Cosgrove - Properties

Cosgrove Properties

The main occupation around Cosgrove was agriculture. Inclosure came in 1767, and though there were 27 small owners with claims on the common land, the main beneficiaries were the Cosgrove Priory Estate under John Biggin and the Cosgrove Hall estate under John Mansel. There was some consolidation of holdings afterwards, through sales to Mansel, and the parish began to change in character from one that had been relatively open under a range of owners to one dominated by a large landowner. This process accelerated with the merger of the two estates in 1803 (described above) and by the 1830s nearly two thirds of the parish belonged to the Mansels.

Cosgrove village was not of sufficient size to support a large range of trades, but did have a shop which also served as the Post Office, a blacksmith, a carpenter, and a couple of men who worked on the canal. From the latter part of the 19th century till the mid 20th century the most important source of employment was Wolverton Works - where railway carriages were constructed. Because of the number of Cosgrove men who had secure employment there, when the sale of the Cosgrove estate by Grant-Thorold took place in 1919, many of the tenants of the estate cottagers could buy them. This in turn caused a shortage of housing to rent in the village, a situation not eased until the local authority began to build houses on either side of Bridge Road in the 1930s. Further building took place in the 1950s and 1960s, but no other major development has taken place, for the reasons outlined earlier. Cosgrove has therefore become an essentially residential community of a stable but static size, with most of its inhabitants finding work in Milton Keynes and elsewhere.


The Hall	The Priory

Elm Farm - Branson House - The Lodge

The Water Mill

The Rectory/ Medlar House


The Old School 1844 - 1912	Cosgrove Primary School	The Cottage or Old Dower House

In the 19th century the village had three public houses, the Barge and the Plough and the Barley Mow. Both the Plough and the Barley Mow came on the market when the Cosgrove Hall estate was sold by auction in 1919, when Phipps of Northampton purchased the latter. They acquired the Plough in 1924, though that has now ceased to trade as a public house. Another inn - the Navigation Inn - grew up near the Castlethorpe Wharf. From: 'Cosgrove', A History of the County of Northampton: Volume 5: The Hundred of Cleley (2002), pp. 77-98. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk