On our last visit to Lamport for a while, let's look at the church.All Hallow's (as the guidebook calls it - the apostrophe looks to be in the wrong place and Pevsner calls it All Saints) is dominated by Lamport Hall and was clearly heavily made over in the 18th century to serve as the estate church. There is a Georgian porch, a Venetian window at the East end and numerous family monuments. (One of these was retrieved from the lost church of St Denys at Faxton.)
But it has a friendly atmosphere and you can buy a few modest souvenirs of BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford) there. There was also a copy of a magazine article that claimed a bullet fired by the young Denys can still be found embedded in one of the East windows, but it eluded me.
The guidebook they sell is written by Sir Gyles Isham and billed as the fifth edition, abbreviated from a long work on the church he published in 1950.
It discusses lists the past rectors, including BB's father. The Revd W.M. Watkins-Pitchford, who held the living between 1903 and 1944), we are told, "was a keen musician and revived folk-dancing in the district. He was a friend of Sir Cecil Slarp (sic)."
But just as this Tory vision of England is beginning to appeal, you come across the fact that Robert Isham, who held the living, between 1845 and 1890, was chairman of the Brixworth Board of Guardians.
And we read all about Brixworth workhouse last June.
Other recent posts on Lamport
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