Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
At Nether Heyford the church has a monument to judge Francis Morgan who pronounced
the death sentence on Lady Jane Grey and then, filled with remorse, committed suicide in
1558. The village has a 2ha tree-lined green and a large Roman building to its east.
Bugbrooke has fine 18th century houses, a Baptist church of 1808, a 12th century chapel in
parkland and a 14th century parish church with a 15th century wooden screen and a poem in
the bell-tower warning against improperly dressed bellringers. The village had the first soap
factory in England, as well as a brickyard, bakeries and mills. From the Wharf pub the canal
crosses the Bugbrooke valley aqueduct.
These Northamptonshire villages have an air of quiet affluence. Gayton is another with
fine 16-19th century stone houses and a large church with an ornamented tower as well as an
old manor house site.
At Gayton Junction the Northampton Arm leaves to drop down to the River Nene, cur-
rently the most practical route for many powered craft to reach the rivers of the east of Eng-
land. There is a Canal & River Trust depot at the junction and a roving bridge across it. The
A43 crosses the canal, as does the railway which then crosses the old A43 line north of Bl-
isworth on a Robert Stephenson bridge where particularly good attention to detail is much in
evidence. A tank in a garden previously supplied canal water to railway water troughs.
Blisworth has thatched houses with brown Blisworth stone and light Northamptonshire
sandstone in alternate layers for decorative effect, a benefit derived from once having had
tramways bringing stone from quarries to the canal. It begins at Candle Bridge, where boat-
men bought their tallow dips for Blisworth Tunnel. St John the Baptist church dates from the
13th century and stands behind ornate cast-iron graveyard gates. The Grade II 18th century
former Sun, Moon & Stars Inn backs on to the canal and Blisworth also had a mill.
The village is left behind but it has one more superlative feature to offer: Blisworth Tunnel.
At 2.8km long, it is the third-longest canal tunnel in Britain, being surpassed only by Stan-
dedge and Dudley. Opened in 1805, it posed the greatest technical difficulty on the whole
canal. The first attempt to cut through the ironstone outcrop in 1793-1796 had to be aban-
doned because of floodwater and a collapse that killed 14 men. The current line is a little to
the west, although a ghostly candle-lit junction has been seen at the accident side by some
boaters. In 1977, part of the invert was found to have lifted by as much as 1.2m so the central
section was lined with concrete segments over 1982-1984, during a five-year closure, yet it
still showers water and the walls are covered with calcite.
