Monument record 638 - Daventry

A Medieval market town, well known for the unusual industry of whip making, which declined with the disappearance of the horse drawn coach. In the 18th century Daventry was an important coaching town with up to 80 coaches a day. It is now a centre of service and manufacturing industries.

{4} Writing in the reign of Elizabeth the surveyor of the Duchy of Lancaster described Daventry as ‘a markett towne and a thorough ffaire most usuall from London to north partes.’ In 1655 the parliamentary commissioners recommended that the minister there be granted an increased stipend, since he served ‘a great market town’. Some years later, in 1673, Blome noted that the Wednesday market was ‘well served with horses, cattle, sheep, corn and provisions’; in the 1690s Celia Fiennes wrote of ‘a pretty large market town and good houses all of stone’. According to John Morton, writing in about 1712, Daventry had a ‘flourishing trade’ and was ‘reckoned a town of very good business’. Shortly afterwards, Daniel Defoe found it to be ‘a considerable market town which subsists chiefly by the great concourse of travellers on the old Watling Street way’. These descriptions are consistent in the emphasis placed on the significance of commerce to the town’s prosperity.
In 1335 Robert de Daventry, lord of the Nether Manor, was granted free warren in Daventry (and other places). Does this mean there was another park?
In 1301 there were some 16 non-agricultural occupational names recorded in Daventry. Those representing the victualling trades were ‘cook’ (2), ‘miller’, ‘fisher’; the leather trades included ‘tanner’ (2), ‘shoemaker’ and ‘glover’; surnames associated with the textile industry were ‘deyster’, ‘schereman’ and ‘tailor’; whilst ‘carpenter’, ‘sawier’ and ‘tiler’ represent the buliding trades. Other occupational names were ‘smith’, ‘wheelwright’ and ‘draper’. All these ‘trade names’ represent the three staple occupational groups associated with the provision of food, clothing and shelter, that one might expect to find in any medieval town. Most of these names can be found in the witness lists recorded in the Christ Church Cartulary, which adds the names butcher and ‘le Webbe’. The poll tax list recorded the occupations of only five taxpayers: two shoemakers and a smith, who each paid sixpence; and a baker and a glover who each paid four pence. A handful of references in the 14th and 15th centuries provide more information (for further details see report).
The evidence of the Freemens’ Registers suggests that the production of leather was on a very small scale in the years before 1790. There was a tanyard at Drayton, but over the period only 27 men took up their freedoms as curriers, fellmongers, leather dressers, tanners or whittawers. Again, the 1777 Militia List is somewhat at variance with this evidence. Although the only tanner named was from Drayton, 8 fellmongers were recorded for Daventry, 3 of them masters and 5 of them journeymen; there were also 3 curriers, two of whom were journeymen. By the end of the 18th century, however, the town’s economy was on the verge of change, and the manufacture of boots and shoes began. Shoemaking had been Daventry’s main craft since the 16th century (and maybe earlier), but from the late 1790s it developed into an industry making footwear not just for local needs but for wholesale distribution.
The population of England increased during the 16th century and there is some evidence which suggests that the number of inhabitants of Daventry also grew. Surveys dating from 1591 and 1617-18 refer to many newly erected houses and cottages. A list drawn up in 1604 recorded over 60 houses without rights in the common fields. All of these would have been new dwellings. Analysis of the differences between baptisms and burials recorded in the parish registers in the period 1590-1675 indicates, however, that the population was growing very slowly. Over these 86 years the excess of baptisms over burials was only 430. The periods of greatest growth were the years between 1600-1619 and 1630-1639. In the 1620s and 1640s burials exceeded baptisms, and the years 1597, 1604, 1625, 1642, and 1661-5 witnessed particularly heavy mortality, resulting from the plague and other contagions.
Daventry’s earliest borough charter dates from 1576, although the language implies that the purpose was to restore and renew institutions which had fallen into decay. Moreover, the grant of a governing body of one bailiff, 14 burgesses and 20 men ‘of the commonalty’, with jurisdictional and regulatory powers within the borough, seems to bear some relation to the merchant guild and two bailiffs already in existence and whose accounts survive from 1574. The preamble to the Account Book indicates that the 1574 arrangements were of recent origin and did not go back to the medieval period. There was no mention of burgesses or members of the commonalty in the two pre-charter years, although the town’s craftsmen were already organised into companies, doubtless in accordance with the recent Statutes of Apprentices and Artificers. R. Greenall has suggested that the formation of the craft companies argues for the imminence of borough status, because only boroughs had the powers to regulate guilds. The charter of 1576 was confirmed in 1606-7 and 1674-5, and the system of government introduced in 1576 lasted for upwards of 250 years.
A deliberate act of planning and re-organisation, possibly linked with the establishment of the priory, saw the conversion of some former peasant tenements into burgages, with others remaining agricultural holdings.
The existence of cottage tenements in significant numbers was, therefore, the first phase of urbanisation and the granting of burgage tenure was simply a process of confirmation and further promotion of urban status.
The detailed survey of all the tenements in Daventry in 1571 listed a total of some 116 cottages, most of them with a yard, backside or garden. They were located throughout the town, some of them occupying plots which had been subdivided since the medieval period, some of them built on the backsides of properties which fronted the street.
John Symmes held 20 cottages, the guild held 12 cottages, and Richard Knightley held five cottages. Surveys of 1591 and 1617-18 referred to many newly erected houses and cottages, presumably reflecting the growth in population.

{13} Daventry was a medieval market town at the junction of four main routes, to Northampton, Oxford, Coventry and London. It was a centre for the unusual industry of whip making but this declined with the disappearance of the horsedrawn coach.
Daventry was an important coaching town in the 18th century and up to eighty coaches a day passed through it. Its function is now that of service and manufacturing employment industries.

{14} Grants of lands in burgage in the `new lands' of the borough were made by 1154, and the burgesses were to judge in portmoot.

{16} Engraving - "The Prospect of Daventre and Burrough Hill July 1719";

<1> Brown A.E.(Transcriber), 1788, Daventry High Street, (checked) (Map). SNN75721.

<2> Ordnance Survey, OS Map, (unchecked) (Map). SNN57974.

<3> Sites and Areas of Archaeological Interest in Daventry, (unchecked) (Map). SNN57973.

<4> Ballinger J.; Foard G., 1999, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Daventry (Medieval/Post Medieval/ Industrial), Section 3.1.2.8, 3.5, 3.6 (checked) (Digital archive). SNN100501.

<5> BROWN A.E., 1991, Early Daventry (An Essay In Early Landscape Planning), (unchecked) (Book). SNN57948.

<6> Chapman A., 1996-7, Daventry, Vicar Lane, (part checked) (Note). SNN104090.

<7> Chapman A.; Chapman P., 2000-01, Daventry, Moot Hall, (part checked) (Note). SNN104016.

<8> EVERSON P., 1974, Archaeological Implications Study, (unchecked) (Document). SNN47568.

<9> Greenall R. L., 1999, Daventry Past, (unchecked) (Book). SNN101443.

<10> Billington V., 2000, Woad-Growing in Northamptonshire, p.59-70 (unchecked) (Article). SNN102516.

<12> Ballinger J.; Foard G., 1999, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Daventry (Medieval/Post Medieval/ Industrial), (unchecked) (Report). SNN106656.

<13> Steane J., 1974, The Northamptonshire Landscape, p. 256, 304 (Book). SNN5137.

<14> Beresford, M, 1981, English Mediaeval Boroughs: a hand-list: revisions, 1973-81, p. 63 (Journal). SNN113811.

<15> BKS Air Survey Ltd, 1963, Aerial photograph collection of Daventry (Archive). SNN115331.

<16> Dryden H.E.L., 1842-1895, Dryden Collection, DR/25/84/6 (Archive). SNN115.

Record last edited

Feb 3 2025 8:44PM