West Haddon enclosure riot, 1765
Who Fought
A mob assembled under the pretence of a football match; no military or law-enforcement force is recorded in the sources
History & Significance
West Haddon is a village in Northamptonshire, England, about 11 miles (18 km) north-west of Northampton and 7 miles (11 km) east of Rugby and just off the A428 road which by-passes the village. The population of civil parish was 1,718 at the 2011 Census. The villages of West Haddon and Crick were by-passed by the A428 road from Rugby to Northampton when the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) was built in 1996 near junction 18 of the M1 motorway, 3 miles (4.8 km) west of the village.
The name 'Haddon' means 'hill which is heathy'. ‘West’ to distinguish from East Haddon.
The fields of West Haddon were the location for an enclosure riot in 1765. An advertisement was made in the county newspaper for a football game that was to be played in those fields. The football game was a means to assemble a mob which tore down fences and burned them, protesting against the laws that were then being enacted that allowed wealthy landowners to lay claim to what was once public land.
Redmoor House, Guilsborough Road – mid 17th-century farmhouse.
Brownstones, 2 High Street – former Vicarage, mainly built in the mid-18th century, with a 1612 datestone that may not be original.
The Hall, 14 Station Road – an early 19th-century house with alterations made in 1946.
It also has a General Stores and a Londis shop which incorporates a branch of the Post Office Ltd. There are two public houses, The Crown, which was recently refurbished and The Sheaf Inn, which re-opened in September 2018. The Pytchley Hotel is named after the local Pytchley Hunt.
In 2003, a group of technology experts from the village and the village of Winwick grouped together to provide wireless internet for both villages, as British Telecom would not upgrade the local exchange to broadband internet. The system ran successfully until October 2004 when BT broadband was installed.
The village has many provisions for sport, with two large playing fields, used for men's football, at the north end of the village, a small children's play area, a tennis court, a pétanque area, a cricket pitch with pavilion and car park, and links to numerous countryside paths, such as the Jurassic Way. In the middle of the village there is a bowls lawn.
West Haddon has many active sports clubs, such as a tennis club, bowls club, 3 senior football teams, several youth football teams, a cricket team, a bowls club a petanque club and a table tennis club.
West Haddon Players is a local amateur dramatics society founded in 1978.
The village's primary school is West Haddon Endowed Church of England Primary School. Details of a series of reports on the school can be found in the relevant section of the Ofsted website. There were 233 pupils on the roll at the time of the inspection in December 2024.
The ground they fought on
The site of West Haddon enclosure riot, 1765 lies on Lias Group, bedrock that formed in the Aalenian. The rock here is mudstone, siltstone, limestone and sandstone.
At West Haddon in 1765, organisers of the protest against enclosure placed an advertisement in the county newspaper for a football game to be played in the fields, using the sport as a means to assemble a mob; once gathered, the crowd set about tearing down and burning the newly erected fences, causing approximately £1,500 worth of damage to the enclosures that had swallowed up some 2,000 acres of common land.
- None recorded in the sources
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything a full report reveals about West Haddon enclosure riot, 1765
This page covers West Haddon enclosure riot, 1765. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside scheduled monuments and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Scheduled Monuments near West Haddon enclosure riot, 1765
Other modern Battles
Battles near West Haddon enclosure riot, 1765
Explore the landscape around Northamptonshire
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the UK — drawing on Domesday records, scheduled monuments, Victorian OS maps, geological data and archaeological archives to tell the full story of a place.
- West Haddon · Wikipedia
- Attempts to ban football games · Wikipedia