This view from around 1880 shows the road into Grafton from the south. A covered wagon and a solitary walker are making their way up the hill from Yardley Gobion and Stony Stratford. By today's standards the road is unbelievably quiet and deserted - and even here it is hard to envisage that Grafton once stood on the main coaching route between Northampton and London. By 1880 however the glory days of the coaching trade were over - the coming of the railway had seen to that. The arrival of the motor car brought pressures of its own, and most of the houses on the left of this picture were demolished as part of the widening of the road which was done in 1955.

There is an autumnal feel to the scene, as indicated by the tints of the trees and hedges. In the right foreground, new furrows and the plough at rest are a reminder of the annual rhythm of country life, where activity follows the seasons. There is always something to be done, and in Victorian times there was little in the way of mechanisation to relieve the unremitting human toil.