Why should you move to Northamptonshire?
Countryside to rival the Cotswolds, at Northamptonshire prices, within an hour of London.
Rachel Johnston
If you already know Northamptonshire, its virtues need no selling.
It is a quiet fact that very few people who move here ever move away.
For everyone else, it is the best-kept secret we get to share with our househunters: proper English countryside, handsome market towns and honey-coloured stone villages, within genuine commuting reach of London and the Midlands, at prices the Cotswolds and the Home Counties left behind years ago.
If the county is new to you, the sections below cover what most people want to know before they take a proper look.
Stacks’ insider answers to the questions people actually ask about moving here.
Closer than the name suggests. Despite the “north”, most of the county sits south of the Watford Gap. What makes it unusual is that it reaches three different London stations, not one:
- Northampton to London Euston from about 50 minutes
- Milton Keynes to Euston from about 32 minutes
- Wellingborough to St Pancras from about 45 minutes, Kettering from about 47
- Banbury to Marylebone from about 51 minutes
And it is not only about London. This is a crossroads county, so you can work outward in almost any direction. Birmingham is around 54 minutes by train, with Leicester, Coventry, Oxford and Cambridge all reachable for work too. The M1 and M40 bracket the county, and the A14 runs east to west toward Cambridge and the ports. From the south of the county, Heathrow is a straightforward run down the M40, while Luton, Birmingham and East Midlands airports are all within easy reach.
Here is the part that surprises people.
For broadly the same countryside, you pay noticeably less than in the counties buyers usually reach for first.
Across our patch, homes tend to sit around £300 to £375 per square foot, comfortably below the equivalent Cotswold and Home Counties villages. In practice that means a budget that buys a modest village house in south Oxfordshire can buy a substantial period rectory with land here. At the upper end, the county is well stocked with fine country houses, former rectories, and character and equestrian property well beyond £2m, so there is room to move up as well as in.
It is, quite simply, ridiculously pretty.
The Cotswolds tend to get the postcard, but Northamptonshire’s ironstone produces the same soft, timeless beauty, set in rolling countryside that is not swamped by tourists every summer. The market towns wear their prosperity in elegant, substantial houses, and the countryside between them is dotted with grand homes, comfortable farmhouses and well-kept cottages.
For anyone drawn to the fuller rural life, the agricultural and equestrian property here is of a high standard.
Families relocating here are well served.
There are respected independents and prep schools within easy reach, among them Wellingborough School, Oundle, Northampton High and Spratton Hall, with Oakham, Uppingham, Stowe, Rugby and Bloxham nearby.
The south of the county also has easy access to the Buckinghamshire prep and grammar schools, while selective state options sit just across the border in Warwickshire.
For the full picture, see our Northamptonshire for Families and Private Schools near Northamptonshire pages.
You need never be idle, unless you choose to be.
Villages here have genuine communities, with sport, activities and social calendars that fold newcomers in quickly. The countryside offers canals and rivers, a vast footpath network and the full range of rural pursuits, alongside grassroots and professional sport, with Northampton’s Saints among the country’s leading rugby sides. Silverstone brings world-class motorsport to the doorstep, and the wider Midlands is close enough that its attractions are all in easy range.
