Piddington is a village in the south of the English

shire Shire is a traditional term for an administrative division of land in Great Britain and some other English-speaking countries such as Australia and New Zealand. It is generally synonymous with county. It was first used in Wessex from the begin ...

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It ...

(known as Northants) and just north of

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-e ...

. It is south of

Northampton Northampton () is a market town and civil parish in the East Midlands of England, on the River Nene, north-west of London and south-east of Birmingham. The county town of Northamptonshire, Northampton is one of the largest towns in England ...

town centre, in a

cul-de-sac A dead end, also known as a cul-de-sac (, from French for 'bag-bottom'), no through road or no exit road, is a street with only one inlet or outlet. The term "dead end" is understood in all varieties of English, but the official terminology ...

off the main road at the War Memorial in the village of Hackleton, and about south-west of there. It has a geographic size of and an average height of , rising steadily to in Salcey Forest.

Demographics

It is part of Hackleton (where the actual population is included) parish, which in total has a population of 1,568, according to the 2001 census, and contains 606 dwellings.

Governance

The village is part of Hackleton parish council, which also covers the nearby villages of

Preston Deanery Preston Deanery is a hamlet in the civil parish of Hackleton in West Northamptonshire, England. It is south of Northampton town centre and by road to the M1 London to Yorkshire motorway junction 15. It lies just off the B526 road (former ...

and Horton.

History

The villages name means 'Farm/settlement connected with Pyda'. In a field near Piddington is the site of the

Piddington Roman Villa Piddington Roman Villa is the remains of a large Roman villa at Piddington, Northamptonshire, about south-east of Northampton, a county in the East Midlands of England. Location The villa is on the site of an earlier late Iron Age settlemen ...

. In Roman times, one of the most important roads in the country, used to transport troops, ran through the village. Several residents of Piddington and neighbouring village Hackleton were part of the dissenter church movement in the 18th century. The missionary William Carey lived in Hackleton, where he worked as an apprentice shoemaker, and later briefly in Piddington with his wife Dorothy Placket, before departing on his voyage with the Baptist Missionary Society to Bengal. The couple were married i
St John the Baptist Church, Piddington
in 1781. Initially Dorothy had refused to accompany William on his voyage, but with all decided and farewells written, the missionary party were denied a licence to travel on a vessel of the East India Company by the company directors. The opportunity then arose to travel in a Danish East Indiaman, and Dorothy was finally persuaded to leave Piddington and join her husband and son, Felix. By the 1870s, Piddington was linked to the national rail network by the

Bedford to Northampton Line Bedford is a market town in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 Census, the population of the Bedford built-up area (including Biddenham and Kempston) was 106,940, making it the second-largest settlement in Bedfordshire, behind Luton, whilst th ...

which provided a station to serve the village. The

Stratford and Midland Junction Railway Stratford may refer to: Places Australia * Stratford, Queensland, a suburb of Cairns * Stratford, Victoria, a town in the state district of Gippsland East ** Stratford railway station, Victoria, a railway station on the Bairnsdale railway line in ...

, known as the "SMJ", also opened a station at to the south of Horton village. This part of the line ran from

Towcester Towcester ( ) is an affluent market town in Northamptonshire, England. It currently lies in West Northamptonshire but was the former administrative headquarters of the South Northamptonshire district council. Towcester is one of the olde ...

Blisworth Blisworth is a village and civil parish in the West Northamptonshire, England. The West Coast Main Line, from London Euston to Manchester and Scotland, runs alongside the village partly hidden and partly on an embankment. The Grand Union Canal ...

and

Stoke Bruerne Stoke Bruerne is a small village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in West Northamptonshire, England about north of Milton Keynes and south of Northampton. The civil parish population at the 2011 Census was 373. History Stoke Brue ...

with a connection to Northampton and the

West Coast Main Line The West Coast Main Line (WCML) is one of the most important railway corridors in the United Kingdom, connecting the major cities of London and Glasgow with branches to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh. It is one of the busiest ...

. It closed to passengers in 1951, and was later shut completely as part of the 1960s Beeching cuts. The route of the line is just to the southeast of the village and is clearly visible, with a railway bridge marked with a weight restriction, at the side of the chicken farm. The track bed is intact but the railway bridge is cracked, possibly caused by a vehicle collision. To the west of the village, there is a disused quarry marked on

Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...

maps but barely visible due to a copse of trees. This was used for lime burning up until 1924/25. The stream, Wootton Brook, running from Horton to Preston Deanery very close to the village on the north side was once the divide between the hamlet of Hackleton and Piddington, but in 1935 the amalgamation of the parishes created the civil parish of Hackleton.

Facilities

It consists of approximately 300 houses, a church and a "pocket park". The Pocket Park, more formally known as Longland Meadow, was gifted by the Longland family to the parish and was previously a private field for livestock. There is a pub "The Spread Eagle", on Forest Road, which leads to Salcey Forest. A second pub, "The White Hart", is on the main road in Hackleton. Both are popular with " locals" as well as "out of towners". A village shop on Forest Road, the main road in the village, closed in the 1980s. The village is now served by the village shop and Post Office in nearby Hackleton. A petrol station and garage on Forest Road have also long since gone. The village church, St. John the Baptist dates from c.1290, although the majority of it has been added since. It is also believed there was a place of worship on the site before.

Famous people

* William Carey, Baptist missionary to India, shoemaker and resident. *

Allan Lamb Allan Joseph Lamb (born 20 June 1954) is a South African-born former English cricketer, who played for the first-class teams of Western Province and Northamptonshire. Making his Test debut in 1982, he was a fixture in the Test and One-Day Inter ...

, international

cricketer Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

and former resident. * Margaret K. Wright, designer and embroiderer who exhibited internationally, ran workshops in Piddington for 21 years.Church Times
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References

External links

Upper Nene Valley Archaeology Society and Piddington Roman Villa in Current Archaeology Magazine

The museum at Piddington in a converted Baptist Chapel
{{authority control Villages in Northamptonshire Hackleton