Experience the best of Northampton

Northampton is the county town of Northamptonshire, on the River Nene in the East Midlands. Its market square is among the largest in England, with the columned portico of All Saints' Church at its head, a church rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1675. The Guildhall, built in the Victorian Gothic style, faces the square.

The Holy Sepulchre church, one of only a handful of round Norman churches left in England, stands in the old town. Northampton Museum and Art Gallery holds one of the largest collections of shoes in the world, a reminder of the boot and shoe industry that made the town. Delapré Abbey, a house in parkland, stands near the battlefield of 1460, where the Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians.

County fare means roast dinners, pork pies and ales from small breweries, and the market sells fruit and vegetables from the farms around. Althorp, the Spencer family home, lies north-west of town, Silverstone circuit to the south-west, and the canal village of Stoke Bruerne, with its waterways museum, to the south. The country around is gentle and green.