413 listed buildings, 15 of them Grade I

Church of All SaintsGrade I listedSessions HouseGrade I listedWater TowerGrade II listedPremises of a.J. Tear and Co. Ltd. on Corner of Dunster St. and Overstone Rd. (Former Curriers Works)Grade II listedFormer Midland Railway Locomotive ShedGrade II listed+36See all photos

Photos from Wikimedia Commons and Geograph, copied to our own server, each credited to its photographer with its licence; names open the building’s page or its official list entry.

c. 1821

1847

c. 1847

c. 1878

1891

c. 1904

1905

Public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, copied to our own server. Each credit opens the image’s page with its full description and history.

Historic England lists buildings in three grades: Grade I for buildings of exceptional interest (about 2.5% of all listed buildings), Grade II* for particularly important buildings of more than special interest (about 5.8%), and Grade II for buildings of special interest (about 91.7%). Listing protects the whole building, inside and out.

Every entry on the National Heritage List for England whose point lies inside the ONS 2022 built-up-area boundary. One list entry can cover a terrace or a group of buildings. Neighbourhood dots: the population-weighted centre of each Census 2021 output area, coloured by its neighbourhood’s (LSOA’s) share of homes built before 1919 (Valuation Office Agency, March 2025).

High Street21 listed · 1 II*

Bridge Street13 listed

Sheep Street9 listed

The Green9 listed

Back Lane8 listed · 1 II*

Derngate8 listed · 1 II*

Duston Main Road8 listed

Market Square8 listed · 1 II*

Spencer Parade6 listed

Albion Place5 listed

Gold Street5 listed

St Georges Street5 listed

Of the 413 entries, 169 are named by a street address; the rest are named buildings such as churches, halls and bridges.

Search the rest on Historic England’s list →

Historic England’s conservation areas layer, supplied by councils (incomplete in places, so a page fact, never graded). Hectares are the part of each area inside the built-up area.

The first 52 entries were listed in 1952, 9 of the 15 Grade I buildings among them. 216 came in 1976, in the national resurvey of the 1970s and 80s. Only 12 have been added in the last 15 years.

5 scheduled monuments

Nationally important archaeological sites and monuments, protected by law; work on them needs consent from the Secretary of State, advised by Historic England.

Churchyard cross base in St Michael's churchyard

Multivallate hillfort at Hunsbury Hill

Northampton Castle, remains of

MedievalSaxon palace complex and Saxon and medieval urban deposits in the centre of Northampton

MedievalUpton medieval village and C17 garden earthworks

1 registered battlefield

Two measures, each ranked against every UK town of 1,000 or more, with protected heritage counting twice as much as the age of homes. Protected heritage counts each listed building by its grade (Grade I three points, II* two, II one), each scheduled monument and battlefield two, and each registered park or garden by its grade; it is ranked both per 10,000 residents and as a total, so a village with one fine church doesn’t outrank a historic city. The second measure is the share of homes built before 1919, from the Valuation Office Agency’s council tax records. History is a character grade: it describes the town and isn’t part of the overall grade.

James Harrington

Giles Corey

Samuel Parker

Thomas Woolston

James Hervey

Caroline Chisholm

Thomas Croxen Archer

Joe Goss

James Rice

Walter Dew

Ellen Wright Blackwell

Gervase Elwes

Ernest Scott

Claude King

Alice Greene

Henry Mayes

Tom Walls

Harry Brown

Edwin Freeman

Harry King

16001650170017501800185019001950

James Harrington1611–1677 · English political theorist of classical republicanism

Alice Greene1879–1956 · British tennis player (1879–1956)

Giles Corey1611–1692 · Executed in the Salem witch trials

Caroline Chisholm1808–1877 · 19th century English humanitarian who provided support for immigrant …

TA

Thomas Croxen Archer1817–1885 · British botanist and museum director (1817-1885)

James Hervey1714–1758 · English minister (1714-1758)

JR

James Rice1843–1882 · English novelist and historian of the turf (1843-1882)

EB

Ellen Wright Blackwell1864–1952 · British writer, botanist, photographer (1864-1952)

Everyone born in Northampton → Birthplaces from Wikidata; portraits from Wikimedia Commons.

The official list counts 413 listed buildings in Northampton, 15 of them Grade I. Its Grade I buildings cluster together: 5 of them stand within 400 m of All Saints' Church. High Street alone has 21 listed buildings. Its older streets lie in 19 conservation areas, the first designated in 1970.

Most entries on the list, 70%, are houses, terraces and villas. Of the 63 people born here before 1900, the best known include James Harrington (1611), Alice Greene (1879) and Giles Corey (1611). It also has 5 scheduled monuments, the archaeology and ruins the law protects. The rest is about typical: it has 15 Grade I buildings, about typical for a town its size (the middle one has 7); per resident it sits near the middle of UK towns; and 14% of its homes were built before 1919, close to the 15% in the typical UK town.