Thanks to Russell Mutton for sharing this story with us. The image is from Northampton Development Corporations plans to expand the town. 

I went to school at Cherry Orchard school. I was in the last year when they opened Weston Favel shopping centre. Got shown around it and the Kings school as we had some classes at Cherry and some at Lings.

My family was also one of those to inhabit Belling Estate, there was only us in Faracre Court, then as other families moved in the doctors moved in next door.

I played all over Thorpelands 1 & 2 as a youth. People in the Billings villages thought we were wrong ‘uns as they thought we were from London. I wasn’t, I was from Northampton born and bred.

I remember the Billing Aquadrome drive through bottle shop and the main road ran to it then. I’ve seen Marriott throwing up house like nothing – the compound was opposite the bottom of Faracre Court.

No buses through the estate then – you had to walk to the shopping centre or the Wellingborough road to get a bus.