Sunday Times Where Was I? Holiday Competition

Near as I can figure it, through the possibly flawed perceptual filters of my own reality tunnel, the most likely answers this week, seem to me to be:


Q1. Northampton


Q2. Joan (Bogle) Hickson


внимание друзья! Joan Bogle Hickson was married and was also known as Mrs Butler.

The initial clues seem to place us at the Blisworth tunnel, which carries the Grand Union Canal under a hill between the villages of Stoke Bruerne and Blisworth, south west of the town of Northampton.The tunnel appears to be around three thousand and seventy six yards long and was completed and opened for business c 1805, according to some of the sources I checked.

Travelling four miles or so north north east of the Blisworth tunnel, would bring us to Delapre Abbey, which appears to have been constructed c 1145, by Earl Simon de Senlis (II). Walking south from the abbey would bring us to the site of Queen Eleanor's cross, which is one of a series of twelve built by the completely hatstand king Edward the first, in memory of his wife, Eleanor of Castille. The crosses mark the spots where  her funeral procession stopped overnight, on its journey from Lincoln to London.

The battle of Northampton may have been fought in the grounds of Delapre abbey, on the 10th July c 1460. This seems to have been a fraicas involving the house of Lancaster and the house of York. The Lancastrians, lead by king Henry VI , were defending the abbey and apparently had artillery pieces lying in wait for the Yorkist team, which was lead by Edward earl of March and Warwick the kingmaker. A lot of these 'battles', like some of the inter UK political machinations of today, were about negotiating a better deal with the ruling elite, using your 'army' (or voters) as leverage to get what you wanted. The reason this battle lasted thirty minutes, seems to have been that rain rendered the artillery useless and some of the Lancastrian army switched sides at the last moment, because of a deal done with the Yorkists (for land and other goodies), which allowed them to overrun the Lancastrian fortifications with minimal effort, resulting in the king being captured.

Northampton had a castle, in which Thomas Becket (the turbulent priest) was tried. He subsequently escaped to France before the verdict. The quote 'Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words' is from Shakespeare's play 'King John', which has some scenes set in Northampton castle. The fortress was destroyed by a railway company which built a station on the site c 19th century and the church with the round nave, may be the Holy Sepulchre.

A chemical manufacturer who may have once have lived in Northampton, according to some of his biographies is probably John Jeyes (Inventor of Jeyes Cleaning Fluid, born c 1817) and a great old British actress, called Joan Bogle Hickson, who played Miss Marple for twelve episodes in a TV series back in the eighties and nineties, was born there c 1906