Kettering
With the need to get from A to B high on the agenda for busy families, Kettering ticks quite a few boxes. This Northamptonshire town is in a key position on the main routes between Birmingham and Cambridge, Northampton and Peterborough, Leicester and Bedford. It’s got a growing community of London commuters, as London St Pancras is only an hour away by train. There’s a well-grounded balance of business and industry, retail and residential, work and leisure, as the background for your new home.
Travel options
The main routes that drive the town’s transport network are the A14 and the A43. The A14 is the direct link to the M1 and M6 intersection just north of Rugby. The A43 connects Northampton with Stamford. Trains from Kettering’s station will get you to the capital, with St Pancras being the link for Eurostar services. The station is on the Midland mainline railway, so it’s easy to travel by train to the other main towns in the East Midlands. Centrebus is the local bus service, with routes across the town, and Stagecoach Midlands services link Milton Keynes, Northampton, Wellingborough and Market Harborough. For journeys further afield, you have the amazing choice of five airports within a 2-hour drive of Kettering; Heathrow, Luton, East Midlands, Birmingham and Stansted.
School options
Following on from the good range of primary schools across the town, Kettering has four secondary schools. Bishop Stopford School, Kettering Science Academy, Kettering Buccleuch Academy and Southfield School for Girls. There’s an arts college nearby in the village of Barton Seagrove, Latimer Arts College. When it’s time to move on from school, the Tresham College of Further Education has one of its three campuses in the town.
Local amenities
There’s everything that a town needs to offer to growing families, shopping, sport, leisure, healthcare and green space. There are independent shops, cafés and restaurants in the historic Cultural Quarter and the Newlands Shopping Centre and High Street give you a mix of high street shops and department stores. There’s a market on Fridays and Saturdays, held in the pedestrianised area of the High Street and on Thursdays you can browse in the Flea Market. The Kettering Retail Park on the southern edge of the town is the main retail centre outside the town.