Spires and squires was what Northamptonshire has been called referencing its fine medieval churches and rich landowners.
Northampton, its county town, is better known for its shoe and boot industry; Tricker’s, Crockett & Jones and Church’s still manufacture footwear in the town. It first established dominance over other towns similarly well supplied with cattle hides and tanneries, in the Crimean War when Northampton manufacturers won contracts from the British and French armies to supply them with boots. This came at the same time as an improvement in industrial processes and Northampton became pre-eminent.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, so in 1675, there was a Great Fire. A woman, oh why is it always a silly, bloody woman as Uncle Matthew would say, was carrying a shovel of hot coals back to her house to warm her dinner when a gust of wind blew sparks onto a thatched roof. In six hours about seven hundred of the towns eight hundred buildings lay in ashes. Coming so soon after the Great Fire of London, lessons had been learnt and rebuilding started surprisingly quickly. Indeed if a house had not been re built in three years the owner was fined. Daniel Defoe described Northampton as the “handsomest and best built town in all this part of England… finely rebuilt with brick and stone, and the streets made spacious and wide”.
The Market Square, the largest in the British Isles, was most pleasing, ranged on all sides with handsome buildings. I rate the four greatest squares in Europe as St Mark’s (Venice), Place Stanislas (Nancy) and the Grand’ Place and Place des Héros in Arras. The last two are masterpieces of Flemish Baroque. Northampton made its contribution when the town was re-built but it is a sorry sight today. The development of the town in the second half of the 20th century has been an aesthetic disaster, as with so many other English towns.
There are still traces of what might have been.
I zoomed up the M1 and paid my first visit to Northampton yesterday.
(to be continued)