Rushton Hall

The Triangular Lodge is a folly, designed by Sir Thomas Tresham and constructed between 1593 and 1597 near Rushton, Northamptonshire, England. It is now in the care of English Heritage. The stone used for the construction was alternating bands of dark and light limestone. The lodge is Grade I listed on the National Heritage List for England. Tresham was a Roman Catholic and was imprisoned for a total of fifteen years in the late 16th century for refusing to become a Protestant. On his release in 1593, he designed the Lodge as a protestation of his faith. His belief in the Holy Trinity is represented everywhere in the Lodge by the number three: it has three walls 33 feet long, each with three triangular windows and surmounted by three gargoyles. One wall is inscribed '15', another '93', and the last 'TT'. The building has three floors, upon a basement, and a triangular chimney. Three Latin texts, each 33 letters long, run around the building on each facade. The quotations are: Aperiatur terra & germinet Salvatorem: "Let the earth open and … bring forth salvation" (Isaiah 45:8) Quis separabit nos a charitate Christi?: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" (Romans 8:35) Consideravi opera tua, Domine, et expavi : "I have contemplated thy works, O Lord, and was afraid" (a paraphrase of Habakkuk 3:2)The windows on each floor are of different designs, all equally ornate. The largest, those on the first floor, are in the form of a trefoil, which was the emblem of the Tresham family. The basement windows are small trefoils with a triangular pane at their centre. The windows on the ground floor are of a lozenge design, each having 12 small circular openings surrounding a central cruciform slit. Heraldic shields of various families surround these windows. The slightly raised ground floor has an entrance in the south-east facade. Over the door, beneath Tresham's coat of arms, is the Latin inscription: Tres testimonium dant , meaning "The number three bears witness" or "Tresham bears witness" (Tres was the pet name his wife used for Tresham in her letters). Also above the door are the numbers "5555". The figures are oddly shaped, and architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner speculated that this may once have read "3333", but that number seems to have no particular significance. It has, however, been pointed out that if 1593 is subtracted from 5555, it leaves 3962 (the date, BC, of the Flood, according to Bede). The principal room on each floor is hexagonal, thus leaving the three corner spaces triangular; one of these spaces contains a spiral staircase, the remaining two are small rooms. The building is crowned, above the quotations on each facade, by three steep gables each surmounted by a three-sided obelisk at the apex. Among the emblems carved on the gables are, on the southeast side, the highly symbolic seven-branched candelabrum within an octagonal plaque, and a heptagonal plaque depicting the seven eyes of God. On the north side are a Pelican in her piety, a symbol of Christ and the Eucharist, and a Hen and Chickens; on the southwest gable are a Dove and Serpent; and the Hand of God touching a globe. The triangular chimney is adorned with the holy monogram "IHS", a lamb and cross, and a chalice. While the lodge is indisputably a testament to Tresham's faith, it is also an example of the Elizabethan love of allegory. Carved in the gables are the numbers "3509" and "3898": these are said to be the dates (BC) of the Creation and the Calling of Abraham. Among the more recent dates carved on the building are 1580, thought to be the date of Tresham's conversion, and also the future (at the time of their carving) dates 1626 and 1641 - to what do they refer? One suggestion is that not only are they divisible by three, but that, when 1593 is subtracted from them, they give 33 and 48, the years in which Jesus and the Virgin Mary are said to have died. The broken inscriptions inscribed on each gable combine to read "Respicite non mihi laboravi", which means "Behold I have not laboured for myself alone". The Lodge was the only building Tresham designed which he saw completed before his death in 1605. Nikolaus Pevsner in his The Buildings of England: Northamptonshire states: "as a testament of faith this building must be viewed with respect". He also considered the lodge so architecturally important that he chose its photograph for the front cover of the first edition (1961) of his book; it also features on the cover of the current edition The Lodge figures prominently in the chapter of Alan Moore's novel Voice of the Fire concerning Tresham's son Francis, a Gunpowder Plot conspirator. Moore, a Northampton native, touches on the history of several local sites in his speculative magical realist history of the town. It is also featured on the cover of the album Sun Structures released in February 2014 by the English psychedelic band Temples, and is visible from the Midland Main Line between Kettering & Market Harborough

Glendon and Rushton railway station is a Grade II listed former railway station in Rushton, Northamptonshire.

Rushton is a village and civil parish in Northamptonshire. It is about 2 miles (3.2 km) north-east of Rothwell and 3 miles (4.8 km) north-west of Kettering. The parish covers 3,200 acres (1,300 ha) and is situated on both sides of the River Ise. It contains the sites of three deserted settlements, details of which are set out below. The village's name means 'farm/settlement which is rushy'.At the time of the 2001 census, the parish's population was 452 people, increasing slightly to 461 at the 2011 Census. The village has a primary school a pub opposite the village cricket pitch, a health retreat, bed and breakfast and hotel. There is a bus service that runs through the village linking Rushton to neighbouring towns. It goes hourly and the bus stop is opposite the pub, the Thornhill arms.

Alder Wood and Meadow is a 13.2-hectare (33-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest south-west of Corby in Northamptonshire.The semi-natural ancient broadleaved woodland is a surviving fragment of the Royal Forest of Rockingham. It is mainly ash, and the ground flora on base rich soil includes tufted hair-grass, dog's mercury and enchanter's nightshade. The meadow is agriculturally unimproved, and it has surviving medieval ridge and furrow.There is access by a footpath from Rushton.

Glendon is a deserted village in the English county of Northamptonshire. Its location was on land to the east of Glendon Hall, now within the parish of Rushton. Neighbouring towns include Rothwell, Kettering, Rushton and Desborough.

Pipewell Hall in Northamptonshire, England, is a building of historical significance and is Grade II listed on the English Heritage Register. It was built near the ruins of a Cistercian abbey in 1675. At this time it was owned by the Barons of Powis. The house was constructed from the stones of the abbey. The Hall was the home of many notable people over the next three centuries and is now a wedding venue.

Kettering was a rural district in Northamptonshire in England from 1894 to 1974. It was formed under the Local Government Act 1972 based on Kettering rural sanitary district. It was named after but did not include Kettering itself. Burton Latimer became a separate urban district in 1923. In 1935 it was expanded greatly under the County Review Order, taking in part of Oxendon Rural District, the parishes of Gretton and Rockingham from Gretton Rural District, and the parish of Mawsley from Brixworth Rural District. In 1974 it was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972, with the bulk going to form part of the new Kettering district and the rest going to Corby.

Pipewell Abbey was an English Cistercian abbey, in the Northamptonshire hamlet of Pipewell in the old Rockingham Forest. It was established in 1143 by William Butevilain as a daughter house of Newminster Abbey in Northumberland.The Abbey also held properties in the neighbouring county of Warwickshire, in the area of Rugby, which was then a small village, the monks had several granges at the villages of Cawston, Thurlaston, Little Lawford and Long Lawford and Rugby, with other properties at Bilton, Newbold-on-Avon, Toft, and possibly Church Lawford. The Cawston Grange was the largest and most valuable of their Warwickshire properties, and became the base of their operations there.During the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538 the Abbey and its properties were seized by the Crown and sold off; the Abbey at Pipewell was sold to Sir William Parr, and in 1675, Pipewell Hall was built nearby from the stones of the Abbey. The Boughton family purchased many of the Warwickshire properties, including Cawston, Bilton, Little and Long Lawford, and Newbold.

Kettering is a constituency in Northamptonshire represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Philip Hollobone, a Conservative.

Pipewell is a village in the civil parish of Rushton, in the North Northamptonshire district, in the ceremonial county of Northamptonshire, England. It is a mile away from Corby. With 63 inhabitants, it is one of the smallest villages in Northamptonshire. A Community Governance Review concluded in February 2015 resulted in the ward of Pipewell being moved from civil parish of Wilbarston to Rushton. In the 12th Century Richard I held his Midland Parliaments in Pipewell. Pipewell was the site of Pipewell Abbey, a Cistercian abbey, established in 1143 by William Butevilain as a daughter house of Newminster Abbey. All of the settlement is built around three fields where this used to be, which contains the Harpers Brook, a tributary of the River Nene, running through the centre. It was located within the old Rockingham Forest and some of its income came from sale of the timber and undergrowth. The abbey was suppressed as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in November 1538, despite the representations of local gentleman, especially Sir William Parr (later Marquess of Northampton). The site was subsequently granted to Parr. He intended to demolish the house, but before he could do so the property was looted by the locals. Demolition took place soon after and by 1720 no standing masonry was visible. Pipewell Hall, a Grade II mansion, was built in 1675 with some of the stone from the former abbey: the abbey remains are contained in its estate. West of the site, there is a mill pond and dam, together with a series of medieval quarries which have been worked into the twentieth century. Pipewell also holds Northamptonshire's smallest church building, known as the Abbey Church of St Mary which was built in 1881.

Pipewell Woods is an 85.3-hectare (211-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest south-west of Corby in Northamptonshire. It is composed of Pipewell Wood itself, Little Haws Wood, Foxhole Wood, Barrowdykes Wood, Monk's Arbour Wood and Rawhaw Wood. It is a Nature Conservation Review site, Grade 2.The woods are an example of wet ash-maple woodland both in its typical form and a nationally rare one. It has diverse flora including the locally rare giant bellflower, herb paris and wood speedwell. Open grassy areas provide additional habitats for birds and insects.A road and a public footpath from Pipewell go through the site.

The Borough of Kettering was from 1974 to 2021 a local government district and borough in Northamptonshire, England. It was named after its main town Kettering where the council was based. It bordered onto the district of Harborough in the neighbouring county of Leicestershire, the borough of Corby, the district of East Northamptonshire, the district of Daventry and the borough of Wellingborough.