Happy at Delapre Abbey.

Sunday 22nd September

On a dull but largely dry day we decided to pay a visit to the Delapre Abbey that was just down the road from the canal basin.

We had booked a guided tour of the building at 11 0'clock and as we were a little early we went for a walk around the outside of the building and found our way to the walled garden. The garden is very large with a green house and a game store and surrounded by red brick walls. The original building on the site was a nunnery, the Abbey of St. Mary de la Pre (St. Mary of the countryside), a Cluniac nunnery, one of only two in England. When the wife of Edward I, Eleanor of Castile died she was laid at the chapel here on the way  to burial in Westminster, and up the road are the remains of one of the Eleanor Crosses.  In the land to the front of the house in 1460 the armies of York and Lancaster. Despite being outnumbered the Yorkist won the day when some of the opposition came over to them and allowed them through the defences. Henry VI was captured and York won the day.

After Henry VIII abolished the nunnery the estate passed to the Tate Family. They were gentlemen and knights and staunch protestants. They took the side of Parliament in the Civil War and Zouch Tate gave evidence against Charles I, luckily, or cleverly, he did not sign the death warrant so when Charles II was restored to the throne he did not lose his lands, or his life. This range of buildings at the rear of the house was built during their tenure.

Near the greenhouse is this brick sculpture by Walter Ritchie called Lady with Kittens.

When the Tate line ran out the estate was sold to the Bouverie family in 1764. They were a Huguenot family. They had become the Earl of Radnor and made a fortune out of silk weaving and being merchants. They were still at the house in 1851 and the gardens were maintained by a gardener, a farm bailiff, six labourers and a boy. Nowadays it is just volunteers and they had managed to keep lots of colour in the garden.

This is the front of the house and was erected by the Tates when they were sweeping away the old nunnery buildings. There was no great hall to walk into just a passage that was a bit like a cloister of a cathedral, or nunnery! There were only three of us on the tour that was only £5 and our guide was very good, full of knowledge and humour too.

There is an inner courtyard to the building. The stone lower floor is the cloister like passage that was built around the mid 1600's by the Tate's. The tiled upper floor was added later to give access to the rooms above without having to go through each one. In this courtyard until 1958 were other buildings and even a covered staircase that ran from left to right to where the window id to the left of the stone chimney.

I didn't get many pictures of the interior that were worth reproducing here but they were very fine. This is the salon that was created by the early Bouverie family. The Bouverie family continued until 1895 and it was rented out for another 60 years. After that the County Council bought it and were keen to demolish it it seems. However a campaign was started to save it and it finally became the Northampton Record Office until again becoming redundant once more but was saved by a Trust set up to safeguard it and restoration was commenced in 2015 and is ongoing.

It is less than 30 mins walk from the canal basin and is well worth the walk even if it is just s troll round the grounds and a visit to the cafe.