Pictures of Culworth

About Culworth

Sweet Northamptonshire village set amid delightful open countryside which centuries ago was sufficiently important to have it's own fair and market. Its other claim to fame is as the place where King Charles I stayed on the eve of the battle of Cropredy Bridge in 1644.

The village shows a pleasant mixture of lovely properties, some with thickly thatched roofs and creeper climbing up to tiny dormer windows, fronted by neat lawns and pretty flower beds. It also has an extremely pretty churchyard that has been winner and runner up in the Northamptonshire 'Best Kept Churchyard' competition. Interestingly, the churchyard contains the grave of a negro slave who died at the age of 16 in 1762. The church dates 13th-century and has many historic relics from the past. On the village green is a war memorial to the dead of World War I and II.

Wandering the quiet lanes around the village it is hard to imagine that in the 18th-century it was the headquarters for a notorious band of thieves. Known as the Culworth Gang, this disreputable bunch terrorised locals and other villages until they were later rounded up by the law.

There is an attractive old school which was originally endowed by a local family late in the 18th-century. Here, not only are the children well educated but they also learn to experience the joy of dancing round the Maypole in celebration of May Day. This was something all children enjoyed for centuries but seems to have virtually vanished since the middle of the 20th-century.

The market of centuries ago is replaced with a friendly village stores, and for the thirsty there is an excellent village pub. Sulgrave Manor is close-by as is Cannons Abbey, owned by the National Trust.