Histories - Northamptonshire record

A Northamptonshire Record

This is a pictorial record of places, scenes, buildings and objects in the County of Northamptonshire. It consists of seven bound volumes containing nearly 400 paintings done by Carr, mostly between 1960 and 1964, but the latest, numbered 401, was done in 1969. The numbering is serial in time, but not all pictures are numbered and they are not in number order in the volumes. They were painted mostly on paper, card or board, mostly using watercolour, poster or acrylic paints, and were stuck on sheets of paper and bound into volumes. The volumes also contain proofs of maps and celebratory cards and some examples of printing.

The volumes are in the County Records Office at Wooton Hall Park on the edge of Northampton. You need to make an appointment to see them. The X6 bus goes from stand 18 near the town bus station to the Queen Eleanor bus stop. Don't get off at the next stop as it's a nightmare to get to the office on foot as it's an area designed for cars, not for people.

The seven bound volumes

Most of the paintings are annotated, but on different occasions. Some are annotated on strips of card pasted onto the page, presumably cut from an earlier mount. Carr then may have added extra annotations, often to mark changes in the scene, such as the view from his house in Kettering across the River Ise (Vol 2, page 2, NR 79, Jan 30 1960). More houses were built so that he could no longer see down to the river. Some of the annotations are reminiscences about friends or people he knew in the village or the house that he drew, and a few provided inspiration for scenes in his novels. Some are laments about the loss of churches or the changes in the landscape.

Note that Volume VII is numbered 6 on the spine and volume VI is numbered 7 on the spine.

There is a hand-written explanation of the paintings on page 1 of volume IV. It started thus:

One Sunday when Bob was in his teens and at a loose end, we went out to show him how a landscape could be recorded – a distant farmhouse between Grafton Underwood and Slipton. I used school powder paints. Why that effort began a painting jag which went on for three or four years I am unsure.

The painting Carr refers to is on page 10 of Volume II and is listed as Number One, January 1960. Carr was 47; Bob was 12. It shows a view between the gateposts of a drive leading to a farm in fields. It is not easy to read the text under the painting, but if you increase the size of the image (use Ctrl + in your browser on a Windows PC might do it), you may be able to work out what Carr has written.

All the paintings and printed items in the seven volumes have been scanned and can be seen here but, sadly, the resolution is too low to read what Carr has written about each scene.

(Last updated on 28/5/2021)

A Northamptonshire Record I

Approx size: 452 x 330 x 50 mm

Binding: brown cloth backed with red leather, the title embossed in gold on cover; nothing on spine.