Rust

Northampton is notoriously the county that people journey through on the way to somewhere else. The Romans put the Watling Street through it, on their way from Dover to Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury. Ernest Maples opened the first section of the M1, which traversed it, in 1959 (with no speed limit and no crash barrier between carriageways). Major routes from East Anglia to the West Midlands further dissect it, and besiege Northampton itself. Now it is to be bisected by HS2 - reaping heavy costs in disruption and lost land, but none of the benefits

Possibly the Normans valued it for itself. Culworth is one of four villages in the area that have late 11th century 'ringworks' - defensive earthworks incorporating a circular ditch and embankment, similar to a motte and bailey castle, without the elevated motte. These are not that common, so four is quite a cluster. What they had, they intended to hold

Culworth is a small ironstone village of 500 or so people that seems so far, to have escaped bolt-on housing estates. The old village forge building survives; for a while it housed, appropriately, a business selling wood-burning stoves - we bought one for our previous house. Now it is a cafe. The pub - busy serving breakfasts and coffee - has converted an outbuilding into a small shop and deli. The butcher's shop is modern and bright. That's a lot of retail activity for a small place

Sadly, whatever the engineer did, they do no more. There is no sign of the bell that should be rung, and no hint of the story that brought a Land Rover/Ambulance to this resting place. As the world travels past, metals of many kinds quietly corrode