Manor House Museum

Kettering grew from a market town with a population of just over 5000 in 1851 to a major centre of shoe manufacturing with nearly 29000 inhabitants in 1901. In the years of its most rapid expansion between 1870 and 1900 about 2000 houses were built with small workshops for shoemaking mostly at the ends of gardens. The landscape of 19th century shoemaking is preserved in the north-east quarter of the town, where houses with garden workshops were built along streets laid out to a grid plan, and intermingled with 3-storey shoe factories, buildings used for making shoe laces, heels and other footwear components, chapels and the headquarters of band clubs. The museum has substantial collections of footwear and of shoemaking machinery, some of which was made in the town.

Manor House Museum
The Coach House
Sheep Street
NN16 0AN Kettering
United Kingdom
+44 (0) 1536 - 534219
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