Blisworth Stoke Bruerne and several other villages. There is a small supermarket/post-office/newsagent, being the only shop. There is a modern well-equipped doctor's surgery in Stoke Road serving several surrounding villages as well as Blisworth itself. The village has a pub, The Royal Oak. A second pub, The Sun, Moon and Stars, near the canal closed at least 50 years ago. A third pub, the Grafton Arms, is now a private dwelling. After several years of neglect the listed building was the subject of a compulsory purchase order by South Northants Council in 2007 and may now be restored partly for accommodation
Paw Paw Tunnel expected completion date of July 1838. Lee Montgomery, a Methodist minister who had experience from building the canal tunnel for the Union Canal was awarded the contract on March 15, 1836. Construction on the tunnel began in 1836. Unfortunately for Montgomery, the Irish workers were not skilled at tunnel work, so he obtained English masons, English and Welsh miners, and some "Dutch" [i.e. German] labourers. More unfortunately, this caused ethnic tensions which exploded into violence in 1837 and 1838, specifically between the Irish and everyone else; rioters destroyed the tavern at Oldtown, burned shanties, and the like. There were more