Enjoy browsing through this website which has been designed to help residents and visitors discover the heritage of Northamptonshire. It aims to promote an enhanced sense of place and pride within the county.

Becket’s Well in Northampton is named after Thomas Becket and was built on the site of a spring. Thomas Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 to 1170.

The building which was designed by Edward William Godwin] in the Gothic Revival style, was completed in 1864. The original part of the building was symmetrical with three first-floor windows either side of the main entrance. The building has a statue, designed by Sir Francis Chantrey of Spencer Perceval, Member of Parliament for Northampton and the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated, which was unveiled in 1817.

A tithe barn was used to store one tenth of a farm’s produce, known as a tithe, given to the Church as a tax. Wellingborough Tithe Barn was built in the 15th century and is made of limestone and ironstone. It was used by the Monks of Croyland, who lived in the local manor house called Croyland Abbey.

The Sessions House is Northampton’s former courthouse. It was one of the first buildings to be built after the Great Fire of Northampton in 1675. It is a single-storey, stone building in the classical style of architecture, which was designed by Henry Bell of King’s Lynn in 1676.

The Hind Hotel was built in Wellingborough in the 1640s. It was designed by local architect William Batley and is built from local ironstone. According to legend, Oliver Cromwell stayed at the hotel en route to the Battle of Naseby in 1645 during the English Civil War.

The Bede House in Higham Ferrers was set up by Archbishop Henry Chichele in 1428. It was built in the typical Northamptonshire banded limestone, with alternate courses of silver and ochre stone. The building was designed to house twelve poor, older men (the Bedesmen) and one woman to look after them (the Bedeswoman). Each Bedesmen had a cubicle and locker … Read More

Chester House Estate includes a Roman walled town with evidence from the Mesolithic, Iron Age and Medieval periods, together with a complex of traditional farm buildings dating back to the 17th century. At present much of this heritage is buried; the challenge is to bring it to life and tell its stories.

Among England’s greatest country houses, Apethorpe Palace holds a particularly important place in English history because of its ownership by, and role in, entertaining Tudor and Stuart monarchs. Elizabeth I once owned the building, which she had inherited from Henry VIII. For a period, Apethorpe was a royal palace lived in regularly by James I and Charles I. Visitors now … Read More

Eleanor of Castile (1241-1290) was a medieval Queen. When Eleanor died, her husband, King Edward I, ordered a large funeral procession between Lincoln Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. A memorial cross was built at each overnight stop. Three crosses remain today and two are in Northamptonshire.