Fenny Compton is a village and parish in
Warwickshire
Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Staffordshire and Leicestershire to the north, Northamptonshire to the east, Ox ...
,
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
, eight miles north of
Banbury
Banbury is an historic market town and civil parish on the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire, South East England. The parish had a population of 54,335 at the 2021 Census.
Banbury is a significant commercial and retail centre for the surrounding ...
. At the
2011 census, it had a population of 808. Its name comes from the
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...
''Fennig Cumbtūn'' meaning "marshy farmstead in a valley".
In 1498, Sir
William Cope, who served as
Cofferer of the Household of
Henry VII from 1494 to 1505 (in the absence at that time of a Treasurer of the Household he carried out the duties of that office as well), was granted the Lordships of
Wormleighton and Fenny Compton, part of the lands of
Simon de Montford who had been attainted in 1495. He later sold the lands to the
Spencer family
The Spencer family is an Aristocracy (class), aristocratic British family. From the 16th century, its members have held numerous titles, including the dukedom of Marlborough, the earldoms of Earl of Sunderland, Sunderland and Earl Spencer (title) ...
, later of
Althorpe. The Parish
church
Church may refer to:
Religion
* Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying
* Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination
* Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...
of
St Peter
Saint Peter (born Shimon Bar Yonah; 1 BC – AD 64/68), also known as Peter the Apostle, Simon Peter, Simeon, Simon, or Cephas, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus and one of the first leaders of the early Christian Church. He appears repe ...
and St. Clare was built in the 13th century and is a
Grade II* listed building.
Fenny Compton had two railway stations,
Fenny Compton on the
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, ...
route from to , and
Fenny Compton West on the
Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon ( ), commonly known as Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon (district), Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands region of Engl ...
and Midland Junction Railway route from to
Broom
A broom (also known as a broomstick) is a cleaning tool, consisting of usually stiff fibers (often made of materials such as plastic, hair, or corn husks) attached to, and roughly parallel to, a cylindrical handle, the broomstick. It is thus a ...
. The GWR station and SMJ station were built alongside each other controlled by a joint
signal box
A signal is both the process and the result of transmission of data over some media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processing, information theory and biology.
In ...
. The Fenny Compton Railway Station (Great Western from Birmingham Snow Hill to
London Paddington and the
London, Midland & Scottish Railway
The London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMSIt has been argued that the initials LMSR should be used to be consistent with LNER, GWR and SR. The London, Midland and Scottish Railway's corporate image used LMS, and this is what is generally ...
branch line from to ) closed in 1964, apart from the railway line from Fenny Compton to CAD
Kineton
Kineton is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish on the River Dene in south-east Warwickshire, England. The village is part of Stratford-on-Avon (district), Stratford-on-Avon district, and in the United Kingdom Census 2001, 20 ...
.
Fenny Compton was the home of Andrew and Kathleen Booth, computer pioneers in the 1940s who built a prototype electronic computer called All-Purpose Electronic Computer (APEC). That prototype led directly to the ICT 1200 computer, the UK's first mass-produced computer.
The village was struck by
an F0/T1 tornado on 23 November 1981, as part of the record-breaking nationwide tornado outbreak on that day.
The village features in the 2024 TV drama ''
Mr Bates vs The Post Office'' about the
British Post Office scandal
The British Post Office scandal, also called the Horizon IT scandal, involved the Post Office pursuing thousands of innocent subpostmasters for apparent financial shortfalls caused by faults in Horizon, an accounting software system developed b ...
as the location for the first meeting of ex sub-postmasters and mistresses in 2009.
See also
*
Banburyshire
References
External links
*https://web.archive.org/web/20050901200128/http://www.bmsgh.org/parish/warw/tyaiw/fennycompton.html
*http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/index.htm
Villages in Warwickshire
{{Warwickshire-geo-stub