Returning to the town, there were the houses we know as Primrose Hill as far as the old Catholic Cathedral, then gardens to Adelaide-terrace. On the other side the Freehold-street estate was developed by the Freehold Land and Building Society, then under the guidance of the late Alderman Joseph Gurney. I well remember the site of Langham Place being a garden. The Barracks were then occupied by cavalry or artillery, and over the gateway was hung an oil lamp — probably the last public oil lamp used in Northampton.
Turning up St. Lawrence Street, I well remember at the Bailiff Street end walking through growing corn. To the left we walked by fields and gardens to the Racecourse — not one house all the way.
On the Prison side of Bailiff Street was garden ground. From the Bailiff Street entrance to the Racecourse as far as the grandstand there was no promenade and not one house, only fields right through to the Kettering Road. On that main road there was a brickyard and about six houses known as Mount Pleasant, where Brockhall Parade and the chapel stand. No Kingsley Park! On that side of Kettering Road down to where the Primitive Methodist Chapel now stands there was not another building of any kind.

The Mounts circa 1856

Between 1920-21, James Ward (1847-1925), a Northampton nonconformist, social campaigner and journalist wrote a series of six articles for the Northampton Daily Echo describing life growing up in the town in the 1850s and 60s.

This is an extract from Memories of Northampton circa 1856 in Miscellanea Edintone, 'a collection of items mostly on nonconformity and Northamptonshire'
https://edintone.com