Patrick Comerford
My walk through the villages and countryside in Northamptonshire brought me from Blisworth through Shutlanger, into Stoke Park, by the canal in Stoke Bruerne, and eventually to Roade, where I caught a bus back to Northampton.
Roade is 8 km (5 miles) south of Northampton and 15 km (10 miles) north of Stony Stratford has between 2,300 and 3,500 residents. The village straddles the Northampton to Milton Keynes A508, which divides Roade into the east, older part, and the west part, which is mostly 20th-century housing.
Although Roade railway station closed in 1964, four tracks of the West Coast Main Line from London Euston to Manchester and Scotland run through the village in a deep cutting. However, there are two main road bridges and four others for pedestrians, some for local and farm traffic.
The place name Roade (formerly ‘Rode’) is thought to derive from the Old English word ‘rod’ describing ‘a clearing in a forest’. This suggests a Saxon settlement within a wooded area.
Some prehistoric and Roman artefacts have been found in the parish and aerial photographs indicate crop marks of a number of enclosures. The evidence suggests that there were people living in the Roade area from prehistoric times and through the Roman period.
Three entries in the Domesday Book refer to places in the present parish. Roade was not in the hands of one person or family, and Roade has always been an ‘open village’.
The mediaeval parish of Roade included Ashton and Hartwell, with the principal church in Roade and chapels at Hartwell and Ashton. This continued until the early 16th century when the Lord of Ashton tried to reverse the status of the Roade and Ashton churches, so that Ashton had a rector and Roade had a perpetual curate like Hartwell.
Saint Mary’s Church, the oldest building in Roade, and dates from the 12th and 13th centuries. A church was established around 1100 by the Hartwell family of Hartwell and the Lupus family of Ashton. By 1167, Simon Hartwell had given his portion to the Augustinian canons of Saint James Abbey, Northampton, as a chantry for the souls of his father, Geoffrey, and his brothers William and Henry.
Saint James Abbey was founded by William Peverel ca 1104 and acquired other lands in the area. A dispute over the tithes in Roade between the abbey and Sir John Hardreshall, the Lupus heir, continued from 1342 until 1346, when it was resolved in favour of the abbey.
Saint Mary’s has a chancel with a south vestry, a central tower and a nave with a 19th century north aisle and no clerestory and a south doorway under a porch. The original aisleless nave and chancel are mid-12th century work, with small round-headed lancets in the chancel and the south nave doorway showing beakhead decoration.
The tower is a substantial structure of stone rubble and may have been remodelled ca 1200, while the bell-openings in the upper storey may date from the 15th century.
The nave roof collapsed in 1660. It was re-roofed in 1669 and new windows were put in the south wall. At the same time, one of the tower arches was bricked up, and only a small door provided to give access between the nave and the chancel. The chancel was still walled off from the nave in 1822, and was used as a Sunday school. The partition was eventually taken down in 1840.
The nave was repaired in 1822, when the floor level was raised and a gallery was added at the west end. The north aisle was added in 1850, by the Northampton architect Edmund Francis Law (1810-1882), who was involved at the same time in the restoration of the Church of Saint John the Baptist in Blisworth.
The tower was restored in 1856, and Law restored the chancel in 1857 and the nave in 1864, when the church was re-roofed and the nave roof was raised to match the chancel roof. The south vestry and organ chamber were added in 1879.
Sir Cyril Cripps, a local industrialist and philanthropist funded a major restoration of the tower in 1949-1950, and the church interior in 1950. The north nave doorway now links with the church hall, added in 1972 to replace the old church institute (1886) which had fallen into disrepair. A further restoration of the exterior took place in 1981.
The village grew up south of the church, surrounded by open fields. In 1301, 21 households were assessed for tax or lay subsidy. The oldest secular building in the village is a hall house dating from the 14th century and now known as Hyde Farm House. The Hyde estate had its own fishponds, dovecote, water mill and open field system and belonged to Saint James’s Abbey until the Reformation. It was surrendered to the Crown in 1538.
The principal landowning families in Road until the 16th century included the Mauntell, Boteler and Knightley families and the the Woodvilles of Grafton.
Robert Mauntell was described as Lord of Roade in 1316, although he did not hold all the land there. The Mauntell family continued to hold land in Roade until 1541, when John Mauntell was executed for murder and his estates were seized by the Crown.
The Boteler family of Hartwell held some land in Roade in the early 15th century. This later passed to the Knightley family of Fawsley. Their lands in 1533 included the ‘manor’ of Roade, which was conveyed to the Crown in 1542.
The Woodvilles of Grafton also had land in Roade which passed to the Crown in 1527. Elizabeth Woodville married Edward IV. Their daughter married Henry VII and was the mother of Henry VIII, who conferred the title of Regis on Grafton Regis.
The former estates of the Mauntell, Knightley and Woodville families in Roade and Ashton formed part of the newly created Honor of Grafton in 1542. This was a large royal estate centred on the former Woodville manors of Grafton and Hartwell, and it included land in several other local parishes.
After the Reformation, the land in Roade that once belonged to Saint James’s Abbey remained in Crown hands until 1550, when what was described as the Manor of Hyde was granted to Richard Fermor of Easton Neston. During the reign of James I, Sir Hatton Fermor sold the manor of Hyde to Stephen Hoe, whose descendants retained much of the estate until the 19th century.
The Grafton estates in Roade and Ashton were placed in trust in 1673 for Henry FitzRoy (1663-1690), 1st Duke of Grafton, an illegitimate son of Charles II and Barbara Villiers. His son, Charles FitzRoy (1683-1757), 2nd Duke of Grafton, claimed the lordship of Roade from at least 1713, although he owned less than half the land in the parish.
The people of Roade were obliged to attend his manorial court, whether they were his tenants or not, and a single court was held for the manors of Grafton, Roade and Hartwell in the early 18th century.
The open fields around Roade and Ashton were inclosed between 1816 and 1819. At that time the Grafton Estate owned about a third of the farmland. After the open fields were inclosed, the landscape around Roade was transformed, but the village itself did not change much until the arrival of the railway.
The Roade Cutting was a major engineering feat, designed and supervised by Robert Stephenson, and it was officially opened on 17 September 1838. The railway brought more jobs, houses and pubs and had a profound effect on the social and economic growth of Roade.
Roade Baptist Church is said to have been formed in 1688 by John Gibbs of Newport Pagnell, who also founded the church in Olney. Joseph Palmer was the Baptist minister in Roade in 1715, with a congregation of 200. A Baptist chapel was built in the High Street in 1736-1737, with a manse next door.
The Baptist Church closed in the 1980s when the building was declared unsafe, although services continued in private houses until the lay pastor Ray Lineham died in 1993. The former chapel was sold and became a guest house and then a private house known as the Chapter House.
Methodism came to Roade with a group of men from Bletchley who came to work on the railway cutting. At first they attended the Baptist Chapel but their enthusiastic acclamations during sermons were frowned on and they moved to a room built by railway contractor Richard Dunkley and registered in 1834.
The Methodists moved to a cottage near the Green in 1835. They bought an old malting house on the Ashton Road in 1852, and when that became too small they built a new chapel on Hartwell Road that opened in 1875. The building became a school hall in 1908 when the present church was built next door. The original building is now the church hall.
Saint Lawrence’s Roman Catholic chapel opened in Croft Lane on 1962 and served people in Roade and other local villages. It closed a few months after a new Catholic church opened in East Hunsbury in November 1989 and the former chapel later became a private house.
Roade Primary School on Hartwell Road was first built as Roade Board School in 1876. The local secondary school, Elizabeth Woodville School, is named after Elizabeth Woodville who was born nearby in Grafton Regis; she was the Queen Consort of King Edward IV and grandmother of Henry VIII. The school opened as Roade secondary modern school in 1956, became comprehensive in 1975 and is now Elizabeth Woodville School (North Campus) linked with a South Campus at Deanshanger.
Herbert House Seminary for Young Ladies was run by Anne Lalor and Mary Wilson, who also taught lacemaking. Their school closed in 1879 and was succeeded by Warwick House School for Girls, a boarding school on the corner of Church End and High Street run by the sisters Louisa and Emma Lea. Warwick House was named after the family who once owned Hyde Farm. The school closed around 1914.
A polish factory opened in Roade in 1909. It later became the Simplex Polish Co Ltd, but failed after about 10 years. Sir Cyril Cripps set up Pianoforte Supplies in London in 1919, making components for pianos, and moved the business to Roade In 1923, taking over the former Simplex factory. During World II the factory made munitions and parts for aircraft and army vehicles, and after the war made components for the car industry.
Cripps was a district councillor with an interest in housing, and he was a generous supporter of Saint Mary’s Church, local schools, hospitals clubs and sports. The village grew along with the factory, and the workforce reached a peak of around 1,800 in the 1960s. But the PSL factory gradually declined and finally closed in 2010.
Other political figures associated with Roade include Glenys Kinnock (1944-2023) – the Labour Party politician and wife of the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock – who was born in Roade.
The Revd Mark Donnelly is the Vicar the Salcey Benefice or group of churches that includes Saint Mary’s, Roade, Saint Michael and All Angels, Ashton, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Courteenhall, and Saint John the Baptist, Hartwell.
Holy Communion is celebrated in Saint Mary’s Church, Roade, every second Sunday at 9 am and at 10:30 am, with Morning Worship every first, third and fourth Sunday at 10:30 am. Café Church every third Sunday at 4 pm is an informal time of worship in the Church Hall adjoining the church at 4 pm.
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