Genealogy Chat

Also Crocket & Jones (still going until very recently) Bective shoes at Kingsthorpe (went about 30 yrs ago and factory pulled down) When I lived in Northampton 35 years ago, a large percentage of the workforce were still employed in the shoe industry. Shoe factory (either current or empty) in most of the streets on what was then the outskirts of the old town.

Janet - i believe Crocket and jones still is - if not its closure is very recent although once on Overstone Rd, they are not there now. Remember Manfields- wellingboro Rd? theats now an old folks home and churches , (on the Mounts) an appartment block...and Barratts is industrial units . so sad.

Yes, Jess - very sad. Houses in the terraced streets around the factories all to same model, but room dimensions varied, according to status -worker, artizan, management. They are part of the history of the town (sorry, city now I believe) and I would hate to see them go. Jay

HUh! Some city- if you came back now, you wouldnt recognise it! if its been unnocuupied for 5 minutes its either converted into appartments or Bulldozed! St Edmunds hospital being the latest casualty! Dont know where abouts in the town you were - remember semilong - row upon row of terraced houses with a Yard? those shoeworkers houses -£90 odd K!!

Karen, Just for interest, there are some nice old photos of the shoe making process in a factory on this site: http://www.maybole.org/history/books/johnlees&co/foreword.jpg Merry

I was born in Kettering - my grandparents lived on Field Street, several shoe factories there, and later lived on Wellingborough Road in Northampton - don't remember the shoe factories but do remember the terraced houses. Jess - when I was up there last (my sis still lives in Abington) - we went off the Welli road (right hand side as you go into town) and there are still a lot of the old terraces there - don't know about anywhere else though - but there are parts of the town I don't recognise at all anymore!! My family left the shoe industry in my grandfathers generation and became railmen - he was guard on the Royal Scotsman - and the generation before him came to Kettering for work in the town having been apprentice shoemakers in Gloucestershire. Regards Looby

Thankyou for that site. It's amazing how many people were involved in the shoe making industry.

Just throwing a sideways slant on this topic: If anyone has Croydon ancestors in Northampton in 1901 and wonders how on earth they got there, John Cooper, whose wonderful boot and shoe factory was only knocked down about twenty years ago, moved from Croydon to Northampton in the 1890s and took his employees with him.