NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PAST & PRESENT The start of the R aunds March, r905 The journal of the Northamptonshire Record Society 75p BOUND VOLUMES of NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PAST & PRESENT VOL. Ill - (I g6o- I g65) VOL. IV- (Ig66-197I) Price of each of the above­ Members £3.50 - Non-members £6.so VOL. V- ( I972-I977) Members £6.so - Non-members £7.00 All bound in red cloth, with Index, Post & packing extra. * (Vols. I & II are ten1porarily out of stock.) Archives, the journal of the British Records Association, No. 59, Spring I 978 "With a wide range and high printing quality Northamptonshire Past & Present remains outstanding value ...." Order from the Secretary, Northants Record Society, Delapre Abbey, Northampton NN4. g_A W, or main booksellers. NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PAST AND PRESENT 1981-82 CONTENTS PAGE Notes and News 239 The Peterborough Region in the Tenth Century: a Topographical Survey. Cyril Hart 243 The Medieval Hermitage of Grafton Regis. Geoffrey Parker 24 7 Some Seventeenth Century Northamptonshire Schools. D. K. Shearing 253 The Northamptonshire Commission of the Peace ( 1702) and Parliamentary Polls (1702, 1705). ]ames Alsop 257 Lady Knightley and the South Northamptonshire Election of 1885. Peter Cordon . 265 James Gribble and the Raunds Strike of 1905. Keith Brooker 275 Monks Park, Northampton: the Story of a Town Property. Bruce A. Bailey... 291 Book Reviews ... 296 All communications regarding articles in this and future issues should be addressed to R. L. Greenall, the Hon. Editor, Adult Education Department, University of Leicester Published by the Northamptonshire Record Society Vol. VI No.5 Printed in England by Alden & Billingham, 26 Rothersthorpe Crescent, Northampton Nene College Northampton * Combined Honours Degrees BA BSc BEd of Leicester University. * Higher Diplomas in Business Studies and Engineering. * Over 200 full-time, part-time and day release courses related to local industry and commerce. * Higher Diplomas in Leather Technology at the only centre for advanced leather technology in the English speaking world. * Blackwood Hodge Management Centre-the £1 ~ million residential centre opening this autumn. Further details from: The Academic Registrar, Nene College, Moulton Park, Northamptonshire NN2 7AL. Telephot?e: (0604} 715000. The Home of Scott Bader Wollaston Hall is the old setting of one of Northamptonshire's most lively young industries. Polyester resins, polymer emul­ sions and PVC plasticisers are made in these beautiful grounds. A common-ownership company welding past and present in the service of the future. SCOTT BADER Wollaston Wellingborough Northamptonshire NN9 7RL THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE RECORD SOCIETY (FOUNDED IN 1920) DELAPRE ABBEY, NORTHAMPTON President: Sir Hereward Wake, Bart., M.C., D.L. NOTES AND NEWS The past year has seen changes in the ranks of commitment to the Society, to its members those active in running this Society. The first and its work of publication. We wish her a was occasioned by the death of Mr. C. V. happy retirement, and it is nice to see her at Davidge, Chairman of the Council since Delapre Abbey still, working away in the Ig67. A brisk and cheerful leader, he gave Record Office. An open letter from her to great service to the Sociery and will be missed. members who contributed towards her pres­ An obituary is printed on another page, with ent can be found on another page. those of the late Mrs. Tynan and Canon The lecture, given after AGM business was Dunn, both of whom also served on the completed, was by Mr. Charles Phythian­ Council for many years. The Chairman's Adams, of the Department of English Local passing and the almost simultaneous resigna­ History at the University of Leicester. It was tion of the recently appointed secretary, Mr. a very learned and lucid paper, drawing on Wright, left something of a vacuum which disciplines outside those usually utilised by was filled by the united efforts of the Presi­ historians, notably that of social anthropol­ dent, Mrs. Tippleston, Mr. Farmer the Hon. ogy, to throw light on the web of old popular Treasurer, and by Miss Sladden stepping into religious beliefs still current in the country­ the breach once more to help out. To date, side in the later Igth century. Oddly enough, the chairmanship of the Council has been left I drove home thinking more about Thomas unfilled, the President agreeing to serve in Hardy than Levi-Strauss on such things as that capacity pro tem, and Mrs. Tippleston "wise women". Anyone wishing to read a has taken over as Secretary, with aid and version of Mr. Phythian-Adams' lecture can assistance from Mr. Hatley. find one in the recently published The Victorian Countryside, edited by G. A. Mingay, A reasonably well-attended Annual Gen­ and published by Routledge and Kegan Paul. eral Meeting for I g8 I was held once again in the hall of the Anglia Building Society at I g8 I has been an annus mirabilis for the Moulton Park, Northampton, and we are Spencers of Althorp. Heaven forbid that I very grateful to the Anglia for allowing us its should add anything to the broad acres of use. Before the business of the meeting a verbiage about the family called forth by the cheque was presented to Dorothy Sladden to Royal Wedding except to say that all will mark the Society's thanks and good wishes wish the Prince and Princess health and for her ten years' service as Secretary. Many happiness, and to hope that some of the compliments have been paid her before and publicity might help to launch our next since, but I should like to add mine. As a new publication, Vol. I of Dr. Peter Cordon's and inexperienced editor, faced with the task edition of The Papers of the sth Earl Spencer. of finding ways of reducing costs and keep­ The "Red Earl" was one of the great Whig ing up the standard of this journal, I found magnates of the Victorian era, who served as her extremely helpful, unfussy and business­ Viceroy of Ireland in the tense time after the like. No one who has worked with Miss Phoenix Park murders, and who come close to Sladden can have failed to appreciate her succeeding Gladstone as leader of the Liberal 239 240 NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PAST AND PRESENT Party. Although primarily about "high setting splendid. politics", Vol. 1 has much oflocal Northamp­ tonshire interest in it, the Earl being a notable local figure politically as well as a Important and powerful though the owners patron of the chase and local cricket. All of the soil were and are in English life, and being well, members should have received the dearly though Englishmen are supposed to book by the time this reaches them. love a lord, history is about more than squires and country houses. The problem is that representative voices of other sections of 1981 has also seen important develop­ society are less clearly heard, and always ments in the preservation of two of the least audible is the voice of the poor. One county's country houses- Canons Ashby and gets a chance to hear it in the EMMA Lamport. Though the Drydens have not lived Theatre Company's production of The Poach­ at Canons Ashby all the year round since as er, a performance of which I recently caught long ago as 1937, the National Trust and the in Leicester. A one-man show, it is based on Historic Buildings Council have long been the journal of James Hawker, a Victorian concerned about its future. When the three poacher from Northamptonshire. Born and Dryden brothers, who live in Zimbabwe, brought up in Daventry, and knowing like advertised for a new tenant in the summer of the back of his hand all the places between 1980 the problems of the house, desperately Badby and Geddington where game could be in need of extensive repairs, seemed over­ taken, Hawker's memoirs are wonderfully whelming. Since tlien much has happened, vivid. They are however, much more than the most important steps being the Drydens' just the reminiscences of an "old country decision to offer the house and church to the character". They are that genuine rarity, the Trust as a gift, and the 'newly-established memoirs of a "rough", and one moreover National Heritage Memorial Fund's decision with a viewpoint. Throughout, Hawker to step in and provide the greater part of the maintains that he poaches to get back at what money needed for an endowment. Although he calls "the Class", who for so long denied he the National Trust still needs to raise over and his kind their political rights, and he £3oo,ooo to go ahead with the full scheme for proudly proclaims his hero-worship of Brad­ restoration and preservation, it now seems laugh. certain that this ancient manor house will be From this, the writers, Andrew Manley and saved. LloydJohnson, who acts the part ofHawker, When the late Sir Gyles Isham inherited have fashioned a fine documentary play. The his ancestral home at Lamport in World War time-scale is one night's poaching, and the II he found it in a poor state of preservation, pace is varied nicely by scenes in which the and devoted much of the last thirty years of techniques of poaching, close-calls with his life to restoring it. When he died in 1976 police and 'keepers, and stories of the thrill of he left it to a Trust renovated virtually com­ knocking over game are interposed with pletely, expressing the wish that it should not episodes from his life as a shoemaker, only be opened to the public on a regular Militiaman, early cycling-enthusiast and basis, but that creative ways of using the village politician.