Kenilworth


Kenilworth is a market town and civil parish in the Warwick District of Warwickshire, England, southwest of Coventry and north of both Warwick and Leamington Spa. Situated at the centre of the county, the town lies on Finham Brook, a tributary of the River Sowe, which joins the River Avon north-east of the town. At the 2021 Census, its population was 22,538. The town is home to the ruins of Kenilworth Castle and Kenilworth Abbey.

History

Medieval and Tudor

The name Kenilworth derives from the Old English cynehildworð meaning 'Cynehild's enclosure'.
A settlement existed at Kenilworth by the time of the 1086 Domesday Book, which records it as Chinewrde.
Geoffrey de Clinton initiated the building of an Augustinian priory in 1122, which coincided with his initiation of Kenilworth Castle. The priory was raised to the rank of an abbey in 1450 and suppressed with the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. Thereafter, the abbey grounds next to the castle were made common land in exchange for what Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, used to enlarge the castle. Only a few walls and a storage barn of the original abbey survive.
During the Middle Ages, Kenilworth played a significant role in the history of England: Between June and December 1266, as part of the Second Barons' War, Kenilworth Castle underwent a six-month siege, when baronial forces allied to Simon de Montfort, were besieged in the castle by the Royalist forces led by Prince Edward, this is thought to be the longest siege in Medieval English history. Despite numerous efforts at taking the castle, its defences proved impregnable. Whilst the siege was ongoing King Henry III held a Parliament at Kenilworth in August that year, which resulted in the Dictum of Kenilworth; a conciliatory document which set out peace terms to end the conflict between the barons and the monarchy. The barons initially refused to accept, but hunger and disease eventually forced them to surrender, and accept the terms of the Dictum.
During the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century, Kenilworth Castle served as an important Lancastrian base in the Midlands: The Lancastrian King Henry VI and his wife, Margaret of Anjou, spent much time here.
File:Kenilworth StNicholas southwest.jpg|thumb|upright|The parish church of St Nicholas, where Elizabeth I worshipped in 1575 and James I visited in 1616
Elizabeth I visited Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, at Kenilworth Castle several times, the last in 1575. Dudley entertained the Queen with pageants and banquets costing some £1,000 per day that surpassed anything seen in England before. These included fireworks.
Near the castle there is a group of thatched cottages called 'Little Virginia': According to local legend they gained this name because the first potatoes brought to England by Sir Walter Raleigh from the New World were planted and grown here in the 16th century. Modern historians however consider this unlikely, and have suggested that the name may have originated from early colonists to America returning to England from Virginia.

17th and 18th centuries

During the English Civil War, Kenilworth Castle, was occupied by Parliamentarians, after the Royalist garrison was withdrawn. After the end of the war, the castle's defences were slighted on the orders of Parliament in 1649, after which the castle became a ruin.
In 1778 Kenilworth windmill was built. In 1884, it was converted into a water tower, by the addition of a large water tank on the top of the tower in the place of the sails. It continued to be the town's main water supply until 1939, and finally became disused in 1960. It is still a local landmark, but is now a private home.

19th century to present

With the demise of the defensive role of the castle, Kenilworth had ceased to be a place of national significance, but Sir Walter Scott's 1821 novel Kenilworth brought it back to public attention, and helped establish the ruins of the castle as a major tourist attraction.
In the early 19th century Kenilworth was known for its horn comb making industry, which peaked in the 1830s.
Kenilworth was revolutionised by the arrival of the railway to the town in 1844, when the London and Birmingham Railway opened the Coventry to Leamington Line, including Kenilworth railway station. The station was rebuilt in 1884 and a new link line was opened between Kenilworth and to bypass. This closed to all traffic on 3 March 1969. The railway station was located to the south of the Finham Brook valley, and this caused the focus of settlement at Kenilworth to move south, away from the castle, and nearer to the railway station. Industrialists from Birmingham and Coventry arrived, developing the area around the town's railway station with residential and commercial buildings. In the 19th century Kenilworth had some fine large mansions with landscaped gardens; these were demolished after the First World War and Second World War to make way for housing developments. The railway also brought a number of new industries to Kenilworth, such as tanning, brick making, and chemicals, and also caused substantial growth in Kenilworth's market gardening, which became known for producing crops such as tomatoes and strawberries.
The town's growth occasioned the addition of a second Church of England parish church, St John's, which is on Warwick Road in Knights Meadow. It was designed by Ewan Christian and built in 1851–1852 as a Gothic Revival building with a south-west bell tower and broach spire. By the 1870s Kenilworth's population had exceeded 4,000.
In 1869, local whitesmith and engineer Edward Langley Fardon demonstrated the first bicycle with wire-spoked wheels and rubber tyres, riding from Warwick Road to Leek Wootton.
During The Blitz in World War II on the night of 21 November 1940, a German aircraft dropped two parachute mines on Kenilworth; the large explosions in the Abbey End area demolished a number of buildings, killing 25 people, and injuring 70 more. The bomb damaged area of the town was redeveloped in the 1960s.
In May 1961, the Kenilworth Society was formed over concerns about protecting a group of 17th-century listed cottages adjacent to Finham Brook in Bridge Street. The Society sets out to promote awareness of Kenilworth's character and encourage its preservation.
British Rail withdrew passenger services from the Coventry to Leamington Line and closed Kenilworth Station in January 1965 in line with The Reshaping of British Railways report. In May 1977, British Rail reinstated passenger services, but did not reopen Kenilworth station, which became derelict and was eventually demolished. In 2011 Warwick Council granted John Laing plc planning permission to build a new station. It finally reopened in 2018.
In the early 1980s, the town's name was used by one of the first generation of computer retailers, a company called Kenilworth Computers based near the Clock Tower, for its repackaging of the Nascom microcomputer, with the selling point that it was robust enough to be used by agriculture.
Kenilworth was struck by an F0/T1 tornado on 23 November 1981, as part of the record-breaking nationwide outbreak on that day.

Geography

Kenilworth has several suburbs, including Borrowell, Castle Green, Crackley, Ladyes Hill, Mill End, Park Hill, St Johns, Whitemoor and Windy Arbour. The town has good transport links to Coventry, Warwick, Leamington Spa and Birmingham.

Amenities

The principal shopping area of Kenilworth is around Warwick Street, Abbey End and Talisman Square, a 1960s shopping precinct. In 2008, the Square was modernised and partly redeveloped to include a new Waitrose supermarket. Kenilworth has been a Fairtrade Town since 2007. The town's public library underwent a renovation in 2021. The Cross, a local pub-restaurant, received a Michelin star in 2015.
Near the centre of Kenilworth is Abbey Fields, a public park which covers within the valley of Finham Brook. Abbey Fields contains the ruins of the historic Kenilworth Abbey as well as St Nicholas Church. It contains public amenities such as a swimming pool, a lake, a children's play area and heritage trails. There are several further public open spaces in Kenilworth, including Kenilworth Common, an area of historic common land covering. Parliament Piece, a field and nature reserve covering, was where, according to legend, King Henry III held a Parliament in 1266. Knowle Hill Nature Reserve, managed by the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust, is found near the Common and covers.

Landmarks

In the centre of Kenilworth stands a Kugel ball water feature, called the Millennium Globe.
Kenilworth's clock tower is an important local landmark. It was first built in 1906–1907 by a notable local benefactor, George Marshall Turner, as a memorial for his late wife. It stands in a roundabout in the town centre. The top part of the tower was severely damaged in 1940 by World War II bombing and had to be pulled down, it was fully restored in the 1970s. The clock tower is locally listed as a heritage asset by Warwick District Council.

Governance

There are three tiers of local government covering Kenilworth, at parish, district and county level: Kenilworth Town Council, Warwick District Council and Warwickshire County Council. The town council is based at Jubilee House on Smalley Place in the town centre.
Kenilworth gained a local board of health in 1877, which was converted into an Urban District Council in 1894. Under local government reforms in 1974 Kenilworth Urban District was merged into the new Warwick District along with Warwick and Leamington Spa. The former urban district of Kenilworth was then reconstituted as a successor parish with a Town Council.
Since 2010, Kenilworth has been part of the Parliamentary constituency of Kenilworth and Southam; prior to that it was part of Rugby and Kenilworth.