Page 58 - Hindsight Issue 26 April 2020

HeRItAge
is still a matter of debate, but a corner of a mosaic floor was lifted and we think taken to the Moot Hall in Daventry town centre. the mosaic was certainly on display when Daventry Museum occupied the Moot Hall in the 1990s. When the museum closed in 2004 the mosaic went into storage.
the museum has been at its present home in new street since 2010 and we have wanted to have it on display again but it wasn’t until July 2019 that a suitable place was chosen and the mosaic arrived.
Weighing half a tonne, its journey from storage across town was achieved by fork lift, trailer and sheer manpower. My worst fears of it being dropped and damaged fortunately were not realised and the previous sleepless night quickly forgotten. Whose feet had walked on it and what stories it could tell, it is truly a wonderful survivor.
THE HISTORY OF ROADE RAILWAY CUTTING
Chris Hillyard RVM
At the Northamptonshire Heritage Forum
Awards 2019, Roade Local History Society
was delighted to receive the accolade of ‘The Best
Event’ for their exhibition celebrating the 180th
anniversary of the opening of Roade Railway
Cutting. This event fortuitously coincided with it being awarded a prestigious ‘Red Wheel’ by the Transport Trust, recognising it as a designated National Transport Heritage Site. In this article Roade LHS committee member, Chris Hillyard writes about the exhibition and the background to the importance of the Railway Cutting. Chris did most of the research for the exhibition and was one of its organisers.
the 11⁄2 mile Roade cutting was officially opened on Monday 17 september 1838, following four and a half years of troublesome construction. engineers engaged upon the work had to contend with three distinct layers of rock strata, and upwards of 25 barrels of gunpowder were consumed weekly. In total, in excess of 1,000,000 cubic yards of rock and spoil were removed. the original estimated cost of the works was £112,950; delays, landslides and necessary additional works took this figure to over £310,000 – equivalent in purchasing power to about £34 million in 2019.
Hundreds of scottish and Irish navvies worked 24 hours a day on the excavations. the navvies’ impact on a rustic and traditionally rural population both enlivened it and challenged the status quo. It was an enormous drain on resources, upsetting
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