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Adapted from The History of the County of Northampton Vol.V - Cleley Hundred (ed. Philip Riden)
A Brief History of Shutlanger The hamlet of Shutlanger, together with the neighbouring hamlet of Stoke Bruerne to the east, formed the ancient ecclesiastical parish of Stoke Bruerne, although for much of their existence the two hamlets were treated as separate parishes for all civil purposes.
The pattern of population and settlement in Shutlanger is somewhat different from that in many other parishes on the former Grafton Estate, in that the population peaked in 1881 - a time when most other parishes were showing a decline, owing to the downturn in agriculture in the late 19th century. In 1931, there is another rise when most other parishes were declining, but by 1961, the population was down to nearly half of what it had been in 1881. Even with modest development in the latter stage of the last century, by 1981 the population was still only at the general level it had been in 1801. At Shutlanger, the village developed on either side of a south-flowing stream, and at a convergence point of four routes from all four points of the compass. Earthworks on the north-east part of the village suggest that the village may have contracted in the late medieval period certainly the lay subsidy returns for both Stoke Bruerne and Shutlanger (click here for details) suggest that in 1301 and the 1520s both villages were about the same size. Not being a parish in its own right, Shutlanger lacked either a parish church or a manor house which would have constituted a core focus for village life. Like Stoke Bruerne, in the Middle Ages Shutlanger had its own three-field system of open common fields cultivated by ridge-and-furrow methods. Again like Stoke, Shutlanger had a Wood Field to the north of the village; the common fields to the south were divided in to Rowslade Field to the west and Alderton Field to the east (though that field was quite separate from any fields belonging to Alderton parish). At the beginning and the end of the 17th century, small portions of the fields were inclosed, but in general the fields remained as open fields longer than most in south Northamptonshire. Part of Shutlanger fell within the manor of Stoke Bruerne, other sections were part of other estates. One belonged to a family called Parles, who had bought it in 1364 from the heirs of the Robert de Harrowden who had owned it - together with other land in Stoke Bruerne and Alderton - in the early 14th century. The Parles family's connection with Shutlanger lasted till 1504, when it was sold to Richard Empson of Easton Neston, who was acquiring land in the district as part of his creation of a large estate centred on Easton Neston. In 1510 Empson was attainted and executed, the lands in Shutlanger passed first to William Compton and then to Richard Fermor. The Fermors - later the Fermor-Heskeths and Earls of Pomfret - held a sizeable portion of Shutlanger for the remainder of the period covered by this CD. At some time in the 14th century, Shutlanger did acquire one building of substance. One of the freeholders built an imposing two-storey stone building on the south-eastern edge of the village which later became the home of the Parles family and later a farmhouse on the Fermor estate. Owing to a tenuous association with the Sewardsley nunnery in Easton Neston, the building became known as the Monastery, and later Monastery Farm. The house has an almost complete medieval roof structure and a two-storey entrance porch. It was surrounded by quite extensive grounds, with fishponds and a dovecote.
At the inclosure of Shutlanger's common fields in 1844, Monastery Farm was part of an exchange of holdings between the 5th Earl of Pomfret and the 5th Duke of Grafton, and was therefore part of the Grafton Estate in its later years. Its most famous tenant was C.H.B. Franklin, who from the latter part of the 19th century till 1904 established the farm as the best run, most productive farm in the district. Though suffering badly from the agricultural downturn of the late 19th century, Franklin's skills as a farmer, and especially his breeding of Red Devon bullocks, won him acclaim and numerous prizes for the latter. His premises were always maintained in good order, his land in good heart, and his crops and animals rated the best in the district. Some years after his death, his son Richard wrote an account of his father's husbandry, titled "Good Pastures" © Cambridge University Press. Shutlanger and Easton Neston were both annexed to the honor of Grafton when that was created in the 1540s, though Easton Neston portions went back to the control of the Fermors in subsequent years. The next major change came with the creation of Stoke Park in the late 16th/early 17th century, and the subsequent loss of common grazing land for the tenants of Stoke Bruerne. (Click here to read about Stoke Park). In 1590 they agreed with the rector of Stoke Bruerne and the steward of the Grafton honor that they might inclose an acre for every twenty acres of common land held in the common fields. Their success in this led the tenants of Shutlanger in 1610 to request something similar of Sir George Fermor. The request was granted, but encountered the furious hostility of the rector Richard Lightfoot, who did not look favourably on the loss of tithe income from a village where a greater proportion of the common land was under the plough than was the case at Stoke Bruerne. He had had clashes with the villagers of Stoke in 1608-10 , and in 1621-2 was accused by the villagers of Shutlanger of damage to new fences and ditches around Stoke Park, and the blocking of the highway. There was also criticism of the allegedly oppressive high-handedness of the newly-appointed Crown under-steward John Cooke, who for his part accused the tenants of damage to wood in the park, illegal inclosure, encroachment on the waste, and other misdeeds. After the Restoration of the Monarchy, things settled down as the honor of Grafton became administered by the stewards of Queen Catherine, and later the Dukes of Grafton. During the 18th century there was a gradual amalgamation of smaller farms into larger units, but the greatest change came with inclosure in 1844. Things did not proceed without more disruption than had been seen two centuries previously. In June 1841, 24 local men were arrested and charged with riotous and tumultuous assembly at Stoke Plain. The incident is related in the History of Stoke Bruerne on this CD. Immediately after inclosure, the Grafton Estate built three new farmsteads on the former open-field land: two north of Stoke at Stoke Plain and Stoke Gap; one south of Shutlanger at Shutlanger Grove. These were substantial structures: modern farms of a much increased size (and at a higher rent). Click here to read about Shutlanger Grove and the Grafton Farms. Despite the modernisation programme, the farms were hit by the agricultural downturn later in the century, and despite C.H.B Franklin's good work at Shutlanger Grove, he retired from farming in 1904, and the farm was one of those offered (together with Monastery Farm) in the Grafton Estate Auction Sale of 1919. The sale changed the character of the area, more especially in Stoke than in Shutlanger. The Monastery was bought by the tenant and converted to a private residence. Shutlanger Grove, though under the same tenant, was sold elsewhere and continued on bad times until in the 1930s its fortunes were raised by the husbandry of its new owners the Davy family. (Click here to read their story). There was a mill in Shutlanger in the 1420s, but by this time it was already ruinous. The other trades in the village were the usual ones, which included shoemaking and lacemaking. Throughout the second half of the 19th century, Shutlanger had two pubs: the Plough and the Horseshoe, both of which were leased to Phipps Brewery of Northampton from the 1880s - possibly earlier. The Horseshoe was in fact owned by the Bosenhoe Charity, but when the modernisation of the house was needed in 1905, there were insufficient funds. Phipps agreed to do the work in return for an allowance on the rent, and this duly went through, but in 1917 with the reduction on licences during the First World War the pub was closed. Shutlanger remained relatively untouched by the canal developments at Stoke Bruerne, but in the early 1870s Sir Thomas Fermor-Hesketh attempted to exploit the ironstone deposits in the district and leased them to Samuel Lloyd of Birmingham. A tramway was laid from Towcester which by 1875 ended in two spurs near Shutlanger. There is recorded output from the pits in 1873-4, but by 1878 the tramway had been shortened and though some Shutlanger men must have been working in the quarries which remained at Easton Neston, in 1921 the pits were closed and Shutlanger parish council was receiving a deputation of unemployed men. Though Shutlanger had no parish church, when the new infants school was opened in 1885 (see below for the history of the school) it was licensed for worship, and in 1886 a chancel was added with a stained glass window. An altar which had been replaced in Stoke Bruerne parish church's restoration of 1881 was also installed in the chapel. After the closure of the school in 1916 the building remained in use as a chapel-of-ease to St Mary's at Stoke Bruerne, with the nave also serving as a village hall. Meeting houses for Protestant dissenters were registered in Shutlanger in the 1820s and 1840s (click here for details), and in 1844 a Wesleyan Methodist chapel was erected (the one in Stoke came two years later) and was registered in 1854. From the start, Shutlanger had the larger congregation, and this continued through the 19th century and is reflected in the size of both buildings. In 1922, when the chapel was undergoing major repairs, the congregation used the village school-chapel mentioned above - a situation which was repeated when further repairs to the chapel were carried out in 1948-9. Stoke chapel closed in the mid-1970s and the members went to either Shutlanger or Roade. Numbers remained flourishing for a while but then declined and the chapel was closed in the 1980s, the building being later used as a book repository.
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