Geddington

The Eleanor Cross and village pub

At a road junction in the middle of Geddington stands a stone cross, triangular in plan, with canopied statues under a slender hexagonal pinnacle. Edward I put it there around 1294 to mark where his wife Eleanor of Castile rested overnight on her funeral journey to Westminster. Twelve of these were built; three survive, and the Geddington one is regarded as the best preserved. It sits at the heart of the village, which is to say people walk past it to get to the pub.

That pub is The Star Inn, at 2 Bridge Street, opposite the cross. It is a 17th-century real ale place and, as it happens, the only pub left in a village that once had four — the Royal Oak, the White Lion and the White Hart have all gone, the last long-term closed. The Star pours three changing ales plus Greene King Abbot, typically something from Grainstore, Digfield, Phipps or Nene Valley. There's a weekly-changing lunch special at £14 for two courses, home-made classics in the evening, and a traditional Sunday lunch until quarter past two with a vegetarian menu alongside. Landlord Richard and landlady Jayne run it; one reviewer records Richard walking a guest who took unwell back to where he was staying. Dogs are welcome, there's a garden and a real fire.

Café life and the River Ise

For daytime there's Café Oak on Queen Street, open Tuesday to Sunday, dogs welcome, home-made food, and the local knitting group in the corner. It won Northamptonshire's Community Café of the Year in 2025. It grew out of a youth charity, and customers have been known to carry takeaways down to watch the village cricket. The old post office and shop closed during COVID and hasn't come back.

The village straddles the River Ise, crossed by a medieval bridge from around 1250 — four arches, three pointed and one round, with cutwaters built up into refuges where you can step aside from traffic. A ford runs alongside it, added in the last century so wide modern vehicles could cross without anyone rebuilding the bridge.

Saxon church and vanished palace

St Mary Magdalene, up from the river, is Grade I listed and older than most of what surrounds it: an Anglo-Saxon nave from somewhere between 850 and 950, with triangle-headed arcading and a blocked-up window still visible. It keeps the King's Door, the entrance the monarch used from the royal hunting lodge that once stood on the rise to the north. That lodge hosted Henry II, Henry III, Richard I and King John; nothing of it stood after 1374, and modern housing now covers the ground.

Walking out and getting here

Walking is easy here. There's a three-mile circular from the village, and a footpath northwest through Weekley to Boughton House, the French-style pile the Duke of Buccleuch keeps, with its landscaped grounds and famous arithmetic of windows. Kettering station is about four miles off, the number 8 bus links both it and Corby.

The Boxing Day Squirt

The best day to be here is Boxing Day, when a beer barrel is strung over the ford and two fire brigades try to hose it past each other, best of five. It has run for nearly forty years. The parade starts at the cross.