Charles Dickens calls at The Admiral Nelson, Braunston

The Admiral Nelson at Braunston was kept for a time in the 19th century by George Adams Dickens, who was a cousin of Charles Dickens.

He was once visited unexpectedly there by the great novelist, who was travelling from London to Birmingham by canal.

Which may explain why, in The Old Curiosity Shop, Little Nell and her grandfather travel by canal for a short stretch of their flight into Shropshire:

A confused sound of voices, mingling with her dreams, awoke her. A man of very uncouth and rough appearance was standing over them, and two of his companions were looking on, from a long heavy boat which had come close to the bank while they were sleeping. The boat had neither oar nor sail, but was towed by a couple of horses, who, with the rope to which they were harnessed slack and dripping in the water, were resting on the path.

‘Holloa!’ said the man roughly. ‘What’s the matter here?’

‘We were only asleep, Sir,’ said Nell. ‘We have been walking all night.’

‘A pair of queer travellers to be walking all night,’ observed the man who had first accosted them. ‘One of you is a trifle too old for that sort of work, and the other a trifle too young. Where are you going?’

Nell faltered, and pointed at hazard towards the West, upon which the man inquired if she meant a certain town which he named. Nell, to avoid more questioning, said ‘Yes, that was the place.’

‘Where have you come from?’ was the next question; and this being an easier one to answer, Nell mentioned the name of the village in which their friend the schoolmaster dwelt, as being less likely to be known to the men or to provoke further inquiry.

‘I thought somebody had been robbing and ill-using you, might be,’ said the man. ‘That’s all. Good day.’

Returning his salute and feeling greatly relieved by his departure, Nell looked after him as he mounted one of the horses, and the boat went on. It had not gone very far, when it stopped again, and she saw the men beckoning to her.

‘Did you call to me?’ said Nell, running up to them.

‘You may go with us if you like,’ replied one of those in the boat. ‘We’re going to the same place.’

The child hesitated for a moment. Thinking, as she had thought with great trepidation more than once before, that the men whom she had seen with her grandfather might, perhaps, in their eagerness for the booty, follow them, and regaining their influence over him, set hers at nought; and that if they went with these men, all traces of them must surely be lost at that spot; determined to accept the offer. The boat came close to the bank again, and before she had had any more time for consideration, she and her grandfather were on board, and gliding smoothly down the canal.

The sun shone pleasantly on the bright water, which was sometimes shaded by trees, and sometimes open to a wide extent of country, intersected by running streams, and rich with wooded hills, cultivated land, and sheltered farms. Now and then, a village with its modest spire, thatched roofs, and gable-ends, would peep out from among the trees; and, more than once, a distant town, with great church towers looming through its smoke, and high factories or workshops rising above the mass of houses, would come in view, and, by the length of time it lingered in the distance, show them how slowly they travelled. Their way lay, for the most part, through the low grounds, and open plains; and except these distant places, and occasionally some men working in the fields, or lounging on the bridges under which they passed, to see them creep along, nothing encroached on their monotonous and secluded track.

The Old Curiosity Shop is one of the books I read at my mother's bedside in her last weeks.

It's probably best know today for containing the death of Little Nell and in particular for Oscar Wilde's remark that it would take a heart of stone not to laugh, though whether Wilde ever said it is open to debate.

But the novel is full of good things, such as the young buck Dick Swiveller, who owes money to so many people that he has to cross London by circuitous routes to avoid meeting them:

"I enter in this little book the names of the streets that I can't go down while the shops are open. This dinner today closes Long Acre. I bought a pair of boots in Great Queen Street last week, and made that no throughfare too. There's only one avenue to the Strand left often now, and I shall have to stop up that to-night with a pair of gloves. The roads are closing so fast in every direction, that in a month’s time, unless my aunt sends me a remittance, I shall have to go three or four miles out of town to get over the way."

The Admiral Nelson at Braunston was originally a farm building, but began to serve beer to the navvies building the canal. Later it became a boatmen's pub and today it caters for leisure boaters and people like me who just fancied a walk along the canal.