Guilsborough

The villages name means 'Gyldi's fortification'. The hundred is named after Guilsborough, but the site of the meeting-place is unknown. Guilsborough is made up of two hamlets, now joined. Guilsborough (Guildesburgh) and Nortoft. The former referring to the Roman fort, or referencing the earlier Late Bronze Age/Iron Age Enclosure on the same site. Possibility of the name deriving from a later Anglo-Saxon base word 'gebeorgan' (enclosure to save/protect/preserve) given there was an Anglo Saxon settlement over the Late Bronze Age/Iron Age followed by Roman, and the Anglo-Saxon fortified enclosures. The Church Mount road housing stands where Guilsborough Hall once stood. The mound under the…

On 22 July 1612, four women and one man were hanged at Abington Gallows in Northampton for the crime of witchcraft, also known as the Northamptonshire Witch Trials. Of those five, Agnes Brown and her daughter Ioane/Joan Vaughan (or Varnham) were from Guilsborough. They stood accused of bewitching a local noblewoman, Elizabeth Belcher (née Fisher) and her brother-in-law Master Avery and of killing, by sorcery, a child and numerous livestock. Although the hangings can be legitimately traced back to actual historic events, the story most commonly repeated is of less certain origins. The tale goes that there was an elderly witch called Mother Roades, who lived just outside the neighbouring…