Preston Deanery | |
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Preston Deanery Hall |
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Preston Deanery shown within Northamptonshire | |
Population | 51 (2010 est) |
OS grid reference | SP788556 |
District | |
Shire county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | Northampton |
Postcode district | NN7 |
Dialling code | 01604 |
Police | Northamptonshire |
Fire | Northamptonshire |
Ambulance | East Midlands |
EU Parliament | East Midlands |
UK Parliament | |
Preston Deanery is a hamlet in the civil parish of Hackleton in South Northamptonshire, England. It is 4 miles (6 km) south of Northampton town centre and 1.5 miles (2 km) by road to the M1 London to Yorkshire motorway junction 15. It lies just off the B526 road (former A50) from Northampton to Newport Pagnell, between Hackleton and Wootton, a former village which has become now a suburb of Northampton.
The village is represented on Hackleton parish council which also covers the nearby villages of Piddington and Horton. It is an "ancient parish"; a village or group of villages or hamlets and the adjacent lands which originally they held ecclesiastical functions, but from the 16th century onwards they also acquired civil roles. It was abolished as a separate parish in 1935. The 1801 census showed a population of 70. The current population estimate is 51. At the 2011 Census the population remained less than 100 and was included in the civil parish of Hackleton.
The church was dedicated to St Peter circa 1200, then St Peter and St Paul c.1415. It was a parish church for what was at the time a much larger and later abandoned village. The church is now redundant but cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust. It has a 12th-century west tower with a central pilaster-buttress on each face, a single nave, and a square-ended chancel. A small part of the church is early Norman (11th century) and an even earlier part appears to have an early Viking influence, which is very unusual for the area. The chancel arch is Romanesque.