A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



Middle Ages,' and Morton describes the blue 

 rag here quarried for paving, whetstones, and 

 tombstones.- 



Although nearly every quarry shows some 

 peculiarity in colouring or texture, it may be 

 said generally that in the middle and south of 

 the county the stone is warmer in tint, tending 

 more to yellow and red, while the famous 

 northern stone exhibits tones colder and greyer ; 

 and it is worth notice that in the Kettering and 

 Wellingborough district ironstone ' was from 

 an early period used for ornamental masonry, 

 while in the neighbourhood of Northampton the 

 walling of many of the churches is built almost 

 entirely of this material. 



Cosgrove and Stratford possessed important 

 quarries in the south during the Middle Ages, 

 and in accounts of the repairs at Silverston, the 

 royal hunting seat near Whittlewood Forest, we 

 find in 4 Edward I a charge of 2s. 6d. for stone 

 bought at Stratford, whilst its carriage cost a 

 shilling.^ Helmdon parish was long famous for 

 quarries of fine oolitic freestone suitable for 

 carved work, and the Northampton Cross is of 

 this material.* The remains of the old manor 

 house of the Washingtons at Sulgrave show that 

 it was built of local limestone and roofed with 

 stone-slates, which were probably supplied from 

 Helmdon. 



Great quantities of stone were raised round 

 Northampton for building purposes, and some- 

 times there were complaints of encroachments 

 on the king's highway.^ The repair of the 

 town walls necessitated constant expense for the 

 quarrying and carriage of stone. ^ Most of the 

 manors of the county possessed stone or slate 

 quarries within easy distance, and Leland noticed' 

 that ' Welingborow is a good quick Market 

 Toune buildid of stone as almost al the Tounes 

 be of Northamptonshire.' In the case of 



Northampton itself, timber began to be more 

 used in the Tudor period, and Ray ^ in 1658 

 remarked that ' the houses were built of timber 

 notwithstanding the plenty of stone dug in that 

 country,' but after the disastrous fire of 1675 the 

 tide turned, and Defoe describes'" Northampton 

 'finely rebuilt with brick and stone.' 



Occasionally the sovereign gave licence to 

 favoured persons to dig for stone in the royal 

 forests. Thus the churchwardens and parish- 

 ioners of Towcester were granted permission by 

 Edward IV to raise stone in the bailiwick of 

 Hanley in Whittlewood Forest for the building 

 of their church 'xl feet every way square within 

 any place of our quarry,' and this privilege was 

 confirmed by Richard III on 2 March in the 

 first year of his reign." 



Now and again amongst the too often stereo- 

 typed and banal accounts of stewards and re- 

 ceivers we may be happy enough to find set out 

 the details of work at some private quarry when 

 stone was needed for walls or tenement repairs. 

 A fifteenth-century example '^ at Welton has 

 points of interest. One Edmund Perkins and 

 his company {societai) were engaged to dig the 

 stone at the wage of /^d. a day to each man, and 

 they received 395. ^d. in all. For making a 

 path from the stone-pit four men were paid ^d. 

 each, and two men for two days at the same 

 wage brought ' ramell a fonte petrarum.' Appar- 

 ently the skilled craftsmen demurred to clearing 

 the surface soil, and two Irishmen, the helots of 

 vagrant unskilled labour, earned 13^. ^d. for ' le 

 ryddyng de le stonpit vsque ad petram.' In 

 addition seven excavators were paid lbs. ^d. for 

 seven days' work, while the filling of the stone- 

 carts took five men three days and cost "js. 6d. 

 In conclusion one Thomas Archare drew 4s. 6d. 

 for filling up the pit, and the carter's bread and 

 cheese and beer accounted for a shilling. 



QUARRIES AND MINES (TECHNICAL) 



BUILDING STONES 



Northamptonshire is, on the whole, particu- 

 larly well off for building materials ; stone, clay, 

 limestone, sand and gravel are within compara- 

 tively easy reach of most towns and villages. 

 This is due to the frequent alternation of hard 



1 In some of the Welton accounts of 8-9 Edw. IV, 

 Mins. Accts. \*J, fol. 43 (P.R.O.), occurs the item 'For 

 vij cartes at Harleston for to feche ston, xvji^.' 



- Op. cit. loS. 



' From information kindly furnished by C. R. 

 Peers, Esq. 



' Accts. Exch. K.R. *f*. 



* Mem. of Old Kortkatits, 171. 



* Rot. Hund. (Rec. Com.), ii, 3 ; cf. ii, 13. 

 ' Accts. Exch. K.R. ^i (i-u Hen. H'). 



* Itin. (Hearne, 1745) i, 8. 



and soft strata in the Jurassic rocks of which the 

 county is built up.'^ 



There are three ways in which we might 

 classify or arrange the building stones of North- 

 amptonshire — into red '^ stones and white stones, 

 into sandstones and limestones, or in order of age 

 according to the geological formations from 

 which they come. We adopt the latter course, 

 because, all things considered, it appears to be 

 the best. 



' Kortkants N. and Q. iii, 241. 



'" Tour, ii, Letter 3, p. 130. 



" Harl. MS. 433, fol. 165/J (B.M.). 



'-' Mins. Accts. \^Ji, fol. 34, 38-39 Hen. VI (P.R.O.). 



" ^. C. H. Northants, i, 1-40. 



" ' Red Stone ' used in a general sense includes all 

 stones coloured by peroxide of iron, which may speci- 

 fically vary in colour from yellow to dark brown. 



298 



