Kettering Town Information

Kettering can trace its origins back to an early Roman British settlement. The local Roman industry is represented by the pottery kilns at Barton Seagrave and Boughton.

It is in the mid-tenth century that we have our first historical reference to Kettering in a charter of 956 AD in which King Edwy granted ten "cassati" of land to his then Aelfsige the Goldsmith. The boundaries delineated in this charter would have been recognisable to most inhabitants of Kettering for the last thousand years and indeed can still be walked today. It is possible that Aelfsige the Goldsmith gave Kettering to the monastery of Peterborough as King Edgar in a charter dated 972 confirmed it to that monastery. Certainly at the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, Kettering manor is listed as a property held by the Abbey of Peterborough. Words and names ending with 'ing' usually derive from the early Saxon word inga or ingas meaning 'the people of the' or 'tribe'. Ketter'ing' is no exception as we can see this root in literary spellings used in the 10th century – Cytringan, Kyteringas and Keteiringan.

The charter for its market was granted by Henry III in 1227. By the 17th century the town was a centre for the production of woollen cloth. The present town mostly grew up in the 19th century with the development of the boot and shoe industry, which had seriously declined by the middle of the 1990s.

Victorian Kettering was the centre of the 19th century religious non-conformity and the missionary movement, and this has been preserved in many of the names. William Carey was the first of the great and good men associated with the town. He was born in 1761 at Paulerspury and spent much of his young life in Kettering before leaving for India as a missionary in 1793. The Carey Mission House and Carey Street was named after him. Andrew Fuller helped Carey found the Baptist Missionary Society and he is remembered in the Fuller Church and Fuller Street. In 1803 William Knibb was born in Market Street and he grew up to continue the missionary work of Carey; he is commemorated by the Knibb Centre and Knibb Street. The Toller Chapel and Toller Place are named after two ministers, father and son, who preached in Kettering for a total of 100 years. The chapel was built in 1723 for those independents who since 1662 had been worshipping in secret.

In 1887, John Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles described Kettering like this:"Kettering, market town and parish with railway. station, Northamptonshire, 8 miles N. of Wellingborough and 75 miles from London, 2840 ac., pop. 11,095; P.O., T.O.; 3 Banks, 2 newspapers. Market-day, Friday. Kettering is an ancient place, and was called by the Saxons Kateringes. It is a fairly prosperous town, with tanning and currying, mfrs. of boots and shoes, stays, brushes, agricultural implements, and some articles of clothing. It has a handsome town hall, a cattle market, a corn exchange, and a grammar school. Many Roman relics have been found in the vicinity."

In 1801 Kettering's population was 12,734. In 1901 it was 41,770. By mid-2003 the population of the Borough was 84,300. This is expected to rise significantly over the next 15 years. Kettering is due to see 13,100 new houses built during that period, with several thousands of houses thereafter. That will increase the number of houses and people in the borough by more than a third by 2021.