Ahead of you stretches a broad open rectangle of pale stone paving, edged by long brick and stucco frontages, with All Saints’ tower rising close by as the square’s old landmark.
This is one of the oldest open-air market spaces in England. Northampton got its first market charter in eleven eighty-nine, and in twelve thirty-five Henry the Third pushed trade out of All Saints’ churchyard and onto this open ground. Sensible enough. Churches tend to object when commerce starts elbowing liturgy out of the way. For the next seven centuries, this square became the town’s outdoor workplace, hiring hall, debating chamber and pressure valve.
This is where we need to establish the basic cast of characters. Northampton’s defining trade was boot and shoe making. If England had one shoemaking town, this was it. Before the factories took over, much of the work happened through the outwork system: a master supplied leather in town, workers carried it home to parlours, kitchens and back-shed workshops, then brought back finished parts or full boots for piece-rate pay. And every pair depended on a four-step chain. The clicker cut the leather uppers on a knee-board using brass templates - that sharp contact gave the trade its famous click. The closer stitched those uppers together. The laster pulled the leather over a wooden foot-form called a last. The finisher trimmed, edged and polished the result. In Northampton, men usually clicked and lasted; women usually closed.
By eighteen forty-one the census counted one thousand eight hundred and twenty-one shoemakers here. By eighteen seventy-one, about forty percent of Northampton’s men worked in the trade. One local writer said you knew you were within a mile of town by the noise of shoemakers’ lap-stones. Not church bells. Not traffic. Work.
This square also taught shoemakers how public power worked. In seventeen sixty-eight, three earls fought the so-called Spendthrift Election here and burned through about one hundred and sixty thousand pounds - roughly twenty-five million pounds today - on bribes and entertainment. Democracy, in that version, came with drinks included. One earl had to sell Horton, another fled to Switzerland from his creditors.
Then came fire. On the twentieth of September, sixteen seventy-five, flames starting in St Mary’s Street tore through about seven hundred of the town’s eight hundred and fifty buildings in six hours. The rebuilding act that followed forced new houses around the square to use brick or stone with slate roofs. That disaster is one reason the space feels broader and more orderly than many medieval market places. If you look toward the north side, the Welsh House is the stubborn survivor - stone-built, older than the fire, and strong enough to help townspeople escape through it while the rest of the center burned.
And this place could still turn ugly when workers felt cheated. In October eighteen seventy-four, after the radical Charles Bradlaugh lost a by-election, supporters - many of them shoemakers - ripped up stones from this very square and smashed windows across town. The Mayor read the Riot Act, soldiers arrived, and despite the legend that always grows extra smoke and drama, no shots were fired. But the point stands: Northampton’s working people did not treat politics as a spectator sport.
So hold this square in your mind as we walk: not as a tidy civic backdrop, but as the place where Northampton bought, sold, hired, shouted, voted, rioted and tried to stop the future arriving
