Page 30 - Thrapston Life January 2023

This month I am focussing on old Islip with a few items discovered in two documents written by unknown people over the last hundred years.
discovered under the thatch of the cottage indicated in the top image which is opposite Old Farm Lane on the High Street. The papers related to James Elmer, sometimes known as Elmore, and his son John, born in 1789. Father and son were carpenters, the earliest bill being to James for the supply of carpenters’ tools in 1777. In 1812 James made out his will in favour
One covers Islip History over the last thousand years, being a carbon copy of a typewritten original and in my Barbara Knight archive. In this it mentions that at one time, Islip had a stone wall encircling it. At the time the article was written, a few parts of
this old wall were still standing around
the churchyard, on Chapel Hill and
Mill Road/Lane. This postcard (above)
taken in School Lane and dating from Edwardian times shows part of the wall.
The village pound, a stone walled
enclosure in which stray animals were placed until recovered by their owners at a fee of
4d was on the site of the reading room. This postcard (above right) from just before World War 1 shows the corner of Mill Road with the reading room on the left and it is possible that the wall was part of the pound.
During the early 1960’s several papers were
of his two sons William and John, proved after his death in 1816. John took over the business and continued trading as a carpenter as well as being the village undertaker. Amongst other items John purchased were hops and malt. In his will, written in 1835 he
refers to his house, the cottage indicated above, as being called by the sign of the Royal Oak which strongly suggests that as well as working with wood, he and/or his wife were brewing ale. The discovered papers showed that a two-gallon cask of rum and gin were, respectively, 30 and 22 shillings (today, £1.50 and £1.10).
“Remember the poor plough boys”
Plough Monday – the first Monday after 5th
30
GLANCE
AT THE
PAST
Eric Franklin looks back