Wedding Photographer Towcester

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Towcester Weddings: Professional wedding photography

Towcester/Brackley Register Office, Sunny Banks, 55 Brackley Road, Towcester. Northamptonshire

Silverstone Golf Club, Silverstone, Northamptonshire

Plum Park Hotel, Watling Street, Towcester. Northamptonshire

Towcester Racecourse- The Racecourse, Easton Neston, Towcester. Northamptonshire

Whittlebury Park (West Park House, The Atrium, and Paddock Suite), Whittlebury Park Golf and Country Club, Whittlebury, Nr.Towcester. Northamptonshire

Whittlebury Hall Hotel, Whittlebury. Towcester. Northamptonshire - Caters for small intimate gatherings to grand affairs. Whittlebury Hall can cater for up to 500 for banqueting, the Brooklands Suite provides a superb backdrop for Weddings. The hotel is situated near the A43 in between Towcester and the M40 backing on to Silverstone Race Circuit.

Towcester History - Towcester is the oldest town in Northamptonshire, and is on the old Roman Road called Watling Street (A5). It was founded in the middle stone ages ther has been Neolithic remains found, and also evidence of Iron Age burials.

The Romans called Towcester Lactodorum. This was used as a garrison town. Brick towers were built one of which lasted up to the 1960's when it was demolished to make way for a telephone exchange. A monument to Archdeacon Sponne, the town's first benefactor can be found at St. Lawrence Church. The Romans finaly left in the 5th century AD.

Towcester became a frontier town in Saxon times as it was situated on the border of Wessex (Ruled by the Saxon King Alfred) from Danes law. Alfred's son Edward the elder fortified Towcester in 917 as part of a campaign to conquer all of England. He was successful in this and made Towcester a Saxon Royal Burgh.

It remained so until the Norman Conquest when it was confiscated by William the Conqueror. However, within a hundred years it had passed from the King's possession and throughout the middle ages it had a succession of Lords of the Manor before falling into the possession of Richard Empson, perhaps Towcester's most notorious son. He was Henry VII's tax collector and whilst earning a knighthood from his master he earned nothing but loathing from those by whom he obtained his advancement. The poor taxed public had their revenge as Henry VIII felt obliged to stifle their wrath by executing him on Tower Hill on what appears to be a rather spurious charge. Towcester shortly thereafter found itself in possession of Richard Fermor, an up and coming merchant in what was yet another age of "new men". The Fermors were obviously more astute than their predecessors and their line continues to this day as the Fermor-Heskeths.
The Normans built a motte and bailey castle early in the 12th century as a gentle reminder of the new order. It was not required for that long and fell into disrepair, but the motte survives to this day behind Watling Street East and abutting Moat Lane. It is now covered by Scots Pine, a reminder of 19th century landscape gardening.

In the English Civil War it was used as originally intended when Prince Rupert positioned ordnance on it to defend the town from the parliamentarians of Northampton. Towcester had once again become a frontier town, this time between Royalist Oxford and Roundhead Northampton. No great battle was fought here but plenty of skirmishing took place round about. The strategic significance of the town did not go unnoticed and after the Royalists were forced to withdraw the Parliamentarian Army was billeted here on its march from Newport Pagnell to Naseby to the battle that sealed the King's fate.

The 18th and early 19th centuries saw developments of a different kind as social stability brought greater wealth and the needs for increased travel. This became the great age of the stage coach. Watling Street was the road to Holyhead and hence Dublin, the second city of Georgian Britain. Towcester once again found itself on perhaps the most important road of the kingdom with countless travellers passing up and down it, Swift and Dickens among them. They stayed at such famous coaching inns as The Saracens Head (of Pickwick papers fame), the Talbot (now Sponne House and one of Towcester's earliest inns) and the White Horse Inn (where the new Towcester Museum is under construction). The latter was one of the most famous coaching inns on the Watling Street renowned for its hospitality and the standard of its cuisine. Although now a shadow of its former self it remains substantially unchanged. In its Pickwickian heyday Towcester must have presented the picture of a bustling thriving country town with coaches passing through by day and night travelling between London and Liverpool, Manchester or Holyhead as well as between Oxford and Northampton. These were the days when nearly every other establishment on the Watling Street was an inn and those that weren't inns were ale houses.

More information on towcester can be found at Towcester and District Local History Society

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