Horton House Cricket Club is the venue for the 2026 AGM of the Record Society and its accompanying lecture. Situated some seven miles south-east of the centre of Northampton, the Club’s name recalls a country house which sadly is no longer with us.
In the middle of the 18th century, most of an earlier property on the site was redeveloped in the form of an imposing Palladian mansion designed by Daniel Garrett. Various alterations took place during the remainder of its life but in 1936 the whole estate of 3,628 acres was broken up and, along with demolition material from the House itself, sold in lots.
Horton Hall Estate, as it was called on that occasion, had initially been offered for sale as a whole. An advertisement published in ‘Northampton Mercury & Herald’ on 16 August 1935 described the accommodation in the mansion as an 'entrance hall, a fine suite of 7 reception rooms, 16 principal bedrooms, 7 dressing rooms, 9 servants’ bedrooms, 8 bathrooms and well-arranged offices’. Other features included a badminton court, hard tennis court and swimming pool of 85 feet.
You can read more about Horton House in Neil Lyon’s notable book Useless Anachronisms? A Study of the Country Houses and Landed Estates of Northamptonshire Since 1880, which the Record Society published in 2018.