Shoetown history

This midlands market town’s first steps into the shoe trade began many hundreds of years ago.

Long before people could rely on cars, trains or bikes to get them from one place to another, Northampton and its surrounding county was providing footwear for all walks of life.

Workers have been producing boots and shoes here for nearly 1,000 years.

At its peak, more than 500 factories operated in the town, providing the main source of work for locals.

To start with, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about Northampton shoes.

It was the 12th century and local people made goods to sell to other local people, as in any settlement, and the town was best known then for its woollen trade.

But it was home to a good number of tanneries, where leather is prepared for use as a fabric.

Surrounding forests and woodlands provided the businesses with a steady supply of tree bark, used in treating and colouring leather, Northampton had a bustling cattle market and and it was situated on a ‘drove road’.

A route commonly used for transporting cattle, this particular drove road saw huge amounts of livestock walked along it on route from Wales to London, and with the river Nene flowing through and fields for pasture all around, the town was a popular place to stop over and rest animals and humans alike.

With leather being produced locally and a steady stream of potential customers regularly passing through, the shoe industry began to grow.

Individuals worked independently, selling their wares to merchants who would take care of the customer-facing side of things.

Northampton has been a significant English town throughout history and not just for its shoes.

The castle was one of the most famous Norman buildings in the country and a favourite of King John – several scenes from the Shakespeare play are set in Northampton Castle.

As the monarch’s reign began in the early 13th century, London, Oxford and Northampton were known as the places to buy well made boots and shoes.

On one visit, in 1213, the king is said to have bought a pair of boots for nine pence. This was an attractive price at the time and he was impressed by their quality.

As news of his purchasing habits spread, more wealthy buyers began to travel to check out the footwear being sold and produced here, increasing its reputation.

Following the king’s death in 1216 his son Henry took the throne, aged just nine.

History tells us he was seen more favourably by the public than his father, who was a brutal ruler, even by the standards of the day.

In his mid-20s, Henry III began buying Northampton boots to distribute to the poor at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun, a tradition he continued until his death in 1272.

This charitable project brought yet more attention to the town’s industry, by now responsible for a significant amount of local employment.

As the industry expanded, a Guild of Shoemakers was established in 1401 to protect workers’ interests and establish rules around apprenticeships. It also had powers to sanction those whose work was judged to be unsatisfactory.

By 1600, boot and shoemaking was a small but thriving cottage industry of outworkers supporting the local economy.

By 1725, the town had been mostly rebuilt (following the Great Fire of Northampton in 1675) and Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe was moved to note that the majority of English men’s shoes – regardless of the wearer’s financial background – came from here.

Things kept changing fast and in 1864 another new development hit the market – the Blake Sewer.

Like the Singer, it was an import from the US, but unlike its predecessor it was a huge piece of machinery, far more expensive, and needed steam power to run it, making it unsuitable for use in the home.

This caused real upset. Many workers were angry that working from home seemed to be vanishing as a viable option, with autonomy over hours and conditions being lost.

Yet some took up employment without much persuasion – they felt they’d already lost control over their work, and with less of it now being given out to individuals, their routines and incomes were suffering.

Factory life was a very different way of working and didn’t provide the same levels of satisfaction or stimulation.

“You’d be trained on every part of the process but then assigned only to work on one stage,” explains Rebecca.

“Each stage had distinct rooms for each part of production.

“Before, you might have done everything, now, workers were reduced to repeating one task over and over again.”

There was also resistance to so many women coming into the workforce – their labour had been used for years, but their presence was now visible and remunerated.

“Shoemaking remained very gendered as it moved into factories,” Rebecca says.

“Men were clickers, women did the sewing.”

“I’ve very rarely been in a factory with men on the sewing machines, and clickers have always been treated as the kings of the factory.”

Commercially though, things were going well – for the owners.

By 1865 the Campbell factory was producing more than 100,000 pairs of shoes per year.

From the 1850s onwards, many Victorian red-brick factories were built, and around them communities of terraced housing, schools, churches, shops and pubs for workers and their families.

Almost all shoemakers were now factory-based. Even those making bespoke footwear were doing so in-house.

A lot remained unhappy with all the changes to their lifestyles and livelihoods, but industrialisation was here to stay.

By 1894, there were 505 shoe factories operating in the town.

The industry was at an economic peak, employing one in four of all residents aged over 14.

As the 1900s got underway, the US began catching up and were exporting leathers more cheaply than Britain could.

Factories there were able to harness more modern technology, producing more, and faster, putting pressure on the industry here to adopt the newer methods.

With the advent of the First World War, Northampton was once again called upon to support the war effort by supplying military footwear.

Against the backdrop of horrors it could hardly count as even the thinnest silver lining, but of 70 million boots and shoes made for British Allied troops in WW1, two-thirds were produced in Northamptonshire.

Factories were working at full capacity and employment was available for those who needed it. It was a boost to the town in terms of its manufacturing.

But those fortunate enough to return from fighting were changed by all they’d experienced.

Many were unable or unwilling to return to factory life as though nothing had happened. Not all those who had been in line to take over family firms survived and of those that did, some chose not to continue in the business.

Companies were shut down, factories were sold or even left standing empty.

The Second World War meant that once again, the town’s expertise was called upon to produce military footwear on a huge scale.

As before though, once the fighting had thankfully ceased, there was a sharp downturn in demand.

Competition from abroad accelerated after the Second World War.

Northampton was still focused on men’s and military footwear, and this specialism ultimately contributed to the decline of the industry.

Manufacturing was rapidly being moved abroad to exploit opportunities for cheaper goods and labour, and competing with factories offering a wider range of products became even more difficult.

It was a death knell for many companies and experienced shoemakers who kept their jobs mostly found themselves working on production lines which utilised even fewer, if any, of their heritage skills.

During the 1950s many brands and factories were bought out by Charles Clore, who then shut them down and sent his contracts abroad to save money and maximise profits.

Buildings that had once been so busy, now stood empty, like the shoemakers’ workshops before them, when industrialisation had forced outworkers into factories.

Those still standing have mostly been repurposed as housing, though a number remain as shoe factories making high-end footwear.

A resurgence over recent years has seen increased demand for luxury footwear from brands in the county.

Consumers are preferring to invest in well made goods, produced on a smaller scale and built to last as fast fashion is eschewed in favour of pieces that concentrate on quality, style and comfort, and can last for decades.

This focus on process and producers, as well as final product, is at the heart of a new project set up to train workers in traditional shoemaking.

The E.Woodford Academy will keep alive the old skills at risk of being lost, while creating employment opportunities for a new generation of artisan bootmakers.

While making the highest-quality footwear possible, the academy will invest and reinvest in Northampton’s communities and people, preserving and growing its shoe and boot industry and providing careers now and into the future.