The firm was founded in 1879 by Charles Jones and his brother-in-law James Crockett, who set up on the town's Perry Street, where the company is still based today. Over the following century and a half, the business grew from a modest workshop into one of the most respected names in English men's footwear, and it has remained a family-led company throughout.

Our guide met us at the door of the red-brick factory, and the first thing we noticed was the smell: warm leather, wax, a faint sweetness of glue and cedar. The second was the sound, a steady rhythm of machines and hammers that felt oddly like a heartbeat.

The brand is renowned for classic English dress shoes and boots built to last, with a strong focus on quality leather, refined lasts and construction that can be repaired rather than discarded. Its shoes are sold worldwide and have long been a favourite of people who care how a shoe is made, not just how it looks.

They are also known for working with other labels. Many well-known fashion and heritage brands have had shoes made at Perry Street, which tells you something about how the industry regards the workmanship.

We began in the clicking room, where skilled cutters select and cut leather by eye and by hand, working around natural marks and flaws in each hide. It is slow, thoughtful work. A single wasteful cut cannot be undone.

From there, the leather moves to the closing room, where the pieces of the upper are stitched together. Brogue patterns are punched and perforated; linings are added. Then we reached the part I had most wanted to see: the making of the shoe itself.

Goodyear Welting, Explained

Crockett & Jones is best known for Goodyear-welted construction, a method developed in the nineteenth century and named after the Goodyear family, whose machinery made it practical on a larger scale. Here is how it works in simple terms:

1. Lasting. The upper is pulled tightly over a wooden last, a form that gives the shoe its shape, and attached to an insole that carries a thin rib.
2. Welting. A strip of leather, the welt, is stitched through the upper, lining and rib around the edge of the shoe.
3. Filling. The cavity beneath the insole is filled with cork, which gradually moulds to the wearer's foot.
4. Outsole. The outsole is then stitched to the welt, not to the upper itself.

That last step is the secret. Because the outsole is stitched to the welt rather than through the upper, a worn sole can be replaced again and again without taking the shoe apart. A well-made pair can be resoled several times over many years.

"People ask us why it takes so long," our guide told us, watching a welting machine at work. "The answer is that the shoe is meant to outlive the first owner's patience."

The finest shoes are made in the firm's Hand Grade range, which receives additional hand finishing across a very large number of individual operations, and takes weeks to complete rather than days.

By late afternoon, we stepped back onto the street, and I found myself looking at Northampton differently. When Charles Jones and James Crockett opened their doors in 1879, this was a boomtown of the railway age, its streets crowded with workshops, leather merchants and last makers, and its boots marching off to the army. The twentieth century was harder. Cheaper overseas production thinned the industry out, and many of the old factories closed or were turned into flats, offices and studios.

The town reinvented itself rather than faded. From the late 1960s, Northampton was expanded as a new town, drawing in new housing, new employers and a much larger population. More recently, the University of Northampton moved to its Waterside campus beside the river, and the town centre has been working to find new uses for its Victorian brick. Northampton Town FC, nicknamed the Cobblers, still carries the trade in its name.

The shoes survived too, in smaller numbers and at a higher level of craft. Today the town is known for premium, long-lasting English footwear, made by a handful of makers who have kept the skills alive.