Merry Tom Crossing to Spratton: The Northampton & Lamport Railway's proposed northern extension

On 30 March the Northampton & Lamport Railway will open its half-mile southern extension from Pitsford and Brampton to a new station at Boughton.

After that, eyes will turn northwards to the line's proposed mile-and-a-half extension from Merry Tom Crossing to Spratton.

This enthusiastic video shows us the route, starting from Spratton and walking south towards Merry Tom Crossing, which is currently the northern end of the line.

A portrait of Northampton in 1963

Click on the image of Northampton greyhound stadium above to view this film on the British Film Institute site.

There the blurb runs:

This exhaustively detailed account of Northampton in the early 1960s may lack cinematic flair but the passage of time has left us with a snapshot of a town on the up and keen to expand. This film was made for an unnamed company that was keen to relocate to Northampton - or as they tell us, to the town which has shopping facilities that compare with any London suburb and houses to rent for only 30 shillings a week. If you're a local you might even spot your own home.

The greyhound stadium in Cotton End lasted only another year and the outdoor pool by the Nene in Midsummer Meadow closed in 1983.

Little Bowden Crossing signal box, Market Harborough

This box stood on the line from Market Harborough to Northampton and could be found in the former at the junction of Scotland Road and Northampton Road.

It closed with the line in 1981 - I took this photo a year or so before that - but had an afterlife. Today you can find it on the Northampton & Lamport Railway under the name Pitsford and Brampton.

Meanwhile, there is no news on whether Little Bowden Junction box on the Midland main line survived the closure of Coventry's Electric Railway Museum. I fear it did not.

Kingsthorpe: Where Northampton has almost won

Pitsford surprised me. Boughton astounded me. But by the time you get to Kingsthorpe the encroachment of Northampton is almost complete.

The old village is still there amongst it all. So you get a road with an ironstone farmhouse on one side and Victorian terraces on the other. A village green bordered by mid-20th-century bungalows. Rural enclaves with 21st-century infill at the end of them.

And, says Wikipedia, it is something of a nursery for actors. Joan Hickson, Judy Carne and Lesley Joseph all lived here as girls.

I wonder if St Mary Mead is now like this?

The drought of 1976

Embed from Getty Images

When I visited Pitsford Water last summer it looked like the picture below. But the picture above shows how it looked in the summer of 1976.

A BBC News page remembers the drought of 1976. My own strongest memory of that summer is of a coach trip to York.

The fields we passed were burnt up and there was fodder put out for the animals. And there were posters all across South Yorkshire trying to recruit men to the coal mining industry. (It was a long time ago.)

And on Sunday we shall see that at least one pop song was inspired by the drought.

A round barrow at Pitsford

The Victoria County History entry for Pitsford is intriguing:

On different sides of the road leading out of the Market Harborough road into the village are two small earth-works, known as Layman's Hill and Barrow Dyke. In Morton's time, the former was about 10 yards wide and of an oblong shape, but it has since been planted. Barrow Dyke is described by Morton as a square figure, with 'two of the sides still remaining; one of them above 80 yards in length', but by 1820 nearly all trace of the original form had been destroyed by repeated ploughing.

Barrow Dyke has now disappeared completely - its site must be somewhere under new housing or a sports club.

But Layman's Hill - or Longman's Hill as the sign calls it - is still to be seen and is now in the care of the parish council.

Pitsford Water

Pitsford Water is an artificial reservoir constructed in 1956 to supply water to Northampton.

It occupies the valley between Pitsford and Brixworth, and the quickest route between the two villages takes you over the dam.

Brixworth Country Park is at the far end - you can even get a mug of tea there.

The monument to Charles Cavendish at Brixworth

This monument stands beside the main road a little to the south of Brixworth.

It looks like a stray Eleanor Cross, but turns out to be a monument to Charles Cavendish, Third Baron Chesham.

As the Brixworth History Society tells its story:

It was hunting that was his passion. From 1883 until 1893 he was Master of the Bicester Hounds. Although his county seat was Latimer House in Buckinghamshire he rode all over the country, especially the Grafton and Warwickshire Hunts, but particularly enjoyed the Pytchley. ... 

On the fateful day he was riding with the Pytchley at Welton near Daventry. His horse jumped a fence but did not clear the ditch on the other side. Lord Chesham was thrown and suffered a broken neck. 

He was buried on 14th November 1907 at Latimers in Chesham, Buckinghamshire. 

Such was his popularity that when Lord Annaly opened a fund to erect a memorial, over 350 contributed, including heads of state, those who served with him and those from other walks of life who had admired him. 

This is why the memorial was erected in Brixworth in Pytchley Hunt country. It was commissioned from Pullen and Sons of Northampton and was erected in October 1908, the stone trough replacing an earlier wooden one.

The page also gives the inscription at the base of the monument, which it says is "difficult to read today due to damage caused a few years ago by saboteurs":

Erected by friends in the Pytchley Country

to the memory of Charles William, third Baron Chesham, K.C.B.,

who met his death hile hunting with the Pytchley hounds,

Novr. 9th 1907, aged 56 years.

A good man; a gallant soldier; a true sportsman.

Chesham was a Conservative peer and the last holder of the government office Master of the Buckhounds.

Besides this monument at Brixworth, there is a statue of him in Market Square, Ayelesbury.

Jethro Tull: Jack In The Green

After yesterday's excursion to Pitsford I have to choose the song that introduced me to the Jack in the Green.

It comes from Jethro Tull's 1977 album Songs from the Wood and is here performed live in Germany in 1982.

In the version on the album, Ian Anderson plays all the instruments. As I once blogged, there was a time when I thought that Songs from the Wood was just about the best LP ever,

Searching for the Jack in the Green in Pitsford

Gothick Northamptonshire by Jack Gould says of Pitsford:

Within living memory, on May Day there were chosen not only a May Queen and King but a mysterious figure called 'Jack in the Green'. 

A boy wore a cane construction about 4 feet ... high with leather straps inside to fit over his shoulders. This was made by a blind man in the village and covered by branches of laurel, barberry and other evergreens. It was possibly a reminder of the Elizabethan 'man in the oak'.

Gould goes on to say that the Jack in the Green should not be confused with the Green Men you find in churches, but other sources do connect them.

Anyway, I looked for the Jack in the Green in Pitsford yesterday, but I'm not sure I found him.