underwood cut on the estate in the late 18th century was sold to the Foxley family of Wicken Hurst, where they had a brick-kiln. (fn. 324) The Foxleys also supplied bricks and lime to the estate for repairs. (fn. 325) The kiln was already in existence in 1717, when the tenant was Elizabeth Green, who also had a farm of 63 acres on the estate. (fn. 326) Twenty years later the kiln and 8 a. of land were in the hands of John Foxley, (fn. 327) who described himself as a farmer and brickmaker of Wicken Hurst in his will of 1769. (fn. 328) His widow Anne continued the business until 1778, when she was succeeded by her son Thomas. (fn. 329) He in turn died in 1797, when he described himself merely as a farmer, (fn. 330) and this may have marked the end of brickmaking on the estate. His widow Elizabeth kept the farm at Wicken Hurst until 1817 and left the parish two years later, (fn. 331) but there is no evidence that the brickkiln was still at work in that period. In the 19th century the Foxleys made bricks elsewhere in the district. (fn. 332)
Gravel has presumably been extracted on a small scale over a long period from pits near the river. Wicken was among the parishes in which quarries were opened (or enlarged) in the late 1950s to provide materials for the building of the M1 through the county. (fn. 333)
Other trades and crafts.
Wicken had only a handful of tradesmen or retailers during the century and a half in which the Mordaunts and Douglas-Pennants owned the estate, presumably relying for most services on the much bigger, open village of Deanshanger. (fn. 334) A blacksmith is listed in directories from 1847 to 1940, together with a shoemaker until the end of the 19th century. There were three shopkeepers in the village in 1869, (fn. 335) and four or five from the 1870s until the First World War. (fn. 336) In the early 1920s there were still two greengrocers and a butcher, (fn. 337) but by 1930 only the butcher was left, plus a general store at the post office, which remained the position until the start of the Second World War. (fn. 338) Thomas Green, the schoolmaster, who kept the post office at Wicken from the 1850s until the 1870s, (fn. 339) appears to have been the village's first sub-postmaster. Services were modestly increased in the 1890s but Deanshanger remained the nearest place for most Post Office business. (fn. 340)
Richard Whitton was described as a 'laceman' (i.e. a merchant) of Wicken in 1699 and 1720; (fn. 341) he died in 1741, by which time he was living at Deanshager, where two of his sons were also lace merchants. (fn. 342) As elewhere in the district, lacemaking remained a ubiquitious by-employment for women in Wicken until the early 20th century. In 1891 there were said to be at least 40 pillows in the village, which was one of those which benefited from the interest in the craft shown by Mrs. Harrison, the wife of the rector of Paulerspury. The exhibition organised that year in Northampton helped to raise the price the local buyer paid for Wicken lace, while Mrs Harrison's counterpart in the parish, Mrs. Andrews, tried to revive the craft and Lady Penrhyn agreed to pay for some new designs. (fn. 343)
The White Lion, one of the few freeholds in the village, was kept by the Canvin family from at least the 1840s until it was bought by Pickering Phipps, the Northampton brewer, in 1883 and a new tenant installed the following year. (fn. 344) The pub was modernised in 1906. (fn. 345)
A carrier from Wicken to Stony Stratford on Fridays and Northampton on Saturdays is first mentioned in 1869; (fn. 346) in 1874 he was also going to Wolverton Station on Thursdays, although this seems to have been a shortlived innovation. (fn. 347) In the 1890s there were two carriers (both of whom also had greengrocer's shops in Wicken) to Stony Stratford on Wednesdays and Saturdays but no service to Northampton; one of them was still in business in 1920 but had retired by 1928. (fn. 348) Another carrier continued to go to Stony Stratford one or two days a week until at least 1936. (fn. 349) From about 1930 motorbuses from St