The Cordwainer

The larger-than-life sculpture, outside the Grosvenor Centre, depicts two children wearing new shoes and dancing on a cobbler's 'last' - a device used in traditional shoe-making, a trade which made Northampton famous. The first recorded reference to the town's shoe industry was in 1202. A few years later, King John, on one of his many visits to Northampton, bought a pair of boots for nine pence. The town's first guild of cordwainers (or shoe-makers) was established at the beginning of the 15th century.