Stockingford is a suburb of the town of

Nuneaton Nuneaton ( ) is a market town in Warwickshire, England, close to the county border with Leicestershire to the north-east.OS Explorer Map 232 : Nuneaton & Tamworth: (1:25 000) : Nuneaton's population at the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 censu ...

, in the county of

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, about west of Nuneaton town centre. Stockingford first appeared in records in 1157, named ''Stoccingford'', derived from the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

''Stocc''; to root up trees. It therefore has its origin as a clearance in a wood, by a ford across a stream. It was historically a small hamlet within the old

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

of Nuneaton. In the early 19th century the area became industrialised, with several

collieries Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extrac ...

and

brickwork Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and mortar. Typically, rows of bricks called '' courses'' are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick wall. Bricks may be differentiated from blocks by ...

s, and the population expanded rapidly. In 1824, the church of St Paul's was built, originally as a

chapel of ease A chapel of ease (or chapel-of-ease) is a church architecture, church building other than the parish church, built within the bounds of a parish for the attendance of those who cannot reach the parish church conveniently, generally due to trav ...

to the main church in Nuneaton. Stockingford became a separate

ecclesiastical parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

in 1846, and St Paul's church became a

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the Church (building), church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in com ...

. Stockingford was served by its own railway station on the Birmingham to Nuneaton line from 1864 until 1968. There have been proposals to reopen the station in recent years. Stockingford was mentioned in George Eliot's novel Scenes of Clerical Life as 'Paddiford Common'. The area is adjacent to Whittleford Park, a public park and nature reserve, reclaimed from former industrial land in the 2000s.

References

External links

Stockingford archives – Our Warwickshire
Areas of Nuneaton {{Warwickshire-geo-stub