Northamptonshire

Some of England's grandest country houses are to be found in this prosperous rural county. The Elizabethan Renaissance Kirby Hall, the Jacobean mansion at Apethorpe, the late 17th-century French-inspired Boughton, Hawksmoor's stately Baroque Easton Neston, and the interiors of Althorp provide a fascinating survey of changing taste through the centuries. Complementing them are smaller buildings of great character, supreme among them those of Sir Thomas Tresham: the eccentric and ingenious Triangular Lodge at Rushton and the evocative New Beild at Lyveden. Of no less interest are the fine churches, from Anglo-Saxon Brixworth to the noble Gothic of Warmington, Rushden and Finedon and from All Saints, Northampton, one of the grandest 17th-century churches outside London, to Comper’s  St. Mary’s, Wellingborough. Chief among the towns, Northampton has not only distinguished Victorian and Edwardian public, commercial and industrial buildings but also the principal work in England by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. 

“The newly revised Pevsner addition to Northamptonshire shows the county batting well above its size in numbers of fine buildings.”—Marcus Binney, The Times, “The Pevsner architectural guides to the counties of Britain are crammed with . . . tiny fascinating details. Yale University Press and the Paul Mellon Centre in British Art . . . must be praised for this work of scholarship, unequalled in the world."—Harry Mount, The Daily Telegraph, “I walked over the fields to Rushton on a fresh sunny morning this week to try out the new Pevsner Buildings of England volume, Northamptonshire, which Harry Mount wrote about on Monday. We agree that the series is unequalled in the world.”—Christopher Howse, Daily Telegraph, “Pevsner’s achievement in visiting and writing about every building of architectural importance in England was breathtaking. . . Bailey, without lowering the tone, is more expansive and easier to read, and he tells us much more about the families and craftsmen responsible for these buildings than Pevsner had the space to do.”—Alexander Chancellor, The Spectator

Bruce Bailey is a Northamptonshire man and has contributed to both of the previous editions of the guide to the county in this series. He serves as archivist at Drayton House and for the Althorp Estate.