In my perambulation around the manufacturing towns of Britain, I have normally found the presence of raw materials and water, ideally navigable. Northampton had no coal nearby and its river, the Nene, was only navigable some miles toward the sea. It was, though, on road routes from London to the north and so enjoyed the trade from passing coaches, much like Stamford. Unlike Stamford, it was the shire town and carried on all the administrative functions. It was in the middle of livestock farming country and so had a market, but also access to hides, of which more later.
Poor communications were hard to address. The Grand Junction Canal passed the town by as did the north-south railway. Anyone visiting Northampton by canal boat will know well the reason: the link from the Nene to the Grand Junction Canal demands some seventeen locks to descend one hundred and twenty feet. This link to the canal system completed in 1815 did open the town to more trade and that is where hides come in.
It was of course the shoe making industry that provided the economic growth that Northampton needed. It was a cottage industry, but quite substantial. Boots and shoes were made for the local market, but also further afield including the plantations of the West Indies. The Peninsula war created a strong demand for boots for Wellington's army. A strike by London boot makers added significantly to Northampton's business since wage rates were much lower. It wasn't only boots, it was said the Northampton lace was superior to that made in Nottingham.
The railways were a bone of contention. Land owners hated them; townsfolk knew they would be good for business. They were also not very good on steep inclines like that up from Northampton. For this reason Robert Stephenson chose to route the London Birmingham railway around the town. Nevertheless, the town did get a railway in 1845, linking it both to Peterborough and to the London Birmingham line. This enabled the cheaper import of coal and export of agricultural produce and footwear.
The footwear industry did take off, but still in small cottage units except for a very few factory employers such as William Parker and John Groom each producing 80,000 pairs of footwear a year with 800 employees. Moses Philip Manfield was not far behind. Their employees were said to be better off than their home working counterparts, given the opportunities the factories had for better ventilation of noxious fumes. Child labour was more prevalent in smaller businesses, indeed schools tried to include work based learning in their timetables.
The mid-point of the century brought to Northampton, as elsewhere, the issue of mechanisation. With footwear production it was the American invention of a sewing machine for shoes. The fear, as elsewhere, was the loss of jobs, particularly for men since the view was that women could manage sewing machines. A little later, machines for riveting soles were on offer, but not enthusiastically welcomed by masters for in the beginning they proved slower and less reliable than hand work. Finally machines to stitch soles to uppers came along and the battle was lost; the industry had become mechanised. Interestingly it seems that home working continued, but with machines in the home. It seems also that this was the case in Wellingborough and Kettering as well as Northampton and its surrounding villages.
The turn of the twentieth century witnessed a great change. Home working was nearly a thing of the past. Manfield, run by Moses's sons, employed 1,000 men and women in a single story building. Crocket & Jones and Truform (part of Sears & So) employed about the same number. Charles and Edward Lewis employed nearer 1,500, whilst Barratts were still comparatively new but distinctly ambitious. Church & Co boasted 'every conceivable style and material'. William Wren made shoe polish and Horton and Arlidge, cardboard boxes. Some seven manufacturers had come together to form Northampton Shoe Machinery Co first supplying American machines but then manufacturing them under licence. Machinery also came from the International Goodyear Shoe Machinery Company.
Other businesses made cycles and motor cars. Mulliner made the bespoke car bodies for manufacturers to add to their engine and chassis. Bassett-Loake made beautiful model trains and yachts. Importantly for the future, Smith, Major and Stevens made lifts.
The First World War saw Mulliner's factory producing munitions and military vehicles. Of far more significance, the Northampton shoe companies produced 23 million pairs of footwear for British, French and Belgian forces including infantry boots, flying boots, ski boots and canvas shoes. The other shoe manufacturers in the county topped this production at 24 million and together they made up two thirds of the British footwear output between 1914-1918.
The 1930s saw Express Lifts of Leicester buy Smith, Major and Stevens but to continue to manufacture in Northampton. Other arrivals included Rest Assured with beds and Mettoy which later manufactured Corgi toys. Mettoy was encouraged to come to Northampton by Bassett-Loake whose owners played a major role in the civic community which was keen to reduce the town's dependence on shoe making.
The Second World War saw shoe factories producing an ever increasing range of footwear, including shoes designed for deception, so flying boots which could have their uppers removed to reveal ordinary well worn shoes should their wearer be shot down in enemy territory. The Birmingham British Timken company set up a shadow factory near Northampton and this reverted to peacetime work after the war.
The post war years saw the growth of earth moving equipment supplier Blackwood Hodge (owned by house builder Bernard Sunley), but the steady decline of the mass production of shoes. Manfield was bought by the British Shoe Corporation of Leicester and I write in my blog on Leicester of the gathering of former brands into this company owned by the property developer, Charles Clore.
Avon Cosmetics was encouraged to the town in the sixties a little before its designation as a 'new town' under the third wave of such towns in the post-war era. A good number of businesses came to the 'new town'. Black & Decker, set up warehousing and distribution, as did MFI; Henry Telfer employed 2,000 in food manufacturing. The Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation helped to fund the Blackwood Hodge Management Centre at Nene College.
In 1960 Electronics Weekly reported that 'the extended factory of Plessey Nucleonics at Northampton, officially opened in 1959, has doubled facilities for R&D is this rapidly growing field. During the year, Plessey Nucleonics received an order from the UKAEA for the supply of all nuclear instrumentation for the advanced gas-cooled reactor at Windscale.' This business eventually became part of Ultra Energy. Plessey also manufactured Connectors in their subsidiary Plessey Interconnect.
At the time of writing there are shoe factories still manufacturing in Northampton and neighbouring towns. In the town itself there are Church & Co, Crocket & Jones, Trickers, Edward Green and Jeffery-West. Outside Northampton there are Dr Martens in Wollaston, Grenson in Rushden and Barker in Earls Barton all just outside Wellingborough; then Loake in Kettering and Joseph Cheaney in nearby Desborough.
Express Lifts still has a presence in the town through its lift testing tower built in the seventies and shown in the image.
Further reading:
Cynthia Brown, Northampton 1835-1985: Shoe Town, New Town (Chichester: Phillimore, 1990)
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