Contents: A tour of Badby | Post Office | Youth Hostel | St Mary’s Parish Church | The Chapel | The Cemetery | Spirit of the Valley | Then and Now in Photos | Back to History Section overview
The Post Office
Early days: There was a Post Office in Badby well before 1800. The offices were usually in the homes of the post masters or mistresses so have been in many places around Badby. This photo is of an early Post Office near the bottom of Stoneway. The old Police House is half visible in the distance on the right.
In 1901 John Masters was the Post Master and in 1911 Ephraim Cox, the son of the old Morris dancer who met Cecil Sharp, was the Post Officer. The son’s grave is in Badby cemetery.
In the 1950s the Office was run by Mrs Dickinson who also sold stationery and at that time it was near the Maltsters pub down a small alleyway. In this picture, the Post Office is near its final position and there was a café next door. You can see at the back of the picture the wall of Bodkin Park – a privately owned piece of walled land which is part of the Green now.
In the 1960s, the Post Office was in its final location where the telephone box is now. David Hodges and his wife Mary ran Badby Post Office together soon after their marriage when Mary was 27. She had the job of balancing the accounts. Some people couldn’t pay their shop bills as they went along, so paid at the end of the week or the month. There was one afternoon off a week and no holidays. After their daughter was born it was hard work running the business and looking after the baby at the same time.
Another job was to clean the telephone box which was well used as people didn’t have mobile phones or cars in those days and young visitors to the Youth Hostel often needed to ring their parents.
David got a licence to deliver milk – about two crates, which he delivered to people round the Green. He was kept busy in icy weather delivering other produce to different parts of the village. He had got some experience in butchery and sold bacon and vegetables too, getting produce from Banbury Market, going to Cash and Carry to buy other things to sell in the shop.
It was an interesting life as Mary got to know all about her customers and the postmen and women became good friends. There was one postie for the village and another went to the farms.
Mary and her husband ran the Post Office from 1960 to 1987 and it was always a successful business during their time there. Later the Gallagher sisters owned the Post Office and a Mr Gunstone bought it from them. He made some improvements to the building.
In the 1990s Sue Thompson was the relief ‘Postie’ for Judy Russell who was the post lady for over 17 years. Sue recorded some of her memories in the local magazine, ‘Village Matters’. These are some of her recollections:
“The unsorted mail would arrive in a van from Daventry in 2 to 4 large sacks between 7.30 and 8.30 am. The mail had to be sorted into pigeon holes in a small room at the back of the Post Office where only one person could work at a time. The sorting into ‘walk order’ normally took 2 to 3 hours. There were three ‘walking rounds’. The first one was the Village Green and lower end of the village via Pound Lane taking about one and a quarter hours. The second, taking about one and a half hours, was the upper part of the village via Church Green, Bunkers Hill and Main Street. The third was the middle of the village via the Glebe, Park Close, Chapel Lane and Berry Green Farm and took about three quarters of an hour. The trolley was filled up back at the Office between the rounds.
“When there was nobody in to receive registered mail, it was returned to the Office and a note delivered so that the resident could collect their mail from the Office. When there were mail shots which had to be delivered before a deadline, the load was greater as every home had to be visited.
“Gill and Jim Douglas from Crick moved into the Post Office in November 1996. They had tried to buy it earlier so were given first refusal by Mr Gunstone. In 1998 Gill was reported to be keen to reopen the tea rooms at the back but sadly, the village Post Office closed on the 20th of March 2008 when Barbara Douglas was the Post Lady.”
The photo on the right shows Badby Post Office and Store on 30 May 2006. The person posting the letter is Ken Forster (1915-2013), who was then living in Braunston with his son John. Ken started collecting postmarks from all over the world when he began his first job as an office boy at a printing company in Leeds in 1930. He wrote four books about postmarks and postal history, and his monthly column on the subject in “Stamp Magazine” ran for 36 years until January 2003. John took an interest in postmarks from the age of 14 and is now the custodian of the family collection.
In 2017s the mail was distributed from Daventry by Melissa Gibbs, our well -respected post lady at the time. She was the first to be given a Post Office van, as the previous postman used to drive in his own car to Daventry to collect the mail. There used to be a separate delivery for parcels but Melissa delivered them as well as the letters. She used a portable computer/phone which she said is a great help – she did, however, carry a few copies of the old paper forms in case the technology failed!
Badby Youth Hostel
There was a Youth Hostel in Badby from 1932 to 2005. During that time it occupied three different buildings. Below are extracts from the YHA handbook, describing the properties.
The Chapel
The Chapel dates from 1873, when it was erected by the generosity of Mr Edwin F. Ashworth Briggs and opened as a Congregational Church in 1873. Earlier, from 1870 to 1873, services and a Sunday school were held at Ashworth Cottage, which had been built as a home for the village’s Congregational Minister.
Little is known of the Briggs family. Mr Edwin F. Ashworth Briggs was president of the County Association of Congregational Churches from 1888-1889, and the Briggs family was also involved in the erection of Newnham and Flore Chapels. Although it is said that many of the chapels built around this period cost less than two hundred pounds, to be involved in the building of three chapels suggests that they were a family of some means.
The Chapel was renovated in 1929 by Mr Charles Rodhouse, J.P., of Daventry.
After the Congregational Church and Presbyterian Churches combined to form the United Reformed Church in 1972, it was the Badby United Reformed Church until 2021. The last service was held on 25 July 2021. The building was transferred to the Synod on 1 September 2021 which put it up for sale by auction and it was sold in October 2021. It is now a private house.
Badby Chapel was also the birth place in 1986 of the ‘Mite Scheme‘ established by Roy Barnett MBE (see Badby people (Roy Barnett). A plaque, installed on the wall of the Chapel on 12 October 2019 in memory of Roy , was removed and was passed to Badby School where Roy went as a child.
The Cemetery
St Mary’s Churchyard was closed for burials in 1886; in readiness, land had been purchased off Brookside Lane for a Cemetery. The Cemetery as we now see it consists of three areas purchased at different times:
1. The Old Cemetery, the original land bought and opened in the 1880s – the area, left and right, on entering the cemetery up to about 12 ft from the path that leads up the main section of Cemetery.
2. The New Cemetery, bought in the 1930s – the areas to the left and right of the main path up the main section of Cemetery to the top fence (East).
3. The Cemetery Extension, bought in the 2000s – reached by the path to the left beyond the shed, including all the area on the left and right, up to the boundary fences (North and East).
A map of the New Cemetery was produced in 1950 by H Bonsor MIMunE, Surveyor, 44 High St, Daventry, showing the known and prospective grave positions. That map was used by the Parish Council to record burials and reservations (exclusive rights of burials) for some years.
The Northamptonshire Family History Society (NFHS) undertook a survey in 2016 of the gravestones and memorials in both St Mary’s Churchyard and the Cemetery and produced a booklet of Memorial Inscriptions for Badby (ISBN 978-1-913157-00-5, 2016).
In 2021 the Parish Council arranged for a new mapping of the two areas still in use, the New Cemetery and the Cemetery Extension. The opportunity was taken to map and index the whole Cemetery, drawing on the Bonsor map, the Burial Records, the Exclusive Rights Register and the NFHS booklet. The map and the accompanying index are available below (PDF format). As the map of the whole Cemetery is large, separate maps of the three areas are also available. There is a separate alphabetical index of names of those buried or memorialised in the Cemetery with the location of the grave/memorial. The maps and index are being maintained with new burials and reservations, and it is planned to extend the work, especially on the Old Cemetery, where the location of many of the burials is still to be determined.
- Full map of the Cemetery, all areas (A1, large PDF)
- Map of the Old Cemetery
- Map of the New Cemetery
- Map of the Cemetery Extension
- Index to burials and memorials in Badby Cemetery
- Alphabetical index (names and locations only)
The Cemetery is owned and managed by the Parish Council. Cemetery Regulations, the Fees List for burials, headstones and memorials, and information about exclusive rights of burial can be found on the Parish Council Cemetery Page.
The Sculpture on the Nene Way
On the boundary between the Badby and Newnham parishes, beside the River Nene, is a wooden sculpture. This sculpture, ‘Source’, was carved from a piece of local fallen walnut by artist Mike Ivens from Long Buckby as part of the Spirit of the Valley millennium project in the year 2000. The 10ft piece of art was made for the Badby Youth Hostel as part of the Northamptonshire Spirit of the Valley project, and is engraved with the letters ‘SOV’ – Spirit of the Valley.
It was first installed in the orchard gardens of Badby Youth Hostel (now Holly Cottage, Church Green) where the sculptor also held a sculpting workshop at the time. Because the Youth Hostel was a grade two listed building, the managers had to apply for planning permission from Daventry District Council. Youth hostel warden Ursula Brendling said: “It was made for the village because Badby was a source of the river. It was made for everybody and they thought rather than put it on the green they would put it in the youth hostel grounds. It has grown on me. It catches the sun in the evening and in the morning.”
Before the Youth Hostel became a private house in 2005, the sculpture was moved into its current position on a local farmer’s land by the River Nene next to the Nene Way (OS Grid Ref: SP 56858 59318) on the boundary between Badby and Newnham. The Head Ranger from Daventry Country Park, Dewi Morris, who lived in Badby, arranged for a group of his staff to move the sculpture to its new position (see Pauline Bird’s account below).
Mike Ivens reports that he also made an oak way-marker for Badby at the same time, to be placed nearby.
Pauline Bird, Newnham, recollects: “What is the curious wooden sculpture beside the youthful River Nene between Badby and Newnham? Yes, I can tell you. This was a Millennium Project funded by The Forum of Art. It represents the ‘Spirit of the Valley’ – S.O.V.
“Badby and Newnham Primary Schools did art work, wrote poems which they sang in school. Richard Campbell helped set them to music. These were later read and sung in the fields.
“Dewi Morris came into school and together we made willow pyramid lanterns. Some made a boat, or more accurately half a boat in Newnham and the other half in Badby. What do you put in a boat, well of course, an owl and a pussycat. (A badger, Newnham school’s symbol, was also made.) Having had to wait for floods to subside, one dark evening both schools processed with lanterns and torches to where both Parishes meet. They sang the songs they had written and then in front of the sculpture released the valley’s ‘Spirit’ by setting the boat, owl and pussycat alight.
“What a great sight to see all their smiling faces in the firelight. They will certainly remember the Millennium.”
- Northamptonshire Walks leaflet
- Northamptonshire Borough Council Development and Framework Masterplan 2005
- Daventry Express 2001
- Mike Ivens
- Pauline Bird
December 2022, last updated 4 March 2025