In the Middle Ages, the town rose to national significance with the establishment of Northampton Castle, an occasional royal residence which regularly hosted the Parliament of England.

The town continued to expand with the arrival of the Grand Union Canal and the railways in the 19th century, becoming a centre for footwear and leather manufacture.

Present-day Hunsbury Hill is an example of this settlement; a circular ditch and a bank faced with a wall of timber and enclosing an area of 160 acres (65 ha) which dates to around 400 BC.

[7][20] Simon de Senlis is also thought to have built the medieval town walls, which enclosed about 245 acres (99 ha) and had four main gates.

[7][20] His son, Simon II de Senlis, built St Peter's Church on a site between a former Anglo-Saxon palace and Northampton Castle.

[20] A network of medieval tunnels remains under the centre of Northampton around All Saints' Church and the Market Square but their purpose, extent and significance have been disputed.

The corporation of the town, having already refused to provide troops to the King in 1632 or to pay the notorious ship money tax in 1636, petitioned Parliament in 1642 against papists and bishops.

[20] When war broke out in 1642, the town willingly became the main Parliamentarian garrison for the south-east Midlands area with the former royal castle as its headquarters.

Oliver Cromwell visited in 1645 and General Fairfax marched from the town to Naseby, where Charles I's Royalist army was decisively defeated.

[48] Following World War I, the shoe industry was increasingly in decline, despite the town's factories supplying over 23 million pairs of boots to the armed forces.

Much council housing was also built largely to the east, north and south of the town, including Abington, Far Cotton, Kingsley, Kingsthorpe and Dallington – areas which had been incorporated within the borough's boundaries in 1901.

[20] The Northampton Development Corporation (NDC) was set up in 1968 to substantially redevelop the town in partnership with the local council, spending £205 million to build new housing and industrial estates, initially in Lumbertubs, Moulton Park and Round Spinney to the east, followed by Briar Hill, Camp Hill and East and West Hunsbury in the south of the town, mainly to accommodate the overflow population of new residents from the London area.

On Good Friday 1998, Northampton suffered severe flooding, particularly in the areas of Far Cotton and St James; two people were killed and thousands of homes were affected.

[50][51][52] In 2006, Northampton became a government expansion zone with new growth promoted by West Northamptonshire Development Corporation (WNDC), an unelected quango, which has provoked a series of regeneration schemes across the town.

[71] Other settlements that the Office for National Statistics considers part of the Northampton urban area include Boughton, Ecton, Moulton, Overstone and Rothersthorpe.

[72] At the 2011 census, Harpole, Cogenhoe, Grange Park, Little and Great Houghton, Overstone and Sywell were just outside the Northampton built up area;[72] this may change when the 2021 boundaries are released.

The Royal & Derngate theatre complex, on Guildhall Road in the Cultural Quarter of the town centre, is one of the main venues for arts and entertainment in Northampton.

[113] There are seven other public libraries that are dotted across Northampton—in Abington, Duston, Far Cotton, Hunsbury, Kingsthorpe, St James, Wootton—all run by Northamptonshire County Council.

There is also a smaller Grade I listed historical museum in the former Abington Park house which mainly has history on domestic life in the town and the Northamptonshire Regiment.

The Saints have won 3 major titles so far: the Heineken Cup in 2000, and the English Premiership twice in 2014 and 2024 respectively, and have the highest average attendance of any professional sports team in the town.

Established in 1897, in their centenary season of 1997 they reached Wembley through the play-offs and beat Swansea City 1–0 with an injury time winning free kick from John Frain.

Rockingham Motor Speedway and Santa Pod Raceway are a few miles north and east of Northampton respectively, the latter offering a range of drag racing events.

[96] The film was turned into a musical Kinky Boots, maintaining its Northampton backdrop, which premiered on Broadway in 2013 and won 6 Tony Awards.

It was built in 1100 on the orders of the first Earl of Northampton, Simon de Senlis and based on a plan of the original Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

All that remained was the medieval tower and the fine vaulted crypt, but by 1680 All Saints' had been rebuilt, with the help of donations from all over England, including 1,000 tons of timber from King Charles II, whose statue can be seen above the portico.

Northampton Guildhall, which is Grade II* listed, was constructed mostly in the 1860s in Victorian Gothic architecture designed by Edward William Godwin, and extended in 1889–92[142] and in the 1990s.

[143] 78 Derngate is a Grade II* listed Georgian Town House remodelled by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke in 1916–17.

Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, it consists of two large obelisks and an altar-like stone sited in a small garden behind All Saints' Church.

[155] Henry III was also advised by bishops and magnates that it posed a threat to Oxford, and signed a Royal Decree which banned the establishment of a university in Northampton.

[157] This is the only higher education (HE) establishment in the town and offers courses from foundation and undergraduate levels to postgraduate, professional and doctoral qualifications.