Upton, Northamptonshire

Upton is a civil parish in Northamptonshire, in the English Midlands, lying about three and a half miles west of the centre of Northampton along the A4500 road. It was formerly a scattered hamlet and is now part of the town, and the large area of expansion to the west of Northampton takes its name from the parish. The place name means a higher farm or settlement, because the village sits on a hill higher up the River Nene than Northampton. Its Norman parish church of St Michael has a fourteenth century tower, and the remains of a Saxon timber building of the sixth or seventh century were excavated near it in 1965. Upton Hall, a Grade I listed house bought by the Samwell family in 1600, is where the political theorist James Harrington was born in 1611. The 2021 census recorded 10,035 people in the parish.