276 WOLSTO~. 'VARWICKSHIRE. [ KELLY's

Hanson Sarah (~Irs. ), farmer Walton George, farmer ' Williams James, gardener to R. J. Hil'OIIJS Annie (Miss), dress maker Watts George, gamekeeper to R. J. Beech esq Hirons Thomas, carpenter & joine.r & Beech esq Working Men's Club (Daniel Liggins, poultry house builder YeDmanry Cavalry (B hon. sec) John.son William, woodman to R. J. Squadl"'OO., Hon. Major R. J. Beech BRETFORD. Beooh esq in command ; Ca.pj;. The Hon. Dudley Boors Fred, Queen's Head P.H Rankin Andrew, farmer Leigh, seoond in command ; W. J udd Geol'lge, grazier Reev!liS John, tailor Plridm.ore, qururtermaste

WOLVEY, in Domesday "Vlveia," is a. village and Smith esq. LL.D. alternately, and held since 1876 by the parish, bordering on Leicestershire, on the road from Rev. Burford Waring Gibsone M.A. of Trinity College, Hinckley to Cov-entry, 5! miles south-east from Nuneaton, Cambridge, and Fellow of King's College, London. The 4 south from Hinckley, 9 from or Lutterworth, whole of the, land representing the· great tithe is owned 10 from Rugby, and 3 north-easll from Shilton station, on by Lewis Vivian Layd esq. the Trent V alley ·section of the London and North W e~ern Here is a Baptist chapel : and the domestic chapel at­ railway, in the North-Eastern division of the county, tached to Wolvey Hall -is open to the public. Several and Kirby division of Knightlow hundred, Coventry petty provident friendly societies are maintained in this village, aessional division, Hinckley union and county court dis- one of which has a capital of £1,365, and another of £713· trict, rural deanery of Monks Kirby, archdeaconry of There is a charity of £28 a year, left about the beginning Ooventry and diocese of Worcester. It is supposed to of the present century by John Foster esq. of Leicester have derived its· name from the Saxon, '' Ulf" or "Wolf" Grange, and others, for educational purposes; the re- . and the Celtic "Ea," water, for the river Anker flows maining charities for the relief of the poor do not average through it, and once formed at this point a small fen or £ro a year. The inhabitants are chiefly employed in lake; it may claim on several grounds< to be regarded as agriculture. On Wolvey Heath, according to Holinshed one of the most central parishes in , since it lies and Speed, Edward IV. was surprised in 1470 by Richard, .on the chief water shed, within half a mile of the point Earl of Warwick, the "King Maker," and conveyed to where the two great Roman roads, Watling Street and Middleham Castle, in Yorkshire, whence he soon escaped; the Fosse Way, cross each other, almost midway between this incident forms part of Shakespeare's Henry VI. There London and Chester, and is nearly the centre of gravity was formerly a hermitage on Wolvey Heath: and in the of the map of England, ~gardecl as a uniform plane. This r8th year of Richard II. (1394-5) William de Scregham district belongs to the Warwickshire table-land, and there was appointed by Giles, brother of William Lord Astley, being no higher ground eastward for many miles, and to the ancient hermitage, "there to live an hermitical most of the soil sandy, the climate is bracing and healthy, life in the service of God, and to pray for the souls of the owing to cooling winds and free drainage. The riTer said Giles, his ancestors, and all the founders and bene· Anker, mentioned by the poet Michael Drayton, rises on factoN of the monastery of Coombe" ; this hermitage, the upland here, and passing on through Nuneaton and by which, as Dugdale relates, existed before 1395, was ·situated Athert~tone and Polesworth to T'arnworth, there joins• the roo yards west of the road leading from Nuneaton to Tame, and eventually fall!! into the Trent. The church of Cloudesley Bush ; some distance southward is a circle of St. John the Baptist, originally Norman, is a building of raised ground, where, about 1555 according to Dugdale,

Attleboro' sandst{)ne, chiefly in the Decorated style, and 1 Lady Dorothy Smyth was burnt a.t the s£ake for the consists of chancel, nave, aisles, south porch of Norman murder of her husband, Sir Waiter Srnyth, at Shirford. date, and a lofty embattled western tower of the late rsth Wolvey Hall, built by repute in 1676, in place of an century, containing a clock and 3 bells, g:ven by the earlier mansion destroyed during the Civil war, is the Astleys, of Wolvey Hall, and others at the Restoration of property and residence of H. F. :f. OJape-Arnold esq. Charles II. in r66o; the south aisle retains the remains M. A. · it contains a handsome oak stairca.se with the date of a chantry founded in 1344 by Alice Lady Astley, and 1677, 'and a window, filled with fragments of stained glas~ in th~ north aisle is a monument, with recumbent effigies from the old ball, including shields of arms and dates of of freestone, to Sir Thomas de Wolvey and his wife, circ. the earlier period. The Hall has been repaired and en­ I300, and one of alabaster with effigies to Thomas Astley larged by the present owner, who also in r8go-r built a and his wife, r6o3; a reversionary endowment wai left by private Catholic church communicating with the house. the Rev. J. W. Arnold D. D. for the repair of these tombs: and dedicated to our Lady of Ransom and St. Thomas of the chancel was restored in r8Si3, at the expense of the Canterbury; it is in the Early Gothic style, from designs late Lord Overstone, lay impropriator: there are 500 by Messrs. Goodacre, architects, of Leicester, and affords sittings: the churchyard occupies a. knoll, on the south about go sittings: it is registered as a place of publiJ bank of the .Anker, and affords a pleasant view down the worship, and duly licensed for marria£res: in the hou