The name of Weedon “Beck” might not unreasonably be supposed to derive its second half from the river Nen, that ripples not unpicturesquely through the village, were it not that it has clearly been proved an ancient manor of the Abbey of Bee, in Normandy. When Leland was pursuing his antiquarian studies through England, in the time of Henry VIII., he found it “a praty thoroughfare, sette on a playne grounde, and much celebrated by cariars, bycause it stondeth hard by the famose way there comunely caullid of the people Watheling Street.” It became a very busy place in coaching times, and was then chiefly a street of inns. What would have become of Weedon had the military depôt not been placed here to keep it alive before the railway came, with the thoroughness of a new besom, to sweep the long road clear of traffic from end to end, goodness only knows. There is a Providence that shapes the ends of even old thoroughfare villages; and undoubtedly Weedon believes in the beneficence of that Providence, because, taking away with one hand, it has given double with the other: that is to say, it has a railway junction and a canal, so that when the officers become bored to death in their ugly quarters they can either drown themselves in the canal, or take leave of absence and train to some more lively spot. A third course is to enjoy the billiards and society that the hotels of Weedon afford, or the pleasures of the Grafton Hunt. Those hotels, chiefly of the old coaching type, have all been restored and added to of recent years, and a very large modern one, the “Globe,” taking the name of the old and extinct “Globe” half a mile onward, has been built at that spot where the Holyhead Road and the Watling Street part company for some seventy-three miles: a spot quaintly called by Ogilby, in 1675, “Cross o’ th’ Hand.” The “White Hart” stands next door, and opposite glares the “Red Lion”; while the “New” inn—new in 1740, as a tablet over its doorway tells—is trebled in size by two modern wings. “Cash Stores” spell modernity, and the imposing branch of a Northamptonshire bank speaks of business. In contrast with all this, the old “Bull” inn, situated on the left hand, at the entrance to the village, is now a farmhouse, and the road by which the carriages and post-chaises came to it off the turnpike, though still traceable, has long been stopped at either end.