Relocating to Northamptonshire - advice on where to live please?

[rosieposey]

Could i have some advice on where to live please? We currently live in Devon ( have been here 18 months after moving from Wilts ) but DH has just started a job in London and he is staying with my DM during the week in Wiltshire and commuting in from there and coming home just at weekends.

We don't want this to be a long term thing as we have young DC's and are hoping to put our place on the market in April and be moved by the Autumn. Wiltshire is expensive for what we want and looking around at whats on offer in a commutable distance from London we felt that Northamptonshire had a lot to offer.

Ideally we would like to live in a village as we do now but one that is not more than 20 mins from a mainline train station into London, I can see that there are quite a few beautiful villages in the Northants countryside and something like that would be ideal but i have no idea where to avoid or even what the schools are like.

Could anybody who lives in Northants tell me what its like to live there and where best to start my search? ( and where to avoid!) tia.

Hi thewild, I'm nearby .

You'll almost always get a seat on an early train (7am ish) from Northampton as the trains start there.
Fast trains take 1hr. Euston has Victoria, northern and overground
I suspect seats are more of a premium from kettering/Wellingborough.

I'd look at Moulton - village close to Northampton, Abington Vale - suburbia. Brixworth, big village.
The Brampton's are lovely but expensive.

Market Harborough is very commutable time-wise (around an hour and fairly fast trains) but a season ticket more expensive than Northamptonshire. Great town though, lots of shops and cafes, including independents, secondary school outstanding (though both schools about to change their age ranges) and lots of community stuff going on, and all of the primary schools are fine afaik.

We live abroad and would like to move to Northampton, what are the best areas to live with 3 children and what are the good high schools there. Thank you

Market harborough is a lovely market town. Lots of independent shops/ cafes/ thriving bustle feel to it. Lots on for families. Great Bowden on outskirts is beautiful: nice walks along canal etc. Definitely worth a visit. Trains run quickly into st Pancras and Leicester is 30mmins drive for big shops and more to do. ( personally I preferred Leicester to Kettering or Northampton)

If you're looking at villages between Towcester and Milton Keynes, it's worth knowing that you can get direct trains to London from Wolverton - 50 minutes or so

Thank you very much Nottsmove16 and soulrider, our daughter is likely to get into Northampton high school, is there any parent with an experience from there and are the villages far from it? ANOTher one is still in primary and I hope wherever we settle, there will be good primaries.

Check out hardingstone village and a large estate called grange park. Both good links to m1 and the high school but not train station. Anywhere you need to get to for work etc? Budget?

Hardingstone and Wootton are really handy for the high school. Abington and Weston Favell are also lovely, nearer town centre, easy to drop on to A45 to get to the high school, lots of good primaries in that area. Secondary schools in Northampton aren't great. If you also have boys there is the boys school but it's not easy to get in to.
I don't have girls but have friends who have girls at the High School and they love it, very happy there.

The railway line through Kettering (I think it's the Midland Mainline?) to London is currently being electrified which is going to drastically reduce the journey time. They've been working on it for a while and I believe it's due to be completed in 2019. That might be worth considering in terms of time spent sitting/standing on the train every day.

Hi... I live in a Northants village, and I've been a London commuter on and off for several years.

If you want this to work happily then I would really try to do as much homework as possible to understand the impact of the different commuting options. Commuting to some parts of London from here is a push, it has a certain detrimental impact on your life and relationships. I am often out of the house for 13-14 hours, but it's way way more draining than doing a 14 hour day in the local office.

I chose to stay down there a few nights a week in a 5 day a week room to take the pressure off for a while and it made a big difference to my stress level.

I used to live an equal journey time between Northampton & Wellingborough stations which are on different lines (into Euston / Kings Cross) but have always thought the service from Northampton is better. You nearly always get a seat on the way in and there are about 3 direct trains in the morning.

However, Northampton station is not great to get to as it's right in the centre of the (large) town through 30mph zones full of lights. My village is only 5 miles out but I would leave by 6.10am to hit the 6.42am fast train.

If you're working in the city, Bedford offers a direct service direct into Farringdon / Blackfriars which removes the worst part of the journey, which is the underground (it takes 10 minutes to get from your train to the underground platforms at Euston in the morning rush, and you may wait a couple of trains to get on). Therefore, for that particular commute, definitely worth considering.

If you just need to get to a major terminus then to be honest, Milton Keynes is a much much better commute than any station in Northamptonshire. The road links to the station are better as it's right by a main dual carriageway, it has more trains per hour, and the journey time on the train is 30 minutes a day less. Towcester +3 miles is worth a look if that appeals.

I would advise looking at some different locations and doing a "virtual commute" - i.e. use online resources to work out the realistic transfer time from the London station to the office, bearing in mind the peak of the rush can add +50% to this (the evening rush other than the really bad bits like navigating Bank at 5pm is often not so bad, maybe +20%), then work out which train to catch, and then check the drive time to the station from home +10 mins.

If you can't get it down to 4 hours a day door to door then it's probably not sustainable, in my experience. When you've narrowed it down, a week actually doing a couple of the commutes staying in an airBnB would be money and time well spent.

Lastly, if you seek tranquility, beware the north west ring road extension & associated housing development which has begun - map attached

If you decide Towcester area, don't forget you'll need to factor in car parking charges (and what time you'll need to get to the station to get a space.)
London Midland (now London northwestern) from Northampton has a couple of fast trains in the morning which only take 50mins - 6.40ish and 7.40ish. I don't think I've ever not got a seat on these.

Northamptonshire is very pretty, it just gets forgotten about in amongst the Cotswolds etc