Monks Kirby
| Monks Kirby | |
|---|---|
 St Edith's Church |
|
 Monks Kirby
|
|
| Monks Kirby shown within Warwickshire | |
| Population | 445 (2011) |
| OS grid reference | SP4683 |
| Civil parish |
|
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | RUGBY |
| Postcode district | CV23 |
| Dialling code | 01788 |
| Police | Warwickshire |
| Fire | Warwickshire |
| Ambulance | West Midlands |
| EU Parliament | West Midlands |
| UK Parliament | |
Monks Kirby is a village and civil parish in north-eastern Warwickshire, England. The population of the parish is 445.
Monks Kirby is located around one mile east of the old Fosse Way, around 8 miles north-west of Rugby, seven miles north-east of Coventry and six miles west of Lutterworth. Administratively it forms part of the borough of Rugby. One of the largest and most important villages in this part of Warwickshire from the Anglo-Saxon to the early modern period, by the nineteenth century Monks Kirby had become a small farming community. Monks Kirby is today an attractive, wealthy commuter village with many residents working in Coventry, Birmingham, Leicester and London.
Monks Kirby is dominated by the priory church of St Edith, a site of Christian worship since at least the 10th century AD.
The priory is long since gone but the church remains, seeming out of proportion to the size of the village. The first church at the site is said to have been founded in 917 by Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great and the good soils, strategic location (near the meeting point of the Fosse Way and Watling Street) and size of the parish suggest it was the dominant village in this part of Warwickshire before the Norman Conquest.
In the tenth century the village was on the frontier between the Viking controlled Danelaw and Anglo-Saxon Mercia. "Kirby" is a Norse place name roughly meaning "church town" but the village is just on the west (Anglo-Saxon) side of Watling Street, which was the formal frontier.
After the Norman Conquest, the land around Monks Kirby came into the ownership of Geoffrey de la Guerche, a Breton knight who married Aelgifu, daughter of Leofwin of Newnham, the last Saxon lord. Geoffrey rebuilt the church and gave it as a priory to the Benedictine Abbey of St Nicolas in Anjou in France, naming it in honour of the Virgin Mary and St Denis. Unusually, the text of the founding Charter for the Priory survives: the dedication took place on 1 July 1077 and the Charter tells us the names of the first monks – Geoffrey, Ranulf, Stephen, Maurice, Roger and Herman.
...
Wikipedia