History

Daventry lies in the middle of England in the County of Northamptonshire and has its origins as a settlement in the ninth or tenth century. Its name has an Anglo-Saxon root, being made up of a personal name, Daffa, and the Saxon word tre, meaning tree. The old pronunciation of the town was used by Shakespeare in Henry IV part I when he refers to the red-nosed innkeeper of Danetre.

A Cluniac priory was founded in the town in the early twelfth century, and became one of the major land-owning institutions of medieval Daventry. It was, however, long gone and its buildings had fallen into disrepair by the time of the Reformation. The priory church was also the parish church, and this alone survived, until it was replaced by the present parish church in the late eighteenth century. Little is known of the appearance of the priory buildings, but a few images of the priory church do survive.

Daventry has had a market since at least the twelfth century, attracting people from the surrounding villages to buy and sell their produce. Many other people have visited the town too, passing through on their way to other places. Roads from Northampton to Warwick and from Oxford and Banbury to Market Harborough and Stamford passed through the town, as well as the important road from London to Chester.

These travellers brought prosperity, in the form of business for shops and inns in the town. Other trades flourished, too, notably whip-making. When, in 1839, the London to Birmingham railway opened, the coach traffic dropped away dramatically, and the town embarked on a long period of economic and social stagnation. This only ended with the planned expansion which took place in Daventry during the last four decades of the twentieth century. An expansion that still continues today.