Northamptonshire

Country: England
Region: East Midlands
Established: Ancient
Area: 2,364 km2 (913 sq mi)
Population: 792,400
Largest Settlement: Northampton

Northamptonshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Leicestershire, Rutland and Lincolnshire to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east.
Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire to the south and Warwickshire to the west.

Around 500 BC the Iron Age was introduced into the area by the Hallstatt culture. an ancient civilization that thrived in Central Europe during the early Iron Age between the 8th to the 5th centuries BC.

In the 1st century BC, most of the county became part of the territory of the Catuvellauni, a Belgic tribe, forming their most northerly land.
The Catuvellauni were then conquered by the Romans in 43 AD

The Roman road of Watling Street passed through the county, and the Roman settlement, Lactodurum, stood on the site of modern-day Towcester. There were other Roman settlements at Northampton, Kettering and along the Nene Valley near Raunds. A large fort was built at Longthorpe.

After the Romans left, the area eventually became part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia in the 7th century. Northampton functioned as an administrative centre. The Mercians converted to Christianity in 654 AD with the death of the pagan king Penda

Around 889 AD the area was conquered by the Danes and became part of the Danelaw until being recaptured by the English under the Wessex king Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great, in 917.

Northamptonshire was conquered again in 940, by the Vikings of York, then retaken by the English in 942.

Rockingham Castle was built for William the Conqueror and was used as a Royal fortress until Elizabethan times.

King Charles I was imprisoned at Holdenby House in 1647.

George Washington, the first President of the United States of America, was born into the Washington family who had migrated to America from Northamptonshire in 1656. George Washington's ancestor, Lawrence Washington bought Sulgrave Manor from Henry VIII in 1539.

It was George Washington's great-grandfather, John Washington, emigrated in 1656 from Northamptonshire to Virginia.

During the Industrial Revolution Northamptonshire became known for its footwear, and the contemporary county has a number of small industrial centres which specialise in engineering and food processing.