The town traces its origins to an early, unwalled Romano-British settlement, the remnants of which lie under the northern part of the modern town. The Catuvellauni were in turn conquered by the Romans in AD 43. Like most of what later became Northamptonshire, from early in the 1st century BC the Kettering area became part of the territory of the Catuvellauni, a Belgic tribe, the Northamptonshire area forming their most northerly possession. About 500 BC the Iron Age was introduced into the area by a continental people in the form of the Hallstatt culture, and over the next century a series of hillforts were constructed, the closest to Kettering being at nearby Irthlingborough. Spelt variously Cytringan, Kyteringas and Keteiringan in the 10th century, although the origin of the name appears to have baffled place-name scholars in the 1930s, words and place-names ending with '-ing' usually derive from the Anglo-Saxon or Old English suffix -inga or -ingas, meaning 'the people of the' or 'tribe'.īefore the Romans, the area, like much of Northamptonshire's prehistoric countryside, appears to have remained somewhat intractable with regards to early human occupation, resulting in an apparently sparse population and relatively few finds from the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. Kettering means 'the place (or territory) of Ketter's people (or kinsfolk)'.
