Long Buckby

Long Buckby is a large village and civil parish in West Northamptonshire, England. In 2020 the parish of Long Buckby, which includes the hamlet of Long Buckby Wharf, was estimated to have a population of 4,303.

Long Buckby is hill top village, located around north-east of the town of Daventry, and roughly midway between Northampton and Rugby, with each being around to the south-east and north-west respectively. The west of the parish has the A5 road, Grand Union Canal, West Coast Main Line railway and M1 motorway all passing through the Watford Gap, with Watford, Northamptonshire being the next village to the north.

Just south of the village is Long Buckby railway station on the Northampton Loop corollary of the West Coast Main Line.

History

The villages name origin is uncertain. 'Bukki's farm/settlement' or 'Bucca's farm/settlement'. Alternatively, 'he-goat farm/settlement'.

Long Buckby has a history going back approximately 1,000 years to the Vikings when all of northern, central and eastern England came under the Danelaw. The village was recorded in the Domesday Book as ''Buchebei'', its prefix was first recorded in the Elizabethan era in reference to the length of the village.

Near the centre of the village are the remaining earthworks of a medieval castle, which was probably built by the lords of the manor, the de Quincy family in the 12th century. The castle was likely an earth and timber construction, built by 1150 AD, and occupied until some time after 1200 AD. The surviving earthworks known locally as 'The Mounts' consist of an oval ring surrounded by a ditch.

The parish church of St Lawrence has a tower which dates to the 12th century, with the rest of the building added later.

Long Buckby was once a thriving industrial village: In the 17th century, a woolen industry was established, and Long Buckby became a centre of weaving and woolcombing. After 1800 this went into decline and was replaced by a thriving shoemaking industry. This was enhanced by the arrival of the Grand Union Canal nearby in the early 19th century, upon which Long Buckby had a busy wharf. The shoemaking industry went into gradual decline in the 20th century, and had died out by 2000.

Since the 1960s, the construction of the nearby M1 motorway, spurred expansion of the village from around 2,500 inhabitants to over 4,000, and has caused the nature of the village to change into a residential and commuter village.

Nonconformity was a strong tradition in the village, with a chapel of the United Reform Church built here in 1707, the present building was built in 1771.

The small hamlet of Long Buckby Wharf, is separate from the main village, but within the parish. This is located alongside the Grand Union Canal, and was once a thriving community with its own post office, church and village hall.

The village offers a wide range of amenities and services to its residents, including a doctor's surgery, two dentists, four churches, two schools, a public library, a veterinary surgery, a boarding cattery, a post office, a community centre, Long Buckby Mill Park Nature Reserve and Cotton End Park. There are three pubs in the village (The Pigeon, Old King's Head & a micro-pub Badger's Arms). A fourth pub, The Admiral Rodney is closed and now a hair salon and rented flats. Local shops include two grocery stores, a butchers, several hairdressers, a card and gift shop, chemist and a wide range of restaurants and take-aways.

The English comedian Stanley Unwin moved to Long Buckby in 1940 when he got a job with the BBC
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