Leisure
Formal parks include: Abington Park; The Racecourse, which used to be home in summer to the Balloon Festival and originally used for horseracing until 1904 and also used as a cricket ground between 1844–1885; Delapré Park; Bradlaugh Fields; Becket's Park, named after Thomas Becket as are nearby Becket's Well and Thomas á Becket pub. There is a park around an Iron Age fort in West Hunsbury.
Billing Aquadrome leisure park is on the eastern outskirts with a caravan site, marina, funfair, bar, riverside restaurant and converted water mill with original workings. Other smaller ones are Thornton's Park and Victoria Park.
The main shopping centre is the Grosvenor Centre built in the 1970s. The town has one of Britain's largest market squares, dating from 1235. Outside the centre the Weston Favell Centre built in the 1970s is in the eastern district together with various out of town retail and leisure parks.
Read more about this topic: Northampton
Famous quotes containing the word leisure:
“The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“... instead of being a help meet to man, in the highest, noblest sense of the term, as a companion, a co-worker, an equal; she has been a mere appendage of his being, an instrument of his convenience and pleasure, the pretty toy with which he wiled [sic] away his leisure moments, or the pet animal whom he humored into playfulness and submission.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true.... The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)