Upper Catesby


Upper Catesby is a hamlet in the civil parish of Catesby, Northamptonshire, about southwest of Daventry. The hamlet is about above sea level, at the top of a northwest-facing escarpment. The population is included in the civil parish of Hellidon.

Archaeology

In 1895 during the sinking of a shaft for Catesby Tunnel a Roman cinerary urn was found about south of Upper Catesby.

Village

The village's name means 'farm/settlement of Katr/Kati'.
In 1389 Upper Catesby was recorded as Overcatsby. It is a shrunken village. 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. Most of the fields around the former village still have clear ridge and furrow marks from the ploughing of the medieval arable farming with an open field system divided into narrow strips.

Catesby House

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

Catesby Tunnel

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