What the houses are like

Northampton has an old core, a Victorian and Edwardian ring and a new town edge. The terraces and villas of Abington, Kingsley, Phippsville and Far Cotton are the shoe town at its peak: red brick, bays, slate roofs and generous rooms. The interwar semis run out through Kingsthorpe and Weston Favell. Then the Eastern District, Thorplands, Lings, Blackthorn and the rest, built by the Development Corporation in the seventies with the same ideas Milton Keynes used at the same time. The newest housing is south of the town at Wootton Fields, Grange Park and Upton.

Planning authority: West Northamptonshire Council

Finished stone opening with a new oak lintel and solid oak door

The seventies estates, which we know well

The Eastern District houses behave exactly like the Milton Keynes estates of the same date, because they were built the same way: cavity walls, concrete tiles, trussed roofs and Radburn style layouts with garages set apart and gardens backing onto footpaths. That means the same things to watch. Trussed roofs cannot be cut into without a proper design, and access for a digger to the rear of the house is the first thing we check.

Garage conversions, rear extensions and knock throughs are the common jobs on these houses, and they are the jobs we do most weeks at home.

Victorian Northampton and the ironstone villages

The Victorian terraces around Abington and Kingsley are solid wall with the usual rear addition, and the same rules apply as anywhere: softer mortar, timber lintels to check, party walls to think about. The Edwardian houses in Phippsville and around Abington Park are bigger and were built better, and they suit a full renovation.

Out in the villages, Hardingstone, Wootton, Milton Malsor, Blisworth and Roade, the older cottages are Northamptonshire ironstone rather than brick. It is a soft, warm coloured stone that needs lime mortar and a builder who has laid rubble stone before, and several of the villages are conservation areas. Our stone cottage doorway project shows the kind of careful opening up that suits that stock.

West Northamptonshire Council

Northampton has been part of West Northamptonshire Council since 2021, the same authority that covers Towcester. Its own local plan, its own conservation areas, including Abington Park and Kingsthorpe village, and its own building control. The permitted development rules are the national ones. As with everywhere on this site, that is general local guidance rather than planning advice, and we will say when confirmation should be obtained from the council or an appropriate professional.