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Stoneleigh (St. Mary)

STONELEIGH (St. Mary), a parish, in the union of Warwick, Kenilworth division of the hundred of Knightlow, S. division of the county of Warwick, 4 miles (S.) from Coventry; containing 1371 inhabitants. This place, anciently called Stan-lei, from the rocky nature of the soil, was in former times distinguished for its abbey, founded in 1154 by Henry II., for monks of the Cistercian order, who were removed hither from Radmore, in the county of Stafford. In 1245 the abbey suffered greatly from an accidental fire, and was subsequently repaired by Robert de Hockele, the sixteenth abbot, who in 1300 built the gateway tower and entrance, now remaining entire. The revenue of the establishment, at the Dissolution, was valued at £178. 2. 5. The parish is crossed by the London and Birmingham railroad, and comprises by admeasurement an area of about 9700 acres, of which the substratum abounds with good red-sandstone, though none is quarried: the rateable annual value of the railway property in the parish is £1500. The village is intersected by the river Sowe, which, passing under an ancient stone bridge of eight arches, unites with the Avon about half a mile beyond. Stoneleigh Abbey, the elegant seat of Lord Leigh, stands on the site of the monastery, in a park well stocked with deer, and enriched with a profusion of stately oaks. Of the monastic buildings, the principal remains are found in the cellars and domestic offices of the modern mansion, consisting chiefly of groined arches resting upon massive pillars, and of details in the latest and most finished period of the Norman style. A market and a fair, granted to the monks by Henry II., were formerly held in the village. The living is a vicarage, valued in the king's books at £16. 15. 5., and in the patronage of the Crown; impropriator, Lord Leigh: the great tithes have been commuted for £533, and the small for £470; the glebe of the vicar consists of 3 acres. The church is a venerable structure, partly Norman, with a low massive tower, strengthened by angular buttresses, and surmounted by another tower of smaller dimensions. Near the altar are, a splendid monument to Lady Alice Leigh, Duchess of Dudley, and a recumbent figure of stone which was recently found in an upright position when digging the foundation for the handsome mausoleum of the Leigh family; the figure is supposed to represent Geoffrey de Muschamp, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield in the reign of John. A free school was established in 1708, by Thomas, Lord Leigh, who endowed it with land; and there are almshouses for five aged men and five women, founded in 1576 by Dame Alice Leigh, whose endowment is augmented with a portion of the Duchess of Dudley's charity at Bidford.

Transcribed from A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858.

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