Beavers return to Northamptonshire after 400-year absence

Rushden Lakes shopping centre is welcoming the first beavers to be seen in Northamptonshire for four centuries. 

Boudicca, Alan and their six kits - I don't know if there is a class system among beavers, but I can't shake off the suspicion that Boudicca married beneath herself - will be living in a 42-acre fenced enclosure there.

But if it's true that, following escapes from such enclosures, there are now hundreds of beavers living wild in Kent, it won't be long until Boudicca and Alan, or their friends and relations, turn up on the River Jordan here.

Anyway, Katie King-Hurst, education and communities manager for the Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust, told the BBC:

"They're incredible. "They ... create other habitats that the other animals thrive in. There's been a few beaver releases around England, but these beavers share their fences with a shopping centre with millions of visitors a year, so it really is an opportunity to see an inspirational species right on people's doorsteps."

A blue plaque at the Rushden home of H.E. Bates

I didn't have much time to explore Rushden - a Northamptonshire village that mushroomed into a major centre of the boot and shoe trade in the late nineteenth century - so I made straight for an attraction I already knew about.

This plaque is on the Rushden home of the novelist and short-story writer H.E. Bates. He was born in the town and educated at Kettering Grammar School.

Rushden appears in several of his works - notably the novel Love for Lydia - as Evensford, while his Uncle Silas stories are set in the Northamptonshire countryside.

But Bates's best known works, thanks to television adaptions, are the Pop Larkin books, and they are set in rural Kent.

Nene Park, where Rushden & Diamonds played

Rushden & Diamonds was formed in 1992 by a merger between two non-league team from Northamptonshire, Rushden Town and Irthlingborough Diamonds.

The merger was promoted by Max Griggs, owner of the Doc Marten shoe brand, who funded the new club.

The new club was remarkably successful. It rose through the non-league divisions and were promoted to Division 3 of the Football League (as its lowest division was then called) in 2001. Two years later they won it.

After that they began to struggle, particularly after Griggs handed the club to its supporters. They were soon out of the Football League and were wound up in 2011.

I was at the site of Rushden & Diamonds' ground, Nene Park, today.

Once they brought Leeds United and Sheffield United here in the third round of the FA Cup and staged under 21 and non-league internationals.

Even after Rushden & Diamonds folded, Kettering Town (a club with its own problems) played here for a while, and there was even talk of Coventry City being based here.

But Nene Park was demolished earlier this year. A Northamptonshire Telegraph report said:

"The building is in a dangerous condition and is unsafe. 

"The stadium represents a major fire risk. 

"The site is derelict and subject to wanton damage."

It is not known what will become of the site - nothing has happened at Leicester City's old Filbert Street ground - but at least that was nice use of "wanton".

And for the time being the blackberries growing there are very good.

Frank Tyson in his pomp

Frank Tyson, the former England fast bowler, has died in a Queensland hospital at the age of 85.

It is odd that the two English bowlers most feared for their sheer speed, Tyson and Harold Larwood, chose to settle in Australia when they retired from cricket.

Anand Vasu interviewed Tyson last year:

Tyson would only play 17 Tests, picking up 76 wickets at an average of 18.56. No bowler since he played has managed more than 20 wickets at a better average. 

To measure Tyson in cold numbers, though, is to do him a disgrace, for here was a man of words. One of only three or four university graduates in county cricket at the time, Tyson studied English Literature at Hatfield College in the University of Durham. When he went on tour, he took with him the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, Virginia Woolf and Bernard Shaw. 

Consider the words JM Kilburn, respected sports writer of the Yorkshire Post, used to describe Tyson: “His best pace was nothing short of startling to batsmen and spectators alike. He represented an elemental force obscuring the details of his technique and the highest tribute he received was the gasp of incredulity frequently emitted by the crowd as the ball passed from his hand to the distant wicketkeeper.”

The video above shows Tyson bowling for Northamptonshire against Kent at Rushden in 1957.

It provides a pleasing portrait of country cricket at an outground in that era. Marquees; adults on deckchairs; children sitting cross-legged on the grass.