Northampton Audio Tours

Northampton has been stitching boots and shoes since the 17th century, when Cromwell's New Model Army needed reliable footwear for its campaigns. The tradition ran so deep that by the 19th century the town was producing millions of pairs annually, and the Central Museum and Art Gallery on Guildhall Road still holds the largest collection of historic footwear in the world -- from ancient Egyptian sandals to Diana's wedding shoes. The Guildhall itself, completed in 1864, is one of the finest Victorian civic buildings in England, its facade covered in historical figures carved in stone.

The town also produced Charles Bradlaugh, the 19th-century MP who spent years fighting Parliament for the right to affirm rather than swear an oath on the Bible -- a battle that took him in and out of the House of Commons until 1886.

His statue stands in Abington Square with a self-possessed confidence appropriate to a man who founded the National Secular Society. A different kind of history can be found at 78 Derngate, where Charles Rennie Mackintosh's last significant architectural commission transformed an Edwardian terrace into something unlike anything else in England, with his signature geometric interiors restored to immaculate condition.