Blatherwycke

Blatherwycke is a small village in north Northamptonshire which has remained more or less the same size since Domesday. Once it had three manors, two churches, a school, and a great house. Now it has one church (Holy Trinity), closed for regular use and in the care of the Historic Churches Trust, while Blatherwycke Hall was demolished in 1948 and the school closed in 1952. It has inevitably become a commuter and retirement village. But farming is still the principal industry, and the Hall gardens are being restored, with a new ‘great house’ in prospect.

This book is a survey of its history from the earliest times to the mid-twentieth century. Particular attention has been paid to the families who lived here, not just the squires but also the ‘ordinary’ villagers – who they were, what they did, and how external events affected them. No previous history of the place has been written since that of county historian John Bridges in the eighteenth century, and relatively few records survive, so that piecing Blatherwycke’s past together has been something of a detective puzzle. It is hoped that the resulting picture will be a pleasure to the village’s present inhabitants and to a wider audience interested in the history of middle England.