Upper Catesby

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Upper Catesby
Northamptonshire
Catesby - geograph.org.uk - 69292.jpg
Catesby House
Location
Grid reference: SP526593
Location: 52°13’49"N, 1°13’48"W
Data
Post town: Daventry
Postcode: NN11
Dialling code: 01327
Local Government
Council: West Northamptonshire
Parliamentary
constituency:
Daventry

Upper Catesby is a hamlet at the edge of Arbury Hill, three miles south-west of Daventry in the west of Northamptonshire. The hamlet stands at the top of a northwest-facing escarpment below the county top.[1]

Archaeology

In 1895 during the sinking of a shaft for the Catesby Tunnel, a Roman cinerary urn was found about 575 yards south of Upper Catesby.[1]

Village

The village's name means 'farm/settlement of Katr/Kati'.[2]

In 1389 Upper Catesby was recorded as Overcatsby.[1] It is a shrunken village.[1] The modern hamlet has only a handful of 19th- and 20th-century houses, but is surrounded by numerous earthen features showing where cottages and the main village street had been.[1] Most of the fields around the former village still have clear ridge and furrow marks[1] from the ploughing of the mediæval arable farming with an open field system divided into narrow strips.

Catesby House

Catesby House is a Jacobethan country house about 400 yards west of Upper Catesby. It was built in 1863 and enlarged in 1894.[3][4] The house includes 16th-century linenfold panelling said to come from Catesby Priory,[3] and 17th-century panelling,[3] doorcases and a stair with barley-sugar balusters,[3] all from the previous 17th-century Catesby House[4] that was in Lower Catesby.

Catesby Tunnel

Main article: Catesby Tunnel

Catesby Tunnel north portal, just northwest of Upper Catesby

Catesby Tunnel is a disused railway tunnel on the route of the former Great Central Main Line. It passes about 250 yards west of Upper Catesby and about 100 yards east of Catesby House. The tunnel's north portal is about 400 yards north-west of the hamlet, and its south portal is half a mile north of Charwelton, just inside the southern boundary of Catesby parish.

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References