Welford, once known as Wellesford, is first noted in the Doomsday Book in 1086 AD. Wellesford is recorded as having land for eight ploughs, although the villagers had only six ploughs. In Manorially farmed land there are recorded two ploughs, two serfs and one bondwoman. There were twelve Villeins, with a Priest, and two cottages had four ploughs between them - generally ploughed by eight oxen. Twenty acres of meadow is noted.

From pottery identified as belonging to the 2^nd and 4^th centuries AD it is clear that the Romans farmed the fields around the village.

Originally the village had three parallel streets, with today's West Street being the main street. Hollows and mounds in fields to the West of the village show the site of this medieval village ( See Village map )

Welford was once considered large enough to be a small town, and had its own Market Cross and Charter.

The village was prominent as a Coaching stop during the 17^th & 18^th centuries, lying equidistant between Leicester and Northampton on the main road to London. Some of the houses on the High Street are old Coaching Inns and are named appropriately.

The Parish Church of St Mary The Virgin ( See Village Church ) dates from the 13^th Century with registers from 1561. The Congregational Chapel dates from 1722, with the present building dated 1793.

Welford & Sulby Endowed School, recently renamed Welford, Sibbertoft & Sulby Endowed School, dates back to the early 18^th century. Log books begin in 1879. The present building dates from 1859, with further additions in 1909 and further major alterations in 1972-1974.

Welford once had 7 pubs, numerous ale houses, coaching inns, blacksmiths, saddlers, shoemakers, tailors, a milliner, bakers, butchers, drapers, wheelwrights, chandlers, coal merchants and many more different tradesmen.

Today Welford is a thriving community with many and varied facets to village life. A listing of some of the various associations, clubs, associations, societies and so on can be found on the Societies Page Listing (see Welford Societies)

Enquiries about the book may be made to John Dunn on 01858 575429

This is a link to an external site reporting archaeological fieldwork undertaken in Northamptonshire which was published by NCC's Historic Environment Team (Northamptonshire Heritage) on 30 January 2004. http://www.jwaller.co.uk/nas/fieldwork_reports/jan2004.htm

Husbands Bosworth Camp – also known as Polish Hostel Sulby

In 1948 the Welford area faced the unexpected arrival of Polish refugees who turned Husbands Bosworth aerodrome into their own slice of homeland. Tucked away as it was in the green fields of Northamptonshire, the Polish Hostel Sulby was easy to bypass. Yet the National Assistance Board, over the course of ten years, housed several hundred people in the disused RAF buildings south of the runways. Nature and farming may have subsequently tried to reclaim the area, but it is still possible to retrace the footsteps of this community and find buildings relating to this (almost) forgotten past.

The Camp was a product of the diaspora suffered by Poles when their country was divided by co-invaders Germany and the USSR at the outbreak of WW2. Over 1.5 million Polish citizens were then deported to the Soviet gulags under the orders of Stalin. At the same time, Polish military personnel chose exile in Britain alongside their government, and continued to fight with the Allies under the slogan “For Your Freedom and Ours” . Those remaining in Poland went underground, staging a countrywide uprising in August 1944. With the failure of this operation, Hitler ordered that insurgents be transported to slave labour camps in the Reich. Many of these people, by different means and in different ways, came to call Britain ‘home' when Poland disappeared behind the Iron Curtain…

The ‘Little Poland' of Sulby was anything but a closed community with residents finding an easy way of living together with locals from Welford, Husbands Bosworth, and Sibbertoft. Ties between Welford and the Poles were closest, for it was here that the children went to school and that the parents did their shopping and, for this reason, the Camp is an inherent part of Welford history. There is even a corner of the village churchyard where gravestones are carved with Polish surnames.

If you would like to find out more about the Polish Hostel Sulby, then click here to visit a website dedicated to preserving its history . The post-war Polish community now speak of Britain as their home, but they still carry fond memories of those initial years in their newly adopted country.

Click here to see a photograph of the annual Corpus Christi procession, which took place on the Camp led by on-site priest, Fr. Lewandowski.

Copyright Halina M. A. Szulakowska 2006.