Monument record 953 - Long Buckby

{1} There would appear to have been four major phases to the development of Long Buckby: the origin and growth of the village up to 1280; the development and decline as market village between 1280 and 1365; the agricultural village from 1365 to the 17th century and then the industrialisation of the village originating at some point between the late 17th to mid 18th century.
Buckby does not appear to have any central place functions in the Saxon period. It did however have a complex manorial structure with at least three separate manors. This may in part account for the complex settlement plan and the existence of a separate hamlet called Cotton, which probably coalesced with Buckby as a result of post medieval growth of the village which then became known as Long Buckby. The seigneurial importance of the settlement in the early medieval period is however shown by the establishment of a castle there in the late 11th or early 12th century. This may relate to the existence of a major medieval road running through Buckby, from Northampton to Coventry, combined with the ownership of the main manor a major lord, the Earl of Winchester.
It has not been possible to reconstruct the manorial structure in relation to the topography of the settlement, but this may prove to be the key to the understanding of the plan form and evolution of Long Buckby. There were two manors in 1086 and this may explain the two discrete foci: one based on the castle and Salem, perhaps laid out by the early medieval period along what was later the major road from Northampton to Coventry; the other a new addition with church on a parallel road to the north. The basic plan form does however appear to fall into what may prove to be a discrete type, with two broadly parallel roads converging but not meeting and with the settlement at the point of nearest convergence
The foundation of the market and fair at Long Buckby can be securely dated to 1280. It was a seigneurial foundation following the acquisition of the manor by the Earl of Lincoln. This was towards the end of the major phase of market creation in Northamptonshire in the 13th century, which rapidly slowed thereafter. Only one of these late foundations, Rockingham in 1271, survived into the post medieval period, and that as a very minor marketing centre. At Buckby a market place was laid out, apparently involving the addition of a substantial plan component to the edge of the existing areas of occupation, between the early settlement and Cotton, which was finally united as a single settlement either at this time or possibly in the early post medieval period. The foundation of the market may have led to a significant shift in the focus of the settlement, compounded by the desertion of the castle and the integration of the main manors into one.
The market had modest success in the late 13th and early 14th century, judging from the market toll, but Long Buckby was never a major commercial or industrial centre. It is possible that there was limited production of cloth within the settlement, but there is no indication that Buckby acquired any other urban attributes. Though it may have expanded somewhat as a result of its marketing function, the relative size and wealth of the settlement was to a large degree a reflection of the size of its township, which enabled the growth of a large agricultural population. The viability of Buckby market was always probably very marginal and so, under the impact of the recession accompanying the Black Death, the market had gone into serious decline by 1353-4 and had apparently completely decayed by 1368. A three day fair from Whitsun eve was granted in 1385. There is no evidence of any attempt to revive the market or fair in the late medieval or post medieval period, when West Haddon market was revived.
By the late 16th century Long Buckby, as it then became known, was described as an agricultural settlement with a large but relatively poor population. A woollen industry seems to have survived in some form through the 16th century to be greatly developed in the later 17th and 18th century, exploiting the labour resource offered by the large but relatively poor settlement. In the later 18th century Long Buckby was the dominant non-urban settlement involved in the woollen industry. With the decline of the woollen industry in the later 18th century and early 19th century the village again provided an significant pool of poor labourers which encouraged the development of the boot and shoe industry in the settlement in the 19th century, leading to the growth into a small town.
Long Buckby operated as an industrialised village as opposed to a town in the period following 1750, having lost its urban market status by the end of the medieval period. Industrialisation occurred early (in the 18th century) and although this process continued throughout the 19th century the large-scale development which occurred in other industrial villages and towns in the county did not take place. By the mid 18th century Long Buckby was operating as a large open village, but with an industrial element based on the woolcombing and weaving industries, The boot and shoe industry was a major component of the settlement in the 19th century with a particular emphasis on outworking. The settlement did not, however, go through a process of large-scale urbanisation and industrialisation despite the innovative approaches to the boot and shoe trade by a number of individual manufacturers in the town and the good communication links in close proximity to the settlement. The boot and shoe industry remained important in Long Buckby throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries with boot and shoe factories and workshops continuing to develop, but its impact on the growth of the settlement was negligible compared to the overriding importance of the industry in the Ise Valley region of the county.

{2} The maximum possible extent of the medieval settlement has been determined from the extent of old enclosures recorded in 1766, but the earliest map to give consistent and extensive evidence on individual tenements and buildings is the 1st edition 1:2500 Ordnance Survey map. Given the lack of an adequate early map, the relative complexity of the plan of the settlement, the complexity of the tenurial organisation and the absence of good evidence to reconstruct the tenurial pattern or locate the manors, any analysis of the evolution of the plan form of the settlement must be highly conjectural analysis.

{4} The development of Long Buckby is of interest; various features such as the settlement remains and the situation of the castle, together with some place- name evidence and the morphology of the existing village, as well as other clues, suggest that its history is by no means simple. The village is extremely attenuated in shape as its name implies, but the name Long Buckby is apparently not recorded until the 16th century and the surviving architecture suggests that the long eastern extension of the village is perhaps a relatively recent growth towards the separate medieval settlement of Cotton End. If this is so, then the village can be seen to have been fairly compact in the past, arranged around a neat rectangular market place now encroached upon. However, the castle is oddly situated in relation to this market place, and indeed to the centre of the village. It seems to be more closely related to another road system, and even to another settlement which may have been located to the west in the area now known as Salem. If the original Buckby in fact lay in that area the castle would have overlooked it and controlled the approach from the east. The present village can thus be seen as a later, perhaps planned addition to this earlier settlement to the west, set up in about 1280 by Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln and Salisbury, when he was granted a weekly market and two annual fairs at Buckby.
To the south and south west of the present village centre was an area called Salem. Large parts of the remains have been destroyed so little can be said about them as earthworks. However, together with other evidence, they suggest that the layout of the village was once somewhat different and they may, in part, be the remains of the earlier village of Long Buckby which was possibly replanned on its present site in the 13th century.

{7} During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Long Buckby itself was an important centre for wool-combing and weaving although this declined at the time of the industrial revolution,. In the seventeenth century Royalist forces are recorded as passing through Long Buckby on the way to Northampton.

{8} Possibly not taken forward to Stage 2 survey and assessment.

<1> BALLINGER J., 1999, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Long Buckby (Industrial), (part checked) (Digital archive). SNN100506.

<2> FOARD G., 2000, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Long Buckby (Medieval + Post Medieval), (unchecked) (Report). SNN100746.

<3> Foard G.; Ballinger J., 2000, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Long Buckby, (unchecked) (Report). SNN101574.

<4> Royal Commission on The Historical Monuments of England, 1981, An Inventory of The Historical Monuments in The County of Northampton, p.133-135 (checked) (Series). SNN77381.

<5> GRACE-DUTTON K.; REEVE S.A.; WRIGHT F.W., The Long Buckby Directory, (unchecked) (Booklet). SNN69788.

<6> Greenall R.L., 1977, The History of Boot and Shoemaking at Long Buckby, (unchecked) (Article). SNN107174.

<7> Morton R., 1998, Land Adjacent To Ryehill Farm, Long Buckby, Northamptonshire, Archaeological Assessment, p.13-7 (checked) (Report). SNN100014.

Record last edited

May 18 2021 9:51AM