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A mischievous historian might suggest that Ettington was a divided parish, with the hamlet of Fulready a part of the Roman Empire, and the main settlement a part of the uncivilized wild lands, unconquered by Caesar.
For a time, anyway.
Of course, that was long before parishes were even invented. And eventually, even Ettington succumbed to the might of Rome.
It is true, however, that one of Britain’s most impressive Roman roads passes through the parish on its journey from Isca Dumnoniorum to Lindum Colonia*. And it is also true that the Fosse Way may well have started out as a defensive ditch, marking the western edge of occupied territory in the first decades after the Roman invasion in 43AD.
The manor of Lower Eatington (or Etendone) has been held by the Shirley family since the Domesday Survey in 1086, and possibly long before. No other family in England is known to be able to make such a claim.
The family seat, a neo-Gothic mansion called Ettington Park, was once named the Most Haunted Hotel in Britain. In 1963 it was the setting for the classic ghost film, The Haunting.
A Saxon thane called Saswalo held the manor in 1086, but died around that time. The manor passed to his son, Fulcher, and then to grandson Sewallis, who later moved to Shirley in Derbyshire and took the local name as his own. In 1247, another Sewallis undertook never to sell any part of the manor of Ettington – though the family seat, Ettington Park, is now leased to a hotel group.
There was already a priest at Ettington at the time of Domesday, and it seems a church had been built, or at least paid for, by Saswalo. The remains of a second church, Holy Trinity, still stand in the grounds of Ettington Park. Parts of it date from the 12th or 13th Century.
Legend has it that an early Shirley returned from the Crusades with the head of a Saracen he had killed; when he bent to drink from a pool in the village, the head fell into the water. Water still flows from the mouth of a stone head in the Saracen’s Well in Rookery Lane, so maybe…?
The old myth was recalled in the name of a pub, The Saracen’s Head on the old Halford Road, which is now a private house called The Saracens. Nearby are Saracens Field, Saracens Yard, and Saracens Manor, a house that does not date back to the Crusades.
Sir Hugh Shirley won a literary nod from William Shakespeare, after he was slain at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403. Sir Hugh was Grand Falconer to King Henry IV, and was one of four knights who dressed in the king’s armour to confuse his enemies at the battle. Their sacrifice is recalled by Shakespeare in his play, Henry IV, Part 1, when Prince Henry challenges the knight who killed them:
“Hold up thy head, vile Scot, or thou art like Never to hold it up again! the spirits Of valiant Shirley, Stafford, Blunt, are in my arms”
Local lore has it that Shakespeare hunted at Ettington. The playwright was a friend of the Underhill family, who leased the manor from the Shirleys for 100 years.
A later lord of the manor, Robert Shirley, was accused of taking part in Royalist intrigues and died in the Tower of London in 1656. He may have been poisoned.
Dr William Croft, a celebrated composer of church music, was born in the manor house at Nether Ettington and baptised in the parish church in 1678. He went on to become organist of the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey, where he is buried. He wrote the tune widely used for the hymn, O God, Our Help In Ages Past, and his Burial Service music has been used at the funerals of kings and queens ever since, including for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother.
Another hymn, The Church Triumphant In Thy Love, is sung to a Croft tune that remains in the English Hymnal. The tune is called Eatington.
Ettington is a village that moved. It started out as a riverside community, around the manor, church and Domesday mill at Lower Ettington. The villagers were moved nearly two miles up the hill just over 200 years ago, when Evelyn Shirley cleared the land around his home to create Ettington Park, leaving the only the 12th Century parish church (now part-ruined) and the village cross.
That was not the only time Ettington saw a geographical shift. Until 1931, the parish stood on the Worcestershire border. It was the border that moved, not Ettington.
A new church opened in the relocated village in 1798, and was declared to be the ugliest in Warwickshire. It was built of poor-quality local stone and eventually demolished in 1913, apart from its tower, which was used for a time as a mortuary chapel. The tower survives, fenced off, close to the roundabout at the top of the village.
The current parish church was erected in 1903, and is rather more attractive. It was built in 14th Century style and has four bells, all of them much older than the church itself. Two are dated 1595 and a third 1621. They originally hung in the old church in Lower Ettington. The fourth was recast in 1803, but may be older still./
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