Some famous names appear among the Lords of the Bramptons Manor over the years; they include the Treshams and Christopher Hatton. The latter held it between 1575 and 1657 during which time his close friend Francis Drake sailed round the world and named his ship “The Golden Hind” in his memory, using the Hatton family crest. From 1825, the Spencers acquired the Manor and Hall which stood where Cedar Hythe was built in the 1960's when Brampton House, as it had become known, was knocked down. The chapel, dedicated to St Margaret, after which Chapel Brampton had been named, stood in the grounds of the Hall, just behind the ‘bus shelter, but no written record of it has been discovered since the middle of the 16th century. Also, in those grounds, stood the village school, beside the cedar tree, but that building was also demolished at the same time as Brampton House. The little wooden chapel, beside the present school, is Non-conformist, and indicates the long history of Protestants in the villages; they obtained a certificate in 1815 permitting them to meet in Mary Wright's home in Chapel Brampton. Later, they met in the groom's room behind the Posting House on the Welford Road. The Church of St Botolph, mostly of the Decorated Period, has many interesting features. The south porch is of an earlier date, unusually large, and has a shield bearing the arms of King Edward III who was in Northampton at that time. Some of the stained glass windows and table tombs in the churchyard reflect past members of important local families. It is a ‘listed building' as are many of the old sandstone houses and cottages in both villages. They all lend character to the parishes and examples can be found beside the church where the ‘Spencer Ten Cottages' stand and just up the road, the Alms Houses which were given by the Earl Spencer for six poor widows, in memory of his parents in 1854. In Chapel Brampton, there are also ‘listed buildings' of old sandstone houses and cottages, including a similar row of ‘Spencer Ten Cottages'. The core of this village is a ‘conservation area' to help preserve the character. Only a few properties in the Bramptons are still thatched although the pitch of the roof of several indicates where the thatch has been replaced. The Old Posting House was built in 1585 and is known to have been an inn providing food, drink and shelter to travellers. Mail coaches used the Welford Road in the early 1830s, carrying the London-Irish mail and passengers. The Spencer Arms is known to have been a public house since 1825 but was, before that, an ale house known as the Stag's Head. Another ale house, called the Old Fish, stood beside the bridge over the Brampton arm of the River Nene. In Church Brampton, the ‘Old Cottage' at the top of Church Lane has cellars which support the tradition that the house was an inn; the date on a date stone on a gable is 1764. Yet another ale house called the Wheatsheaf stood adjoining Church Lane in what is now the lower part of the churchyard before it was extended. The coming of the railways meant the establishment of a station for each village, Chapel Brampton in 1859 and the Church Brampton Halt for passenger traffic only in 1913. The Pitsford and Brampton station afforded goods and passenger facilities and carried a considerable amount of freight, including local farm produce and requisites, ironstone quarried nearby, coal and many horses which were bred on Grange Farm. During the last war, tons of foodstuffs for the specially built cold store, near Boughton Mill, came through the station. Closure of that line in 1970 meant a loss of many jobs and transfer to the roads of heavy traffic. The County Golf Club, covering 144 acres, has an 18 hole course which was constructed in 1910 on what was mainly the heathland of the Bramptons. Another course, Brampton Heath, was opened nearby in 1995 on fields which were part of Grange Farm. Like most villages near to a country town, the Bramptons have grown in the number of dwellings but have not, in the main, expanded into the countryside. One very interesting fact is that, although the number of houses has quadrupled since 1801, the population has not quite doubled in that period and the average household has dropped from 5 1/2 to 2 1/2 persons. |
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