NAPTON-ON-THE-HILL - Extract from National Gazetteer, 1868

"NAPTON-ON-THE-HILL, a parish in the Southam division of Knightlow hundred, county Warwick, 3 miles S.E. of Southam, its post town. The village, which is small, is situated on the road from Warwick to Northampton, and near the confluence of the Napton and Oxford canals, the latter having a large reservoir here. The inhabitants are chiefly engaged in agriculture. Napton-on-the-Hill is within the jurisdiction of the county court of Southam, and was once a market town. The land is chiefly in pasture, with a small proportion of arable and woodland. The impropriate tithes are said to have been granted by Queen Elizabeth to Robert Earl of Leicester, by whom they were given as an endowment for the hospital founded by him at Warwick.

On the enclosure of the parish in 1778 the commissioners assigned to the hospital 490 acres of land, and to the vicar 201, in lieu of tithes. The living is a vicarage* in the diocese of Worcester, value £460, in the patronage of the lord chancellor. The church, dedicated to St. Lawrence, has a tower containing five bells. In the chancel is a stone supposed to represent a gridiron, symbolical of the martyrdom of the patron saint. The parochial charities produce about £45 per annum. There are places of worship for the Baptists and Wesleyans; also National schools for both sexes. At the northern extremity of this parish, adjoining Leamington-Hastings, is a tumulus called Tornlow, supposed to indicate the site of some ancient battle, human bones being frequently dug up."

[Description(s) from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868)
Transcribed by Colin Hinson ©2003]