In the late 15th or early 16th century the Lord of the Manor was probably
Richard Empson, courtier to Henry VIII, whose sister married William
Spencer of Wormleighton, ancestor of the Earls of Sunderland (and
Princess Diana). The manor and estate came into the Spencer family
in the mid1500s
and belonged to them until 1706, when it was disposed of by Anne,
Dowager Countess of Sunderland. The Rev. Maynard deplores this event
as few people could afford to buy their homes and when the rents inevitably
rose it brought many strangers tenants not much to the good of the
town. A lot of the land in Lower Boddington was retained by the Spencer
family, and some was bought back in 1735, but has since been sold.
The Manor House and farm, next to the Church in Upper Boddington, were
sold in 1706 to John Smith, a famous mezzotint engraver, favourite of Sir
Godfrey Kneller, who did a portrait of John Smith a print of which may
be seen in the National Portrait Gallery. John Smith was born in Daventry,
worked in London for many years, and obviously decided to return to his
native county on retirement. He is buried in St. Peter's Churchyard, Northampton,
with his wife and children.
The Church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, is mainly 15th century,
but has examples of three styles of architecture - Early English, Decorated,
and Perpendicular - the tower being the last of these. The Church is described
in Pevsner's Northamptonshire. A church treasure is an ancient wooden dug-out
chest, banded with iron. The registers date from 1558, the oldest being
kept in the Northamptonshire Record Office at Wootton Hall in Northampton.
The population of the village fluctuated considerably in the 19ffi century.
In 1801 it was 476, but rose steadily to 926 in 1851 and then declined
until, in 190 1, it was back to 487. The reason for this must have had
to do with the poor conditions of the farm labourers who left the land
to go to the towns. In the rioting of 1830-31, risks and threshing machines
were destroyed on farms in Boddington. In 1834 the wage of a Boddington
labourer was 10 to 12 shillings a week, with beer, in the summer, and only
8 to 9 shillings a week, without beer, in the winter.
In his paper on Methodism in Boddington, the author attributes the growth
of Methodism in the area in part to these conditions, as a protest against
the status quo as represented by the Church. The first certain date for
the arrival of Methodism in Boddington is 1797, when a licence was obtained
for a meeting house. We have reason to believe that one of these houses
was the Bakehouse in Upper Boddington (now Peel Cottage). The first chapel
still stands: it is the building attached to the Old Post Office in Lower
Boddington. When this became inadequate for the numbers of people, a chapel
was built in 1865, in what was then called Cox's Lane, Upper Boddington
(now Chapel Lane). In 1885 Mr. Cherry of Lower Boddington gave land there
for a new chapel. This is now converted into a house, but the chapel in
Upper Boddington is still in use.
In 1870, the year of the first Education Act which provided education
for all, the Rev. Edward Sale undertook to build a school as there
was none in the Parish. He gathered contributions from many people
and paid some £260
himself toward the cost of £718.
In the course of conversation with residents of the two villages, many
interesting facts have come to light. For instance, up until the early
1900s there were houses and another public house, The Star Inn, at the
bottom of Townsend Lane near the Pleck. The Manor House in Upper Boddington
lost a top storey when a flaming bomber crashed into it at the close of
the last war, and a cottage which once stood on the hill above the bend
at the top of Hill Road (near the new buildings of Cleveland Farm) was
once inhabited by refugees from Belgium during the 1914/18 War.
New buildings continue to appear in both villages. Old ones are brought
up to date and improved. Some are redundant and some disappear. New faces
appear to add to the succession of those who have come and gone throughout
the centuries - history continues.