaries. Wilcocks died in December 1791 at Slough in Buckinghamshire [in Berkshire since 1974].

The urn on the bowling green was “Sacred to the Memory of Edward Wortley Montague”, an English author and Joseph Wilcocks F.S.A. traveller, who died 1776. He was the son of the diplomat and Member of Parliament Edward Wortley Montagu and the writer and traveller Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the famous authoress. According to the late John Bailey, the urn was erected by John English Dolben in 1787.

“Temple in the Shrubbery” from the sketch book of Julia Dolben.

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Julia Dolben’s sketch book is held at the Northamptonshire Record Office, reference NRO D(F)8 X1397.

Note: Mike Sumner donated the copy of pre-enclosure map to the society, after finding it in a box of unrelated books he bought at auction. A very fortuitous find!

Programme of Speakers Mick Britton

If we can commence with the July speaker and continue with the rest of the 2021 programme of speakers there will be a change to the listing printed on the membership cards: The revised schedule is as follows.

26th July. Memories on stone – historic graffiti in the Garden Lodge at Lyveden. Susan Lees.

23rd August. Irthlingborough Mines. Alan Pack.

27th September. Northamptonshire Film Archive. Pete Austin.

25th October. and me, recollections of Finedon in the 1950s. Tom Watts.

22nd November. AGM and The History of Wellingborough and Finedon Quakers. Karon Hawes.

All the talks will be in the Mission Room, commencing at 7.30pm and will be subject to possible cancellation. Please check our website, Facebook or contact me for regular updates.

Society Photographs

The names of those on the photographs in this edition are taken from our picture database. Some entries have an incomplete set of names and there may be some where the names have been given in good faith. If you can identify any person(s) shown as ‘?’, or believe that our database record may be incorrect, then we would be pleased to hear from you.

I can be contacted by email at [email protected] or on 07988 065010.

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More from the collection of the late Derek Richardson

1950s Church Fete. The only names we have are Margaret Manning and Judy Sherwood, two girls at the back on the left-hand side.

Star Girls Club, London Weekend 1956. l to r. Janet Richardson, Pat Godfrey, Sylvia Mellows, ?, ?, Mavis White, Ann Ford, Rose Richardson, Hazel Hobbs, ?, Eileen York, Roberta Toseland.

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