Parish History

Astrop and its Spa

After the Civil War the discovery of a medicinal spring at Astrop heralded the start of an era of prosperity for the village. George Baker, published his History of Northamptonshire in parts between 1822 and 1830 it provided a complete and systematic history of the southern half of the county and described the rise and fall of the fortunes of our local spa. It flourished for over 100 years but was in decline by 1786.

“In April 1664 Dr. Richard Lower, an eminent physician travelling with Dr. Willis to visit patients, discovered a medicinal spring at Eastthorp, commonly called Astrop, near King’s Sutton. His companion was as usual either asleep or in a sleepy condition, on horseback: but afterwards, imparting his discovery, they on their return made some experiments on it and being persuaded of its efficacy, recommended it in their practice. Soon after the water was enclosed in a well and upon the said commendations ’twas yearly frequents by all sorts of people.”

Another traveller, Aubrey, gave a different version of the discovery and attributed it solely to Dr. Willis:

“About 1657, riding towards Brackley to a patient, his way led him through Astrop, where he observed the stones in the little rill were discoloured of a kind of Crocus Martis colour; thought he, this may be an indication of iron; he gets galls, and puts some of the powder into the water; and immediately it turned blackish; then said he, ‘Ile not send my patients now so far as Tunbridge,’ and so in a short time brought these waters into vogue, and hath enriched a poor obscure village.”

Celia Fiennes, travelling from Broughton in about 1690, wrote:

“I went to Astrop where is a Steele water much frequented by the Gentry, there is a fine Gravell Walke that is between two high cutt hedges where is a Roome for the Musick and a Roome for the Company besides the Private walkes.”

Anthony A Wood paid a visit to the well in 1694 and recorded in his diary:

“Soon after, the water was enclosed in a well and upon the said commendations ’twas yearly, as to this time it is frequented by all sorts of people. July 10th. I went to Astrop Wells; took up my lodgings at Wm Upton’s at King’s Sutton near there unto; and continued there ’til the 15th of August. I2s. for my carriage backwards and forwards, and 5 pounds for my being there; 4s 6d. I gave for my lodgings per week.”

Thomas Short, writing in 1740, suggested it was a cure for most ills:

“I found it a certain cure in all female Obstructions, and singularly good in the first, and beginning of the second stage of consumptions; seldom fail in the Jandice, or begining Dropsies, effectually restore a Constitution Shattered by hard Drinking, they are Sovereign in Rheumatic pains Stone and Gravel; and have restored several who have been melancholly or maniac.”

Dr Radcliffe, the famous physician from Oxford, was said to have patronised Astrop very warmly. In 1749 a new well was opened at King’s Sutton with great solemnity at which a breakfast was given by Anthony Keek of Leicestershire in gratitude for the benefit he had received. (This is the Bog Spring which can still be found in the meadow close by the railway station.)

While Astrop was at the height of its fame there was a public ball every Monday, cards, dancing and a variety of social events. Its popularity declined rapidly at the start of the 19th century and was soon overtaken by more fashionable rivals.

The original well in Astrop Park is now in very poor condition. A replica was built on the Charlton road following the purchase of the estate by Sir William Brown in 1865 and the closure of the public road through the park to Newbottle.

In Northamptonshire Notes and Queries (published in 1886) an article and poem refers to op “sinking for ever and for ever.” Quoting:

“There is reference to this flourishing time in the verses given here. Possibly the festivities connected with a Michaelmas goose at Astrop became too uproarious, and the abolition of the feast may have been necessary as a matter of decency and order.”

On the abolition of an ancient and excellent Institution called the Goose Feast, at Astrop Wells, September 29, 1786:

With grateful Glee and Joy profuse.
Oft have I eat an Astrop Goose;
Such Geese indeed we might well brag on,
Fit for St. Micheal and the Dragon!
In ancient History we read,
The Predeccessors of thes Breed,
By cackling did avert the Doom,
And save the Capital of Rome;
Where were ye Cacklers of the Wells,
Ye brilliant Beaus, ye lovely Belles?
Why join’d you not in full Oration,
Against this impious Innovation;
Which alters Days, and Times and Seasons,
O’erturns old custom, ancient Reasons;
To follow still the changing Moon,
Will put the Country out of Tune,
And Astrop once esteem’d so clever,
Now sinks for ever and for ever!

It is of interest that none of the early writers link the name St. Rumbold with the Well. This appears to be no more than a convenient association with the legend adopted in later years.

The Bog Spring of King’s Sutton

The previous article about Astrop wells mentioned another well at King’s Sutton and this was opened in 1749. This is the Bog Spring and can be found in a field, just north of Wales Street, next to the railway. An eminent historian, Sir George Clark, suggested that this was the original St. Rumbold’s well, the name having been borrowed by those promoting Astrop in the 17th century.

A description by B. Thompson in 1914 shows little change:

“This spring rises in a field near to the railway and it is still in use by the people around. At the present time the spring is enclosed by post and rails – wooded posts and iron rails about 24 yards around. The enclosure is polygonal with seven sides and a gateway. The water flows in a thin stream from a small lead pipe in a mound above the general ground level, but I understand there is no reservoir in the mound. The supply of water is maintained at all seasons, and the surplus water is carried away by a drain to the nearest ditch, near to the road.

“As to the water, it is entirely different to the Astrop water, although comparatively near, and is probably derived from the lower beds of the Middle Lias instead of the Upper. It is not Chalybeate, ie it does not deposit iron on standing and does not go turbid on standing. It is saline water having a brackish taste, containing nearly four times as much solid matter to the gallon as the Astrop water; and according to Mr.Beesley contains a little Iodine.”

In the description Beesley’s analysis, made in 1850 is reported with the comment:

“A sample of the water collected July 1913, shows that the water has not changed materially since 1850. for the solid residue dried at 115 C. amounted to 182 grains per gallon, and was chiefly composed of Chloride of sodium (common salt) and sulphate of Sodium (Glaubers salts), the latter being the substance which gives it its real medicinal properties.

“This is not bog water, but apparently the spring rising in the low ground originally made a bog, hence the name Sutton Bog Spring.”

An analysis for Brackley Rural District Council in 1963 shows a similar composition and a letter from the Public Analyst states:

“The dose of sodium sulphate when given medicinally is 15 to 120 grains, and a person drinking one and a half pints of this water would receive approximately the minimum dose of this salt. The water is therefore likely to have some aperient effect if consumed in any quantity or regular doses, and in many cases this could prove beneficial. Being saline the water will be good for satisfying thirst and useful in alleviating salt depletion. On the other hand it would be unsuitable for persons on a sodium restricted diet. In addition to its interesting mineral composition, the chemical results show the water to be of a high degree of organic purity.”

St Rumbold’s Well – Medicinal or Holy Water

(From the King’s Sutton Times dated Jun 1993)

In about 1863 William Johnson, in his History of Banbury and its Neighbourhood, discussed the religious association of the well in the reigns of Henry II and Edward III, centuries before its discovery as a medicinal well based on its mineral content:

“At this period, great virtues were supposed to be inherent in chalybeat springs, to which were attributed not only the medicinal property of the waters, but also the reputed sanctity of some particular saint. Thus at Astrop, we have St. Rumbold’s Well – whoever St. Rumbold may have been – a spring bubbling up by the side of the highway, closely adjoining a gamekeepers house, and about midway between the mansions and village of King’s Sutton. In after times this well became famous as the resort of upper class invalids – a sort of rival to Tunbridge and Bath – until the paternity of an illegitimate child was attributed to a fashionable physician, whoever afterwards took umbrage to the waters and declared that they were valueless for the purposes of medicine.

“Then there was St. Stephen’s Well a short way westward from Banbury, and that of St. Botolph at the village of Farnborough – neither of which, it is true, was so popular as the Rumbold Saint; still both would have their devotees and pilgrims to their shrine. So numerous were these towards the close of the century at which we are now arrived , and so heavy were the exactions on the Churches patrimony in support of the helpless cripples who crowded thither in search of an exceedingly problematical cure, that Bishop Oliver Sutton, who had succeeded to the episcopate of Lincoln about 1280, found it necessary to exert the authority of his office and to prohibit the indigent from the practice of making ‘pilgrimages’ to the so-called holy wells.”

Thus Astrop Well fell into obscurity until its accidental rediscovery by Dr Lower and Dr Willis in 1664.

The Moving Tale of a Saint and his Spring

(From the King’s Sutton Times dated September 1997)

It blackened both teeth and stools, but the water of St. Rumbold’s Well in King’s Sutton was highly prized in the 18th century… Byron Rogers traces the source.

Astrop Wells in 1813, drawn by Thomas Rowlandson

Beyond the last house lies a place of importance and some danger, and if you blink you will miss it, for the road out of King’s Sutton to Brackley straightens at this point and motorists accelerate. They would need to brake sharply to see the little wall and the warning signs put up by Northamptonshire County Council.

One proclaims “County Heritage Site”, although there is nothing to say why. The council, however, is explicit on the dangers: “Caution, Access Bank May Be Slippery”. So you stare in wonder at the path beyond the wall which leads down to a neo-classical stone seat, quite ornate. Beside this, a simple pipe sticks out of the bank; the pipe drips and the water has stained the earth red. Above is another sign, “Water Unfit For Drinking, NCC”. It is one of the oddest little places ever.

But close your eyes. We are going back to a time before county councils told people what to do, long before county councils even were. This place is full of ghosts, and here they come… “Lord Lymington and the Hon Master Wallops, his three brothers, young Master Cartwright of Aynho and his tutor, the Rev Mr Parker, Sir Henry D’Anvers, the Rev Dr Grey and his wife, the Rev Dr Trimmell, Captain Thicknesse …”

Not the Captain Thicknesse, the most quarrelsome man in the 18th century, of whom it was said he could sniff out an insult at 100 yards? The very same. But Thicknesse did not quarrel in the Northamptonshire village of King’s Sutton.

He drank the water dripping from that pipe, up to a gallon-and-a-half of it a day, which had the effect of turning stools black as jet. He would have had unlimited opportunity to admire this piece of conjuring, for the water was also a potent laxative. Captain Thicknesse had things other than insult on his mind in this lost spa.

Unlike their Continental counterparts. the spas of England are all shadows now (although Bath is applying for a grant from the Millennium Commission for an ambitious rebirth). But all still have their buildings, the pool and pump rooms agonised over by town councils who do not know what to do with them now that no one comes. “You should have been here 60 years ago,” an old man in Llandrindod Wells said, wistfully. “We had a lavatory every 10yards.”

But in King’s Sutton you have to tum detective to spot the footnotes to lost grandeur – a doorway here, a window there – until, that is, you come to the churchyard. Here the footnotes are massed, the gravestones of the 18th century, row upon ornate row, and so many of them there could have been little room to bury anyone there afterwards. Perhaps the water always was a bit dodgy.

The original spring is in a field in front of the big house on the outskirts of the village, fenced off against curious cattle. The main road came past this one but the squire had that moved, as squires could then and a depression in the field is all that is left of the old highway. A later squire had the pipe run out to the Brackley road.

And King’s Sutton forgot the periwigs and the crinolines who flocked here to cure the gout and fix the loose teeth, even though the water turned these black as well.

But the village had a fame 1,000 years before that, and I am indebted to the antiquarian Kemmis Buckley for his researches.

The spring is called St. Rumbold’s Well, after a 7th Century Saxon saint who was born here, crying out loudly at the moment of birth that he was a Christian. Dramatic place, King’s Sutton.

In the crowded first day of his life, which was also his last, Rumbold was baptised in a huge concave stone that no-one could lift, received Holy Communion and preached a sermon. Ho, ho, ho, I hear you say, except that in 1923 something rather odd turned up in the churchyard.

After replacing a fallen pinnacle on the spire, workmen were asked by the vicar to clear away a large earth mound outside the porch. This had been much loved by children, who played leapfrog on it. But when dug into, it revealed a huge concave stone that no-one could lift. Clearly of great age, it is now the church font and so big that a fully-grown man could be baptised in it. It was not only the young who were baptised in pagan England.

They were always finding things in King’s Sutton. A year earlier, in 1922, the holy water stoup had been retrieved from a nearby farmyard, and three centuries earlier there had been the most important find of all when Thomas Willis, a local doctor, rediscovered St. Rumbold’s Wells in 1667. It was said that he was asleep on his horse at the time. Dr Willis tested the water for iron and said: “I’ll not send my patients now as far as Tunbridge Wells.” Its fame spread so quickly that a year later a pamphlet was published listing 70 conditions this water could cure. “It penetrates through every occult passage where other medicines cannot come.”

And then everyone came, the doctors first. Dr. Radcliffe, later to have a hospital named after him in Oxford, initially praised the water, but then vilified it, as he was later to do with the water at Bath. Kemmis Buckley has found that the abrupt waning of enthusiasm for King’s Sutton may have something to do with the fact that the parish made Dr Radcliffe pay for an illegitimate child he had fathered during his visit. Potent stuff, the water.

Dr Radcliffe swore “he would put a toad in that well”, but his professional colleague, a Dr Short, purred: “If he did put a toad in, he either took it out again or the water converted it into one of the most restorative medicines in the country”.

It was Dr Short who suggested the dosage. A pint or two a day was no use, he wrote; to get the maximum benefit, it was necessary to drink six to 10 pints of it every day. That teeth and mouth were stained an indelible black was a small price to pay.

“Oh there were tea-rooms, a dance-hall, long gravel walks and, most important many conveniences for the drinkers to repair to when the waters operate.” Of all these, it is only the neo-classical stone seat which survives. Gone the tea-rooms and the ballrooms, gone all those fine, if blackened, lords and ladies.

Gone are the Prince and Princess of Wales, gone the Lord Chief Justice of England, also a Mr Thomas Thornton, who for half a life-time came every year, staying three months at a time for his health. That he had no need to worry is suggested by the fact that he industriously drank sea-water as well, and must have had the constitution of an ox.

Thornton wrote verses to a friend describing days which started at nine and consisted of walking up and down, of talking to friends and listening to brass bands until, shaking, it was evening, when the boozing and the dancing could start. These, of course, had to be flushed out of the system the next morning, day after day, week after week . They were mighty men in England 200 years ago.

But fashion changed. Other spas, such as Leamington, opened, and after the first decade of the 19th century a great silence, one writer noted, fell upon King’s Sutton. When, in 1914, Mr Thompson came, he said he could just about make out the ruins of the tea-room and the assembly hall, and sadly took the treasurements.

One picture of the golden years survives. (as above) The great Thomas Rowlandson came in 1813 when the crowds had thinned, but he was still able to show them walking up and down, up and down, in bonnet and tricorne hat. The ornate stone seat he painted survives, where the water still runs for the ghosts, which Northamptonshire County Council will not allow anyone else to try.

This article appeared in The Sunday Telegraph on 15th June 1997, and is reproduced with the kind permission of Byron Rogers, the author, and The Sunday Telegraph.

Employment and Commerce in King’s Sutton

Trades and Employment

Until the coming of the Great Western Railway most work was to be found on the farms and in associated services such as the blacksmith, saddler and wheelwright. Pump making was an important business as, with no mains water, one either had to use a well or a pump.

Cabinet and chair making was carried out and these craftsmen met socially at the Walnut Tree Inn in Church Avenue. Other trades such as thatching and shoemaking continued until recent times. Edgar Mobley was the last thatcher from the village and he retired in 1949. Bert Stockford is still remembered as the shoe-mender along with ‘Snobby’ Ring, whilst “Shoe-maker” Wyatt and Johnny Taylor, the church sexton, were shoe-makers.

When the Oxford to Birmingham railway line was built a new opportunity was opened because it became possible for ironstone to be mined and carried away by rail. There were mines at Astrop, Nell Bridge and Sydenham. Joseph ‘Joey’ Owens, the ironmaster at Astrop, lived in the house on the corner of Astrop Road and The Knob, it was then known as Spring Vale after the foundry at Bilston. To reach the Sydenham works the workers walked over Black Bridge and through Factory Meadow where the old paint factory had stood, from there they crossed the river and canal by a footbridge and a swing bridge.

See details of ”Gertrude” one of the three trains used at the Sydenham Iron works….also see Gertrude now! reunited with The Doll”

Work at the Ironstone Works was very hard and not well paid. In the early 1900s the pay was 4d per ton for wet ore and 3 1/2d for dry. A man could usually fill about twenty wagons which each held 1 ton of ore. For stripping the soil, the pay was 3d. a yard and one farthing for tipping each wagon. Fred Hickman, who is now in his eighties, (in 1993) started work at Sydenham when he was 14 years old and as he had a good head for figures was put to working out the wages. The wage was linked to the cost of iron so as the price rose during the First World War so the men earned more. However, when the war finished and the price went down many families faced difficulties. When Astrop closed in 1924 and Sydenham in 1926 two thirds of the working population were without work and great poverty was experienced. A soup kitchen was operated from the Reading Room as had previously happened in 1887-88.

Evidence of the workings can still be seen around the village, fields being lower than nearby roads and, if you look carefully, you will see where the tramway was laid, along which horse-drawn trucks carried the iron-ore down to the railway sidings. One of these foundations can be seen on either side of the road near Buston Farm.

Apprentices learnt their trades from experienced craftsmen. In 1927 Jack Cox was apprenticed under the Ann Jenkinson Charity to Messrs Harris Bros. to “learn the art, trade or business of carpenter and wheelwright”. During the five years following, “the said apprentice his Master faithfully shall serve, his secrets keep, his lawful commands everywhere gladly do, he shall do no damage to his said Master nor see to be done of others but to the best of his power prevent or forthwith give warning to his said Master of the same, he shall not waste Goods of his said Master nor lend them unlawfully”. A common practice in the early part of this century was for schoolgirls, as soon as school was finished, to work as maids doing housework for the local gentry.

New Opportunities

Gradually other opportunities arose at the Northern Aluminium Company in Banbury, Morris Motors at Cowley and the building of RAF Upper Heyford. Some also found employment at Bletchington Cement Works, Wroxton Ironstone and on the Great Western Railway. At the start of the Second World War men were conscripted into the forces and it became necessary for women to take their place in the factories and on the land as they had during the First World War.

Agriculture, which had been affected by the depression, now became an important source of food as many supplies were cut off. As mechanisation became more prevalent small farms gave way to larger units, fields increased in size with the removal of hedges so the small working farms within the village gradually disappeared. There is now only one farm, Home Farm, situated in the village and even that is cut off from its land due to housing development. Within the parish boundaries there are still working farms, Buston Farm, Astrop Hill Farm, Little Purston, Sutton Lodge Farm and The Mill House Farm, the remainder of the land being worked by company farms.

Commerce – The Early Part of the Century

There were nearly 50 businesses directly serving the villagers in 1914 as listed in Kelly’s directory. These included Alfred Adkins and Thomas Hopkins, bakers, David Cadd the saddler, six shop-keepers, Joseph Ayriss, John Cousins, John Dagley, Mary Jane Parry, George Turvey and William Tustain. There was also the Banbury Co-operative Industrial Society Ltd.

Apart from these there were a variety of small shops which people set up in their front room. Both Janet Bevis and Elsie Merry remember these little shops, especially Mrs Hurst who kept a little shop in Red Lion Square selling haberdashery, sweets and liquorice rolls which cost one farthing. Janet helped in her own mother’s shop making ice-cream by putting ice-cream powder, egg substitute and milk into a container and, placing the container inside another then surrounding it with ice and saltpetre, turned the handle until the ice-cream was made. This was done on a Saturday morning and sold at Id. a cornet and 2d. a wafer in the afternoon at the cricket matches in the Greens. The Dagley family had the Post Office at the The Lace House. Mr Dagley is remembered for his little goatee beard. Olive Wyatt worked there at that time and next door Mrs McGinlay had the shop which had previously belonged to Mr Joseph Ayriss, her brother.

The Co-op (formerley Mr & Mrs Heath’s general store) was situated on the corner of Astrop Road and Mill Lane but in the 1930s moved temporarily into the old thatched Methodist Chapel whilst modernisation took place. Fred Moore and then Ted Keen were the managers and Kath Stimpson and Sheila Wyatt worked there for many years. Kath took over as manageress when Ted Keen left in 1964 and stayed until its closure in 1977. In the early days customers would sit on a chair in the shop doing their knitting whilst waiting for their order to be put up, the bacon sliced just as they liked it and the tea and sugar weighed out from sacks.

Since the closure of the Co-op the shop has become Coupe’s Stores with its own butchery owned by Ivan and Neville Coupe.

Other businesses in 1914 were George Kerby, a hurdle maker, Dr. J. Rickards, physician and surgeon. Public Houses were run by Oliver Compton at The Three Tuns and Frederick Poole at The Bell, there were two beer retailers, one William Williams was also the butcher at the Butchers Arms, two carriers, two builders, a blacksmith, dressmaker, coal merchant and drainage contractor. Twyford Mill was owned by Spokes & Marriage and the other mill, King’s Sutton Mill in Mill Lane, was run by Robert Lane.

By 1940 there were three coal merchants, Owen Judd, Cousins & Morgan and Eder ‘Jack’ Bint who was also a dairyman and cow-keeper, Mr Hopkins’ bakery had been sold to Percy Ayriss and Ernest Plank had taken over from Alfred Adkins.

Miss Anna Dagley had retired and Mr & Mrs McGinlay took over the Post Office & telephone exchange. Mrs McGinlay retired and closed the shop in 1972, having already transferred the Post Office to Mr & Mrs Bert Taylor in High Street. Today the Post Office is in the old bakery in Bull’s Lane (Red Lion Square), as part of the Spinney Bank Stores. David Cadd continued as saddle and harness maker, Leonard Green as the blacksmith and William Barber was still one of the carriers, the other being Edward ‘Teddy’ Meadows.

Garages

There were two garages in the village Canning’s Garage, formerly owned by Mr Terry Canning, ran a fleet of coaches until 1974 when they were sold to Heyfordian Coaches. Mr Canning retired in 1978 but the business continues under new ownership. Waverley Garage, owned by Mr Eddie Moon, was opened in 1947 and continues as a family business.

Working for the Parish

The following is an interesting example of a contract with the Parish Council from the early part of the century:

AN AGREEMENT made this ninth day of June, One thousand, nine hundred and thirteen – between The King’s Sutton Parish Council and John Lovesey, as to labour in connection with the said Council.

I, John Lovesey of King’s Sutton hereby agree to carry out the whole of the work required to be done by the said Council, including grave digging at the Cemetery, also mow with ‘machine once a week, mow the ordinary grass twice a year, keep graves tidy, trim hedges and clean ditches twice a year, dig round the inside of hedge and fence once a year, to attend to flower borders when necessary.

To clean Lamps once a week (when in use) and light them as instructed. To weed the parish footpaths once a year. To go round with the Cart to collect the Household Refuse once per week, and afterwards bury same.

To attend to the Recreation Ground hedges, also to lock and unlock the swing and see-saw each weekend.

The Cemetery Grass to be mown and cleaned away in a reasonable time. All the above mentioned work to be done to the satisfaction of the Council for the sum of Twenty six pounds (£26.0.0) per year. The payment to be made at the rate of 10/- per week.

In case of any breach of Contract in any of the above mentioned work, one months notice be given to terminate this Agreement.

Witness: Alfred Weaver
Clerk to Parish Council”

Signed: John Lovesey 1913

Olga Kevelos – “Idle Woman”, international motorcycle champion and pub landlady

Olga Kevelos was an astronomer, “Idle Woman”, motorcycle racing champion, Mastermind contestant, a much-loved (and respected) pub landlady, an energetic parish councillor, sometimes a very wicked humourist, and a good friend to many, many people in King’s Sutton and beyond.

Olga was born on November 6, 1923. She was the first child of a wealthy Greek financier and the English widow of an Indian Army doctor who had died of wounds sustained in the First World War. After marrying in Nice, the couple had settled in a large Victorian villa in a then rather well-to-do suburb of Birmingham, Edgbaston. Olga’s birth was followed two years later by a brother, Victor, and then in 1932 by yet another brother, Raymond.

Olga attended the celebrated King Edward VI High School for Girls, where she more than held her own, academically speaking. But the unconventional and competitive aspects of her nature were also much in evidence even then. At one point, she was severely censured by the headmistress for organising a wholly unauthorised roller-skate race in the school hall. History doesn’t record who won that race.

After going on to study metallurgy, and with the country now at war, Olga worked for a time in the laboratories of William Mills, manufacturer of the famous Mills Bomb. Recalling that time many years later, Olga was quoted as saying: “…I give thanks for the war, otherwise I would never have escaped from home. Although I loved it, I wanted to live in the outside world.

Always passionate about astronomy, Olga was then lured to London by the offer of a job at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. Unfortunately, enemy bombing forced the closure of the Observatory soon afterwards and Olga was evacuated along with other members of staff to the Admiralty at Bath.

Her arrival in Bath dismayed at least one member of the senior management there, Donald Sadler, who later recalled in his memoirs that “Olga Kevelos… could not do arithmetic and terrified people by stalking around with a large knife in her belt… Most [members of the clerical staff] were reasonably competent and one or two were exceptionally good, but a few were hopeless — Olga Kevelos could not add plus and minus signs together.” Mr Sadler did acknowledge, however, that “…she seemed an interesting woman, and after the war, became a motor-cycle racing champion!”

An “Idle Woman”

It has to be said that Olga wasn’t especially pleased to be in Bath either. There was none of the star-gazing that so fascinated her and the daily grind of endless paperwork didn’t suit a young girl who yearned to make her way in the world. One day in 1943, though, fate intervened to change her life dramatically. Her eye was caught by an advertisement placed in the Times by the Department for War Transport. The ad was seeking female trainees to work on canal barges for the Inland Waterways. Olga jumped at the chance to escape the drudgery of clerical work and spent the next two years with several all-female volunteer crews who manned barges carrying vital war materials up and down the Grand Union Canal between London and the Midlands.

Nearly 50 years on, in June 1992, Olga was delighted to be invited to a reunion held at the Blatchworth Canal Centre in Hertfordshire to honour those extraordinary women. They had been nicknamed the “Idle Women” after the initials IW on their badges. Officially, IW stood for Inland Waterways, but the traditional boat people alongside whom they worked — people born and bred to the canal system — called them idle women and the name had stuck.

They had certainly been women, but far from idle. Interviewed at the Blatchworth reunion by a journalist from the Independent newspaper, Olga remembered that it was “hard work with no respite at all. From the moment you cast off in the morning,” she said, “you just kept going till you were ‘locked out’ — meaning that the lock had been shut — or darkness made it impossible for you to go any farther. We worked an 18- to-20-hour day, and nobody ever stopped.”

Unlike the much better known Land Girls, the Idle Women didn’t receive much in the way of extra rations. Olga said: “We subsisted on cocoa with condensed milk, national loaf and peanut butter. I don’t know how we managed to live and keep as fit as we did. I was always hungry, all the time.”

The 1992 reunion was organised to premier a play written and performed by members the Mikron Theatre company, which travelled the waterways presenting its works at canal-side venues. This very moving play, Imogen’s War, was based on diaries and books written by some of the Idle Women themselves. It was later performed by Mikron just down the road at Aynho Wharf where I remember Olga was thrilled to be the guest of honour.

Later still, in October 2005, the Waterways Trust and British Waterways unveiled a special plaque at the National Waterways Museum, in Stoke Bruerne not far from us, to commemorate the involvement of the idle women in the Home Front. In a long overdue appreciation of their contribution to the war effort, the British Waterways’ chairman, said this: “Keeping cargo moving along the waterways during the war was no easy task. These young ladies had to contend with limited rations, difficult living conditions and sometimes appalling weather including being ice-bound. Their selfless service to the country deserves recognition and we are delighted to unveil this plaque in their honour.”

After her momentous war, Olga was awarded a government grant to study French medieval history at the Cité University in Paris. Olga recalled having a “smashing time” during this period of study in the company of one of the girls she had crewed with on the canals. The pair bicycled all over Paris and travelled extensively in other parts of Europe as well. “I was one of the first backpackers,” she later quipped to a magazine journalist.

On the back of the knowledge of Europe she gained at this time, Olga started her own travel agency on her return to Birmingham. She also helped her father and other members of the family in the running of the Cherry Orchard restaurant in the centre of town, which her father had bought as a side line to his work at the Birmingham Stock Exchange.

Motorcycle champion

From there on, Olga’s life might well have returned to some semblance of normality if it hadn’t been for another twist of fate. Finding that her then boyfriend, Phil Heath, was slipping off at weekends to race motorcycles, Olga decided that the best way to stay with her man was to join him at the races. She borrowed a bike from an artist friend, took a few basic lessons in how to ride it, and embarked on a career that would last for over twenty years.

Encouraged by her bike-racing boyfriend to try her hand at the sport herself, Olga soon impressed everyone with her natural aptitude. She later listed all the qualities a motorcycle racer should have: “balance, anticipation, concentration and fearlessness.” It’s possible that her tough life working on the barges had something to do with her success as well, preparing her both mentally and physically for what was to come.

In fact, Olga did so well at her first race meeting that she was offered a bike and sponsorship there and then by the James Motorcycle Company. She accepted the offer but found the James machines too fickle and the following year was the proud owner of an AJS, which she rode down to San Remo in Italy to take part in the International Six Day Trial. In San Remo an accident left her with a broken wrist and a broken ankle too. Undaunted, she rode back to Birmingham with her wrist and ankle still in plaster. (It should be noted that most of Olga’s male competitors travelled to and from San Remo in the comparative luxury of their team transports.

Olga went on to win the first of her two Gold medals, riding a 500cc Norton in the following year’s International Six Day Trials in Wales. She was to ride in every Scottish and International Six Days Trial event until she finally retired from the sport in 1970. During that time, she won the backing of virtually every major British motorcycle manufacturer, and the Italian and Czech manufacturers Parilla and Jawa/CZ respectively. It was the imposition by the Czechs of a strict fitness regime lasting some six weeks, to which Olga later attributed her second gold medal in 1953.

Her former links with Czechoslovakia led Olga 40-odd years later to be invited to a Foreign Office reception held to celebrate the Czech Republic’s accession to the European Union. The then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, apparently spent some time discussing with Olga her views on Ghengis Khan. “He probably wanted a few tips on how to invade other people’s countries successfully,” she commented afterwards.

During her days as a professional motorcycle racer, Olga also turned her hand to competing on four wheels. She regularly drove Kieft Formula III cars at Brands Hatch and Thruxton. As well as the Kiefts, she raced cars designed by her greatest love, Rex McCandless. Rex was an extraordinary Irish engineer who when Olga first met him worked for leading British bike manufacturer Norton and he was a pivotal part of the team that developed the legendary Norton “featherbed” bike frame. The Featherbed was later adopted by just about every major motorcycle manufacturer in the world.

Rex later went on to work for fellow Ulsterman, tractor magnate Harry Ferguson (of Massey Ferguson fame), for whom he designed two revolutionary, aluminium-bodied racing cars that were distinguished by their Shamrock-shaped radiators. In the 1960s, Rex also took his inventive genius to the skies, designing and building his own Autogyro, a form of one-person helicopter similar to the one featured in the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice. As with Olga, Rex attracted superlatives like a lamp attracts moths. It comes as no surprise, then, that he and Olga got on like a house on fire, sometimes almost literally.

Her career as Britain’s leading lady motorcyclist turned Olga into something of a celebrity of course and like all such people, she attracted a lot of press attention. Newspaper stories about her life abounded. Some of them were even true. During one of the Scottish six day trials, for example, Olga and one of the race officials, Allan Jefferies, were reported to have found themselves banged up in the Fort William nick for general rowdiness around the town. They were apparently only released the following morning after dire threats that the six days event would be moved to a different part of Scotland if the local police force didn’t let their prisoners go.

Then there was the time Olga drove her Italian Parilla motorcycle over a cliff during the International Six Day Trial at Lake Como in northern Italy. She lost two teeth as a result and also wrecked her bike. The headline in one of Italy’s leading newspapers, La Stampa, the following morning read: “Olga has lost her smile.”

Writing in an early 1960s Scottish Six Day Trial programme, one of Olga’s fellow participants, David Tye, recalled an encounter with her at a previous event. As he made his way around the course, Mr Tye came across Olga, apparently stranded by the wayside. No, she assured him, she didn’t need any help, she’d simply stopped to admire the view.

In 1964, Olga risked the wrath of the East German police by handing out to local children some expensively imported fruit she’d been given by the authorities. Unbeknown to Olga, such luxuries were “verboten” as far as the general population were concerned and, in any case, these children didn’t have any idea how to unpeel a banana. Olga competed in several other countries behind the old Iron Curtain – including Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia – during her illustrious career, and she retained a great deal of sympathy for the collective sufferings of their people for the rest of her life.

The motorcycle trials events in which Olga participated were widely acknowledged as the longest and most strenuous of all motorcycle competitions. This short extract from a biography of the famously macho Hollywood film star Steve McQueen – who famously performed the stunt himself when filmed jumping his motorbike over a barbed wire fence in the film, the Great Escape – gives a flavour of just how tough they were:

“In September of 1964 Steve was chosen as a member of the US team for the ‘International Six Day Trials’, the most challenging motorcycle event in the world. Each member of the team would ride 200 miles per day, competing in a range of endurance and skill based events, through mountains, forests and rocky trails against the best riders the world had to offer.”

“The most challenging motorcycle event in the world… against the best riders the world had to offer.” It’s worth repeating those phrases. Remember, Olga Kevelos, the woman whose life we celebrate here, won two gold medals, and several more silver and bronze medals, against the best riders the world had to offer in the most challenging motorcycle event in the world.

Pub landlady, quiz fanatic and parish councillor

Olga eventually gave up racing in 1970 and settled down to help her younger brother Ray at his pub in King’s Sutton, the Three Tuns. The pair of them were to stay at the Tuns until 1992, the best part of 26 years in all. During that time they ran an orderly, if somewhat unconventional, house. On many occasions, for example, would-be customers could be heard shouting and banging on the pub door at seven thirty in the evening, well after official opening time, trying to get a drink.

In those days, before the arrival of late opening shops, the Tuns would also be invaded by children looking to buy chocolate from the pub’s “off licence”, a hatch to one side of the bar. Unsurprisingly, a lot of those children later learnt how to hold their beer at the Tuns.

In 1978, Olga famously took part in one of the BBC’s most popular TV programmes, Mastermind, specialising in Ghengis Khan. A young local resident Taffy Sharpe, spent ages before the recording trying to improve her knowledge of sport in anticipation of the general knowledge round. (Olga knew next to nothing about most sports.) Taffy made Olga memorise dozens of sports facts, including the winner of that year’s FA Cup. Needless to say, when that question came up, Olga’s mind went blank and she could only think of Taffy’s own team Liverpool. Wrong team! Despite this letdown, Olga won her round and went on to do another, narrowly failing to go further. For the rest of her life, Olga continued to participate in quizzes, mostly in pubs in and around Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire but also higher profile events like the TV quiz, 15-1.

Olga could be ruthless in her pursuit of quiz victories, carefully selecting people for inclusion in (or exclusion from) her teams according to their ability to answer questions on subjects where her own knowledge was relatively weak. On one occasion in the late 1980s when Olga was trying to strengthen her regular team, she was mightily impressed by the brainpower of a chap called Naden, who played for a pub in Middleton Cheney. Looking up Naden in the telephone directory, she called him and invited him to join her team. She was mortified to find on the night of his big debut, however, that she’d got the wrong Naden!

Olga’s quiz teams enjoyed a few successes, notably beating a side led by a Brain of Britain winner to take the Oxford Mail Trophy, and twice winning the Northamptonshire County Villages competition. After she and Ray had to let the Tuns go, Olga became involved in local politics, working tirelessly on the Parish Council and helping to get the Kings Sutton Times out every month. “When you’ve run a village pub,” she said, “you know better than anybody what issues the community is most concerned about.”

Olga died on October 28, 2009 at the Horton Hospital in Banbury after suffering a massive stroke.

Olga Kevelos could light up a room with the gleam in her eye, and leave people in convulsions of laughter with her mischievous sense of humour. She was a woman of firm convictions but never allowed seriousness to interfere with her sense of fun. She was open about what was by any standards a remarkable life but never boastful. It’s no exaggeration to describe her as a legend in her own lifetime and her death leaves King’s Sutton a sadder and poorer place.

This article is based on the eulogy for Olga Kevelos written by David Bridson and delivered by him at her funeral in November 2009.

Further reading

Olga Kevelos’s obituary in The Times

Olga Kevelos’s Daily Telegraph obituary

Olga Kevelos’s Independent obituary

Biography of Olga Kevelos by Scots author and motorcycle enthusiast Colin Turbett

Profile of Olga Kevelos by Tim Coghlan for Canals & Rivers magazine: Part 1 and Part 2.

Barbour’s tribute to local hero Olga Kevelos

Audiovisual records

British Pathé film of one of Olga’s races on four wheels, in which she led all the way until the final few seconds, when she was pipped to the post by another driver after being signalled to slow down by her team in case her engine blew up! .

The Thorne brothers of King’s Sutton at war

In her 2016 book The King’s Sutton War Memorials – The Story of Those who Served, village resident Margaret Burne recounts the results of research she began as part of the First World War centenary commemorations in 2014. Margaret’s book provides a fascinating glimpse into King’s Sutton life over a century ago, but her interest in the period was never simply academic. Her three great uncles – brothers William, Frederick and Richard Thorne – all of them born in the village, saw military service during the Great War. Only one of the three survived.