Page 11 - Oundle Life March 2021

local limestone. Considered to be among the most extravagant of all regional stations built at that time, I think Oundle’s station buildings reflected, rather than detracted from Oundle’s glorious town centre.
Pevsner agreed, ‘In this area it
[Oundle] comes a close second to
Stamford, with which it has much in
common; neither was ever an industrial
town.’ Sure, in Oundle there was leather
in the C16, and brewing in the later C18
and C19 due to the existence of many natural springs – some of them containing iron – which were a great advantage for the tanning and brewing industries. But according to Pevsner, ‘neither [industry] produced major buildings.’
That said, the brewing industry did leave us
with some very handsome buildings. Pevsner described Townley House on the south side of West Street as ‘one of the most impressive C19 houses in the town’. Originally built c.1840 as
offices for the Oundle Union Brewery – one of four breweries located in Oundle in the C18 and C19 – Townley House is a gem. Another fine brewery building, recently renovated for residential use, is the old Anchor Brewery at the junction of Mill Lane
and South Road, retaining its louvred windows as a tell-tale to its past and a rare Oundle sight in red brick.
With no other great industrial or manufacturing activity occurring in Oundle, there was no rapid expansion to overwhelm
The main effect remains Georgian
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