A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



for a settlement.' In 1698 his daughter and heir Eliza- 

 beth and her husband Thomas Thornton made a 

 settlement of it.^ He was impropriator^ at the time of 

 his death in 17 19; she then married the Rev. William 

 Trimnell, dean of Winchester, and died 1737 leaving a 

 son and heir Thomas Thornton of Brockhall who with 

 his son Thomas Lee Thornton'' made a settlement in 

 1774.5 The last-named's son Thomas Reeve Thornton 

 conveyed it to Christopher Smyth in 1 801,* after which 

 it descended with the manor of Little Houghton (q.v.). 

 Poor's Land. An allotment of 4 a. 

 CH-iiRITIES 2 r. 39 p. of land in this parish was 

 awarded in lieu of certain pieces of 

 land in the open fields, which had been purchased with 



certain benefactions amounting to £6e, and were 

 originally conveyed to trustees by deed dated 24 June 

 173 I for the benefit of the poor of the parish. The 

 land is now let in allotments and the rent is distributed 

 by 4 trustees appointed by the Parish Council. 



Pendrid's Dole. The yearly sum of 5;. which is paid 

 out of an estate at Brafield is distributed with the rent 

 of the Poor's Land. The gift of the charity is ascribed 

 to one Hannah Pendrid. 



Church Land. On an inclosure in this parish an 

 allotment of i a. 2 r. 34 p. was awarded in lieu of lands 

 formerly held for the repairs of the church. The land 

 is now let in allotment and the rent is paid by the church- 

 wardens to the church expenses account. 



CASTLE ASHBY 



Asebi, Esseby (xi cent.); Essheby David (xiii cent.); 

 Asscheby Davy, Castel Assheby (xiv cent.). 



Castle Ashby is a parish with its village seated on an 

 eminence 8 miles east by south from Northampton, 

 sharing a station with Earls Barton 1 1 miles north of the 

 village, on the Northampton and Peterborough branch 

 of the L.M.S. railway. The soil is of a fertile mixed 

 character on a subsoil of clay. The chief crops are 

 cereals. The population in 193 1 was 236. 



To the south-west of the village lies the hamlet of 

 Chadstone, in which the rectory house is situated.' 



The castle stands in the north overlooking the valley 

 of the Nene having three parks with ornamental water, 

 covering a total area of 645 acres. One entrance is 

 reached by an avenue of trees which begins at Yardley 

 Chase, and is nearly 4 miles in length. 



The mansion, which is one of the seats of the Mar- 

 quess of Northampton, has nothing of the castle about 

 it; it is a fine house of the Elizabethan period, altered 

 in many places by descendants of the original builder, 

 Henry, ist Lord Compton. But it was built near the 

 site of the medieval castle which already in the time of 

 Leland, early in the i6th century, was a ruin. It is 

 'now clene down', he says, 'and is made a septum for 

 beestes'. A few years before Leland's visit the estate 

 had been bought, in 1 5 1 2, by William Compton, one 

 of a family that had long been estabhshed at Compton 

 Wynyates in Warwickshire. Henry, ist Lord Compton, 

 presumably began the house before the death, in 1574, 

 of his first wife, Lady Frances Hastings, whose arms 

 are carved on a small doorway of the south-west turret. 



The house, thus begun, followed the usual plan 

 of the period. There was a main block containing the 

 great hall, kitchens, and family rooms, and from it, on 

 the south side, stretched two narrow wings, thus in- 

 closing a courtyard. The fourth side was probably 

 open, or only closed by a wall, but near the southern 

 end of each wing was a staircase turret. 



The suggested date of 1573-4 for the start of the 

 house is confirmed by the evidence of the very interest- 

 ing cellar under the dining-room at the east end of the 

 hall. This is vaulted in stone and bears a general 

 resemblance to the cellar at Drayton House which is 

 beneath the wing dated 1584. But the detail of the 

 work at Ashby, being of a very late Gothic type, may 



well indicate a date some ten or twelve years earlier 

 than 1584. In both cases the rib-vaulting is of great 

 interest as that form of construction had largely gone 

 out of fashion. At Ashby the cellar is under one end of 

 the dining-room and the floor over its vaulting used to 

 be higher than the floor of the remainder of the room, 

 so the whole cellar has been lowered in recent years to 

 the requisite level, the stonework being rebuilt exactly 

 as before. 



At each end of the eastern wing the buildings project 

 beyond its face, thus leaving a long recess which in 

 1624 was filled in, the ground floor forming an open 

 arcade or loggia. But these open arcades, pleasant 

 enough in Italy, were not suited to the English climate, 

 and in many houses they have been enclosed. The 

 loggia was converted in 1691 into drawing-rooms. 

 Evelyn relates how, being on a visit to Althorp in 1688, 

 he was taken to see Lord Northampton's house, whose 

 owner, the young earl, had married a girl whom Evelyn 

 had known since she was a child. His reception was 

 not quite as cordial as he expected, for the visitors, 

 instead of going into the house, were entertained in a 

 lobby overlooking the garden, presumably the loggia 

 in question, and they did not prolong their stay. There 

 were other projections from other faces of the original 

 house, leaving other recesses, but these also were 

 eventually filled in, thus leaving the house the almost 

 square mass which it is to-day. 



Henry was succeeded in 1589 by his son William, 

 who was created Earl of Northampton in 161 8. How- 

 ever much there still remained to do, the house had 

 so far progressed as to be fit to receive James I and his 

 queen in 1605, not to mention the extreme probability 

 that Queen Elizabeth had stayed in it in 1603.* The 

 earl must have done much towards completing the 

 house before his death in 1630, for the long parapet 

 is dated 1624, as also is the parapet of the south-eastern 

 turret. Within the house not much work of this time 

 remains, but the fine ceiling of the room known as 

 King William's, that of the Old Library, and that of the 

 little room known as Lady Margaret's Bower, date 

 from the first Earl's time. He had married in 1599 

 the daughter of the wealthy Sir John Spencer, who was 

 Lord Mayor of London in i 594. He was no connexion 

 of the Spencers of Althorp, and he bore difl^erent arms. 



II. 



Feet of F. Northants. Trin. 23 Chas. 



Ibid. East. 10 Will, and Mary. 

 Bridges, op. cit. 340. 

 Baker, Hist. Norlhanls. 1 1 5. 



5 Feet of F. Northants. East. 14 

 Geo. III. 



'• Ibid. East. 41 Geo. III. 



' The suggestion that there was some 

 monastic establishment here {Assoc, Arch. 



Sec. Rep. xli, 236) is not supported by any 

 documentary evidence. 



^ A later royal visitor was Charles I, 

 who was here for four days in 1634 ; Cal. 

 S.P. Dom. 1634-5, P- '49- 



230 



