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Records sometimes show a complaint that there is ‘nothing to do in Denton’.
Perhaps this just reflects human nature as, in reality, it shows Denton has a rich history of the community pulling together and there being many social gatherings in the village over the years.
Bert Hollowell in his notes of childhood (See Bert Hollowell's notes on Denton life.) also comments on a lack of entertainment but then goes on to list reference to concerts, whist drives, school treats and a youth meeting room. Also mentioned is the annual Castle Ashby sports day, and the fair on the green on the occasion of Denton Feast. Furthermore there were street games, the occasional circus visit, street singers, and musicians with dancing bears so it does not sound as if there was a complete lack of entertainment for villagers in pre-War years
Another organisation not mentioned in his notes but with which Bert Hollowell was involved as treasurer was the Denton Champion Club - a club to provide for those who fell ill and were unable to work. Members paid in 1/8d per week and if needing to claim received 12/- per week for a maximum of 26 weeks. This club owned the pair of cottages on Church Way immediately up from the old school building. They were rented out for 15/- and 18/- per month. It is not known how they originally came into the club's ownership.
Mrs Joan Buller in her reminiscences (see Memories of Denton by Mrs Joan Buller) also mentions the sports day and Denton Feast plus the existence of the facility of the Reading Room and clubs such as the Blanket Club and Coal and Clothing Club. Also referred to is the importance of the May Day ceremony which is still continued to this day in the form of the school May Day celebrations which often include traditional maypole dancing and the crowning of a May King & Queen.
In later years more organisations were set up. The Denton Women’s Institute was formed in 1954 and in the post-War years there was also a Drama Group, Over 60’s club, two football teams plus active congregations, and well-attended Sunday Schools, at both St Margaret’s Church and the Baptist Chapel. This does not suggest a lack of social activity in the village at that time.
In those days the pub also offered activities - apart from drinking! The traditional leather upholstered skittle table with its boxwood ‘cheeses’ was well used and Denton hit the headlines in August 1963 when 3 players at the Red Lion scored a remarkable 48 for 3 (the scoring method has to be understood to realise how impressive this is!). The men who achieved this feat were Les Stock, Walter Carter and Arthur Bell who scored respectively 15, 16 & 17. There were also regular games of cribbage, dominoes, cards & darts played at the pub.
In 1970 a Mercury and Herald feature on Denton shows more additons to the list of organisations. There was now a Mother’s Union, Girl Guides, Brownies and Boy Scouts – even a branch of the Mercury & Herald’s own ‘Merry Comrades’.
A youth club that had closed in 1968 was reopened in 1972 and it was reported over 100 young people between 12 and 21 attended the first meeting in the village hall. This initiative was led by a young local woman, Christine Cox, together with five other members of the original club.
As we approach more recent times the list continued to grow further. The W.I eventually wound up in 2007, not so much through lack of support as a desire to be more independent, and an active Ladies Lunch Club evolved from it.
We now have Mums and Tots, a pre-school playgroup, a very active short mat bowls club, badminton club and a recently established and already well-supported walking club. The old Drama group from post-war years had long since ceased but we now have a new and active Players' Group providing the village with periodic entertainments. Similarly the village football club - highly successful in years gone by but then defunct for many years has experienced a great resurgence in the last few years and there are now both Saturday and Sundays sides playing in local leagues and repeating some of the successes of the teams of past generations.
The Gardening Club has a full programme of events such as meetings with invited speakers and visits to gardens of interest. Their biggest event is the annual Flower and Vegetable Show which takes place in September each year and goes from strength to strength. A very well attended open garden day was also organised in 2009 - resurrecting a tradition from earlier years that had died out.
Another significant, but relatively new event is Denton Day, organised by the Village Hall Management Committee. This has been held on a Saturday in July for the last few years. It has quickly become well established on the calendar and offers a 5 aside football competition, Tug-of-War and golf games on the Rec. with a variety of stalls and other attractions centred round the village hall. All tastes are catered for with a barbeque, real ale, ice creams and tea & coffee all through the day.
The school has not only the statutory governing body but also a fundraising organisation FODS (Friends of Denton School). In being for well over 25 years FODS have, over the years, run many fundraising events to provide the school with extra funds for special projects. Important though the fundraising is in itself to provide those ‘luxuries’ the school’s Government funding cannot stretch to, equally important is the social benefit to the community of the fundraising events themselves. Over the years these include many fairs, competitions, discos, clothes shows, racing nights etc.
The annual church summer fete is the event which follows most closely the traditions of Denton Feast (see separate section a little further below) in that it is held on the green and has live music and stalls and sometimes a pony or steam engine ride. It is always well suppported and a well entrenched feature in the village calendar.
Such a list would be incomplete without reference to the Parish Council, whose elected members oversee the local parish budget and generally look after the many aspects of local community management that keep Denton the unspoilt village it is. It can be argued that Parish Councils had their origins way back in Saxon times. The Lord of the Manor would have had almost total power of rule with little democracy in evidence. Gradually decisions that would have a direct effect on the community might have been discussed with the Parish priest and perhaps the schoolmaster - probably they were two of the few other people who could read and write. In some parishes there was an element of 'you keep them ignorant and I'll keep them poor' involved but evidence suggests that the people of Denton did not suffer with a Lord of the Manor of that type.
This informal situation continued until the1894 Local Government Act which introduced the existence of formal parish councils. These were to be funded by a levy on agricultural land - but as it was a time of agricultural depression this system did not last. After the First World War more powers were granted including administration of allotments and playing fields.
Following the Second World War the National Association of Parish Councils was formed and by 1952 half of all parish councils were members.
Today's parish council receives their funds via the 'precept' - an amount raised by an extra levy paid along with council tax. This money is then spent on a wide variety of matters directly affecting the village environment including grass cutting, street lighting, tree maintenance, playing field including play equipment, provision and maintenance of seats and litter/dog bins i.e. all those small things that cumulatively make Denton a pleasant place to live.
DENTON FEAST - (as recalled by Edwin Cawley)
The coming of the fair each year was a highlight in the village calendar in the years between the Wars.
It was a large fair run by a Mr George Billing from Towcester which arrived on the Sunday after 20th July (appropriately the Feast of St. Margaret) every year having previously been at Hanslope for a week. Denton was the only village in the immediate area which was visited by the fair.
The entourage of horses and engines and caravans would stop up the Horton road and only enter Denton once the evensong service at the church had finished around 7 p.m.
The whole area of the green was filled and the main carousel ride came part way across Main Street. As the village green was on a slope the stalls and rides had to be chocked up to make them level. The horses were kept on the field now the Rec.
A dynamo provided lighting on the green and the trough was used to replenish the steam engines which also powered the organ. This was a fine organ with a good sound which had one shortcoming. The evening was always finished off with the organ playing ‘Christians Awake!’ but unfortunately the very top note was just out of the organ's range!
Mr Billing was known as a smart and honest man who strode round the fair immaculately dressed making sure all was running well but he was never known to get his own hands dirty. He was kind, however, and liked fair play. On one occasion a young girl dropped her sixpence and it rolled under a stall. The stall operator quickly picked it up and put it in his pocket leaving the girl in tears. Mr Berrill came along and asked her what the matter was and she told him. Without further ado he ordered the worker to turn out his pocket, return the sixpence and dismissed him on the spot.
Mrs Berrill stayed the week in a caravan towards the top end of the green as there was a water standpipe there. The caravan was immaculately kept with polished brass and delicate curtains. Although she kept in the background from the fair itself she was also well-liked and in exchange for doing small jobs, such as filling a water pail, local lads might be rewarded with a ticket for a free ride. Free ride tickets were also among the prizes on offer from the various stalls.
There were a number of games and stalls including several based on throwing darts but using specially made dartboards. Roll-a-penny was popular and it was not unknown for the lady running it to giving guiding hand to particularly unlucky young competitors to make sure they didn’t leave empty-handed. Coconut shies were well patronised as coconuts were still relatively uncommon and considered exotic in pre-war years.
Some stalls were really novel. One in involved ‘tipping the lady out of bed’ in which balls were thrown at a target and, if hit in the right place, the ‘lady’ was tipped out of bed onto the ground.
Another involved a round table with a hole in the middle where the stall-holder stood. Around the edge were small markers each with a name of a town it and a piece of cheese! Bets were placed on the favoured place and then the showman opened his cupped hands to reveal several white mice and the first piece of cheese to be eaten was the winner and who ever had chosen the town in question was able to choose a prize from those on offer.
Most of the stalls and rides wee owned and run by the Berrills but they also a few invited self-employed stallholders. One was a man who had lost one leg and plied his trade round the fairs.
He had a table skittles of the type where the ball was suspended from a string above and the player swung the ball in an attempt to knock down the nine pins in one go. It was sometimes called ‘Devil among the tailors’ referring to an incident in 1783 when theatregoers at the Haymarket thought a play had insulted tailors. A riot ensued and the dragoons ploughed through the crowd to restore order – in the same way as the ball knocked down the pins.
The stall holder would demonstrate how to do it first and it seemed that knocking all the pins down was not that difficult. An attractive prize of 5 Woodbine cigarettes was on offer for felling all 9 pins or, for 7 down, a cup of hazelnuts was ladled out and given to the successful player.
However when the player come to do the same it was, all of a sudden, not so easy. This may have been explained by the fact a one-legged man needed to support himself by leaning on something and a skittle table ‘not on the level’ made success decidedly more difficult!
The flagship ride was the steam driven carousel the running of which was entrusted to George Berrill’s own son. It was large and colourful with traditional rising and falling horses and the music was provided by the steam powered organ. It was always popular and when the end of the evening was approaching and the last ride was announced sometimes it was so overloaded it could hardly get going round.
Needless to say people came from all around to visit the fair particularly from Whiston ,Yardley Hastings and Brafield as it did not visit any of these (rather to Denton’s delight). There must have been some interesting late evening journeys back home in the dark for those fair goers who had managed to fit in a visit to the Quart Pot or the Red Lion – or both!
After the War
The Denton Feast ceased when war broke out as,apart from the consideration of men being called up to fight, it was not allowed to have any lights after dark. After war ended in 1945 another fair run by Strudwick's visited the village on a few occasions. It was on a much smaller scale and only occupied a proportion of the green with a small roundabout and some stalls. None the less it gave enjoyment while it lasted. Unfortunately it's music was not up the the standard of Berrill's steam organ and the rather raucous rendition of a 'pop' song by a young pretender called Elvis Presley sufficiently irritated the easily irked Miss Gibson who lived at Holly Cottage and her complaint spelt the end of visiting fairs.
However in recent years the annual Church Fete has replicated some of the old traditions with an excellent brass band, dancing displays, stalls and rides including some old fashioned favourites. Doubtless the children enjoy these simple pleasures as much now as 80 years ago and some 80 year old Denton 'children' can remember the past years with equal affection.
MAY DAY
May celebrations have always formed an important part of the history of Denton. An ancient May Day song is reproduced below.
This is a surviving text from an old publication from 1897 catchily entitled ‘Old English Customs extant at the Present Time; An Account of Local Observances, Festival Customs, and Ancient Ceremonies yet surviving in Great Britain’ by P. H. Ditchfield M.A., F.S.A.
He writes :
A perfect garland of song adorns this bright rural festival, and a volume of the verses sung on May Day might be written. We will conclude our May Day songs with the words of Mayers in Northamptonshire, at Denton and Chaldecote :
‘Here come up players all, and thus do we begin To lead our lives of righteousness, for fear we die in sin. To die in sin is dreadful, to go where sinners mourn, ‘Twould have been better for our souls if we had ne’er been born. Good morning, lords and ladies! It is the First of May; I hope you’ll view the garland, for it looks so very gay, The cuckoo sings in April, the cuckoo sings in May, The cuckoo sings in June, in July it flies away. Now take a Bible in your hand and read a chapter through, And when the day of judgment comes, the Lord will think of you.’
The hand of the Puritans is evident in this curious medley, who altered the old May songs and took away from them much of their light-heartedness. But, as we have already seen, many of the old merry verses survived, and are still repeated in the old villages of England’.
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