Where to Stay in Northampton, England

What is Northampton known for?

Northampton is a town of England long tied to shoemaking and to a cluster of old churches. All Saints' Church anchors the centre, its portico facing the market square. Two rarer buildings set the place apart.

The Holy Sepulchre is one of only a handful of round churches left standing in the country, and 78 Derngate, the Charles Rennie Mackintosh House, holds the designer's single English interior. Cricket keeps its own ground at the County Cricket Ground, and the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery gathers the trade's history under one roof.

What are the main landmarks in Northampton?

Northampton's landmarks run from round church to cricket ground. All Saints' Church stands at the centre behind its columned portico, and the Holy Sepulchre keeps its rare circular nave a short walk north. Design draws visitors to one address. 78 Derngate, the Charles Rennie Mackintosh House, preserves the architect's only interior in England.

The Northampton Museum and Art Gallery holds the shoe collection, the County Cricket Ground stages the summer game, and the older parishes keep the Church of St Giles, St Peter's Church and St Matthew's Church among the town's medieval and Victorian towers.

What is the history of Northampton?

Northampton grew as a walled town of medieval England. Northampton Castle rose beside the crossing and gave the place its early weight, holding parliaments and royal councils through the Middle Ages before its slow ruin. The round church came early too.

The Holy Sepulchre was raised in the twelfth century in imitation of Jerusalem, one of the few of its kind to survive in the country, and the parish churches of St Giles and St Peter took shape around the same medieval streets. Fire and trade remade the town. A great blaze swept the centre in the seventeenth century, and the rebuilding left the classical portico of All Saints' Church over the market square.

Shoemaking then carried Northampton for generations, its workshops and factories supplying armies and markets far beyond England, a trade whose record the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery still keeps. The town's newer chapters left their own marks, among them the arts-and-crafts interior of 78 Derngate, the Charles Rennie Mackintosh House.

Where is Northampton?

Northampton sits inland in central England, one of the larger market towns away from the coast. The old core gathers on rising ground around All Saints' Church and the market square, with the ruined ground of Northampton Castle marking the western edge of the medieval town. The built-up area spreads out from there.

Older parishes reach toward Abington and Upton on the fringes, where the churches of St Giles and St Michael mark villages long since absorbed into the growing town.

What is the climate of Northampton?

Northampton has the mild, damp climate common to inland England. Held well away from the coast, the town runs a little cooler and drier than the western hills, with grey changeable weather blown across the country from the Atlantic. Winters are cool rather than hard.

Summers stay warm without much heat, rain falls in every season, and frost settles over the market square and the parish churchyards through the colder months.

How do you get to Northampton?

Northampton lies on the road and rail network of central England. Trains run south to London and north to the larger cities from the town's station on the western edge of the centre, and a motorway passes close by to link the town with the capital and the north. Almost everyone arrives by train or motorway.

The nearest large airports serve the wider region rather than the town itself, so the train or the road carries the bulk of arrivals from across England to the streets around All Saints' Church.