Fawsley | |
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St Mary's church, viewed from Fawsley Hall |
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Fawsley shown within Northamptonshire | |
OS grid reference | SP5657 |
District | |
Shire county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | Daventry |
Postcode district | NN11 |
Dialling code | 01327 |
Police | Northamptonshire |
Fire | Northamptonshire |
Ambulance | East Midlands |
EU Parliament | East Midlands |
UK Parliament | |
Fawsley is a hamlet and civil parish in the Daventry district of the county of Northamptonshire, England. The population at the 2001 census was 32. At the 2011 census the population remained less than 100 and is included in the civil parish of Charwelton.
The Domesday Book (1086) confirms the population of Fawsley (Falelau) as around 50, but the Knightley family of Fawsley Hall developed the sheep farming at the expense of their peasant tenants, who were all evicted by the turn of the 15th century. The hall and the church are all that remain of Fawsley.
Fawsley Hall and landscape park was created by the Knightley family. Richard Knightley, a well-to-do Staffordshire lawyer, bought the manor of Fawsley in 1416. His grandson Richard, knighted by Henry VII, built the first wing of the present house.
Sir Richard's son, Sir Edmund Knightley, was a commissioner concerned with the confiscation of monastic lands after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. King Henry VIII granted the manors of Badby and Newnham in 1542 to Sir Edmund Knightley and his wife Ursula and their heirs in exchange for Alderton and Stoke. Sir Edmund ordered the building of the Elizabethan hall, which was visited by Elizabeth I in 1575, after it had passed to Edmund's nephew, Richard Knightley, a prominent Puritan. He ran a secret printing press at the house on which were printed Puritan pamphlets and for which he was briefly imprisoned.