Northampton
It is strange. I am sure I would have visited Northampton as a child. But there is absolutely nothing about it that rings bells as I walked around the town. It makes me wonder if it was somewhere I never actually made it to with my parents. I know I was a terrible bus and coach passenger when young, and most of the places we went to were gotten to by train. The only reasonable way for us to have got from Leicester to Northampton would have been by bus, as although it isn’t a long way to go, there were no direct trains between the two. It would have meant a change at Birmingham New Street (the portal to the underworld), or Coventry (who wants to be sent to Coventry), or more ridiculously, London.
It wasn’t like trying to get to other local places we visited on a semi-frequent basis, such places as Nottingham (although there were coach journeys there, accompanied by more than one filled sick bag), Derby, Coventry and Birmingham themselves, Peterborough, Lincoln, Sheffield, London. They all had direct trains. Even Skegvegas and Matlock Bath were straightforward compared to getting to Northampton by train.
Now, I know part of the lack of recognition may be that when a child you’re not that interested in old buildings. But I was that weird kid who was. And things will have changed over the years. But there are still plenty of the old buildings here. Perhaps I never did ever visit Northampton before. (Having spoken to my mum this evening, I can confirm that I did go there a few times, and now that she mentions the ‘Elephant’s Shoe’, it does ring a few bells.)
Whatever the case may be, I am glad to say I have visited it now.
It is a lovely town. And it is a town, not a city. It bears the distinction of being the largest town in the UK. Anywhere bigger in the UK is a city. And it does seem strange that Northampton isn’t a city.
There is a cathedral. Granted it is a Catholic one, and from a later period than a lot of the well-known ones which used to be the reason for places to be made cities.
Places such as Wells, St David’s, Ripon, Rochester, which are all tiny compared to Northampton.
It has a university, but that again is a more modern construct, it isn’t one of the ancient ones, not even one of the red-brick Victorian era ones.
The county is named for the town, but it sits with others such as Bedford and Stafford, where they are just county towns, and have never progressed to be cities.
It is home to a whole host of history. There was a castle here until the reign of Charles II, when he slighted it after the town’s part in the Civil War, and it never recovered. All that remains now is a postern gate. The rest was demolished and removed for them to build the railway station in the 1860s. A station itself long gone and replaced with a much more modern build.
The town’s history is now intrinsically linked with that of the boot and shoe trade. Something it is difficult to get away from as you walk around the town. It is what made the place prosperous, and is still a large employer.
We were staying in the suburbs of the town, and got a bus into the modern looking bus station, where you are greeted by a large, decorated boot. It was the only one we saw. I had been expecting to see various ones scattered around the town, in the same vein as similar themes had been done over the years in other places, such as Leicester, Derby, Manchester, Southampton. Only for me to remember, they are all cities.
A trip into the museum shoehorns the connection to boots and shoes into your consciousness.
There is a lot of the museum about shoes, there is a large temporary exhibition, bringing the lives of those who work (and worked) in the trade to life.
And then a permanent exhibition on the history of shoes. There are lots out on display, but they only scratch the surface of the hundreds of thousands they have in their archive, and make Imelda Marcos look like a complete amateur.
It also turns out we were in the museum on St Crispin’s Day. Purely by accident we were there on the feast day of the patron saint of shoemakers.
In there we found out that a Cobbler is only a fixer of shoes, or a dealer of second-hand shoes. Which means that Northampton Town’s nickname relates to dealing with duds, perhaps if they were nicknamed after the makers of new shoes — Cordwainers — then they might be faring better.
I know a lot of people for who this pair of trainers would be wholly appropriate, not that I wouldn’t mind them myself.
Not only that, but the museum had Elton John’s mega DMs from the film Tommy, enough to have me humming “Pinball Wizard” for a while afterwards.
Seeing as the temporary exhibition highlights the fact that the cordwainers, cobblers, and other assorted tradespeople involved in the manufacture of boots and shoes were noted as being ‘radical non-conformists and activists’ it does make you wonder if the lack of forthcoming city status is politically motivated.
Some might say that the expansion of Northampton after the Second World War due to it being given new town designation is reason why it hasn’t been granted city status. But surely with everything else it is more deserving than that ultimate new town, less than twenty miles down the road — Milton Keynes — of city status.
The town centre and the radial spokes out from it is a lovely eclectic mix of lovely buildings. At the centre sits All Saints Church, grand outside and in.
There are other medieval churches (including the Holy Sepulchre, one of only four round churches in the country).
Georgian grandeur, Victorian red brick and Gothic reproduction, Edwardian splendour, and Art Nouveau and Art Deco builds, all standing shoulder to shoulder with each other. Granted most of them have the hideous glass, chrome, steel, and plastic garishly coloured shop fronts ruining their aesthetic on the ground floor level.
And then there are the factories. A bit further out, but built to last, and wonderfully detailed. Some were High Street staples, others well known marks of quality, but the rows of grand houses along the main roads upon which they sit, and the rows of not so grand terraced houses which radiate out from them for the workers, show the impact the industry had on the town.
We had gone to Northampton to watch Crawley Town play football there, but the less said about that the better.
On the way to the ground we passed the famous lift tower, which when built in the early eighties was all on its own in fields, but nowadays sits in the middle of a modern housing estate.
It is where lift companies can test their new lifts, it has the tallest test shafts in the world, and where the lifts can go up to twenty miles an hour. I was oblivious about it, but my brother had told me about it earlier in the year as he had been especially to see it some years ago. Strangely my mate Chris, who designs and builds lifts as a job, has never mentioned it.
It is the only permanent abseil set up in the UK and when we were up close and personal with it, a group was having their debrief, having just abseiled down it.
There are parks and green spaces, and a large hospital, full of old wards. Mainly because so many of the various boot and shoe company owners donated sums for them to be built over the years. Strangely I couldn’t see any mention of a foot clinic though.
On our wanders around, either on foot or by bus, we passed quite a few out-of-town retail parks, but there were very few boarded up or empty shops in the town centre, and there appears to be a roaring trade in eateries, so it gives off the appearance of being a thriving town.
We really enjoyed our weekend there (apart from the couple of hours at the football), and feel there is still quite a bit we didn’t get to see, and I recommend it as a place to visit.
And who knows, perhaps it will manage to get its city status granted at the next random awarding of them. It probably deserves it.
For other stories of wandering around this year, check out my list
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