Catesby, Northamptonshire

Description
Catesby or Catesby Abbey, a parish in Northamptonshire, on the verge of the county, near the Oxford Canal, 4 miles SW of Daventry, and 6 ESE of Southam Road station on the G.W.R. It includes the hamlet of Newbold Grounds, and its post town and telegraph office is Daventry; money order office, Helidon. Acreage, 2017; population, 78. A Benedictine nunnery was founded here as early at least as the time of Richard I. by Robert de Esseby, and given at the dissolution to John Onley. Catesby House occupies the nunnery's site, belonged to the Parkhursts, and was the birthplace of Parkhurst, the Greek and Hebrew lexicographer. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Peterborough; value, £50. The church was long in ruins, and a new one instead of it, incorporating some fine materials of the old, was erected in 1861.