e 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 par