A tour of Badby – Badby Parish Council

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Page updated 7 March 2025

Click to learn more about the history of the relevant area on the map, as remembered by Ian Adamson

1 The Bake House

If you took your Sunday dinner to him he used to light the oven and put it in and he used to charge one old penny and it was first come first served as once the oven were full that was it. You had to take it back in your tray and have your Sunday Dinner on Monday. That was in my Grandmother’s time.

2 Hillside

The carter used to live there. If you wanted anything picking up he was your man and that was in my mother’s time. That’s been like that ever since I can remember.

3 The Red Lion

That’s where The Red Lion was, up there. The Red Lion must not be forgotten. Most people don’t know that there was a fourth pub in the village, right up the top of the village, more or less opposite the church. The Red Lion closed in the late 1800s. It hadn’t got a proper bar. If you went in you could see it was a pub. You had like Bitter and Malt and the old boy used to bring a big jug in straight out of the barrel and when it got to about 11 o’clock at night you just had to have what was left on the bar.

4 Warner's Coal Yard

This here is where Warner’s Coal Yard used to be and round about just there is where the old water tank used to be ‘cos there was a wind mill down there you know like the American type they used to have.

5 Brick Yard

At the top there where the garden centre is, that was the brick yard with the marl pit on the other side of the road.

6 Wetherdee

Bottom of this field on the right that was ‘Wetherdee’ where castrated rams recovered. (A ‘wether’ is a neutered male goat. Wikipedia)

7 Pennywick

This house here – why that’s called Pennywick was because a chap there was called Penny. There was a field called Penny’s too.

8 The chip shop

This little shed here was a chip shop. Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays it was open. It was open when my mother was alive.

9 The Co-op

This was the Co-op. This side here was the hardware department. You could get a bicycle there you know. “If I ain’t got one, I’ll get you one Thursday,” he used to say.

10 The butcher's

The butcher’s shop was just there. Just here is a concrete path. Well, they were going to build a paper shop there in the 1960’s. They got that far and got no further.

11 Bodkin Park

They used to have a stone wall all round that (called Bodkin Park) and about just there where I’m pointing was a well. That used to belong to the Turner family and it had a wall all round.

12 The Goat House

That tinned roof building there was the old slaughter house and the wheel for pulling the beasts up with is still in there and there was a well there. It’s not very deep they reckon, but it was that wide that you could turn a horse and cart in it. He needed a lot of water for his business.

13 Park House

That house there – Park House, it was Jack Jones house and his wife was a teacher at the school, little kids like the reception kids, and she looked like Lady Penelope out of Thunderbirds with bouffant hair. Blonde it was. Jack sold the field for Park Close to be built.

14 Police House

This house was the second Police House and a chap names Dickinson lived there. He used to have a blue light over the door. A chap called Paddy Quinn put an extension on there.

15 Parrott's Barn

Where them cottages are now, just slightly back, there was an old barn called Parrott’s barn. That used to be the Granary. It was set a lot further back than what it is now and that was part of the Manor.

16 Rose Cottage

There’s a cottage just there where this garage is here now, called Rose Cottage. I’ve got a letter addressed to ‘Rose Cottage, High Street, Badby’ because my father’s father lived there. It burnt down in 1957.

17 The School

This is the entrance to The School just here. This part here with the little windows was the girls’ changing room and for little kids. The other side, which is a mirror image, was boys but that was the bigger boys. There were three (school) girls from Fawsley. Every Monday morning, they used to strip those girls off put them in a pair of shorts and put them in the bath and wash them. There was a lad – similar thing, put him in the boys’ cloakroom and give him a bath. When you got to sort of 10 or 11 years old the boys used to have to carry buckets of coal down for the boiler down the brick steps.

18 Clark's Lane

This is not Chapel Lane. From there up to the Gate House it’s Clarks Lane. From the gate house to the top of the hill before you go down the dip to the cross roads, it’s Markham’s and down at the bottom it’s Tichburn.

19 The Gate House

A chap that used to live there was a man called Nobby Hill. He was the Woods Man. If they were hunting there tomorrow, tonight he would be coming and filling the holes in. He was an amateur taxidermist. I went in there. He’d got stuffed owls, magpies. He’d got Foxes’ brushes hanging up everywhere. In a glass case he’d got a beautiful vixen. He put it like it were grinning at you.

20 The copper

This brick building – there used to be a copper in there and old Newport was in there and he used to boil his potatoes up in there. It had a chimney. A lad I knew thought he was Father Christmas and if it wasn’t for someone who was coming back from his garden and heard him he would have been very stuck in the chimney. He was about 10.

21 The Brook

From there along that track, right, there’s a bridge at the end isn’t there? That’s called Brookside from there. You used to come through here. You had to jump over the brook, right and that footpath was cut off when they built the Glebe. It got overgrown and it used to go to the church. You could actually walk from the Church to the Chapel.

22 The Glebe

That there was green fields -all marshy down there, because when we were kids that used to be our motor bike track. Years ago you got a lot of people, cos’ money was tight they used to have a motor bike and when things got a bit better they used to be able to afford to buy a car and you didn’t want a motor bike no more. And we used to buy them for about £2. I’m going back about fifty years now and that used to be our dirt track there.

23 Footpaths

The old boys used to walk either to Fawsley or to the railway at Woodford, as Woodford, if you walk across the fields, is not as far away as you think it is, because you come out at Preston Capes and cut across the fields again. When they used to come out the woods they used to bring a faggot of sticks with them. You want to walk it- you bring your faggot! You don’t bring your faggot – you’re not getting on it and they used to get quite volatile about this. They used to bring a faggot of sticks and as you walked back you lay them down in front of you and of course if everybody’s doing it, you make yourself eventually a hazel green-type path.

24 Vicarage Hill

These houses used to be some cottages but they were set back further than where they are now. That was where the Church Hall was. It was a red brick building and it got knocked down sometime in the mid-sixties. The Village Institute it was called. The school used to do the Church Harvest sale there. You could rent it for wedding receptions etc. Those cottages at the bottom there were called the Co-op cottages.

25 Vicarage Garden

Out the back of the Vicarage was the terraced Vicarage Garden with some stone steps and a tennis court. Mortimer did that. The other side of this hedge is where the ice house was in the garden behind the Vicarage which had snakes in it to kill the rats. The ice wasn’t for you, it was for the Vicar. The vicarage land went right down to the row of trees down there. Where the Glebe is, that field belonged to the vicarage. There used to be stables there and there was a groom’s cottage.

26 The Vicarage

The Vicarage had a wide hall with a piano, study with another piano, dining room, kitchen, scullery, an empty classroom, lounge and two floors of bedrooms. The rooms were huge and there was a bell system and little bedrooms for the servants at the top, but only one staircase I believe.