Towcester is easily one of the more fascinating towns in the county of Northamptonshire and, with the sheer amount of interesting things to see in town, it is in the running for one of the most fascinating towns in England as a whole. Though there are the traditional diversions that are meant to bring fast-paced fun to the masses, and the famed Towcester Racecourse is a perfect example of this sort of thing, the real nitty gritty of what makes Towcester so fascinating has more to do with its history than with the many national thoroughbred races that take place within the town.
Towcester is widely considered to be the oldest town in all of Northamptonshire but more and more historians and archeologists are claiming that Towcester is in the running for one of the oldest continually inhabited places in the entire United Kingdom. This is due to the fact that many relics from the Iron Age have been uncovered throughout Towcester in recent years. Burial grounds were very popular during the Iron Age and in those days a ceremony would often accompany a burial in much the same way that our modern day funerals mimic. At any rate, many burial grounds have been discovered in Towcester and during these excavations even more fossils were found. Many experts now agree, after perusing some of these fossils, that Towcester saw human inhabitation during the middle of the Stone Age, making it even older than previously thought.
Though Towcester has had many humans live and die within its town limits, it wasn't called Towcester until a very long time after it was inhabited. During the days of the Roman Empire the area was known as Lactodurum and it had the kind of wall built around it that was all the rage in those days of Roman occupation. The walls fell into ruin as walls tend to do when they are ignored for countless centuries but visitors could still see some parts of the ancient strongholds up until the 1960s when the last vestiges of Roman influence were torn down to accommodate more current infrastructure.
It wasn't until the Normans arrived around 800 A.D. that Towcester began to take on its appearance that it maintains today in some forms. The Norman castle that proudly stood among the area can still be seen to this day and, though it is not unlike the countless Norman castles found around the country, it is an incredibly fascinating thing to behold. The Towcester of today has less than ten thousand citizens living within the town limits and this has helped the town to hold on to some of its more treasured relics. In other words, a visitor to Towcester can still see a bit of the wonder that some of the early settlers of the area must have experienced a millennium ago and even further back than that. As such, a visit to Towcester should be on the bucket list of any person fascinated with history and humanity.
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