--- title: "Northampton Still Makes England's Best Shoes. Here Is Where to Look" url: https://quietmenace.com/travel/northampton-shoemaking-guide/ author: Quiet Menace Editors section: Travel published: 2026-10-30 updated: 2026-10-30 topics: City Guides, Travel Guides, Heritage Brands --- # Northampton Still Makes England's Best Shoes. Here Is Where to Look > Cromwell's army marched in its boots and James Bond still wears them. A visitor's guide to the Midlands town where Goodyear-welted shoes are made, and to the museum that holds thousands of pairs. In the late 1640s the shoemakers of Northampton made thousands of pairs of shoes for Oliver Cromwell's army. Wikipedia gives 2,000 pairs in 1648, while West Northamptonshire Council's shoe industry timeline gives 2,500 shoes in 1649. Either way, it was not their first army order. Earlier in the Civil War the town had already supplied more than 4,000 pairs of leather shoes and 600 pairs of cavalry jackboots to the Parliamentary side. Nearly four centuries later, Northampton is still where a large share of England's best men's shoes are made, and you can go and see where. The town sits about 60 miles northwest of London. It is not a pretty place in the way the Cotswolds are pretty, and it does not try to be. It is a working town that happens to hold one of the great concentrations of shoemaking skill in the world. ## How a town became a shoe factory Northampton's shoe trade is old. A [2018 history of the town's industry by Gulf News](https://gulfnews.com/lifestyle/fashion/englands-northhampton-the-spiritual-home-of-luxury-mens-shoes-1.1142221), written for its alpha magazine, dates laws establishing a shoemakers' guild to 1401, and a [shoe industry timeline from West Northamptonshire Council](https://westnorthants.gov.uk/northampton-market/shoe-industry) gives the same year for the guild's founding. By the end of the 18th century, according to Wikipedia, the town was a major center of footwear and leather manufacture. Demand during the Napoleonic Wars helped the population more than double between 1801 and 1831, and at that point a third of the adult men in the town were shoemakers. Gulf News adds two numbers that show the scale. By 1836 one manufacturer, William Parker, was making 80,000 pairs a year. In 1841 the town counted 1,821 shoemakers. Factories were mechanized by the middle of the century, and in the First World War Northampton's factories supplied more than 23 million pairs of boots to the armed forces. The decline came after that war, as it did for most British manufacturing. What survived was the top end of the trade, the welted shoe that can be resoled for decades. That is the shoe the town is known for now. ## What a Goodyear welt actually is Most of the men's shoes made in Northampton are Goodyear welted. Gulf News describes the construction. A strip of leather, the welt, is stitched to the upper and the insole. The cavity underneath is filled with cork or a similar material, and the outsole is then cemented and stitched to the welt rather than to the upper itself. The practical result is that the sole can be removed and replaced without damaging the upper, again and again. A well-made pair can outlast several soles. Gulf News reports that making a men's shoe here takes about 200 processes, from choosing the leather to boxing the finished pair. The makers' own counts are in the same range. [Crockett & Jones](https://www.crockettandjones.com/pages/in-the-making) says its shoes go through more than 200 separate operations over about eight weeks, and [Tricker's](https://trickers.com/pages/making-trickers) puts its figure at 265 processes over eight weeks. Gulf News adds that machines do the sewing and lasting, but every machine is operated by hand. ## The makers to know A handful of family names carry the town's reputation. The table gives the founding dates published by Wikipedia, Gulf News and the makers themselves. | Maker | Founded | Worth knowing | |---|---|---| | Tricker's | 1829 | Founded by Joseph Tricker, Royal Warrant since 1989 | | Church's | 1873 | Founded by Thomas Church and his three sons, owned by Prada since 1999 | | Crockett & Jones | 1879 | Founded by James Crockett and Charles Jones, still run by the Jones family | | Edward Green | 1890 | Founded as a Northampton workshop, still makes every pair in the town | **Tricker's** is the oldest of the group. Wikipedia says its Northampton factory is a Grade II listed building, and that much of the film *Kinky Boots* was shot there. **Church's** was one of the first makers to sell what Gulf News calls the Adaptable, a shoe made with separate left and right fittings. Wikipedia puts its main works in the St James area of the town, with capacity estimated at 5,000 pairs a week, and reports that Prada bought the company in 1999 in a deal reported at 170 million dollars. During Pierce Brosnan's run as James Bond, costume designer Lindy Hemming chose Church's shoes for the films. **Crockett & Jones** was founded by James Crockett and his brother-in-law Charles Jones, and the company is now run by Charles Jones's great-grandson. Its factory on Perry Street dates to the 1890s, with additions in 1910 and 1935, and all its design, development and production still happen there. Daniel Craig wore Crockett & Jones in his Bond films, including Molton chukka boots in *No Time to Die*. **Edward Green** is the quietest of the four. The company's [own history](https://www.edwardgreen.com/about) says Edward Green set up his workshop in Northampton in 1890, and that every pair is still made there, by a team of more than sixty people producing around 350 pairs a week from French and Italian calf. If you have read our [Savile Row visitor's guide](https://quietmenace.com/travel/savile-row-bespoke-visitors-guide/), several of these names will be familiar from their London shops. Northampton is where those shoes come from. ## The museum with thousands of shoes Start at [Northampton Museum and Art Gallery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northampton_Museum_and_Art_Gallery) on Guildhall Road. Wikipedia describes its shoe collection as one of the largest in the world, with more than 15,000 pairs in the collection and about 12,000 on show on the ground floor. Gulf News puts the holding at more than 12,000, so the exact figure depends on whether you count what is displayed or what is held. The collection was formally recognized as being of international importance in 1997. The museum closed in 2017 for a 6.7 million pound expansion and reopened in July 2021, more than a year later than planned because of the pandemic. Admission is free, and the [museum's website](https://www.northamptonmuseums.com/nmag/) lists opening from Tuesday to Sunday, with shorter hours on Sunday and no regular Monday opening. Give it a couple of hours. It is the best way to understand the town's trade before you go looking at shoes. ![A pair of brown leather wingtip brogues on a wooden surface](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1777987601431-8d27d2039cc4?w=1600&h=1067&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop) *Brown wingtip brogues, the Northampton house style, though the maker of this pair is not identified. Photo by Husien Bisky on Unsplash* ## Planning the trip Several of the makers have run factory shops in Northampton over the years, and a trip timed around them is the classic shoe pilgrimage. Opening days and hours are limited and change often, so check each maker's own website before you travel and do not assume a shop will be open on a weekday afternoon. Factory tours, where they exist, need booking. Bring the shoes you already own. Asking a maker's staff about resoling or refurbishment is the best introduction to how the shoes are built, and it is the point of buying a welted shoe in the first place. If you want a lighter shoe for warm weather, our [penny loafer history](https://quietmenace.com/style/penny-loafer-bass-weejuns-history/) is a good primer, and our [Clarks desert boot story](https://quietmenace.com/style/clarks-desert-boot-history/) covers the other great English shoe tradition, the crepe-soled kind. For more, see our [city guides](https://quietmenace.com/topics/city-guides/) and the full [Travel section](https://quietmenace.com/travel/). The Bond connection gets people through the door, but the reason to go is quieter. In a few streets of a Midlands town, shoes are still made the way they were when the Parliamentary army needed boots, and they are still built to be repaired rather than replaced. --- Filed under: [City Guides](https://quietmenace.com/topics/city-guides/), [Travel Guides](https://quietmenace.com/topics/travel-guides/), [Heritage Brands](https://quietmenace.com/topics/heritage-brands/) Hero image: Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash (Unsplash License)