Patrick Comerford
During my stroll through the Northamptonshire countryside earlier this week, I visited a number of pretty villages and small towns, including Blisworth, Shutlanger, Stoke Bruerne and Roade.
My journey began by taking the bus from Northampton to Blisworth, a picturesque village on the Grand Union Canal, about half-way between Northampton (8 km, 5 miles) and Stony Stratford (11 km, 7 miles).
Blisworth is known for the Blisworth Tunnel, one of the longest tunnels on the English canal system, for the annual Canal Festival every August, and for the Blisworth Arch, a railway bridge built by Robert Stephenson in 1837-1838 for the London and Birmingham Railway.
Blisworth has a population of 1,800 to 2,000 people, with a few small businesses. There are many traditional local stone cottages, often thatched and some dating back to the 18th or even the 17th century.
The Walnut Tree Inn was once the Blisworth Station Hotel. The Royal Oak is the village pub; a second pub, the Sun, Moon and Stars, closed over 50 years ago, and a third pub, the Grafton Arms, is now a private house. The only shop is a small supermarket, post office and newsagent.
Iron ore and limestone were quarried at Blisworth in the 19th and 20th centuries. The iron ore was sent by canal or railway to ironworks in Staffordshire. The limestone quarry near Rectory Farm is now a nature reserve.
The main building of note in Blisworth is, of course, the parish church, the Church of Saint John the Baptist. It was built in the late 13th century but dates mainly from the 14th and 15th centuries, although there may have been an earlier church on the site.
The 13th century church consisted of the chancel, with the nave extending to only three bays, with both north and south aisles. Between 1320 and 1340, the nave was extended to the present length of 61 ft 6 in. The north aisle was also extended, but the three bays of the south side remained as original.
Both the north and south doorways date from the 13th century with characteristic edge rolls. The tower followed later in the 14th century. The chapel at the east end of the south aisle dates from the 14th century, and now contains the table tomb of Roger Wake and his wife Elisabeth Catesby.
There may have been a mediaeval stone sedilia in the south wall of the chancel, but this has not survived.
The five-light East Window with unusual tracery may have been added in the 14th century when the east and north walls of the chancel were rebuilt or refaced. Three large windows were inserted in the chancel in the 15th century, but two of the small original 13th century windows in the south side were left untouched.
There are two large windows In the north wall of the chancel, one with some panels of mediaeval stained glass that have survived since the Reformation.
The first stained-glass window in the chancel dates from 1872, and is a memorial to the late squire and his wife, George and Mary Stone. The East Window contains a memorial to Revd William Barry and his wife Frances and may date from 1885.
The large window on the south wall is a memorial stained glass in memory of a son of the rector, who died at the age of nine.
A blocked north doorway in the chancel is often referred to as the ‘priest’s doorway.’ It is not known when this was blocked. This door was only used it by the rector and members of his family, who has a private pew in the chancel. The ‘priest’s doorway’ was blocked up when the organ was installed in 1889, and the choir was moved into the chancel.
There are blocked low side windows on both north and south sides of the chancel. These so-called ‘Low Side Windows’ are a common feature of local parish churches but are now mostly blocked up.
A wooden rood screen was built in the 15th century, but all that remains of the rood loft is a rood loft stairway on the north side of the chancel arch.
The church also has two squints. The north squint was obscured by the 1888 organ until it was moved in the 1970s. A carved wooden architectural boss was found in the 1970s hidden in the south squint when it was opened up. Both squints are angled so that a priest in each side aisle might see all that was happening at the altar.
The tower was added at the end of the 14th century and terminates in a battlemented parapet without pinnacles. The earliest mention of bells is in 1552.
The present porch was built in 1607.
Among the tombs and monuments in the church is the tomb of Margaret Blackey, wife of Lyonel Blackey, sergeant at arms to Elizabeth I and James I. It reads: ‘She lived a maid eighteen yeares, a wife twenty, and widow sixty-one and dyed the 20th January 1683 in the 99th yeare of her age.’
Major changes took place in the 19th century, when the church was restored in 1856 by the Northampton architect Edmund Francis Law. He arranged the pews, replaced the roof and covered the floor with encaustic tiles.
The Elmhirst family of Blisworth House gave the carved reredos and the raised oak floor in 1910. The Victorian altar or communion table was then encased within an oak super-structure made to carry new needlework. The 1855 Communion Table was later moved from the case to the south door.
The south aisle was rebuilt in 1926.
The oldest pieces of church plate in Blisworth include a silver Communion Cup made ca 1570, and a paten made about 1636.
The most notorious and mysterious person associated with the parish is the notorious Revd John Ambrose (1768-1839). He was the Rector of Blisworth for over 40 years from 1797 to 1839, but was often absent during that time. It was said of him that he ‘disgraced a profession which he ought to have adorned, for he was clever and had a remarkably fine delivery … He passed as the natural son of an Irish peer, whose loose morals had descended to him.’
The student records at Oxford say John Ambrose was born in 1768, the son of John Ambrose of London. But later he claimed he was the illegitimate son of an Irish peer, John Blaquiere (1732-1812), 1st Baron de Blaquiere, and the singer and actress Caroline Ambrosse or Ambrose.
Another illegitimate child of John Blaquiere and Caroline Ambrosse was Henrietta Ambrose Whatley (1766-1852), who was born in Killarney, Co Kerry and was the great-grandmother of the composer Gustav Holst. Could John Ambrose have been born in Killarney too two years later?
Blaquiere was a senior diplomat at the British Embassy in Paris when he was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland (1772-1776). He was an MP in the Irish House of Commons for Old Leighlin (1773-1783), Enniskillen (1783), Carlingford (1783-1790), Charleville (1790-1798) and Newtownards (1798-1801). He was made a baronet in 1784, and was given an Irish peerage as Baron de Blaquiere in 1800 for his support for the Act of Union. Later he was MP for Rye (1801-1802) and Downton (1802-1806). He died in Bray, Co Wicklow, in 1812.
Meanwhile, John Ambrose entered University College, Oxford, in 1784, aged 16, and received the degree BA in January 1791 and MA in June 1791, when his name was spelled Ambrosse. In the intervening years, he married Mary Mahon a soprano of Irish parentage, at Saint James’s Church, Piccadilly, on 3 April 1787, and they were the parents of at least five children.
But questions have been asked about why it took Ambrose seven years to complete his first degree, and whether he spent time in revolutionary France during this time.
John Ambrose was ordained deacon by the Bishop John Douglas of Salisbury on 25 September 1791 and priest by Bishop Beilby Porteus of London at Saint James’s Chapel Royal on 22 April 1792. He was a curate in Swindon, Wiltshire (1791-1797), until was presented to the Parish of Blisworth on 19 April 1797 by the patron, George Finch Hatton, whose family owned the Hatton Garden Estate in London and held the title of Earl of Winchelsea.
The Irish-born actor and dramatist Charles Macklin (1699-1797) often acted often on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. When he died on 11 July 1797, he left £50 to Ambrose as a former pupil to preach at his funeral.
Ambrose was known for his interests in hunting and boxing. His last signature in the Blisworth parish registers was for a baptism in 1807. Soon after he fled his creditors, and was said to have ‘died abroad in obscurity and want’, perhaps in Paris. In fact, he spent some time in the debtors’ prisons, firstly in Horsham from 1813 and then in the Fleet Prison in London. By 1825, he had fled to Nantes and he was still there in 1833.
Ambrose was 66 when he married again. His second wife was the much younger Juliana Catherine Colyear and they were married in the British Embassy in Paris on 15 July 1834. She was said to be an illegitimate daughter of Thomas Charles Colyear (1772-1835), 4th Earl of Portmore. They were the parents of at least four more children, including two daughters, Emma and Juliana, who were born in France.
However, Ambrose remained Rector of Blisworth throughout all those years and he returned to Blisworth in 1836 two years after his second marriage to baptise his daughters. He remained in the parish until he died at Blisworth Rectory on 6 June 1839, aged 71, and he was buried in the churchyard.
A memorial tablet in Blisworth church recalls Joseph Ambrose Lawson (1806-1864), who was born in Waterford. Why is this tablet in Blisworth church? Could there be a connection with John Ambrose, perhaps through the Irish peer he claimed was his father?
Ambrose was followed in Blisworth by the Revd William Barry. He seems to have been unhappy with the old Rectory and in 1841 he built a new rectory west of the church with stables and a coach house. During Barry’s 45 years as Rector, he oversaw many alterations and made many gifts to the church, including three pieces of plate and silver.
The four steps and socket stone of a churchyard cross are on the north side of the church, by the path leading to the porch.
To the north of the cross, on the other side of the High Street, is the site of the supposed Manor. The farm there was called ‘The Manor’ in the 18th century, but the seat of the Manor, where the Wake family lived, seems to have been the site of Blisworth House, to the south-east of the church.
• Canon Richard Stainer has been the Rector of Blisworth, Alderton, Grafton Regis, Milton Malsor and Stoke Bruerne with Shutlanger (the Grand Union Benefice) in the Diocese of Peterborough since 2019. The Family Eucharist (Common Worship) is celebrated at 11 am on the First, Second and Fourth Sundays.
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