Polesworth

An abbey beside the Anker

Polesworth grew around a religious house beside the River Anker. Its beginnings are less secure than some neat foundation stories suggest: the county Historic Environment Record lists traditions placing the nunnery’s foundation at different dates. The documented medieval community was governed by an abbess, whose authority extended into the village’s trading life. ^[2]

On 14 April 1242 Henry III granted Abbess Margery and the nuns a Thursday market and a fair around St Margaret’s feast. These rights brought organised exchange into the orbit of the abbey. Its closure in 1539 changed ownership, but the church and gatehouse survived while the former abbess’s lodgings became the site of a manor house. ^[2]

A household of literary patrons

After the Dissolution, Polesworth Hall became associated with the Goodere family’s patronage. Michael Drayton served the family around 1580, and Polesworth and the Anker entered his writing. The literary connection was rooted in a particular household: the village offered a place of service and patronage from which a poet could address a wider world. ^[3]

Schooling with rules attached

Education acquired another institutional centre through Sir Francis Nethersole’s seventeenth-century free school. An eighteenth-century copy of its orders, held by Warwickshire County Record Office, specified places for 12 boys and 12 girls from Polesworth Trent, with more from neighbouring communities. Its reach therefore extended beyond the village. ^[4]

The rules also expose the limits and expectations of charity. Boys could learn reading, writing and accounts; girls learned English and needlework. Both received Christian instruction and attended church with the schoolmaster. The red-brick building of 1818 replaced the original school, leaving a later architectural marker of a much older educational undertaking. ^[4]

Mining changes the waterside

The Coventry Canal brought a different working landscape alongside the older village. At Pooley, colliery workings connected underground with those at Alvecote and Amington in 1951, forming North Warwickshire Colliery. Pithead baths had opened in 1928. These are reminders that mining history includes changing facilities for workers as well as machinery and output. ^[5]

Pooley Country Park now occupies 62.5 hectares beside the canal. Pools formed by mining subsidence and woodland habitats are part of the site, a third of which is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Former miners donated memorabilia to its visitor centre. Industrial traces survive both in the altered ground and in objects kept by the people who worked there. ^[5]