St. Giles’s, of nearly all styles from Norman to Perpendicular, and St. Peter’s, a fine late Norman work, built about 1160, complete the ancient churches of the town, with the exception of the mouldering old St. John’s Hospital, now used as a French Catholic church.
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The electric tramways, without which no town nowadays considers itself fully furnished, run far out to the north, through the extended boundaries of “Greater Northampton” to the village of Kingsthorpe: the prosperity of the town certified to every beholder in the long lines of newly completed streets butting on to the fields, and in the new boot and shoe factories, from which you do not indeed hear the noise of the lapstones—such things being obsolete in these days of machinery—but the purr and the humming of wheels.
Just outside the borough boundaries are even more factories, built there for the frugal purpose of avoiding the borough rates; and so, in one way and another, Kingsthorpe, which was not so long since a rural village, with quiet village green, has now been invaded by the restless spirit of the age. Even the village inn has been rebuilt by the inevitable Phipps & Co., and might now, to all appearance, save for the sign of it, be a Jacobean mansion, renovated.
A PUZZLING MONUMENT
The apparent prodigality of the highway authorities at Kingsthorpe, in the matter of milestones, is a standing wonder to all wayfarers, for there, side by side, are two cast-iron “stones,” each giving sixty-seven miles to London, with distances to other places. The explanation of this singularity is that here, in the old days, the Kingsthorpe and Welford Trust and the Northampton and Market Harborough Trust met. The “stone” erected by the first gives thirteen miles to Welford, twenty-nine to Leicester, and one to Northampton: the other indicates sixteen miles to Market Harborough and one to Northampton.
To the right of the road on to Brixworth rises among a group of trees on the skyline a tall obelisk that piques curiosity. Traversing muddy lanes to the base of it, the explorer afflicted with an inquiring mind discovers, to his disgust, that it bears no inscription, and local inquiries result only in vague rustic talk of its being a monument to the great Duke of Wellington. Research proves it to be to a Duke of Devonshire; but although the rustics are thus proved to be wrong, the attitude of mind that leads them astray is, it will be allowed, entirely in order. From father to son the story has been handed down that it is in memory of a Duke: what other Duke, therefore, should be possible than the great warrior who still bulks so large in their imagination? They rightly cannot conceive that a Duke who has merely succeeded to a dukedom, and just existed in that state, has a claim to such recognition. But the thing is not without its sardonic irony. Built to keep alive the memory of an obscure dead Duke, it is known in all the countryside as a monument to one whose fame will not die, and needs no such memorial.
This monument that has missed its mark stands at the parish of Boughton (locally pronounced “Bowghton”), famous, together with the adjoining Boughton Green, for the exploits of “Captain Slash.” There was once a church, dedicated to St. John Baptist, at Boughton Green, but the tower and spire fell in 1785, and the district becoming gradually depopulated, the body of the church has long been a roofless ruin. The green is nowadays, except for one annual occasion, merely a desolate common. In former days, however, it was bordered by the cottages of more or less virtuous and contented peasantry, who did so excellently well during the old three-days’ horse-fair held here in June that they lived in comfort all the rest of the year. To the old horse-fair resorted horsey blackguards from many a shire, who swindled the innocent and each other, and fought and got drunk and slept in the ditches, whereupon the simple rustics, recognising that it was harvest-time, promptly went over their pockets. But the good old days are done. The police established a lock-up on the ground for the drunken and for other offenders, and then by degrees the fair itself decayed, until to-day it is but a one-day ghost of itself. The brick hut used as a lock-up still stands on the green.
“CAPTAIN SLASH”
But we must not forget “Captain Slash,” whose real name was George Catherall, a desperado of the highwayman type, who did a little rick-burning and general rural outraging in the ’20’s of the nineteenth century, and brought his lawless career to a dramatic close in 1826. He attempted, with the gang he captained, to let loose the lions in the menagerie on the fairground, hoping in the confusion to make away with a rich haul; but this desperate proposal was defeated on the eve of accomplishment. Very ancient gaffers at Boughton still tell the tale of dread as they heard it in their youthful days: how “Haaron Gardner ‘it’n auver th’ yed with a nedge stake,” and so brought about his capture, and how “Slash” was sentenced to death, and on July 21st was duly executed at Northampton Gaol, and the land had peace. It was certainly very late in the day for outlaws, but not too late for superstition, for newspaper reports of the execution tell how “a number of females immediately ascended the drop and had their wens rubbed.”