About Desborough

Outline

Desborough is a rapidly expanding and changing town situated in north Northamptonshire, with a population of about 11520 (ONS mid-year estimate 2019).  It has ample land for house-building and a number of developments are planed and underway.  Desborough isn’t just housing, it has a number of industries including the traditional (for this area) boot and shoe making with Joseph Cheaney & Sons, and lingerie from Wacoal Lingerie.  Other “Desborough” industries over the years included:-

• Agriculture
• Corsetry, Lace-making, and Silk / velvet manufacture
• Shoe-making
• Box-making
• Co-Ops

Green Desborough

Desborough has a number of distinct “green” areas.  For further details read here.

European

Desborough was one of the founding twelve members of the Charter of European Communities and through this has links with all EU members.  Through the Desborough and District Twinning Association the town is twinned with Neuville de Poitou in France and with Bievre in Belgium. Here are some recent reports:

• REFORM Project (2022-2023)
• Lyceum youth programme (2019 – 2022)

History of Desborough

An historical guide to Desborough produced by the then Kettering Borough Council describes more of our history.  The guide refers to two treasured historical items found in Desborough from much earlier times.  Both are housed in the British Museum and photographs are displayed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license and are ©Trustees of the British Museum.  Photographs of these artefacts are in our gallery here.

• The Desborough Mirror is estimated to be from about 50 BCE.  It has one polished bronze polished side with the other being artfully engraved. It was found again in 1908 and has been with the British Museum  since 1924.
• The Desborough Necklace is from about the seventh century and was found again in 1876 with other items in the grave of an early Christian Saxon lady.

More about Desborough’s history is here.

Although there are no scheduled ancient monuments in the town, Desborough has a conservation area covering a central area including the Lawrence’s factory site.  This is derived from the appearance, layout, and use of the buildings found within the boundary. The area is a discernible industrial suburb, containing a disused boot and shoe factory site and related worker housing, which represents the first planned estate in Desborough.

Winter gritting routes

Details of the roads treated in cold weather are here.

Listed Buildings

Desborough’s listed buildings include (the links are to the listing on Historic England’s website):