Faxton

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Faxton is an abandoned village and chapelry in the county of Northamptonshire in England. The last villager left in 1960 after the demolition of the parish church of St Denis. There is now just one house standing on this remote hilltop location, overlooking the rolling farmland. Nearby are the villages of Old, Lamport and Mawsley and the Northampton & Lamport Railway.

Archaeologists claim that the village dates back to approximately 1150 AD, although they did find a very small number of Roman artefacts. However, it is believed that the name Faxton comes from the Scandinavian Fakr and the Anglo-Saxon tun, meaning Fakr's Farm. This would indicate that Faxton grew from a Norse settler's farmstead and therefore would date from approximately the 9th century

The Domesday Book, naming Faxton as the Manor of Fextone, notes that the population was of approximately 60 to 80 people. The village is documented as having consisted of a church, a rectory, a hall, an aviary, almshouses and a number of ponds. Lady Danvers founded the parish's almshouses for four persons and, six years later, Jane Kemsey bequeathed £100 to it.^[1] By the 1950s, an aerial photograph shows approximately 25 dwellings.

It is noted that the reason Faxton no longer exists today was due to dwindling population but, prior to this, the village was a victim of the plague that decimated the tiny population. It is reputed that in an attempt to escape the Black Death in London, a family relocated to Faxton with their servants. However, one of the servants was carrying the fatal disease which quickly spread and almost wiped out the village. The Northamptonshire Record Office holds the christening, marriage and burial registers for the parish.

[edit] Sir Augustine Nichols (1559-1616)

Faxton's most famous resident was Sir Augustine Nichols, a circuit judge of the common pleas under James I. He was a Knight of the Bath, born in Faxton in 1559; he died in 1616.

In 1610, the Manor of Kibworth, Leicestershire was jointly granted to Augustine, Anthony Shugborough and John Smith after Ambrose Dudley, the Earl of Warwick, died without an heir.^[2] It is not clear what happened to the manor immediately after this, but by 1632 the manor was being held by the Berrige family.

Judge Nichols had a clerk working for him. He was Thomas Dudley, a relation of the Nichols family. In 1627 Thomas Dudley, with his wife, daughter Anne, and her husband Simon Bradstreet, sailed for America. Dudley became Governor of Massachusetts as did Bradstreet later. Anne Bradstreet became America's first female poet and is still thought to be one of its finest. Her poem To my dear and loving husband was set to music by Leonard Bernstein and performed at the inauguration of President Jimmy Carter.

A memorial to Augustine was positioned inside the parish church but it was smashed during the church's demolition in 1958. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London retrieved the pieces and spent three years restoring it to its former splendour. A legend is connected to the smashed memorial. It is claimed that a phantom, reputed to be that of Sir Augustine, has been seen since the demise of the church and his memorial. Judge Nichols was poisoned in 1616 by four women. They were related to a man who was to appear before Judge Nichols for murder. They thought that by killing the judge they could spare their relation from execution.