Atherstone

Location

Atherstone is five miles away from Nuneaton.  Whittington, a scattered hamlet, is within the parish.

Churches and Religious Buildings

For more pictures of Atherstone please visit our Photos & Pictures Gallery

History

Atherstone was originally a township, borough and chapel-of-ease within Mancetter The village was called Aderestone in the Domesday Book of 1086 and the land was owned by the Countess Godiva.  As part of its annual tax at the time of Domesday, Atherstone was required to give ten sticks of eels.

Atherstone’s earliest church dates to the early 12th Century and was founded when the monks of Bec made a donation of twelve acres to a house of friars hermits, later referred to as the Austin friars.  The present St Mary’s church was built in the 1800s.

Atherstone retains much of its old building.  The town grew up along one main street, aptly named Long Street.  Much of the housing for the town’s residents was crammed into the yards and courts of the properties that fronted onto Long Street.

In Tudor times Atherstone developed as a commercial centre for weaving, leatherworking, metal working and brewing.  Atherstone is most famous as a hatting town.  Hats have been made here from medieval times and there were many small hat factories in the eighteenth century and around thirty in nineteenth century.  Felt hats were its speciality.  The hatting industry used a cocktail of chemicals in the manufacture including mercury.  The mercury fumes could lead to brain damage and it is said that this is the source for the phrase “as mad as a hatter”.  As a result of cheap imports, the hatting industry came to an end in 1998.

Both canal and railway passed through the town, as did the original route of the Watling Street, though this now bypasses the town.

Each year on Shrove Tuesday Atherstone still holds is ancient tradition, the Atherstone Ball Game, which has been carried on for more than 800 years.

Research and Records