Geograph - photograph every grid square

This farm track leads to Colpman's Farm (centre middle distance) and this part of it is shared by the footpath to Islip. This was once a stiff climb for the small locomotives of the Islip Iron Co (later Stewarts & Lloyd's). In Eric Tonks' "The Ironstone Quarries of the Midlands, Part 5: The Kettering Area" there is a 1950 photograph of a train of loaded wagons climbing this gradient with a hard-working locomotive at each end. Opencast quarries active in the first third of the 20th century were to the right.


Iron ore quarrying in this part of East Northamptonshire resulted from the opening of the Midland Railway Kettering-Thrapston line in 1866. The Islip Ironworks (now the site of the industrial estate in gridsquare SP9678) opened in 1873, supplied by opencast quarries (and later mines) at Slipton, Twywell, Lowick and Sudborough. The ore was brought to the furnaces by 3ft-gauge steam railways. The quarries and tramways at Lowick and Sudborough were in use for about fifty years until closure of the last pits in 1952.

For pictures of railway and quarry vestiges in Slipton, see SP9479 and SP9579].