Wellingborough
Wellingborough is a
town in
Northamptonshire,
England situated some eleven miles from the county town of
Northampton. It has a
population of 48,428 (2001
census). Formerly a
municipal borough, the town has been the seat of the larger
Borough of Wellingborough since
1974.
It is situated on the north side of the
River Nene (locally pronounced in accordance with its
17th century spelling of "Nen"), with most of the older town being sited on the flanks of the hills above the river's
flood plain.
Wellingborough dates from the
6th century. It is mentioned in the
Domesday Book under the name of
Wendelburie, and was granted a market
charter in
1201.
As mentioned above, the town was founded in the early
Saxon period. The name is formed from elements which translate, roughly, as "the town of the people of Waendel", or Waendel-ingas-burgh. Many newcomers to the town mistakenly think that the name comes from the 5 wells that are found around the town (Red Well, Hemming Well, Stanwell, Lady's Well, Whyte Well), which appear on its coat of arms.
The medieval history of Wellingborough had no features that stand out from any other small town in the country. It housed a modest
monastic grange – now the
Jacobean Croyland 'Abbey' – which was an offshoot of the much larger and better known monastery of
Croyland Abbey, near
Peterborough, some 30 miles down-river. This part of the town is known these days as 'Croyland'.
In Elizabethan times the
Lord of the Manor, Sir
Christopher Hatton was a sponsor of
Sir Francis Drake's expeditions, which is why Drake renamed one of his ships the
Golden Hind. A modern connection with this is that the main hotel in the centre of town is still named the "Hind Hotel" (no web page I can find).
In the Civil war there was little of note (the largest substantial battle in the area was
Naseby in 1645), although a minor skirmish in the town resulted in the carrying off to Northampton of the parish priest, Thomas Jones, by a group of Roundheads. However, after the
Civil War Wellingborough was home to a substantial colony of
Diggers. Little information about this period is available, which causes some local historians to suspect deliberate suppression.
More recent history has been undistinguished save by economic changes, many of which are more widely shared with the eastern end of the county of Northamptonshire. Wellingborough town centre had some re-development in the 1960's and 70's - including an Arndale Centre (now renamed Swansgate) which is now often regarded as ugly.
Agrarian hinterland.
Boot & Shoe industry.Iron & Steel smelting (1920s - 1990s).
Light manufacturing (
Scott Bader chemical plant - xref to
industrial relations;
British Leyland plant at the foot of Sidegate Lane.).
Wellingborough Park Farm Industrial Estate is a major base for many retailers national distribution centres including Homebase, Somerfield/Kwiksave and Boots. This is a tribute to the towns excellent comminication links, lying on the A45 major trunk route providing easy access to the M1 for north and south links and the A14 trunk road only lies 2-3 miles from the town providing links to East Anglia and the Midlands too.
Major TownsNorthampton - 8 miles
Milton Keynes - 18 miles
Peterborough - 30 miles
Leicester - 32 miles
Cambridge - 45 miles
Birmingham - 62 miles
London - 68 miles.Wellingborough is not really considered a town for London commuters, compared to wealthier home county towns. But this has changed in recent years, with Midland Mainline providing fast convenient Intercity train links to London St Pancras in 48 minutes, which is compariable if not faster than some travelling times for commuters living closer to the capital having to use local "metro" service trains.
The St Pancras train terminal will also boost the towns links in 2007 when this becomes the new Eurostar terminus.
Wellingborough provides a good range of local shops, which attracts populations from local villages and towns into Wellingborough, especially on Wednesday's, Friday's and Saturday's when the market is in town with local traders selling their produce and goods. The town has a large indoor shopping centre called the Swansgate Centre providing over 50 major and independent retails with a large multi-storey providing easy parking for visitors to the town. There are three large foodstores located in Wellingborough - Morrison's, Tesco and Sainsbury's.
*Wellingborough School
|
Wellingborough School - Main Building |
Wellingborough School was founded in 1595 and is one of the oldest schools in the country.
*Sir Christopher Hatton School
*Weavers School
*St. Columbus' School
*Wrenn School
*Sir
Christopher Hatton,
*
Mick Mannock, a World War One flying ace from (IIRC) the Mill Road area, and
*
Thom Yorke, singer for
Radiohead.
*
James Lovett, prominent botanist.
*
Peter Ebdon, former world champion snooker player.
*
Peter Murphy, singer for
Bauhaus lived a large portion of his early life in Wellingborough.
The geology of the area has had only relatively minor influences on the development of Wellingborough. As noted above, the town is sited on the hills adjoining the flood plain of the River Nene. In the predominantly agrarian mediaeval period, this combination of access to fertile, if flood-prone, valley bottom soils and drier (but heavier and more clay-rich) hillside/ hilltop soils seems to have been good for a mixed agricultural base.
The clay-rich hilltop soils are primarily a consequence of blanketing of the area with
boulder clay or glacial
till during the recent glaciations. On the valley sides and valley floor however, these deposits have been largely washed away in the late glacial period, and in the valley bottom extensive deposits of gravels were laid down, which have largely been exploited for building aggregate in the last century. While important for the environment of the area, in economic and employment terms, this industry was pretty minor.
Iron Ore
Undoubtedly though the most economically important aspect of the geology of the area is the
Northampton sands
ironstone formation. This is a marine sand of
Jurassic age (
Bajocian stage), deposited as part of an estuary sequence and overlain by a sequence of limestones and mudrocks.
Significant amounts of the sand have been replaced or displaced by iron minerals giving an average ore grade of around 25% wt/wt iron. To the west the iron ores have been moderately exploited for a very long time, but their high phosphorus content made them difficult to smelt and produced iron of poor quality until the development of the
Bessemer steel making process and the "basic slag" smelting chemistry, which combine to make high quality steelmaking possible from these unpreposessing ores.
The Northampton Sands were a strategic resource for the UK in the run-up to World War Two, being the best developed bulk iron producing processes wholly free from dependence on imported materials. However, because the Northampton Sands share in the regional
dip of all the sediments of this part of Britain to the east-south-east, they become increasingly difficult to work as one progresses east across the county.
Around Wellingborough it was possible to extract the ore by systematically stripping the
overburden of mudrocks and limestone off the ore bed, then removing the ore, and finally replacing the overburden (often the cleaner limestone was removed to make the lime for the "basic slag" process) in the exposed cavity. This left distinctive arcuate quarries across much of the landscape around Wellingborough and north-north-east towards
Corby (visit
Irchester Country Park to see a much overgrown abandoned quarry redeveloped as a leisure site). Further east, around
Finedon,
Raunds and
Chelveston, quarrying was carried out during the Second World War by underground "pillar and stall" mining. These mines were abandoned and sealed in the 1950s, and the number of people who even know of their existence is rapidly decreasing.
This regional
dip spelt the ultimate death knell of the iron and steel industry in the area - ultimately it was going to become uneconomic to extract such ores. For a time the Corby smelters continued using ore imported through Humberside, but they finally closed in the late-1980s.
*
Borough Council of Wellingborough*
Northamptonshire County Council*
Wellingborough Freecycle Group Give an item a new home
