Introduction

This book started life as a website. I loved the ability to post stories in an unfinished state which people could correct and respond to. I am still old-fashioned enough, however, to think that the information needs to be put into a book before it is really finished.

Having said that, I realise that it is still unfinished. More information will emerge about the people that I have covered, either because I have missed it, or because it is newly released into the public sphere. Also I will have made mistakes or wrong assumptions. Family trees are notorious for catching out the confident. I have to confess that, although most of my father’s ancestors came from Ringstead in all branches, I have never lived there. I grew up in Wellingborough but I have no local knowledge except from my reading, walking and the many helpful Ringstead people who have given me their time.

I have left the chapters roughly in the order that I wrote them rather than lumping all one kind together. I hope that by reading through the lives, or dipping here and there, you will get a sense of the life of Ringstead in the nineteenth century. As today, we see people, good and bad, steadfast and fickle, in happiness and sorrow.

When you wander along the streets you may see the people who once lived in the houses, or kept the shops, taught in the school or worked in the fields, preached in the church or chapel, or served at the inn. Also wander round the churchyard, Baptist burial ground or the cemetery. Do not see peeling gravestones but the villagers, the real breathing, fallible people, whose lives ended there. A community needs a vibrant present but also a proud past.

David Ball

October 2011

[Note a ‘c’ before a date in the text is short for circa meaning ‘about’ or ‘approximately’.