Bauhaus – Memories from the Recording Studio
My name is Mrs Mavis Tompkins and I’m the widow of the late Derek Tompkins, who owned Shield Recording Studios in Kettering, and Beck studios in Wellingborough.
It was my husband who recorded Bauhaus’ Bela Lugosis’s Dead in one take at Beck, and also several of their L.P.’s and singles, both at Beck and Rockfield. We became great friends of the group and I am still in touch with David and Kevin Haskins.
I remember when Derek went to Rockfield Studio’s in Monmouthshire, to engineer several of Bauhaus’s recordings. They liked to think of him as a kind of Guru, mentor, and father figure! We took our caravan, and it was a nightmare to negotiate the long and winding dirt road up to the farmhouse, with a very steep gradient. We dined each night with the boys in the farmhouse, together with much hilarity and wine.
It was here that they decided to buy the hearse, and Derek was not pleased as they were tearing around the countryside in it while they were supposed to be recording. One time at Rockfield, they were sitting in our car, meditating and theorising on life with the help of certain substances, when smoke began to pour from below the seats. They had set fire to the carpet!
I used to sit and sketch the farm buildings and David J was very kind in his criticism of my attempts. I wasn’t present when they recorded Bela, but I gather it was a magical experience; they were thrilled that even if Derek was a ‘father figure’ in his late fifties, and unconventional in his attire, (old carpet slippers and baggy trousers, cigarette butt
stuck to his lips) he was definitely on their page and knew exactly how to interpret their needs.
Many more details of the way Derek was involved with Bauhaus, and later Love and Rockets, can be found in the following books: Bauhaus Undead by Kevin Haskins, Who Killed Mister Moonlight by David J and Bauhaus and Beyond by Ian Shirley. Both David and Kevin have contributed to my recent books Back Street Genius, and about to be printed C-c-c-come ‘an ‘ave a listen.
The photo provided is the original black and white photo I took of Derek, which was subsequently colourised and used by Love and Rockets – formed by Daniel Ash, David J and Kevin Haskins when Bauhaus split up – for the front cover of their 1988 album ‘Lazy’.
I have recently turned 89, but still very much enjoy their music.
The Wombles at Weston Favell Shopping Centre
I was 18-months old when my Mum took me and my brother to the grand opening of a brand-new shopping centre on the outskirts of Northampton in 1974, Weston Favell Shopping.
My Mum recalls, “The opening of the shopping centre was in the local newspaper and advertised that the Wombles character mascot would be there”. The Wombles were hugely popular at the time with a children’s stop motion animation TV series and the band The Wombles had a 1974 chart-topping hit ‘Remember You’re a Womble’.
My Mum said that we drove to the shopping centre on the opening day and parked in the huge car park at the front of the building. She recalls that she could not believe the scale of this new building. It was like nothing she had seen before in her words: “Back in those days there wasn’t any out-of-town retail parks, so it was very exciting to be able to park up and visit so many shops under one roof”.
My Mum remembers once we were inside the shopping centre looking up at the enormous modern vaulted ceilings and down at the black marbled shiny floor, she said plants and foliage embellished the columns and pillars and it all looked so modern.
She said that a lot of people turned out for the opening and that the atmosphere was wonderful. We queued for some time to have our photograph taken with the Wombles, but it was well worth the wait.
Although I was too young to recall the opening day, I remember lots of other trips to the shopping centre throughout my childhood. It always felt like a big day out, a treat when my Mum would say “We’re going to Weston Favell today”.
Now 47 years on I am proud to say that I work at the shopping centre within the management team and love playing my part in helping this generation of families make happy memories whilst visiting the centre.
Nearly five decades on and Weston Favell Shopping continues to serve its community and host fun club events for local children including meet and greet character mascot days, just not the Wombles!
By Janette Muddiman (Johnson)
Bus journeys in Northampton
Approx. 1970. The memory of catching a double decker bus with my mum, that would drive from the town centre up to the Weston Favell area and drive around the outer roads so that the passengers could view the foundations of the newest build houses. I seem to remember the new roads were part laid too. I was a child at the time and even the foundations looked modern, the outlined gardens seemed massive too.
Even as a child you could tell this was going to be the start of a kind of new phase for Northampton, it just felt modern and as if it was a new start.
But I remember not many people being on those buses.
My second memory is of the Derngate bus station actually situated in Derngate, this was before the Greyfriars bus station replaced it on a new location in 1976. I used to go riding at the Farm which was located where Wootton fields is now, the actual farm house and stables probably would have been where the Wootton Fields shops are located, there is a nursery I think there too now.
Back to the bus station – I liked going there because it was an adventure. My mum and me would get a green bus because we were going into what was the countryside, so green buses were the county ones, red buses were town I believe and green buses would be travelling to the outskirts or into the villages. There seemed a definite divide of town and countryside at that time, before the proposed housing started to be built in the East Hunsbury, Camp Hill, Mereway and Wootton Fields area. These areas were fields and I remember the top of the London road and the Rothersthorpe road being just fields.
Photo Credit: thanks to Northampton Transport Heritage
The Politics of Roundabouts in Corby!
I worked for Northampton Borough Council from 1967-73 when the town was expanding. In 1973 I moved to the County Council in the County Surveyors Depot and one of the design jobs we had was to design a roundabout and link roads into the Corby Steel works from the A427, current image shown above.
At the time we were sworn to secrecy as we were told the Steel Works were to be closed completely, so we had to go along with this, and I had to design the roundabout on the map to include an entrance into the steelworks at the top left of the roundabout. The southern leg of the A43 was designed and built at a later date but was also provided for by the size of the original roundabout.
When the road/roundabout was built, the entrance was also built, and can still be seen and is used as a layby, built to keep the locals happier in assuming the works were continuing without causing any political unrest in the area, but we knew what was about to happen.
A bit of a jigsaw in the life of Corby.
By Neil Farmer
Eighties Live Music Scene in Northampton
I first arrived in Northampton as a schoolteacher, but very quickly got involved in the local music scene, not as a musician, but as a writer! I felt that the local media was not doing enough to support live music, so I contacted a local newspaper to air my views on the subject.
What I did not expect was for them to invite me to write a weekly music column for them, which I quickly accepted! Going to watch live rock or pop bands in Northampton during the early eighties could at times be something of an ordeal rather than a pleasure, not so much because of the sharp divide of talent between bands & musicians but because of the cramped & crowded pubs or clubs in which you would find yourself.
I could regularly be found listening to music down at The Black Lion, The White Elephant, Romany, Five Bells, or other pubs checking out and supporting local bands & musicians with my reviews. Despite the lack of decent venues, the live scene was vibrant and prospered and generally well supported. Many local bands played to packed houses with over fifty bands performing regularly around the town at an ever increasing number of pubs & clubs.
Out of the sweat & smoke two bands managed to clamber from the pub & club circuit onto our nation’s television screens and the larger concert venues of the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world. Former St Georges Avenue Art school students Bauhaus hit the big time with their rendition of David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” which rose to No. 4 in the British charts and earned a much remembered appearance on Top of the Pops, but they also enjoyed a much wider & longstanding global cultural & musical influence.
Bauhaus’ roots can be traced back to the heady days of punk in 1976 and the sweaty atmosphere of The Paddock & Racecourse Pavilion. Seeing Bauhaus at that time was genuinely stirring, vocalist Pete Murphy daringly provocative, toying with the audience who knew they were watching something very special. Within six weeks of their formation Bauhaus had recorded their first single, the hugely influential & what will come to be regarded as their finest hour, ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’, on the Small Wonder label. A startlingly atmospheric debut, David Jay’s bass and Kevin Haskins drums provided the single with its elegant & powerful metal skeleton, whilst Murphy’s hard, haunting voice alongside Danny Ash’s dripping guitar, provided the magic.
The single was chosen to appear in the Bowie film, ‘The Hunger’ with the band playing themselves. Despite the singles success of ‘Bela’ & ‘She’s in Parties’, Bauhaus were a live phenomenon. No recording could hope to capture the riveting presence of Murphy as he writhed about the stage, the howl of Ash’s guitar and the voodoo drums & hypnotic bass of Haskins & Jay. Even the four albums, ‘Mask, In the flatfield, The Sky’s gone out & Burning from the Inside’, could not recreate those unique charismatic performances.
The second most successful and productive town band comes from an unlikely field of music, Rockabilly, and they are the Cotton brothers from St James known as The Jets. The Jets also had a couple of top thirty UK hits with “Yes Tonight Josephine” and “Love Makes the World Go Round”, toured extensively and made many television appearances. Bob, Ray & Tony started making music way back in 1978 and are still touring and producing albums today.
One of my favourite bands was the excellent Fifi & The Firebirds fronted by the late, great charismatic & hugely talented Linda Casey or Leo as she was sometimes called. The line up also included Phil Dann on guitar, Troy Watkins on bass, Steve ‘Ty Sticks’ on drums & occasionally Chester on Sax. It was a combination that worked well as all the band were all experienced musicians, most notably some former members of excellent band Coil. Many of their memorable songs were self – penned, either by Casey or Dann, who later went on to form St Anthony’s Fire.
Another excellent band were Tempest, built around the talents of former Religious Overdose vocalist Alex Novak. They released an excellent single ‘Lady Left This’ and recorded BBC radio sessions for both Kid Jensen & John Peel before splitting. Zoom Club, The Jazz Butcher, Where’s Lisse, Georgie Markov’s Empire, The Russians, Nation III, The World Service, Absolute Heroes and Groovy Underwear were just a few of the many bands & musicians contributing to an exciting live music scene around the town during the early eighties.
Northampton will never be remembered as a musical hotspot in the same way as Liverpool, London, Coventry, or Sheffield but the county town has produced many excellent musicians & bands and continues to do so to this day.
by The Travel Locker
Corby Memories
It was a cold January day in 1953 and I was a ten-year-old dreading what the future had in story. My father had transferred from the steelworks at Barrow in Furness to the Corby plant of Stewarts and Lloyds in October 1951. The family – my mother, seven-year-old sister and I were being reunited and swapping a Coronation Street –two-up, two-down terraced council house in Barrow-in-Furness and moving into a newly-built three-bedroom Corporation house 10, Cupar Crescent close to Corby’s rapidly developing town centre.
Even so, I was leaving all my pals behind, my school football team and my aunts and uncles and was hardly ready for such a life-changing move. Like most 10-year-olds I thought moving to a town I had never even heard of about 200 miles away was a bad idea.
But back then Cory was a town full of incomers. The population was about 13,000 I think, houses were going up faster than some tents and the town centre was in its first stage of development.
Memory can play tricks – especially in a 78-year-old – but one of my first recollections is finding a tortoise on a building site in what was to become Argyll Street on the way to school. The tortoise – who my sister claimed and named Bobby – is still wandering around her back garden up here in Cumbria some 70 years later.
Getting used to Scottish accents and learning the names of Celtic football team were my early introductions to school life at Our Lady of Walsingham junior school in Occupation Road but when I passed my 11-plus I had to learn another “foreign” language – Ketteringese or, as the Telegraph cartoonist told us daily in the Airada cartoon. Oo, megal where’s gooin nah?” English translation: Hello, girl, where are you going now?”
A year was spent at Kettering Grammar before I was among the pupils at the opening day of Corby Grammar School. Highlights of my three years there were largely sporting – first captain of the School cricket team – chosen, I later suspected, because I was English and therefore must know more about the game that Scots – and part of a “rebel” football team who played in the final of the local Coronation Shield at Corby Town’s Occupation Road ground, losing 4-3 to the “unbeatables” of Corby County Modern School. I say “rebel” because CGS was a rugby-only school and my friend and I (Dickie Rich) who formed the team were refused permission to call ourselves Corby Grammar School or wear the red and white colours of the school, having to play in borrowed kit. At 4 pm on the day of the final we were called into the headmaster’s office (then a Mr. Kempe who I believe went on to become head at Gordonstoun) to be told that we would not be allowed to bring the shield into the school should we win the final, to which my friend replied: Don’t worry, sir, we’ll all have it in our homes for a month each. You can have it for the last month if you want.”
We were sent packing but not before French master Ted Kimmons wished us a sly Good luck on the QT.
Having set my heart on a journalistic career from an early age, I left in August 1958 – to join Stewarts and Lloyds in their transport department. A bit of part time work on the now defunct Corby News, work as a freelance in the Northants Press Agency was followed by a job in the Corby office (Elizabeth Street next to the Corby Candle, as sports writer on the Evening Telegraph and Corby Leader).
Among the early reporting jobs was joining Tony Jacklin on the first tee at the opening of Priors Hall Golf Club.
After marrying we moved on to the new housing estate Shire Lodge – a flat at 12, Severn Walk (underfloor heating and all!) before moving into Wimborne Walk. I stayed there for ten years, working eventually as sports editor in the Dryland Street, Kettering office of the Telegraph before joining the Daily Express in their Manchester office.
Sadly, Corby as a town has a poor reputation – even topping some list as the worst place to live – but I have fond memories of the place that was my home for more than 20 years.
It began life as an out of the way village and developed into what is it? 70,000 population so it must have something going for it!
Peter Wilson
Corby belongs to me
I be lang to corby
******************
It was in Scotland April 1968
I was 5 years young I was just starting
primary school St Timothy’s in Coatbridge Lanarkshire
meanwhile in the garden of England there was a new town being born, Corby Town Little Scotland, little did I know at that time Corby. Was calling me on
it was to be my destination. A place where I was to go to grow up in, work in, and become a part of an amazing community of hard working generous multicultural societies full of amazing. People arts musical fun loving. Hard nosed awesome people journey I would both hate and fall in love with, but now it’s April again Corby England I’m now turning 58 years young
from child teenager young man old man
Corby belongs to me x
by Angus Smith
Northampton – ‘Is the love in my fairytale.’
I remember vividly the minute that I heard that my family and I were moving to some place called Northampton as I decided to hide under the Habitat chair in our dining room and told my Mum and Dad that I wasn’t going. It was November 1978 and the whole course of my life was about to change forever.
It was an immediate reaction from a seven year old who had been born and bred on Merseyside, who loved living by the sea in a village called Hightown which had a beach, adored being close to his Grandparents who spoilt him rotten, loved the school he went to and his mates and who from August to May went every other week to Goodison Park to watch his beloved Everton Football Club. Why on earth would anyone want to leave that for some place in the East Midlands that he’d never even heard of?
But the die was cast, my Dad had been asked to move his job as a Sales Representative with Tillotsons from Liverpool to the East of England and having looked at other locations such as Bedford, my parents had settled on the market town of Northampton as our new home and a crying, traumatised nearly eight year old had no say in the matter.
It all moved very quickly. My Mum and Dad found a house on a newish estate called Langlands off the Billing Road East, my new school was going to be St.Gregory’s R.C Lower School and my Mum would teach at somewhere called Bective Middle School. Already Northampton was proving to be different as it had the lower-middle-upper school system whereas Merseyside just had primary and secondary. It would be the first of many differences. We came in December for a visit and I was made up to be getting a day off school and was very impressed with the very plush Westone Hotel that Dad’s company allowed us to stay in whilst Mum and I saw our new schools. Maybe this Northampton wasn’t too bad after all?
I really liked my new school even if it was a lot smaller than the one I was used. The Headmistress, appropriately called Mrs Head, seemed friendly if a little stern but I was disappointed to hear that ball games weren’t allowed in the playground like they were back home. Coming from a football mad city like Liverpool, this worried me as did the fact that the local football team were in the lowly Fourth Division of the English Football League and everyone knew them as ‘the Cobblers’ not Northampton Town. Despite this, it all seemed like a big adventure and I went back to Merseyside for my remaining weeks at school and the difficult task of saying goodbye to all of my mates.
Christmas came and went and then in the middle of something that the newspapers were calling the ‘Winter of Discontent’ we started our new life in our new town of Northampton at the start of January 1979. Only we didn’t completely…Our house on the Langlands Estate wasn’t going to be ours until February so the plan was that Mum and I would start at our new schools, we would stay in hotels and guest houses (The Saxon, The Grand and then The Langham) during the week and then we would spend our week-ends back in Merseyside. It was a chaotic time as in addition to our temporary living situation, the proliferation of strikes by the power workers and others meant that the schools were often closed and I had to spend the day with my Dad. This was good for me however as I got to see a lot of the town centre and its’ environs. I remember visiting the burgeoning Weston Favell ‘supacentre’ and marvelling at how modern it seemed in comparison with the New Strand in Bootle back near our old home. I also remember my Dad getting me a football top from Collins Sports on Gold Street and I remember seeing the market in all of its’ glory and thinking how nice it all looked.
At school, my newness and my Scouse accent meant I was a novelty and I got asked to say certain words by other pupils and teachers which made them laugh! It meant I made friends very quickly and I found the local Northampton children very friendly, even if I was bewildered by the way they spoke with a very different accent and with phrases like ‘watcha.’ I got used to not being able to play footie at Dinner breaks and instead joined in with the games of chase and our version of ‘British Bulldog’ called ‘Running Cock.’ It also helped that a few of the children in my class were also not born and bred Northamptonians with some having come from London and the South East to live on the rapidly developing Eastern District.
It was still difficult to settle in however with our temporary living situation so when in early February we finally got the keys to our new home on Selston Walk, Langlands, it brought a great deal of relief to us all. Suddenly we were able to enjoy Northampton at week-ends, be it walking in the nearby Abington (or Abi!) Park, shop in the very glamorous and modern looking Grosvenor Centre or go for drinks and pub lunches at the Abington or the Britannia on the Bedford Road – two pubs that I would get to know a lot more in quite a few more years to come…
And an immediate benefit of living further South came in early Feb when my Dad took me to Wembley for the first time to watch the England-Northern Ireland international in which my hero Bob Latchford scored. It wasn’t quite the same as going to see my beloved Everton every other week but my Dad promised me we would go back as much as possible. And a few months later he took me to the County Ground to watch (what even I called now!) the Cobblers play Crewe and I was amazed that we could watch the match on the cricket ground side from behind a rope, like you saw in the local park! And speaking of cricket, I had just started to show an interest in the game and I thought it was brilliant that we had a first class county team playing nearly on our doorstep, unlike in Liverpool. Soon the likes of Allan Lamb, Wayne Larkins and Peter Willey became firm favourites and I got to watch the County play at the County Ground during my summer holidays.
Like most children would do, I adapted fairly well to the change and I very quickly took to Northampton as a great place to live. It seemed greener than where we had lived in Merseyside and although I missed being near the sea, we had loads of excellent parks really near to us which gave lots of opportunities for open play. Being a Catholic, it seemed that Northampton was dead important with its own Cathedral and being of Irish descent, my parents loved being able to go to the Cathedral Club after Mass with its’ distinctly Irish feel. It also seemed to be a Town that was going places with the hub of new development all over the place. So much seemed ‘new’ from the afore mentioned Weston Favell Centre with a huge new Tesco, the Grosvenor Centre where we shopped most week-ends, Lings Forum where I learnt football skills and swam in the pool, the Greyfriars Bus Station which was great as it stopped you getting wet waiting for the Bus and Derngate Theatre, where I performed in the Gang Show in 1983.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was also clear that the population of the town was changing as well with the majority of native Northamptonians suddenly having an influx of (mostly) Londoners in their midst. Northampton also seemed more culturally diverse than where I lived in Merseyside with most of my friends coming from Irish, Afro-Caribbean or Asian families, adding to the general feel of a town going through a considerable transition from the sleepy market town of the past.
Although we went back to Merseyside regularly, I felt settled in Northampton very quickly. Of course I missed my family and friends but there was so much to distract me in my new adopted home that I never felt ‘homesick’ and as a family, we threw ourselves into everything that the town had to offer. My Mum had changed schools and whilst teaching at Thomas Becket RC Upper in 1980, a colleague of hers called Edith gave me a 7″ vinyl ‘single’ record as she knew I was mad about buying records even at my young age. This one was different however. It had a really weird front cover with an illustration of a woman’s green eyes and a spaceship flying over some buildings. The back cover however explained all – that it was a promotional single for the Northampton Development Corporation’s ‘Expanding Northampton’ campaign based upon a radio ‘jingle’ that had been developed. Edith’s son worked for the NDC so he was the source for the record.
The record itself had two pieces of music but it was Side One’s catchy ’60 Miles By Road Or Rail’ sung by the exotic sounding Linda Jardim that caught my young ears and I played it again and again, feeling smug that I had a copy of the record ‘from the inside.’ I then stopped playing it and went back to my Elvis Costello, Squeeze and Secret Affair singles and forgot completely about the record. For nearly 40 years…..
And as Northampton continued to expand with the Eastern and then the Southern District and the years went by, I grew accustomed to my adopted home town and was even proud to represent Northampton Townboys representative side on a football tour to the USA in 1984 and at Under 14 and Under 15 level in national competition. I then began to frequent many of the local hostelries and experienced the majestic delights of the Welly Road pubs, The Mail Coach, The Bantam Cock, Rumours, 40s, Top Of The Town, Cinderella Rockafellas/Ritzy’s amongst many others. I worked every summer school holiday at Nationwide Anglia at Moulton Park, played football with a great set of mates at ON Chenecks at the ON’s on the Billing Road and by and large had a great time in this old but new town.
But inevitably I moved away – firstly to go to University in Nottingham and then to start work in Berkshire and I ultimately ended up living in Amsterdam in the Netherlands for 12 years where my two children were born. I still kept in touch with all things Northampton as my Dad remained living there in Moulton and my in-laws lived in Kingsthorpe and on my trips back, I winced at how the Town Centre (like so many town centres in Britain) had gone downhill, how any decent shop chain seemed to be moving away from the town and at the stories of County Council financial mismanagement.
So it was easy to criticise Northampton and yet it was pointed out to me how much I should be grateful for moving to this town back in 1979. I went to some very good schools and had some wonderful teachers who helped me get the grades needed for a great University education and I made some wonderful friends who I’m still in touch with all of these years later. Most importantly, Northampton was where I met my wife of nearly 25 years, who I’ve been with for 33 years since our school days at Thomas Becket. She like me is from the North (North East in her case) and fate was on my side when she moved to Northampton in 1986 and two years later we started going out with each other after a night out at the fondly remembered Top Of The Town! So all these years and two wonderful children later, I certainly have Northampton to thank for it being the place that brought Michelle and I together.
We returned from Amsterdam a few years ago and now live in a village outside Northampton where we are close to our parents. And in 2018, when looking at the Derngate and Royal Theatre listings I suddenly saw something called ’60 Miles By Road Or Rail’ that instantly reminded me of that 7″ single from way back in 1980! I was intrigued by the planned show and was delighted to get my wife and I tickets for the performance on a Friday evening at the Royal. And what a performance! I was on the edge of my seat from the first minute until the last and being a voracious reader of social history and as someone who came to Northampton in the middle of the NDC ‘Expanding Northampton’ period, it was almost as if the play had been written for me! Even weirder, my wife and I nearly jumped out of seat when the names of some competition winners in the play were named as ‘Michael and Pat’ as they are my parents’ names and I might be wrong but I think it said they were from Liverpool which was even spookier!
The play was brilliantly written, staged and performed. It brought back so many memories of that late 70’s/early 80’s period for me personally but it managed to be evocative, sensitive, political with a small p, funny and meaningful, all in under 3 hours. The personal monologues of the actors in terms of their own personal ‘Northampton stories’ were extremely emotive and passionately delivered. What struck me the most however was the optimistic tone the play struck. It did not shy away by any means of portraying the countless missed opportunities, political shenanigans and financial mismanagement that has blighted the town and meant that the immense promise that ‘Expanding Northampton’ offered, had not been fulfilled. Whilst doing this however, it did highlight that a town or city is about the people who live in it and it is they that can make a truly positive difference and bring about effective change for the better. It was therefore heartening to see how something like a theatre production can be a force for good and a catalyst for ameliorating how a town is perceived and hopefully how it operates.
I refuse to accept that towns have to be in terminal decline in this country. We are all aware of towns and cities that have been regenerated and reimagined and which are now thriving places and there is no reason why Northampton cannot, in due course, have its own renaissance. Projects like ’60 Miles By Road Or Rail’ can be a part of this.
So two years on, it is great to see the project up and running again and hopefully many more people can get involved and the next stage of Northampton’s story can be written. I will always be a Scouser at heart but this town in middle England (as the song goes) has brought me a lot of joy. As the lyrics of the song ’60 Miles By Road Or Rail’ go, it brought me “..the love in my fairytale…” – my wife – and I hope it brings so many people even more joy and their own personal ‘fairytales’ in the future.
by Kieron Rathe
Family connections to the Northampton shoe industry
My grandmother told me, literally on her death bed, “I used to make boots, you know.” No, I didn’t know. I knew that the vast majority of my family for several generations had been involved in the shoe industry but I was unaware that my grandmother had also counted among that number. Apparently it was only “during the war,” one of her favourite phrases.
Her husband, my grandfather, was a shoe designer and talented amateur artist. He died at the age of sixty one, leaving my grandmother to live on her own for nigh on forty years. It wasn’t until we were clearing her house that we found an elaborate certificate detailing his involvement as President of the Northampton & District Boot & Shoe & Allied Trades Managers’ & Foremen’s Association in 1961-1962.
His brother, my great uncle Jack, was a real character. He lost an eye at the age of three and therefore escaped the fate of many of his contemporaries in the war. He was employed by Church’s shoes for nearly all his career, although his precise role was apparently something of a mystery to his coworkers. Allegedly one was heard to remark something along the lines of, “Whatever job John Brown does, I’d like it.”
Again it was not until clearing uncle Jack’s house, when his wife moved into a home, that I heard about my great grandfather Jubilee John Brown (or John Brown senior, as he dropped the “Jubilee”, apparently a common epithet bestowed to those born in Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee year of 1887). There is a rather grand photo of him as a moderately young man, dressed incredibly smartly and soberly in a suit among others similarly attired, which I am told is a portrait of the investors in G.T.Hawkins, presumably when it became a limited company in 1916, where he became a director. Apparently Jubilee John had been loaned the money by his more well-to-do father.
Moving back down the family tree both my mother and her sister worked at the Manfield’s factory, part of the British Shoe Corporation, with their father. My mum worked in the offices and her sister as a machinist.
My father worked his way up from the factory floor to shoe factory manager at Barry Road, also owned by the British Shoe Corporation, where he was in charge of over three hundred workers. He then set up a shoe closing firm (ie. sewing the elements of a shoes together before the sole is attached) which morphed into the local factory shoe shop “R & F Closers” when the making work dried up due to cheap labour abroad.
My mother and father met through the British Shoe Corporation’s float at the Northampton carnival. That year the theme was pirates and mermaids. My mum claims she wasn’t pretty enough to join the mermaids on the float and so had to walk beside it as a pirate. My dad and his brother were also pirates and they were carrying a treasure chest, on which they offered her a lift when she got tired.
On my dad’s side of the family his mother, stepfather and older brother also worked in the industry. His mother as a machinist, his stepfather as a sole edge trimmer, both at Crockett and Jones, and his brother as a foreman at Manfield’s .
I suppose you could also argue that my sister and I worked in the shoe industry too; our first earnings were from helping out with piecework; attaching metal trims or tassels or weaving leather strips across the aprons of men’s shoes, work brought home for us to help out with when the factory was too busy. Our young, slender fingers meant we could undertake these tasks with speed and with practise our efficiency led to a decent rate of pay, particularly for teenagers who were still at school. I chose the shoe industry in Northampton as the theme of my O level Geography project and felt proud to be taken on a tour round the factory of which my dad was the manager.
Although times have changed and many of the factories have been closed and converted into flats and luxury apartments, it is heartening to know that Northampton is still remembered as a shoe making town, through the remaining mainly high-end shoe brands still based here including both Church’s and Crockett and Jones and, probably more famously, through the success of the film and subsequent musical Kinky Boots which is set in Northampton (although the true story that inspired it was about a firm in Earls Barton, a village situated about nine miles away).
By Beverley Webster