Northampton Audio Tour: Clicking, Closing - Stonehaven Market Square

Northampton's boots once walked the world, and behind every pair was a parlour, a workshop, a factory floor and a family. This self-guided audio tour traces a working day through England's shoemaking capital, from the open Market Square where shoemakers organised against the new machines, to St Crispin's altar at All Saints, through the cordwainer-chapel where Northampton's shoemakers learned to organise, to the very block where the first 'monster warehouse' broke the parlour trade and triggered the strike of 1858, and finally to a Victorian prison whose vaults now hold one of the world's great shoe collections. You will hear what a clicker actually clicked, why the closing rooms were full of women on rented Singer machines, and how a 1936 super-cinema, a leather-works in Pont Street Dutch brick and a 1940 youth club for the no-collar kids of the Boroughs all share the same streets. Walk slowly. The buildings still hold their shape, and the shoes still hold their stitches.