NORTHAMPTONSHIRE Ruins of OVERSTONE HALL and golf course
Overstone hall was built 1866. There was a late Christmas party held there for all the employees of Jeyes Chemist one hundred years later in 1966. it was near Susan Clarke`s 20 birthday . As the music was started up for dancing , the band played happy birthday and I had the chance to dance with the manager and also the man in charge of the stockroom. His name may have been Mr Campbell . Each day a phone call would be made for items in the dispensary we had run out of and he would make them available for the next morning .
1930-1980 It was a girls school.
2001 a fire badly damaged the hall. Most of the 119 rooms have been damaged.
2010 the hall was put up for sale at £1 million pounds.
notes from Northampton Chronicle and Echo.
We as a family moved from living in Northampton in 1959. To Blisworth . it was to bring a change of life for us, new schools , living in a village and getting used to country life.
We made lots of friends as the children called us the girls who lived in the big house. It had been an old 17th century farmhouse, at one time run by the Clarke family.
With village life there was always plenty of clubs and active going on. I attended church and bible lessons. I was a Sunday School teacher. a member of the drama club, a member of WI, which i attended with my mother.I joined the country dance group run by Mrs Franklin. I joined the youth club at the chapel, but enjoyed meeting people outside better. My mother was shy , her sister helped run the family farm . she enjoyed dancing as i did.
We was invited to Easton Neston house as Lady Hesketh was holding a BBQ and dance in aid of charity in the grounds. The photo`s of Easton Neston House and was taken by James Payne when he visits the grounds and the church yard area.When he visits the area again, he says he will say hello to Lady Hesketh buried in there.She died in 2006. She had been a member of the Grafton Hunt.
George Clarke had been a member of the Grafton Hunt for many years and regularly followed the hunt around the country side in his car, meeting up with his friends.
Easton Neston house was owned by the Fermor family. the Hesketh family married into the Fermor family. The house was sold and now owned by Leon Max. The Hesketh family live in London.
Harpole Northamptonshire
Ann Farmer and John Blackwell both came from Harpole, he was a Gas lamp manufactor in Witney Oxfordshire. His uncle Richard Blackwell was a Straw hat manufactor based in Dunstable Luton
Some of the family moved to Birmingham and became Taylors They lived in Edgbaston . The sons Althans Blackwell who became a Jewellry manufactor and Fred RWilliam blackwell who became a GP working in East End of London. He was called out to witness the death of Elizabeth Stride a victim of Jack the Ripper.
photo. flickr.
Warstone Lane Hockley Birmingham .
Althans Blackwell and Nathaniel Cracknell Reading had a factory there, employing between 200-300 people
