A long and steep descent into the valley of the Ouse conducts from Little Brickhill into Fenny Stratford, seen in the distance, its roofs glimmering redly amid foliage. The river, a canal, and the low-lying flats illustrate very eloquently the “fenny” adjective in the place-name, and it is in truth a very amphibious, bargee, wharfingery, and mudlarky little town. Agriculture and canal-life mix oddly here. Wharves, the “Navigation” inn, and hunchbacked canal-bridges admit into the town; and the lazy, willow-fringed Ouzel, with pastures and spreading cornfields on either side, bows one out of it at the other end. The arms of Fenny Stratford, to be seen carved above the church door, allude in their wavy lines to its riverain character, but, just as Ipswich and some other ancient ports bear curiously dimidiated arms showing monsters, half lions and half boats, so “Fenny” (as its inhabitants shortly and fondly call it) should bear for arms half a barge and half a plough, conjoined, with, for supporters, a bargee and a ploughman.

The church just mentioned is exceedingly ugly, and of the glorified-factory type common at the period when it was built. It owes its present form to Browne Willis, the antiquary, who built it in 1726, and, as an antiquary, ought to have known better. He dedicated it to St. Martin, in memory of his father, who was born in St. Martin’s Lane, and died on St. Martin’s Day. A kindly growth of ivy now screens the greater part of Browne Willis’s egregious architecture. He lies buried beneath the altar, but his memory is kept green by celebration of St. Martin’s Day, November 11th, when the half-dozen small carronades he presented to the town and now known as the “Fenny Poppers,” fire a feu-de-joie, followed by morning service in the church and a dinner in the evening at the “Bull” inn.

Bletchley and its important railway junction have caused much building here in recent years, and bid fair to presently link up with “Fenny,” just as Wolverton with “Stony.” The distance between the two Stratfords is a little over four miles, the villages of Loughton and Shenley, away from the road, in between, and the main line of the London and North-Western Railway crossing the road on the skew-bridge described in a rapturous railway-guide of 1838 as a “stupendous iron bridge, which has a most noble appearance from below.” At the cross-roads between these two retiring villages stands the “Talbot,” a red-brick coaching inn, mournful in these days and descended to the lower status of a wayside public. It lost its trade at the close of 1838, when the London and Birmingham Railway was completed, but, with other neighbouring inns, did a brisk business at the last, when the line was opened for traffic only as far as “Denbigh Hall,” in the April of that year. The temporary station of that name was situated at the spot where the railway touches the road, at the skew-bridge just passed. Between this point and Rugby, while Stephenson’s contractors were wrestling with the difficulties of the great Roade cutting and the long drawn perils of Kilsby Tunnel, coaches and conveyances of all kinds were run by the railway company, or by William Chaplin, for meeting the trains and conveying passengers the thirty-eight miles across the gap in the rail. From Rugby to Birmingham the railway journey was resumed.

“Denbigh Hall” no longer figures in the time-tables, for the idea of a “secondary station,” once proposed to be established here was abandoned. But while the break in the line continued this was a busy place. It is best described in the words of one who saw it then:—

“Denbigh Hall, alias hovel, bears much the appearance of a race-course, where tents are in the place of horses—lots of horses, but not much stabling; coachmen, postboys, post-horses, and a grand stand! Here the trains must stop, for the very excellent reason that they can’t go any further. On my arrival I was rather surprised to find all the buildings belonging to the Railway Company of such a temporary description; but this Station will become only a secondary one when the line is opened to Wolverton. There is but one solitary public-house, once rejoicing in the name of the ‘Pig and Whistle,’ but now dignified by the title of ‘Denbigh Hall Inn,’ newly named by Mr. Calcraft, the brewer, who has lately bought the house. Brewers are very fond of buying up inns, to prevent, I suppose, other people supplying the public with bad beer, wishing to have that privilege themselves. The unexpected demands for accommodation at this now famed place obliged the industrious landlord to immediately convert his parlour into a coffee-room, the bar into a parlour, the kitchen into a bar, the stable into a kitchen, the pig-sty into a stable, and tents into straw bedrooms by night, and dining-rooms by day.”

Another contemporary says: “The building called ‘Denbigh Hall,’ respecting which, the reader may have formed the same conception as ourselves, and imagined it to be the august mansion of some illustrious grandee, is nothing but a miserable hostelry of the lowest order, a paltry public-house, or ‘Tom and Jerry shop,’ as we heard an indignant fellow-traveller contemptuously style it, which has taken the liberty of assuming this magnificent appellation.” Tradition described how this house, once called the “Marquis of Granby,” had been resorted to by the Earl of Denbigh on one occasion when his carriage had broken down, and that he stayed the night under its roof, and was so grateful for the attentions of the host that he left some property to that fortunate man, who thereupon changed the name of his sign to the “Denbigh Hall.” This, at any rate, was the story told when the London and Birmingham Railway was first opened. There were those who looked upon it as a myth invented for the amusement of travellers, and perhaps those sceptics were right, but let others who are not unwilling to believe the story, hug the apt reflection that so unusual a sign must have had an unusual origin; and, so much being granted, let them go a little further and accept the legend as it is told. The little inn still stands by the wayside.