Lowick, Northamptonshire
Historical Description
Lowick (anciently Lujfwick), a village and a parish in Northamptonshire. The village stands on an affluent of the river Nen, 2 miles NW by N of Thrapston station on the L. & N.W.R., and has a post and telegraph office, of the name of Lowick, under Thrapston; money order office, Thrapston. The parish comprises 2028 acres; population of the civil parish, 337; of the ecclesiastical, with Slipton, 420. The manor, with Drayton House-an ancient mansion standing in a park of 220 acres-belong to the Stopford-Sackville family. Part of a Roman pavement was found in 1736. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Peterborough; net value, £200 with residence. The church is a beautiful building in. The Perpendicular style, has a square tower and an octagonal-lantern, and contains fine stained glass windows, a good brass of Sir Henry Greene and Edward Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire (1499), monuments to Sir Walter de Vere, Sir John, Germaiu, and his first wife, Lady Mary Berkeley, and Charles Sackville Germaine, fifth and last Duke of Dorset. There is an endowed school wih £90 a year.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | Northamptonshire | |
| Ecclesiastical parish | Lowick St. Peter | |
| Hundred | Huxloe | |
| Poor Law union | Thrapston |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The register of baptisms and burials date from the year 1542; marriages, 1557.
Ancestry.co.uk, in association with the Northamptonshire Record Office, have images of the Parish Registers and Bishop's Transcripts for Northamptonshire online.
Churches
Church of England
St. Peter (parish church)
The church of St. Peter is a structure in the Perpendicular style, with remains of Decorated work, and consists of chancel, clerestoried nave, aisles, north and south chapels, south porch and a fine western tower of four stages, with embattled parapet and pinnacles at the angles, from within which rises a large octagonal lantern supported by flying buttresses from the bases of the pinnacles; there is a clock and 6 bells: sedilia and piscinæ exist both in the chancel and north chapel, and under an arch between the chancel and north chapel is an altar tomb of alabaster with recumbent effigies of a knight and his lady, originally beneath a canopy, to Ralph Greene, of Drayton, and Catherine (Mallory), his wife, erected by the latter about 1419; there are other memorials to Sir John Germain kt. and bart. d. 1718 (once, owner of Drayton House) and his two wives, Lady Mary (Mordaunt), sometime wife of Henry, 7th Duke of Norfolk K.G. and Lady Elizabeth (Berkeley) d. 1769; in the south chapel is a brass with effigies and marginal inscription to Henry Greene, of Drayton, ob. 1467, and Margaret his wife, and an altar tomb of alabaster with a very fine recumbent figure of Edward Stafford, 2nd Earl of Wiltshire ob. 24th March, 1499, when this earldom became extinct, but was revived in 1509; there is also a marble monument to Charles Sackville Germain, 5th and last Duke of Dorset K.G. d. 29th July, 1843, with a beautiful figure of an angel guarding the tomb. Some fine stained glass of the 14th century remain, in the four windows of the north aisle, and there are five modern stained windows: the church was restored in 1869 at a cost of about £1,200, under the direction of Mr. William Slater, architect, of London, and in 1887 was further restored under the direction of Messrs. St. Aubyn and Wadling.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Lowick from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Lowick (St. Peter))
- Kelly's Directory of Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Northamptonshire, 1914
Land and Property
Drayton House, situated in a park near the village, is a mansion of stone, displaying in the north front the characteristics of the Tudor period, but the building generally exhibits a great variety of styles: the chief entrance on the south side is formed by handsome wrought iron gates opening upon a spacious quadrangular court, with a lawn in the centre surrounded by a carriage way; the building at the farther end of this court was embattled, temp. Edward III. and has a rusticated arch forming the entrance to a second court; at the end is a rich facade of the Corinthian order, erected by Sir John Germain, in the centre of which is the entrance, approached by a flight of steps: the angles of the court are occupied by rusticated piers; two large towers of the Elizabethan period are now surmounted by cupolas, with vanes: the park extends over 220 acres.
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Northamptonshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Lowick are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Northamptonshire papers online: