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Northamptonshire Writers | The Kettering Mural | Kettering Railway Station | Beech Cottage Saga Ted Wright | Robert Mercer | John Smith | William Knibb | Michael Faraday The following people feature on the Blue Plaques page HE Bates | Frank Bellamy | J L Carr | Sir Alfred East | John Alfred Gotch | Thomas Cooper Gotch | Tony Ireson | William Knibb | Charles Wicksteed

A County that has inspired so many
An Article from the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph Dec 19 2002 by Tony Smith

A GALLERY of writers including Charles Dickens and H E Bates has been gathered in a new book looking at authors associated with the county. More than 70 poets, playwrights, novelists and historians are featured in 'The Literary Heritage of Northamptonshire', the latest publication by Kettering teachers Ian Addis and Robert Mercer.

A number of books has been produced over the decades on local wordsmiths or their work, most notably Trevor Hold's definitive poetry anthology A Northamptonshire Garland, but this is the first time writers of all genres have been showcased under one umbrella. The period covered is wide-ranging, from poets John Clare and John Dryden to contemporary novelists such as Corby crime writer Jill McGown and her former Latin teacher Colin Dexter, creator of Inspector Morse. It even includes two journalists who died this year - the Kettering historian and former ET writer Tony Ireson and Michael De-La-Noy, author of than 20 books, for whom the village of Slipton, near Thrapston, was a weekendretreat.

Kettering itself is well represented, from the 19th Century Baptist John Ayre Leatherland to nature writer and artist George Harrison, whose poems and articles were published in the former Kettering Leader in the 1920s and 30s. In more recent times the late J L Carr, who took up writing after teaching at the town's Highfields Primarv School, had two novels short-listed for the Booker prize. For a short spell Carr also taught at Kettering Grammar School, whose former pupils included H E Bates, who based several of his novels on his childhood haunts in the Rushden area. The latter's most popular creation was the Larkin family who won the nation's hearts with The Darling Buds of May.

Arguably the county's most famous literary son is peasant poet John Clare, whose village birthplace of Helpston on the county border has since been claimed by Cambridgeshire through boundary changes. The former ploughboy was feted by the London glitterati in the 1820s, but ended his days at Northampton's lunatic asylum. Dryden, rated by many as the initiator of modern English prose, was born in. a former rectory at Aldwincle, which still stands opposite the redundant church of All Saints. Long gone is the nearby childhood home of poet and theologian Thomas Fuller, whose father was rector of the other village church, St Peter's.

Other writers from the Nene Valley include the 19th Century Barnwell schoolmaster, historian and poet Thomas Bell and naturalist and world flea expert Dame Miriam Rothschild of Ashton, near Oundle. At King's Cliffe is the burial place of renowned religious writer William Law, born in 1685. Earlier that century the poet Mildmay Fane spent his last years at neighbouring Apethorpe after a spell in the Tower of London for his Royalist leanings during the Civil War. Often regarded as the 'forgotten' poet is Wellingborough-born John Askham, buried in the town's London Road cemetery in 1894. Better known was the 18th Century preacher Philip Doddridge of Northampton, whose religious writing included more than 400 hymns.

One of the county's most illustrious writers of more recent years was Denys Watkin's-Pitchford, who penned popular children's books under the pseudonym BB. Born at Lamport Rectory in 1905, he was also a skilful illustrator and champion of the countryside whose work earned him the MBE. Charles Dickens merits a mention for his coverage of a riotous election in Kettering in 1835 for the Morning Chronicle. He was also a regular guest at Rockingham Castle, where he was inspired to write Bleak House and David Copperfield.

The book 'The Literary Heritage of Northamptonshire' is illustrated by sketches of local places and is published by Diametric Publications, priced £9.95.

Northamptonshire Writers | The Kettering Mural | Kettering Railway Station | Beech Cottage Saga
HE Bates | Frank Bellamy | J L Carr | Sir Alfred East | Michael Faraday | Thomas Cooper Gotch | John Alfred Gotch  | Tony Ireson
William Knibb | Robert Mercer | John Smith | Charles Wicksteed | Ted Wright

Ted Wright (1923-2005)

TRIBUTE has been paid to a Kettering Civic Society vice-president who has died at the age of 81.Ted Wright was born at 119 London Road, Kettering, on May 8, 1923. In 1936 he went to Wellingborough School.

On leaving he went to technical college and Grassmoor Colliery Chesterfield, as a mining engineering student before volunteering for military service in 1942.
He joined the Northamptonshire Regiment before being seconded to the Fourth Somerset Light Infantry It was while in its service that he was badly injured after being hit by an antitank shell while fighting in the Rhineland He suffered head injuries and spent about six months in military hospital.

Mr Wright later took a desk job and was posted as adjutant at a prisoner-of- war camp in Luton, with the rank of captain. He went on to Jesus College, Cambridge, on a further education grant. He joined the Government’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and in 1951 became scientific personal assistant to its director of food investigation, based in Cambridge.He moved to the department’s headquarters in London in 1955. He eventually became head of research establishments before retiring in 1983.

After his parents died in the early 1980s he moved from Bloomsbury to their old house in London Road.

He became chairman of Kettering Book Society and at the age 70 vice chairmanof the civic society In 2000 he was appointed life honorary vice-president. Kettering Civic Society chairman Paul Ansell said: “It was his ideas, judgement and wisdom that we would always have benefited from. His opinion was very caring and sound.”

John Smith 1790 - 1824

Defiant hero who paid with his life - from an article in the Evening Telegraph 1/12/00

The name of a brave Rothwell missionary was etched in the annals of history after his tragic death in British Guyana aged just 34.

John Smith, born an orphan boy in 1790, was a staunch abolitionist whose outspoken views and attempts to help negro slaves in Demerara were to cost him his life.

This son of a soldier born in Egypt, whose only education was from a Sunday School in Rothwell, went to London at the age of 14 to work for a biscuit baker. There he joined the London Missionary Society, which sent him to Demerara in 1817.

On arrival with his young wife, Smith was greeted by the Governor with the that any-teaching of the negroes would lead to immediate banishment. Undaunted, he took charge of a little chapel at Le Resouvenir in the midst of slave plantations around Georgetowm.

Slaves toiled for 12 hours a day among the sugar canes, spending each evening supplying fodder to their masters' stables. Even Sunday was a working day and flogging was an every day occurrence, yet Smith attracted large congregations and began reading classes for the freed negroes (and some of the slaves). In 1823 an orderly demonstration by the negroes was met with brutal oppression, with hundreds shot, 47 hanged and many receiving 1,000 lashes each. After refusing to take up arms against them, Smith was arrested on a charge of "conspiracy and rebellion", although the real reason was hatred of his work and his defiant attempts to give slaves some elementary education.

After seven weeks' detention and a court martial lasting 28 days, he was condemned to death In November of that year. But his feeble body was unable to withstand the rigours of his trial and he died in his damp and rotten cell on February 6, 1824 - just three days before Instructions arrived from the British government that he Was to be sent home.

The storm raised in the House of Commons by his treatment was an important factor leading to the final abolition of slavery. His cruel sentence was, in the words of Lord Morley, "an event as fatal to slavery in the West Indies as the execution of John Brown was its death- blow in the United States". A portrait of Smith and a memorial plaque to his martyrdom can be found today at the United Reformed Church in Rothwell, where he was a member as a child. A town avenue is also named after him.