News
From Himeji to Northampton: Sunflower, Indigo, Amber, Moss
For as long as Crown has been making shoes, Japan has been part of the story. Our makers have travelled to Tokyo to show what...
The Yardley GAT: A shoe with more going on than meets the eye
Every shoe you have ever owned started life as one of eleven. Eleven base patterns. That is the whole vocabulary of footwear design, according to...
D16: Celebrating a decade of Crown Northampton since 2016
Ten years ago, Chris Woodford made a decision in a Tokyo store that changed everything for Crown. We told that story in our last blog....
Ten years of direct to consumer
Ten years ago, Crown Northampton started selling shoes direct to the people who would wear them. The Woodford family had spent over a hundred years...
Crown Northampton and the Oxford pattern
Every factory in Northampton has an Oxford pattern of some kind. A hundred years ago, the well dressed man needed a shoe to match the...
Shoe of the Month: June 2026 - Julie's Ashby Loafer
Each month we follow one of our shoes through the factory and tell the story of a customer wearing it. June's Shoe of the Month...
Introducing The Harlestone Derby Unlined
The Harlestone is our most popular Hand Stitch sneaker, and it now comes in the softest leather we have ever worked with. The upper sits...
Introducing the Thornton Wholecut
The wholecut pattern has been in the Woodford family for as long as anyone can remember. In the early 1900s, Chris's great grandfather entered shoemaking...
Introducing the Ashby Loafer
The loafer has been part of Northampton's shoemaking story for nearly eighty years. The pattern found its way into the town's factories in the 1950s...