The Holy Sepulchre, Northampton

The Holy Sepulchre is a Norman round church in Sheep Street, Northampton, England. It is a Grade I listed building.

Simon de Senlis, Earl of Northampton, was responsible for making Northampton a Norman stronghold by building Northampton Castle (now destroyed) and a town wall (approximately on the site of the present inner ring road). It is also probable that he was responsible for the building of All Hallows Church by the market place in the centre of Northampton and the church of the Holy Sepulchre to the north.

In around 1096, Simon de Senlis joined the First Crusade to the Holy Land. There he would have seen the Holy Sepulchre, located near the centre of Jerusalem. He would have seen it as a round church supported on eighteen columns or piers with an ambulatory around the perimeter on the west of the church, and the well attested site of Christ's tomb at the centre. There would have been four apses at each of the cardinal points, and on the east side there would have been a facade, so that the east apse was accessible directly from the rotunda. After restoration, this church is what would have remained of a 4th-century church built by Constantine I, with the rotunda replacing an earlier Roman temple.

It is likely that after his return to Northampton, Simon de Senlis built the round church of the Holy Sepulchre in Northampton, ca 1100. It is approximately half the size of the church in Jerusalem. The original church of about 1100 had a round nave of 8 columns, supporting a triforium. An ambulatory ran round the perimeter. The remains of a Norman window in the present nave, however, suggests that the original round church had a chancel to the east, probably apse-ended.

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