Rugby, Clifton Road c.1950

Photo ref: R69053D

More about this scene

ST ANDREW'S Parish Church is situated in Church Street, opposite the site of the original School House. There has probably been a place of worship here since Saxon times, but it was not until the 13th century that St Andrew's became Rugby's parish church. By 1711 the church possessed five bells and a set of chimes. Until about the middle of the 19th century, the third (curfew) bell was rung daily at five in the morning and eight in the evening, warning householders to extinguish their fires until morning; this custom dates back to the time of William the Conqueror. St Andrew's is unique in having a peal of 5 bells in the mediaeval west tower and a second peal of 8 bells in the Victorian east tower. Clifton Road, a quiet road in the 1950s, and now a busy thoroughfare, leads to the village of Clifton-on- Dunsmore. Both Rugby and Brownsover were once hamlets in the parish of Clifton, their churches merely chapels-of-ease under the mother church at Clifton-on- Dunsmore, itself attached to the Abbey of Leicester. In 1221 the Lord of the Manor, Henry de Rokeby, reached a financial arrangement with the Abbot of Leicester that effectively converted the chapel in Rugby into a parish church.